“That, among its functions, film provides models for collective behaviour is not just an additional imposition of ideology. Such collectivity, rather, inheres in the innermost elements of film.” T. W. Adorno
This section showcases some works, produced both locally and globally, of short films that address social and community issues. The aim is to highlight the role of films as a form of cultural pedagogy that communicates the norms, ways of thought and behaviour in society as well as its values and cultural knowledge. It is also to allow and encourage members of the public to express freely their thoughts and opinions on the issues and problems arising from these films by responding to the trigger questions following each clip.
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Family
The world a child grows up in can expand – or limit – his/her imagination. How can the various agents of society (e.g. family, educators, guardians) play a part in providing the cultural capital that the child needs?
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Aspirations
Similar to the preceding clip, this short film shows that the cultural capital of a child is very much confined to the environment he/she is living in. This includes the overarching systems and structures that constructs social behaviour, ways of thoughts and actions. When the child fails in life, who is to be held accountable? Is it the child him/herself, the family, the community, or the school? Is it really due to the lack of self-motivation and aspiration on the part of the child? Or are there any external factors involved?
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Schooling
What is the role of schooling in the lives of youths? In what – or whose – interest are children sent to school? One of the tasks of schools is to instill values in students. Whose values? What are the values and ideals that youths ought to pursue?
I wish to refer to the film ‘House’ by Linus Chung under 15Malaysia. From a textual analysis approach, there are several levels of meaning that this clip may be deconstructed. These meanings can be both intended or unintended. Firstly, in terms of media representations, we could see how the different races are being represented in the film. Taking for instance the scene in the classroom where each student was presenting a model of his ‘dream house’, we could hear different levels of articulation from the three different races which, by the way, was certainly not of sheer coincidence that a Chinese, followed by a Malay and lastly an Indian student were made to present their model houses.
The Chinese student was seen as someone very confident and eloquent in articulating his ideas of a dream house, reflecting a background of high-culture and sophistication:
“I got the door from the Forbidden City, the two wall pillars from the city of Rome. And I got the Japanese Koi fish pond for my fish. And I got the five-star kennel for my dog… I’ve been
thinking of putting a helicopter on top.”
The Malay student, on the other hand, was portrayed as someone who simply aspires the affluent life but lacks the aristocratic finesse such as that of the previous student:
“Ini rumah saya sebab saya kaya. Ini pool saya sebab saya kaya. Ini kereta saya, Ferrira.”
When it comes to the Indian student, he was portrayed not only as someone meek and unconfident, but lacks aspiration as well:
“This is my house. This is my dream house. My father built it with his hands, this house.”
From my own point of view, I guess there is a couple of things that this film attempts to highlight. Firstly, it is not just addressing the plight of the poor, but in fact stretching the discourse further to include the problem of racial disparity, where the majority tends to oppress the minority group. In the case of this film, we could observe 2 instances which are neatly juxtaposed against each other to show how Malaysian Indians, who have been referred to as ‘the third class race’, are treated: while the Indian student was approached by two bullies, a Chinese and a Malay student, who crushed his model house, his mother
was approached by 2 contractors, a Chinese and a Malay, who without any sympathy, tore down their already dilapidated house.
On the higher level of policy, we could see, through this film, how systems and structures are powerful enough to simply crush the individual. An education system which upholds and celebrates the values of an affluent society at the same time ridiculing, to some extent even to hold in contempt, the standards and values of the underclass, would reinforce the process of social stratification where the school becomes a powerful means of social division (in the case of the teacher who ridiculed the student’s idea of a ‘dream house’). Dehumanizing policies which treat the individual as just another insignificant number in documents of bureaucracy would breed an apathetic society where unthinking executives would simply execute a policy uncritically without any empathy towards those whose lives the policy is affecting (in the case of the two contractors who tore down the house even though its owner was pleading frantically).