My mother is finishing her GED, and only has her grade 12
English credit to finish before she is officially graduated from high school.
Being close to fifty years old and been out of high school for more 30 years, I’m
proud of her perseverance and desire to finally finish her education. One of
her assignments this week was to watch the 1994 movie adaption of Frankenstein,
and complete a series of tasks to accompany the film. They were not assessing
her ability to read the book and compare it to the movie, but to take the movie
as a piece of media in its own right, and to show her ability to comprehend the
information the film gives her, just like a book might.
Key Concepts
Media literacy encompasses just that. Students need to know
how to critically interpret and comprehend information given to them through
different media forms, and how to apply and create these medias. The media
literacy website, MediaSmarts, recommends the following key concepts that
should be the focus when teaching media literacy:
- Media are constructions
- Audiences negotiate meaning
- Media have commercial implications
- Media have social and political implications
- Each medium has a unique aesthetic form
The site recommends always beginning and ending with a focus
on one or more of the key concepts when teaching media literacy. So why not use Frankenstein to teach media
literacy? The plot is saturated in deep themes, the characters are complex, the
use of dramatic elements such as colours, lighting, sets and music to enhance
the message and themes are strongly apparent. Parts of my mother’s assignment
required her to observe horror character and setting tropes, to look at how the colour red
was used to enhance her perception of the movie (aesthetic form), and to ask the ethical complications of
cloning (social implications). The
other key concepts could have easily been included to enhance her media
literacy comprehension, such as discussing the purpose of the movie and the
audience it was geared at.
Trailer Remix
I found a fun activity/assignment that can be used in the
classroom that covers the above key concepts of media literacy and just fell in
love with it. Students create a trailer for a movie, but alter the genre.
For example, this pseudo-trailer changes Mary Poppins into a horror movie.
Media are Constructions
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Task: Students must choose which scenes best fit in their new
purpose for their trailer and the message they want to portray. For example,
the Mary Poppins trailer selects the more supernatural clips from the movie and
skews the plot line from the original movie in order for the viewer to assume
it is a tale of a more sinister nature.
Teaches: Media is created by individuals
that choose how they construct their media influenced by their own knowledge,
opinions and bias and can be skewed to reflect as such.
Audiences Negotiate Meaning
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Task: Students must consider their audience and what they want
that audience to take away from their video. They might also have to consider
what different interpretations their audience might develop based on their own experiences.
The Mary Poppins trailer is geared towards a western audience, and thus uses
western horror film tropes to convey the genre. It might be a very different
trailer if they used Asian or Middle Eastern horror tropes.
Teaches: Their intended audience influences
the production and that certain groups may interpret the video differently.
Media have Commercial Implications
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Task: Students must understand copyright for all their video and
musical clips, and contemplate how and why the media will be distributed.
Teaches: How media is shared and protected, what
the goal of the production is, how that affects the content and the purposes of
distribution.
Media have Social and Political Implications
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Task: As with the first concept, students have an ideological message
they want to portray to their audience. They must construct the trailer to reflect
and influence this message. The Mary Poppins trailer changes to perception of a
kind nanny figure into a sinister one. The audience is left with the message that
she is sinister, not kind like we grew up believing.
Teaches: How media can be manipulated to influence
how a social or political topic is portrayed or represented in the world, and
how that might not parallel reality correctly.
Each Medium has a Unique Aesthetic Form
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Task: Trailers have their own elements to create an effective
video, but they also have specific genre related elements that are expected to
create a specific tone. The Mary Poppins trailer has supernatural and dark
clips are selected, fading in and out from a black, snippets of ominous and
vague text fade in and out, all set to sombre, creepy, suspenseful music. These
typical horror elements create a tone of suspense and questions.
Teaches: To research the elements of each media
form, how it can be applied to portray a message, and how elements can influence
the perception of the message.
Media Literacy is Literacy
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"If people aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?" George Lucas, interview for GLEF.org
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