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april 2011 issn 0113-8332 print issn 1179-4062 on-line national association of media educators script 76 win a v48 hours competition registration pack also special `2 for 1 offer see page 49 1

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contents 03 04 08 12 14 16 15 19 22 23 editorial boy oh boy an interview with taika waititi the media manifesto project it can be done media education after the media script deadlines 2011 the good the bad and the disparate `greed a tearaway s life before editor s rant otago wellington auckland 27 28 motivation 48 hour film challenge 29 road movies a shared teaching resource 33 video storage 34 sdgnz take subscription 35 lighthorsemen study guide atom conference 2011 36 ipod as an av production device 37 name day pd and agm 38 name schools video competition 2011 38 name constitution draft 46 name membership form 48 end piece cover picture this crane converts to a camera platform one of the 67 camera positions used to cover the royal wedding by swedish tv read the full story in script 75 national association of media educators a member of the council of australasian media education organisations the following are the voluntary officers who along with fellow committee members are committed to supporting and growing media education in new zealand president josephine maplesden hamilton girls high school lealand@waikato.ac.nz vice president deb thompson western springs college thompsond@westernsprings.school.nz secretary treasurer script editor sandra chesterman albany senior secondary college schesterman@ashs.school.nz kiely murphy baradene college kmurphy@baradene.school.nz gordon lawrence 27 bert wilson place cockle bay auckland 2014 gsjl@slingshot.co.nz subscriptions you receive script and support the development of media education in new zealand schools by being a member of this national subject association membership:student subsidised rate 5 individual member 35 institution member 60 send your cheque made out to name to treasurer name p.o box 44265 point chevalier auckland 1246 new zealand photographs gordon lawrence pages 31,32 endpiece provided by authors pages 19,21,24,25,26,34 35 internet pages 11,13,36 swedish television front cover google images pages 15,16,17,18 film production company pages 5,6,7 © copyright is retained by the authors unless otherwise indicated with the article script issue 76 ­ april 201 2 2

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editorial what a momentous few weeks we have had first the shock of another earthquake in christchurch this one was the big one and seemed to be the mother of all earthquakes but hardly had we begun to understand the extent and long term impact of this disaster on one of the country s most beautiful cities than our tv screens became filled yet more disaster images ­ japan i do not think that i will ever forget the helicopter shots i watched unfolding on nhk satellite channel the awesome frightening tsunami wave crossing and crushing the rural and urban landscapes images which have now been re-screened many times on various newscasts on both occasions our main tv channels dropped schedules to run with the breaking news commercial free for hours so that there was a cost to them in lost revenue what surprised me was how quickly a private channel ­ tv3 became a public service broadcaster and it certainly pipped tvnz with the news from japan a fact that they now are publicising in whole page newspaper adverts as with 9/11 the first images on screen from christchurch were raw feed and raw camera footage rushed to air gritty actuality rough unpolished and full of wild swings and zooming framing shaky yet compelling attention gradually the images became more processed and edited as repeats were screened like the early coverage on 9/11 it seemed unreal but it was i tried to imagine what it was like in the christchurch newsrooms buildings shaking power going off perhaps stand by generators kicking in at tv3 the car park filling with the silt of liquefaction yet in what i expect was some panic the professionalism kicked in and the images began to be gathered for the nation to see and feeds for the world to use i noticed that channel 7 in australia was taking the live tv3 coverage last evening as i was browsing the sbs web site i came across a blog by one of their reporters peta-jane madam http www.sbs.com.au/news/blogarticle/122692/a-longnight-in-the-newsroom/blog/reporters-blog she vividly describes the sbs newsroom scene as the japanese earthquake news broke everyone was glued to a tv there s one at every desk some reporters huddled in numbers to watch as though witnessing the horrific vision together would somehow make it easier to digest then the adrenalin kicked in and we all began to rush around yell out and bash away at the poor keyboard in an attempt to get the facts for the 6:30pm bulletin and for a special edition at 9:30pm which i am to present seeing a newsroom like this can be quite dizzying it s manic panicked and there s no room for being precious or taking offence particularly when your producer is screaming at you to hurry up and write the lead we re all in this together and further on she wrote minutes pass and still no `official death toll to report what do we tell our audience hundreds thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands feared missing or dead then one reporter yells first wire on the toll has dropped it s six people confirmed dead according to japanese officials eyebrows are raised and someone even lets out a nervous laugh after the vision we ve seen we all know that number will be much greater our managers quickly gather to work out how the network should cover this our senior correspondent brian thomson is sent with cameraman ryan sheridan they re not in the meeting but are probably packing their bags or already on their way to sydney s international airport towards the end of her blog peta-jane comments we nut out the latest facts and write down what we know but the most worrying thing is what we don t know as we prepare to get ready for our late-night special edition we fear we have simply scratched the surface of this horrific event and the information we ve delivered is only a snapshot of the bigger picture which will be somewhat more clear in the morning a tv newsroom at work getting the breaking news out to viewers but for christchurch their quake closed down a local treasure ctv over the years and through various ownership changes the city s own regional tv channel has been a survivor it produced 20 hours of local content per week as i read somewhere a pretty good effort especially considering the budget constraints they most likely worked under i do know that ctv gave students at the nz broadcasting school the practical experience annually of running a season of nightly news broadcasts you can find clips of their metro news on you tube will ctv rise again i hope so i expect so but it will do so without the experienced and passionate staff it once had and we do not forget the deaths and damage in the press building long a distinctive feature of cathedral square amazingly the press was published the next day and the next and the next and continues without a break so our hearts go out to all the people in the garden city but especially to our media studies teacher friends and name members some have suffered loss of their home or at least damage to it some have lost classrooms and resources others have to cope with shared school facilities and some may have lost friends as prince william said at the memorial service kia kaha christchurch kia kaha colleagues 3

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www.boythemovie.co.nz 4

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boy oh boy an interview with taika waititi geoff lealand introduction when i first wrote this for metro [australia in late april 2010 taika waititi s second feature film boy was in its fifth week of release and had become the leading film comedy ever made in new zealand overtaking the previous contender sione s wedding chris graham 2006 since then boy has earned over $nz9.2 million at the local box office to become the highest grossing new zealand film ever a rare success for a new zealand film where the `rule of thumb is that one new zealandmade feature film in ten makes a profit and one in eight breaks even on production costs 1 wedding paul murphy 2008 and the topp twins untouchable girls leanne pooley 2009 boy could be regarded at the most recent example of an interesting new turn in new zealand film-making revoking his 1995 judgement of new zealand film as a `cinema of unease 2 sam neill declared in 2007 that it might now be considered a `cinema at ease in the wake of a number of sunnier `feel-good local productions this could be an over-confident judgement by neill but boy is certainly a sunny film in its setting the beautiful waihau bay on the east coast of new zealand and its lyrical portrayal of a recent past but there are darker moments in its themes in that it engages with parental neglect and self-delusion principally through the figure of boy s inept wannabegangster father alamein a richly worked character played by taika waititi in the ensuing months my interview somehow got lost in the transition between departing and arriving editors at metro and subsequently never got published rather than abandon this interesting interview which involved some organization i am indeed taika s finger-prints are all over this adding it to this issue of script film he stars as alamein the film itself was both boy and sione s wedding reflect the inspired by waititi s oscar nominated short multicultural shape of contemporary new two cars one night and there is possibly a zealand the latter is a celebration of the touch of autobiography in the story given samoan community in suburban auckland this it was appropriate to direct questions the largest pacific island city on the globe about the genesis and purpose of the film to the following and the former although set in a 1980 s rural its writer/actor director and maori-centric new zealand has been interview took place via email in april 2010 enthusiastically received by broad and whilst taika was taking a significant acting diverse audiences as a celebration of a new role as the green lantern s best friend in the zealand way of life which may or may not be shooting of the superhero movie the green lantern being filmed in new orleans by disappearing expatriate new zealand director martin along with other recent releases such as campbell no.2 toa fraser 2006 second-hand geoff lealand 1 from a discussion paper for review of government screen funding arrangements wellington ministry of culture and heritage 2009 screen media studies university of waikato 2 as explored in his cinema of unease a personal journey the new zealand contribution to the british film institute century of cinema video series 5

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the interview q you are currently involved in the shooting of the green lantern in the usa does this mean that you are joining the exodus of new zealand film-makers overseas or will you be back in new zealand soon i ll be back in nz soon-ish i have no plans to escape new zealand it s my home i m very patriotic they re listening q what projects do you have lined up after the green lantern just a lot of writing if i can get the time i need to finish some other scripts and plan my next project i have no idea what that project is so i should really think about that probably something set in new zealand seeing as i m very patriotic q do you see yourself as primarily a new zealand actor/director or more of an international artist following in the footsteps of cliff curtis or temuera morrison i d like to think the art i do is international in that it is accessible by all people universal in theme while being distinctly new zealand in presentation as i keep saying i m a proud new zealander but i also need to escape sometimes because i m related to everyone q what has been the highlight of your career to date apart from the opening week of boy in new zealand in which it did extremely well and proved new zealanders want to see new zealand films the highlight was the premiere screening in my hometown of waihau bay friends family locals all coming together where the film was shot and watching it before anyone else q some questions about boy can you briefly trace the evolution of your latest film brain ­ paper ­ computer ­ sundance writers labs ­ drawer ­ brain ­ computer ­ nz film commission ­ computer ­ nz film commission repeat back and forth 4 times ­ pub ­ computer ­ pub ­ computer ­ nz film commission funding meeting ­ bank ­ bar ­ waihau bay q who do you hope will get to see boy who will be its audience it was made first and foremost for new zealanders they get it and understand all the subtle nuances lingo historical references however outside of that audience i wanted to make something that everyone could appreciate a film that could make them laugh and cry and connect with the themes what the film is really about is nothing specific to just maori or new zealanders it is a human story if you ve ever had parents then you re going to get this film q how do you think australian audiences will react to boy see above i think they ll love it our countries are very similar as is our sense of humour we have a more subtle darker view of what s usually considered funny i think we share an understanding a mutual appreciation of awkward uncomfortable entertainment q several commentators have suggested that much of the story in boy is autobiographical is there anything to such claims it depends it is shot in my hometown and many family members helped out and we used locations i grew up in and around but apart from that the story s a crock of shit q boy is set in a time past 1984 in a time that now seems rather mystical and idyllic do you think that new zealand in 2010 is a very different place has waihau bay changed since 1984 yes new zealand is a different place less safe but more connected less racist but more ignorant i do think times have changed and not necessarily for the better the worst possible change or evolution i have witnessed is the sale and development or rural areas ­ land being sold and then re-sold to rich people many foreigners making it almost impossible for it to return to local hands you see communities falling apart and being taken over and the next thing you know the area has become a holiday town for aucklanders property developers are quite foul q the world and new zealand in 1984 is seen primarily through the eyes of boy was this a deliberate choice of perspective no shooting in 1984 was an accident involving a time machine i wanted to set the story in a time when kids had no access to computers cellphones internet playstations or psp s a 6

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www.boythemovie.co time when you had to go outside to make your own fun when tv was a treat and you were allowed to disappear with friends until it got dark i felt i had no idea or access to kids culture in the present i don t get it and i kind of don t want to i m not interested in the cartoons the after school programming their social world i grew up with sesame street and the electric company shows conceived and produced by people on acid q what is the primary purpose of the animation inserts in boy to entertain the 5 year olds q some more general questions you often draw on a particular style of comedy daggy characters buffoonery taking the mickey in your films do you think that there is something intrinsically new zealand about such humour sure but australians share that style just look at the castle q you have noted in the past that you prefer to be thought of as a maori who makes films rather than a maori film-maker can you expand on this i actually said i want to be seen purely as an artist rather than a maori who makes art my background is visual art painting especially and i like my work to be seen as it is presented i don t think the viewer needs to know that i cut off my ear or that i painted the picture with my feet or that i happen to be maori i carry that attitude through into filmmaking it is however very important to me that young maori are aware that i am maori it is vital that we maori see ourselves doing well especially in areas we normally wouldn t have access to q are you keen to do a serious film in that humour is not so central nor important i think all of my films will be a mixture of comedy and drama it s truer to life it s more human q is it important that new zealand continues to produce locally-made film tv programmes and music for what reasons yes it is very important art is probably the one thing that stops us all from killing ourselves or each other if we keep making our own work then we survive as a culture we grow developing as storytellers or musicians in turn encourages the younger generations and our voice continues to be heard do you really want your children to be raised by americans q how difficult is it to make films in new zealand it s easier for me because i haven t stumbled yet i have done well with my films and people believe in me but for others it is very hard especially if you have no track record and especially if you re a woman women aren t taken as seriously and get less opportunities than men to tell their stories woman is the maori of the world 7

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from the united kingdom the manifesto project a group of british media studies teachers lecturers and academics are currently developing a rational for the existence and teaching of media studies their intention is to develop a web site which will contain various submissions by who ever wishes to contribute to the discussion later many of the contributions will be incorporated into a book the leading organisers seem to be pete fraiser who is a doctoral reseacher and jon wardle the director of the centre for excellence in media practice at the university of bournemout in the lead web page they comment the last decade has seen a resurgence in ideological movements from islamic fundamentalism to opposition to climate change believing in something and believing in it enough to do something to advance its cause whether it be attending a march make poverty history protesting g20 tuition fee demos or buying something rage against the machine ­ christmas number 1 is once again on the rise when charlie brooker interviewed david simon at the edinburgh international tv festival he asked him whether everything he did had to have a message david simon replied `yes or why do it they are giving you 10 or 12 hours commercial free on hbo and they are not getting in your way you get to say what you think is justified and you get to find a way to say it i m using drama to do it it s the tool in my tool box yes everything should have a message or what s the point edinburgh international tv festival 28th august 2009 david simon has an ideological perspective he believes that all media at its heart should have something to say and that is its purpose this book is based on the assumption that media education too should have a purpose and that we need to be more explicit about what that purpose might be from the prompting of len masterman in the early 80s many teachers might describe media education as a process of `demystification with teachers supporting students to develop the capabilities to read media texts in order to `liberate them from the media s `mystification but others like david buckingham have questioned this 8 above pete fraiser below jon wardle

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suggesting that maybe students aren t quite so helpless and i don t just mean in the industry itself your job is to shake things up in this country a healthy democracy that they need their teachers to `unmask media texts requires a powerful and free media your job it to ask the over the past twenty years this tension has usefully been difficult questions of people in power your job is to make explored through a variety of texts which have focussed on things difficult so i would urge you not focus on the diffuclt teaching in the media classroom coupled with recent job of getting a job as a runner or as an assistant producer initiatives to further professionalise the teaching sector a but try to figure out why you are going into the industry renewed focus on teaching and learning strategies and what have you got to say what can you do with this approaches have resulted in significant improvements in incredibly powerful medium bournemouth university classroom practice but for what graduation kosminsky november 6th purpose 2009 there are those who would dismiss the fancy that it took till graduation their very idea of studying the media the last day on campus for the students to daily mail might argue that it is only on be asked to think deeply about what they the national curriculum and available at had learnt and for what purpose they degree level to ensure that the might deploy it this project comes at a participation numbers for young people time when media education appears to engaged in formal learning and gaining be flourishing applications to media good qualifications remains high the courses in the uk have never been `dumbing down agenda they might higher in south east asia media argue that studying soap isn t a serious education is now a legislated aspect of pursuit and will be frowned upon by schooling in a number of countries and university admission tutors and in the us various foundations are employers implicitly this argument is making millions of pounds available for promoting a high brow lowbrow divide academics to investigate the nation s we can t remember the last time we read media literacy yet we spend very little an `angry from tunbridge wells letter time discussing what we are trying to complaining that the tax payers money was being used to achieve and what the measures of success might be we fund the teaching of metaphysical poetry instead of physics might be disappointed if at the end of our teaching careers our ability to `read and `write media texts is vital to a civic society in terms of a vocational view of media education the last labour government in the uk seemed to take the view that a key reason for recruiting students onto media courses was to develop a generation capable of leading the world s creative industries in order to grow gdp by contrast buckingham and others argue that we study the media and teach people how to make it because it plays an increasingly significant role in our lives and our ability to `read and `write media texts is vital to a civic society indeed the sheer amount of time young people spend with the media is itself often offered as a key reason for studying it a common view of education is that it doesn t do us any good unless it hurts many young people far from looking back on their school days as `the best days of our lives remember a time of rote learning and failure it is still all too common to hear that their educational experiences are far from positive but media courses for many students do offer pleasure and enjoyment of learning and we would argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with that these are just some of the discourses around media education this book will seek to explore why a range of people involved in the field see it as an important activity to engage in the best measure of success we can point to is we helped our students get some good grades and a couple of them worked on some popular tv programmes twenty five years of scholarship have bought about broad consensus on the theoretical framework for media education ­ 1 that media is representation not reality 2 that the media is produced by organizations and individuals and therefore can and should be read critically 3 that the media is now not only read and received but reinterpreted by audiences we would nonetheless argue that we are still some way from identifying a broader teaching and learning framework for media education and most critically ­ and the focus of this work ­ we are yet to articulate a clear purpose for the work we do what is the point of media education ­ whether it be media studies media practice media production media literacy ­ what is the point you may argue the clue is in the title of each of these subsets of media education ­ as on the surface the differences between media production and media literacy seem pretty straightforward however the purpose of each still feels rather opaque are we seeking to develop the media producers of tomorrow or to nurture individuals capable of holding power to account are we seeking to hold a looking glass up to society in order for society itself to better understand peter kosminsky the docu-drama writer director itself or perhaps we are hoping to develop a more media responsible for the government inspector and warriors at literate society capable of protecting itself from evil media a recent graduation ceremony encouraged students to think conglomerates about how they themselves would measure success these might all be laudable aims but how far are media `used correctly [television has incredible power and that power is about to be passed into your hands and i would beg you beg you to make good use of it you don t have to just continue and mimic what s gone before its time for a new generation to come along and make some mischief please hear me your job is to shake things up 9 teachers articulating their own agenda as neil postman has written `to become a different person because of something you have learned ­ to appropriate an insight a concept a vision so that your world is altered for that to happen you need a reason a reason as i use the word here is different to a motivation postman the end of

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education in `why i write george orwell 1931 identified four great motives or purposes for writing sheer egoism aesthetic enthusiasm historical impulse and political purpose in this book we are asking a range of media educators to consider the motives and purposes they might have for teaching about the media over the last ten years there has been a lot of attention paid to the student experience and improving our teaching and learning there has also been a lot of discussion about the types of themes we should teach and across what media yet if you subscribe to postman s view of the world to truly improve the student experience and to legitimise our subject we need to be clear about the reason for learning about the media hence a manifesto this project is an attempt to develop a shared understanding some shared reasons for media education we hope it will stimulate discussion within course teams and with students we imagine it will lead to conversations about how we teach and what specific things we teach but those are secondary questions we believe we may uncover many reasons but it seems better to have articulated many as opposed to none and as postman says `a definition is the starting point of a dispute not the settlement on the website you will find a variety of writers summations of their reasoning for media education these will be context specific and at times may feel at odds with one another however we hope that by the end of the process we will have a better more sustaining understanding of the purpose of what we do and that we will be able to draw on this understanding to keep us on track in the classroom and in defending and advocating our subject in the future http www.manifestoformediaeducation.co.uk/why-amanifesto from new zealand geoff lealand contributes this item to the manifesto project discussion do you agree with his comments it can be done teaching media in a small country i live and teach in a small south pacific nation 4.2 million where with surprising ease media studies has found a valuable and valued place in the national curriculum the war is over and the battle has been won but these may be the wrong metaphors to employ as various approaches to media teaching have been in new zealand schools since the 1970s and we have had more allies than enemies along the way we now we have media studies as a specific area of study in the national certificate of educational achievement ncea the portfolio of qualifications most new zealand students leave school with during their school years students can opt to do three years of media studies years 11 to 13 as a blend of theoretical or analytical courses or achievement standards such as `demonstrate understanding of the relationship between a media product and its audience as 2.1 or `examine the media representation of an aspect of new zealand culture or society as 3.3 and production-oriented courses such as `produce a design and plan for a developed media product using a range of conventions as 2.5 or `write developed media texts for a specific target audience as 2.8 the best students can also go on to do scholarship in media studies once they leave school students can go on to a proliferation of tertiary-level media degrees or training courses or take the analytical and practical skills they have learnt in secondary level media studies into other areas of study or employment it is quite possible now that all this activity is leading to a significant slice of young new zealanders becoming media literate and media confident and this is particularly significant for the general health of a nation which has earned the dubious distinction of having one of the least regulated overly-commercial broadcasting environments in the world it is equally important that such media-literate students play a role in the nation s life as it increasingly re-shapes itself as a multi-cultural society but also holds to the moral and legal obligations of the country s founding document the treaty of waitangi so new zealand media teachers their role as multifaceted most of them teach media because they love their name members are encouraged to go to the website and read the various contributions which are steadily increasing in number there is also the opportunity to add comments to each of the often lengthy contributions 10

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subject but also because it allows an engagement with the enthusiasms and prior knowledge of students it is education as it should be teachers come with a specialist knowledge but match and mingle it with the knowledge students bring to the classroom or the editing suite teachers also find that media teaching can motivate and excite the reluctant or difficult learner and students learn to work cooperatively in addition to acquiring the analytical and problem-solving skills so desired in the modern workplace but media teaching media studies in particular also has political implications and quite rightfully warrants a manifesto a great deal of analysis critiques the status quo and taken-for-granted the `conventions of the media from issues around media ownership the concentration of ownership into global corporates placing a value on the local in an increasingly globalised economy to issues of media representation such as gender and ethnicity to issues around media ethics privacy issues in social media for example to issues around marketing the targeting of children by fast food advertising but media analysis is not about conspiracy theories nor about consumer helplessness it is about understanding processes revealing structures below the surface and developing strategies for resistance if that is needed and change it is this fear of political agenda which prompts the popular press and populist politicians especially in the uk to periodically go on the attack against media studies as david buckingham and others have noted here a common taunt is that it is a `mickey mouse subject but of course it is any media teacher worth his/her salt will study mickey mouse as a cultural icon disney corporation as a prime example of a global media corporate the role of diisneyland as a dominant leisure activity the tie-ins between disney movies and toy marketing etc etc media teaching in new zealand is in good health in new zealand firmly embedded in schools and continuing to find support from higher authorities such as the ministry of education and the new zealand qualifications authority we rely less on the imported models of teaching and content rationales such as the british film institute framework or the ontario association for media literacy model which prevailed in the early days new zealand teachers and academics have developed their own approaches and teaching resources and a growing self-confidence about the importance of the task but this is not the say that they don t continue to share a sense of 11 comradeship with media teachers in other countries and other circumstances for increasing student knowledge about the media providing them with a language for analysis giving them with opportunities to create their own media boosting their optimism and acknowledging their media pleasures and ultimately making the world a better place is an international cause why media education because it is there at the centre of our lives and like all important things in our lives we need to understand it be fully-informed about its ways and meanings and have the language to describe what we see and hear as david buckingham suggests most of us could rehearse these and other reasons in our sleep the trick is in finding the perfect balance between over-estimating the power of the media and thus fall into the practice of protectionism and under-estimating its power and aligning ourselves with who argue that media is not a fit topic for education another objective is finding the right mix between practice and analysis or between theory and production as some put it i am a mind that you can t separate the two and although i am drawn to david gauntlett s arguments for diy `creative engagement my experience also tells me that students don t get very far unless they have a good knowledge of how things have been done in the past and how the majority of media is made now i am also mindful of the fact that even though students may have technical proficiency that don t always have much to say with it for they lack the life experiences which allow them to move beyond their familiar reference points they often need to be given guidance in constructing interesting media products and stories for audiences wider than themselves and their friends this implies developing and pitching ideas rather merely creating stuff as cary bazalgette suggests this should begin at the earliest stages of education when children are often more open to new ideas and inventive ways of seeing the world at a point in their lives when as albert einstein declared imagination is more important than knowledge obviously such early intervention will have implications for teacher training but we should put more effort into this area lastly for the sake of clarity and for an united front when we go out and promote our subject we need to have a clearer idea about the ways we refer to it i prefer to speak

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of media studies which is a dynamic and ever-growing discipline of research writing and teaching and one which justifies an upper case status there is also media education which implies teaching about media or using media components across a wide range of other subjects and is also a noble endeavour but now we have media literacy which is favoured in north america but is a concept which lacks a clear unequivocal definition to me it suggests that we are teaching literacy to the illiterate which is really the wrong approach i am all for henry jenkins call to `complicate things but let`s not make it too complicated http www.manifestoformediaeducation.co.uk/2011/01/geoff-lealand jullian mcdougal was a popular keynote speaker at the last nametrcc conference in christchurch he is reader in media and education and head of creative arts at newman university birmingham manifestos are not what they used to be in the uk context it has become a pedestrian discursive exercise to explain away pledges on which elections are campaigned in terms of `what we know now nevertheless this project calls for us be explicit about the purpose of media education along with the arrival of the media education research journal it s timely but it s hard to respond to such wellintentioned pragmatics without being awkward when the first edition of `the media teacher s book mcdougall and potamitis 2010 was published the question of politics came up several times ­ the denial of any teacher-driven political project for media education was seen as a `disavowal the book s thesis was that our `subject is always political in the sense that we are alwaysalready concerned with discourse and `claims to truth competing with one another in our engagement with media but that the central distinction between the potentially radical `spirit of media education compared to it s more conservative cousin ­ english ­ is lost if we allow ourselves the luxury of transmitting any authoritative sense of value to students if media education stops bearing witness to the conditions of its own possibility then any `progressive energy is undermined by conservative institutional practices then came web 2.0 and maybe media 2.0 ­ but that s another argument and a lot has changed it s apparent that a `new politics for media education have come more sharply into focus straightforwardly we can observe that research-based thinking has moved on from viewing new digital media as entertainment and new digital learning as separate things a group of academics are suggesting that new digital media present us with new ways of learning rather than just new contexts for learning or new kinds of access to learning and that these claims raise important psychological and philosophical issues that we can relate to existing and accepted theories of learning from these two disciplines and one implication of these claims is that the educational institution as currently configured is threatened in the near future this is not simply due to economic imperatives why have buildings and teachers when you can provide education online in peoples homes but more importantly because it is suggested that the physical structure and temporal configuration of the institution will no longer be able to provide learning for a generation of people who are `digital natives not simply because of what they prefer eg screens rather than books but more fundamentally because of how they think for media education specifically we can map out a genealogy of sorts in three phases from the `relevance boom of the 1980s ­ during which time eager media students like me found their excitement at getting access to very big cameras and edit suites met with a compulsion to challenge the `dominant ideology ­ which itself became of course a grand narrative ­ to the variably defined era of `creativity with its attendant economic and skills modality to the contemporary landscape of `media literacy it s clear that the navel gazing of practitioners me included for sure and policy-makers has been largely ignored by usually young people who have merrily got on with the job of making interesting stuff and relating it critically we have hoped to concepts of one kind or another we ve moved away from emancipation of one kind through critical reading of the big bad media ­ a liberal humanities conceit to another equally patronising version digital creativity for employment in a non-sector in which such as it can be pinned down the qualifications we provide afford those who hold them with little if any capital so its paramount that we identify our purpose without recourse to these ideal versions of our subject identity to do this we need to transfer the `hurt of which the 12

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julian of this manifesto speak media students to the creators mcdougall reader in from theand education teachers we need to `hurt ourselves today to see if we still feel by taking the media out of media education to this end in after the media culture and identity in the 21st century bennett kendall and mcdougall 2011 we argue that media education has been a distortion that the `project of making popular culture a legitimate object of study has started from the wrong place and that the problem has been our belief in the idea of `the media and its separation from ourselves just as the category of literature imposes an alienating model of reading as an alternative we develop the idea of a `pedagogy of the inexpert to take the place of the horizontal discourse imposed by the conceptual framework genre narrative representation audience ideology still hanging together by a thread the history of the present of media education is the genealogy of a discourse ­ the idea of `the media as an object that qualifies for an educational response the departure of cultural studies from its starting point is bound up with the notion of `the media and the uneasy relationship between popular culture as a category understandable only in its insulation from art literature theatre and classical music which were already `catered for in the curriculum and `the media as an idea what is different about media education is that it has never been coherently defined by practices or any vertical discourse of such so the identity of a media student set against an artist or actor has been much less clearly defined ­ for teachers students and the public at the same time the consensus in popular discourse that `the media are powerful and as such it is worth educating people to protect them from the media through critical thinking and prepare them for employment in the sector has been used in confusion with advocates of the subject oscillating between these two positions in the quest for legitimation furthermore the contemporary media teacher is charged with a paradoxical task ­ teaching about the media after it has ceased to be a meaningful idea whilst orthodox power structures still hold the majority of media exchange is shot through with by the audience the binary opposition that has held firm at least in the minds of media teachers for decades ­ that there is a `mass media that students can look at and that students are part of `the audience is really problematic now the notion of a text ­ with boundaries around it ­ that we can `deconstruct is also straining to hold against the tidal wave of multimodal fluid and `hyperdiegetic hills 2010 cultural exchange `texts only exist when the `audience engage with them and here is the crucial point ­ that is nothing new but we haven t andseen it so clearly until broadband internet made it more head of creative arts at newman university visible ­as interpretation and engagement is semantically archived in every keystroke so thinking about teaching media `after the media doesn t take its premise from an idea of a temporal change ­ that was then this is now ­ but instead it borrows from the postmodern lyotard 1992 ­ thinking differently about culture trying to avoid recourse to the reductive idea of `the media thinking more seriously about what people do with and in culture we need to explore the idea of practising democracy in another way the binaries between `big ideology zizek 1999 and freedom have been appropriated fully by subject media which unlike english does not in itself have to be part of the reproductive technology the media student sits in between the idea of `the media and the project of her liberal educator with only marginal space with which to be fully participative in culture suspending the political project is essential pedagogy of the inexpert in which students are given voice to be textual agents on their own terms will surely lead to a more political praxis in the fullness of time caught between the protectionist and innoculatory constraints of the academic modality with its latest incarnation in `media literacy and the performativity of the vocational modality the student in subject media is trapped in the traverse between the regulatory principles of education and `audience ­ subjects and objects a traverse between two constructions in which she cannot live at the same time `we mean `after the media as an ethics our objective is to begin the project of thinking through pedagogy for cultural analysis and indeed for media education renamed or not `after the media for example in rethinking the subject to pay attention to cultural events as opposed to texts we will tentatively imagine some different concepts we may or may not have a need for genre and representation but we will dispense with `audience identity becomes central along with power and with reading formerly described as narrative we replace the `text with the `event and consider students as agents and we deal with discourse frivolity exchange and para-diegetic activity ­ hitherto part of the language of `fan studies see hills 2002 and jenkins 2006 ­ at the heart of media education students in this context are required to oscillate between `peripheral and full participation lave and wenger 1991 but the apprenticeship they serve is not craft or skill determined rather they are apprentices in theorising their culture 13

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media education is here to facilitate `mastery in a meta-language which gives voice to reflexive negotiation of identity ­ a kind of `culture literacy hurry rush this just a few copies left this name produced dvd contains a classroom friendly collection of nz short films and pdf teaching guides it has sold well and now the pressing run is almost sold out it will not be re-pressed send your order to the treasurer p o box 44265 point chevalier auckland 1246 references bennett p kendall a and mcdougall j 2011 after the media culture and identity in the 21st century london routledge hills m 2002 fan cultures london routledge hills m 2010 triumph of a time lord regenerating doctor who for the twenty-first century london i b taurus jenkins j 2006 convergence culture where old and new media collide new york new york university press lave j and wenger e 1991 situated learning legitimate peripheral participation cambridge cambridge university press lyotard j 1992 the postmodern explained to children london turnaround books mcdougall j and potamitis n 2010 the media teacher s book london hodder zizek s 1999 the spectre of ideology in e wright and e wright eds the zizek reader oxford blackwell 45.00 including postage and gst official school orders are accepted name schools video script submissions of articles teaching resources opinion pieces quality student work news and reports of likely interest to our readers are welcome please consider what you can offer to keep our members magazine interesting and relevant photographs are welcome script #77 copy would be welcome by mid july for an august distribution script #78 copy would be welcomed by the end of october-early november for distribution in late november competition 2010 show reel included with this issue is the annual compilation showing a selection of entries in the 2010 competition this dvd is for in class use only you can show it to your students to create an interest in the competition and to give them an idea of national student video production standards feel free to contact the editor to discuss your ideas and offers having judged the manukau east short film competition at the end of 2010 i saw the winning film made by a couple of pakuranga college students i asked why they had not also entered it int the name competition and was reminded that it was less than a minute over the name time limit they did not want to trim it a pity so encourage your students to make their films within the time limits in case they do produce a potential prize winner editor thanks to rachel renner for organising the dvd ready for dispatch 14

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part 1 terry jones the good the bad and the disparate `greed in the words of the hillbilly in deliverance what s goin on here while its common to explore genre films to look for common threads there are other ways of exploring what binds films together i am going to suggest another approach analyzing the shape of the narrative the choice of characters and the themes suggested by a common blueprint a point of interest or difference is that such a study crosses genre boundaries films that i will reference include a pirate movie a story set in the first gulf war westerns an indiana jones movie and others however the film which perhaps provides the blueprint for the plot and theme i am interested in is john huston s great 1948 film the treasure of the sierra madre however huston s story is itself based on a much older source chaucer s the pardoner s tale and thus the bible and the moral the root of evil is the love of money in this story 3 men decide to kill death they meet an old man who tells them death is at the foot of a tree arriving at the tree they find not death but gold realizing that they cannot take the gold in broad daylight they decide to wait until dark one leaves to bring back food and wine the other 2 plot to kill him and take his share this they do when he returns but when they drink the wine they die because he has poisoned it thus no one gains from the ill got gold-except for death it s certainly interesting for students to understand that the real origins of the movies they watch may be very ancient indeed and that the cultural even spiritual values embedded in a film like a pirate film about the undead might be quite profound huston s story was based itself on a novel written by the enigmatic b traven whose list of aliases reads like tuco s in the good the bad and the ugly a movie central to this study since huston s film provides the blueprint it is worth summarizing the key aspects it is mexico in 1925 the film looks contemporary i.e 1948 but the authorities insisted it be set in the past lest any negative depictions of mexico harm the country s reputation three down on their luck drifters dobbs bogart curtin tim holt and howard walter huston combine to search for gold they achieve a stake after dobbs wins a small amount with a lottery ticket the three men form a partnership and howard s knowledge pays off they discover gold dust and split it three ways something dobbs was very specific about before they are successful on their way to the location they are attacked by bandits and briefly joined by a fourth man cody having fought off the bandits with them cody is killed the others find an affecting letter from his wife in his wallet and both howard and curtin decide to send her cody s `share since he helped them against the bandits dobbs derides this however once the riches are theirs the three survivors become suspicious of each other and dobbs in particular becomes paranoid mumbling and starting at the slightest sound heading back to civilization the old man howard is stopped by villagers and forced to attend to the chief s sick son since they believe he has a reputation as a healer curtin and dobbs set off promising to look after howard s `goods but soon the two fall out and curtin gets the drop on dobbs who is now accusing him of everything from attempted murder to theft dobbs proposes they take howard s share too curtin takes dobbs gun and empties it of bullets exhausted trying to remain awake curtin is attacked and shot with his own gun which dobbs then throws down later dobbs returns to finish him off but curtin badly 15

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