Second Attempt - Laura Mulvey

Being mindful of how the 'booklet-making' technique benefitted my Year 2 group's understanding of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, I decided to try it again with a different student group, and a different key text.

The group I chose are a fairly new first year cohort who are a particularly mixed ability group. They are a combined group of FD and BA Film students. There were a couple of reasons why I tried this:

1. The method allows for plenty of time to move amongst the groups, discussing their work with them, and helping them to find the images / words they are looking for amongst the newspapers and magazines. The group is large so this was a way of identifying who was engaging with the ideas under discussion, as well as how much prior knowledge students had. 
2. I wanted to see how responsive this group would be to using methods outside of their comfort zone.

I have to acknowledge right from the start that in hindsight I should not have attempted this with a first year group in their first term. Although it was not a complete disaster, the differences to when I used this method with year 2 students were incredibly poignant.

To sum this up I would say that the First Year group were not well enough bonded to trust themselves to do this project. There was some resistance from the younger students and I sensed this was due to an almost school-like derision towards "the teacher". (The year 2 group who I had previously worked with had built up a good working relationship with each other and with me, so there was a definite level of trust when we used this technique. They had also had a consistently positive response to the contextual sessions in their first year, and had made creative responses to many ideas that were introduced. These responses were varied but included posters, YouTube mashups, scripts and Marketing campaigns.)

Making use of Tuckman's terminology (1965), my First Year group had not reached the 'norming' stage in their group formation, and therefore could not yet 'perform' to the best of their potential. The group split into quite insular smaller groups, who worked by themselves. Some students worked in a completely isolated way, and did not discuss what they were doing with their peers.

However, this was a great method for the particular texts that we used. Students could choose one of two excerpts from Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (Originally Published in Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp. 6-18). The first excerpt deals with pleasure derived from looking, and the second with male / female representation in cinema.

Students made some interesting responses. We started the session with a 40 minute lecture / seminar that examined some of the key points in the text, so students had a good idea of the terminology used by Mulvey before they even started to read the text. We examined the way Mulvey works with Freud's theories, as well as having a look at some ways that artists have responded to Freud. We concentrating on 'scopophilia', 'voyeurism' and 'narcissism' as our focus points.

Students were then given, or chose, an excerpt to read and on first reading, as before, students identified some issues with having to read an academic text. These included the difficult choice of words, the length of the sentences, and a perceived lack of clarity. 

I then explained the task to the group, and we had an hour to make small booklet responses to the text. The majority of students focused on the task, tried to make meanings from the words, and generally found something interesting to take from the text. 

However, although the choice of Visual Pleasure allowed for some fantastic representational images, the text felt out of date once we had fully analysed it. I would choose something completely different if I use this method again, perhaps something newer and more relevant to everyday life.

More and more it seems that the so-called digital 'revolution' has changed the way that young people think about themselves, their friends and their families. Traditional gender roles are not necessarily important. There may be media academics, political groups and campaigners claiming that Zoo and Nuts put pressure on young women, and their sense of "to-be-looked-at-ness" and on young men to perform in a certain way, but Internet / Social Media identity is built in different ways that are not necessarily as dependent upon gender /body stereotypes. (More exploration of these ideas elsewhere!)

On the whole, the students enjoyed the activity of 'making' in response to theory, with comments that the activity helped to "think creatively" about the text, that it helped with being able to "analyse meaning", and that it was useful to be able to put images with words and therefore "visualise meaning".

It will be really interesting to see the results from everyone else's planned TWOAAMR workshops this Spring term, and to work on ways to develop this technique so that it can be used in different ways. For me there are some Pros and Cons to the technique:

Cons:

• I can't see a group of students wanting to use this technique more than once. So, even students that had great success with these projects, would not need or want to use it again.
• There can be resistance to the idea that this is a childish activity, resulting in some students not engaging fully.
• It needs to be done with groups that are not in the 'forming' and 'storming' stages of group formation. The student group, in my opinion, should be one that is either brand new, or completely at ease, and therefore trusting of each other. 
• Some individuals are unable to relax into this task, because they do not want to feel silly, or let themselves enjoy it.

Pros:

• With the right group this is such a great way to share thoughts, discuss ideas, and gain a greater understanding of a text. The informal creative element of the technique allows for time and space to do this.
• Students feel genuine pride in their creations, and want to share them with each other.
• A tactile approach to reading can genuinely help some people to gain a greater understanding of a text.
• With high levels of dyslexia, and indications of low reading scores in many creative arts undergraduate cohorts, it is essential to find innovative, useful ways that students can engage with theory. I'm sure that this technique can be developed to include making posters, holding poster presentations, pecha kuchas and 'speed-geeking' sessions, amongst other things.

I really look forward to the sharing of creative practices on this blog.