It is time to recognize that the true tutors of our children are not schoolteachers or university professors but filmmakers, advertising executives, and pop culture purveyors. Disney does more than Duke, Spielherg outweighs Stanford, MTV trumps MIT. (Benjamin Barber, The Nation)
It is estimated that the average American spends more than lour hours of a day watching television. Four hours a day. 28 hours a week, 1456 hours a year. The number of hours spent in front of a television or video screen is the single biggest chunk of time in the waking life of an American child. (Hazen & Winokur. 1997. p.64)
Television, movies, the new technologies of enhanced video/computer games and, of course, the ubiquitous internet have transformed "culture especially popular culture, into the primary educational site in which youth learn about themselves, their relationships to others and the larger world"(Giroux, 2000, p. 108). In the struggle over the symbolic order, which characterizes our times, popular culture developed by name brands and various forms of media including the Hollywood film industry, is crucial in creating the identities and representations our youth embrace. Compounded with the fact of corporate mergers, fewer companies are determining what the symbolic order will display. Media conglomerates like Time-Warner and Disney, begin to have an overwhelming influence on the symbolic order. What is represented to youth in the classroom in the form of testable, discreet forms of pre-packaged knowledge becomes increasingly insignificant to them. It is only something to be suffered through, memorized, recalled and promptly forgotten on the way to the real currency of the post-industrial, global, corporate order or as 1 have called it elsewhere, Gateism (Reynolds, 2003), popular culture.
Popular culture is not only about media: it is about identity and commodityread brand-and its connection with the schools. The invasion of corporate America into public education now surpasses questions of Coca-Cola machines in the lunchroom. It has become a quest ion of corporate curriculum or brand name lessons. Corporations are providing brand name curriculum materials to schools and their teachers. So not only do we have a corporate popular culture, but even the schools' curriculum is being a driven in some aspects by branded materials. It is impossible to know which teachers use these branded materials in their classes and which toss them away, but a report published by the U.S. Consumers Union in 1995 'found that thousands of corporations were targeting school children or their teachers with marketing activities ranging from teaching videos, to guidebooks and posters to contests, product giveaways, and coupons' (Klein, 1999, p. 93).
It is not that the corporate development of curriculum materials is new (see Reynolds & Webber, 2004, pp. 19-33). The matter is that it has become accepted practice and even desired. These are issues (the symbolic order, the curriculum of skill-and-drill and corporate invasion of the curriculum) with which cultural curriculum studies has a place within cultural studies and within curriculum studies.
In this essay I would like to address two major concerns. First, the notion of multiplicity and cultural curriculum studies will be elaborated. Second, some areas of study will be suggested for cultural curriculum studies, particularly postmodern films and critical documentaries.
Cultural Curriculum Studies and Multiplicity
I see philosophy as u logic of multiplicities (1 feel, on this point, close to Michel Serres). (Deleuze, 1995, p. 147)
In studies of popular culture as a primary pedagogical site, there also needs to be a reformulation of the conceptualization of the work of curriculum studies and the interconnections with cultural studies. Cultural studies scholars and curriculum studies scholars have only begun engaging in a multidisciplinary conversation and that is something that would prove productive for both since there are many issues that cross borders between curriculum and culture.
At the risk of over generalizing: both cultural-studies theorists and critical educators [and curriculum studies scholars ] engage in forms of cultural work that locate politics in the interplay among symbolic representations, everyday life, and material relations of power; both engage cultural politics, as the site of production and struggle over power, and learning as the outcome of diverse struggles rather than as the passive reception of information. (Giroux. 2000, p. 128)
There is a need in the curriculum studies field to foster what Pinar (2004) calls curriculum studies as a "complicated conversation." Working within cultural curriculum studies is one way of fostering this complicated conversation. There will be those who object to this notion of cultural curriculum studies. There are those that view cultural curriculum studies as a diversion or worse-as interjecting disarray into the field. They will raise objections that this phenomenon deviates from the true nature of curriculum studies and is at worst post-toasty play or carnival. I do not wish to engage in that debate. I have already stated that I consider that debate largely a waste of time (Reynolds & Webber, 2004). At least two additional areas of shared concern exist amongst cultural studies, curriculum studies and pedagogy. Theory in the area of cultural studies and curriculum studies provide the grounded basis, which allows for the people to act strategically in "ways that may change theircontext for the better" (Giroux, 2000, p. 128). The ability of theory to enable agency is one of the bases of curriculum studies and cultural studies as well. I would disagree with Giroux that it is strategic action that is possible at this historic moment, but would posit that it enables tactical action or the exploration of spaces or, as Deleuze would have it. lines of flight, which would provide temporary popular cultural resistances as political engagement, and that tactical engagement is one concern of cultural curriculum studies. Deleuze and Guattari's "version of post-structural politics remains a tactical rather than a strategic style of political thought, directed at particular or local forms of revolutionary-becoming rather than wholesale social change" (Patton, 2000, p.8). Notions of multidisciplinarity or multiplicity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Serres. 1995) would provide a place for cultural workers both in curriculum and culture to work together in these areas that provide tactical engagement.
In Popular Culture and Critical Pedagogy (1999). Toby Daspit and John Weaver discuss two issues concerning popular culture and pedagogy. These two issues are crucial to the understanding of a multidisciplinary manner of understanding the way popular culture operates.
Specifically there are two issues the essays in our book will attempt to address in multiple ways: decentering critical pedagogy by inviting multiple readings of popular culture texts in our analysis of schooling and seeing many tonnsol popular culture as critical pedagogical texts. (Daspit & Weaver, 1999, p. xiii)
These are two goals that I see as crucial to the multidisciplinary approach I would advocate for work centering on cultural curriculum studies. It is a project that deserves the attention of scholars in both presently segmented disciplines. A discussion of multidisciplinarity as a focus for cultural curriculum studies is the first aspect of this essay. This multidisciplinary focus will then be linked to an analysis of postmodern film and critical documentaries and the ways that they can be part of this multidisciplinary cultural curriculum studies.
It appears that in cultural studies multiplicity is both a strength and a perceived weakness. This multiplicity also generates a complicated conversation in curriculum studies (Pinar, 2004; Reynolds & Webber. 2004). The history of the field of cultural studies demonstrates this tension concerning its disciplinarity and methodology. Culture studies draws from whatever fields are necessary to produce the knowledge required for a particular project. The methodology of cultural studies provides an equally uneasy marker for cultural studies. In fact it has no distinct methodology, no unique statistical, ethnomethodological. or textual analysis to call its own. Its methodology, ambiguous from the beginning, could best be seen as bricolage. Its choice of practice, that is, is pragmatic, strategic, and self-reflective (Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, 1992, p. 2)
Rearticulating to cultural studies the methods privileged by existing disciplines requires considerable work and reflection, work that can neither be done permanently or in advance. For cultural studies has no guarantees about what questions are important to ask within given contexts or how to answer them; hence no methodology can be privileged or even temporarily employed with total security and confidence, yet none can be eliminated out of hand. Textual analysis, semiotics, deconstruction, ethnography, interviews, phonemic analysis, psychoanalysis, rhizomatics, content analysis, survey research-all can provide important insights and knowledge. (Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, 1992, p. 2)
In curriculum studies there have also been and continue to be discussions centering on the nature of curriculum studies field. The complicated conversation that is the curriculum requires interdisciplinarity intellectuality, erudition and self-reflexivity. This is not a recipe for high test scores, but a common faith in the possibility of selfrealization and democratization, twin projects of social a subjective reconstruction. (Pinar, 2004, p. 8)
This new research (in curriculum studies) works against the bifurcations, strict disciplinarity, and entrenchment of much educational research. It is the way of the middle spaces (Reynolds & Webber. 2004. p. 17). These notions of the questions and methods of cultural studies and curriculum studies can be perceived as a movement toward what Deleuze and Serres discuss as multiplicity or the multiple. In the case of cultural curriculum studies there are passages or lines of flight among the work done in both cultural studies and curriculum studies, which could encourage work in both to cross the borders of each. Cultural studies can study issues in curriculum and areas of curriculum studies could concentrate on the cultural issues that are the focus of cultural studies, since the curriculum that matters to children and the rest of us is the culture in which we dwell. This work has already appeared (Daspit & Weaver, 1999; Weaver, Anijar, & Daspit, 2004; Weaver, Applebaum, & Morris, 2001; Dimitriadis, 2001; Anijar, 2000; Kincheloe, 2000). But, of course, more productive research could be pursued. Multiplicity gives us aglimpse into the possibilities of cultural curriculum studies. In Genesis ( 1995) Serres discusses the notion of the multiple.
I am trying here to raise the brackets and parentheses, syntheses, whereby we shove multiplicities under unities that is the object of this book: the multiple. Can I possibly speak of multiplicity itself without ever availing myself of the concept? (Serres, 1995a, p. 4)
Serres focuses on the passages between the 'hard' sciences and the social sciences. In Conversations on Science, Culture and Time (1995), Serres discusses his background and the manner in which he has attempted these passages.
I had become a half-caste or a quadroon, commingling the liberal arts student with the math student, pouring differential equations into Greek exercises and vice versa. Cross-breeding-that's my cultural idea. Black and white, science and humanities, monotheism and polytheism-with no reciprocal haired, for the peacemaking that I wish for and practice. (Serres & Latour, 1995b, p. 28)
Serres' works deal in a sustained fashion with one of the most pressing contemporary issues-namely the reformulating of the once great and now weatherworn Enlightenment divisions between self and collective, society and nature, the scientific and the literary, myth and politics. In an age where the rhetoric of interdisciplinarity is commonplace, it still shocks us to encounter work where the deliberate crossing (and re-crossing) of disciplinary boundaries is seriously put into practice. A typical Serres text will, forexample. move from information theory to myth by way of examples drawn from literature or art. Or else bring the ancient and the modern world into juxtaposition through detailed exegesis of Lucretius or Liebniz. In Serres' work philosophy is made to inhabit hard science as myth is brought to life within social science. Jules Verne intermingles with Plato and Thales. Don Juan and La Fontaine rub shoulders with Descartes.
This may at first sound like the very worst kind of postmodern carnival, that posttoastyism, yet Serres' border crossings are always rigorously structured. He proceeds from the notion that disciplinary and conceptual divisions, although complex and provisional, may be analyzed by exploring potential channels or 'passages' that run between them-the excluded middle. Communication runs through these passages, but does so only at the risk of potential distortion, in the course of which the message becomes transformed. What eventually passes over a division, then, is often very different from what was initially sent. To this end. Serres dubs the particular division between science and the humanities as the 'Northwest Passage.' referring to the twisting and convoluted coastlines that separate the great Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Serres' point is that it is possible to traverse such a divide, but only by undertaking the most testing of journeys, one which will involve much doubling back and complex navigation (Brown, 2002).
The multiple as such, unhewn and little unified, is not an epistemological monster, but on the contrary the ordinary lot of situations, including thai of the ordinary scholar, regular knowledge, everyday work, in short our common object. (Serres, 1995a, p. 5)
The divisions between cultural studies and curriculum studies is not such a wide divide, however, academic disciplinary borders are well entrenched. And, finding the lines of flight or passages still remains complex. It is troubling to some, an adventure to others.
Have you noticed the popularity among scientists of the word interface-which supposes that the junction between two sciences or two concepts is perfectly under control? On the contrary. I believe that these spaces between are more complicated than one thinks. This is why I have compared them to the Northwest Passage ... with shores, islands, and fractal ice floes. Between the hard sciences and the so-called human sciences the passage resembles a jagged shore, sprinkled with ice, and variable ... It's more fractal than simple. Less a juncture under control than an adventure to be had. (Serres, 1995b, p. 70)
Serres discusses the notion that he has tried to remain "on the bridge between two shores" (Serres, 1995b, p. 28). There is a jagged shore between cultural and curriculum studies. At cultural studies conferences I have attended, there are few if any papers on curriculum. After discussing possible projects with a publisher in cultural studies concerning curriculum, education and popular culture, the response was that readers of cultural studies would not be that interested in questions of education and curriculum. Likewise in discussions in the field some curriculum studies scholars view cultural studies as almost polluting the curriculum studies field (Marshall, Sears, & Schubert, 2000). Cultural curriculum studies might be the bridge to foster projects that speak to both fields.
Gilles Deleuze in his work with Felix Guattari and in his individual work is also concerned with notionsof multiplicity. Deleuze in conversations with Parnet mDialogiies (1977) echoes Serres concept of passages. He uses the concept of line(s) of flight.
This is why it is always possible to undo dualisms from the inside, by tracing the line of flight which passes between two terms or the two sets, the narrow stream which belongs neither to the one or the other, but draws both into a non-parallel evolution, into a heterochronous becoming. (Deleuze & Parnet, 1977. p. 35)
In What is Philosophy ( 1994) Deleuze and Guattari discuss the lines between philosophy and science.
Although scientific types of multiplicity are themselves extremely diverse, they do not include the properly philosophical multiplicities which Bergson claimed a particular status defined by duration, multiplicity of fusion, which expressed the inseparability of variations, in contrast to multiplicities of space, number, and time which ordered mixtures and referred to the variable or to independent variables. It is true that this very opposition, between scientific and philosophical, discursive and intuitive, and extensional and intensive multiplicities, is also appropriate for judging the correspondence between science and philosophy, their possible collaboration and the inspiration of one by the other. (Deleuze & Guattari. 1994. P. 127)
Cultural curriculum studies could engage in work that dwelt in multiplicity. Cultural studies and curriculum studies could collaborate and inspire one another. The clearest conceptualization of multiplicity for this author is Deleuze's concept of the A ND, and Deleuze and Guattari's notions of rhizomatics. Although I have written about the AND in other texts (Reynolds & Webber, 2004; Reynolds, 2004) it is directly relevant to the discussion of cultural curriculum studies. This multiplicity thinking can be applied to cultural curriculum studies because it clarifies lines of flight or the passages between. It hinges on Deleuze's arguing for the priority of the conjunction AND over the verb to be, multiplicity within duality. It is an instance of multidisciplinarity that can be discovered and created within disciplinarity.
AND is neither one thing or the other, it is always in-between, between two things; it's the borderline, there is always a border, a line of flight or flow, only we don't see it because it is the least perceptible of all things. And, yet it's along this line of flight that things come to pass, becomings evolve, revolutions take shape. The strong people aren't the ones on one side or the other, power lies on the border. (Deleuze, 1995. p. 45)
So, cultural curriculum studies could dwell in this conjunction. Cultural curriculum studies could be a multidisciplinary field of the conjunction. Schools and sitcoms, last food and faculty, science fiction and science curriculum, math and movies, accountability and AC/DC, bricolage and biology. French and fusion cuisine, vampires and verbs, law and Lord of the Rings. KillBill Volume 1 and 2 and cultural curriculum studies, and, and, and, and...
There can be no doubt that what can enable multiplicity in cultural curriculum studies is that philosophy, cinema, art, science and curriculum studies all share in the activity of creation. Creativity serves as the basis of their potential interaction. Deleuze asks then 'what is it to have an idea in something,' an idea in cinema, an idea in philosophy, an idea in science. It is. of course, to think of something new, something original, to create, and it is in name of this creation that we speak. This speech, Deleuze is quick to insist, is not simple communication, which he views with suspicion and distrust. To communicate is to convey information, and information is defined as a set of order-words, of words which code some vested interest, and which perform an act of repression. 'When you are informed, you are told what you are supposed to believe.' Information, on Deleuze's account, is the mechanism by means of which repressive power is exercised in societies of control. Instead of the spaces of confinement of disciplinary societies, we are now bombarded with information, which enacts an even more insidious control over the way we lead our lives.
Deleuze is interested to discover how such control might be resisted, how we might overcome the stilling stratification of received information. He finds that the creative act can function as just such an act of resistance. He insists that 'having an idea is not on the order of communication' (p. 17), it cannot be reduced to the transmission of information because it surpasses or goes beyond that information. Having an idea is to introduce the non-stratified into the strata, which contain us. For Deleuze, what is interesting and remarkable in the work of those he calls 'the great filmmakers' for example is that once in a while we see an act of resistance take shape. a uniquely cinematic idea which casts asunder the order which seeks to control and stratify it. Deleuze gives the example of a particularcinematographic technique, which can be described as the dislocation of sight and sound, which occurs when the sounds we hear unexpectedly fail to cohere with the images we see. Deleuze explains the effect of this as follows: 'It is extraordinary in that it provides a veritable transformation of elements at the level of cinema, a cycle that in one stroke makes cinema resonate with a qualitative physics of elements.' The unexpected, the extraordinary, the remarkable, these are the characteristics of the idea, and their effect is to loosen the grip of the system of control, even if only for a time.
Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2
It is reminiscent of the films KillBill: Volume 1 (2004) and KillBill: Volume 2 (2004). These two films can be used to demonstrate multiplicity and possible passages in cultural curriculum studies. In Volume 1 we watch an extended martial arts scene in which Beatrix Kiddo takes on the dreaded Crazy 88's (a gangster squad of killer sword wielding martial arts fighters) and O-Ren, a fellow assassin ( played by Lucy Lu) that shows sword fighting skills, martial arts skills, and Japanese culture and in the background we hear refrains of Latin music. The film also intersperses Japanese anime, black and white scenes, surrealistic gore, severed body parts, and a Japanese female rock and roll band, the 5,6,7, 8's, who sing " I Walk Like Jane Mansfield." I think that this film's power is that it does loosen the grip of control momentarily. The film, of course, was criticized for its extreme violence, but it seems to me that the violence was so extreme that violence was being parodied and that the focus not be the violence but the ability of the film to loosen the grip. As we watch the film, the multiplicity and creativity of the writer/director causes that temporary line of flight thinking, because it demonstrates such disjunction with the reality of control we face day to day. Of course, I am not claiming that Kill Bill 1 is capable of encouraging tactical political resistance. It does, however, demonstrate the way creativity and multiplicity can cause a temporary loosing of the grip of control, a line of flight and how popular culture can show us manifestations of multiplicity. Deleuze thought that film was philosophy.
In one of the most interesting scenes in Kill Bill: Volume 2 there is a fascinating monologue delivered by Bill the main character and the object of the hatred and revenge of the female protagonist. Black Mambo played by Uma Thurman. He delivers an analysis of human existence using the comic-book hero Superman. In this we can see an example of multiplicity of a sort. Here we have a fictional character analyzing another fictional character trying to give a lesson on life to yet another fictional character. Quentin Tarantino achieves a postmodern moment to say the least. In this one of the final scenes of the film the Uma Thurman character descends a staircase in a modernist style home to the tune of "Nobody Told Me about Her." She enters the open living room in which there is television playing a Western movie. Later we see it is a Roy Rogers movie. Eventually she confronts Bill played by David Carradine. Bill shoots her with a dart loaded with a type of truth serum. He does this after a reference to the film itself and its requisite literary terminology.
Bill: Before this tale of bloody revenge reaches its climax. (Tarantino, 2004b)
Incredibly Bill entitles his truth serum, in what can be characterized as a comment on modernist thinking, "the undisputed truth" (Tarantino, 2004b). Then, the rather incredible monologue begins.
Bill: As you know I am quite keen on comic books, especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero. Superman. Not a great comic hook, not particularly well draw n. (Takes a shot of liquor). Ah, but, the mythology. The mythology is not only great it's unique. [Short dialogue] ....Now, the stable of the superhero mythology is there is the superhero and there is the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne. Spiderman is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning he is Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spiderman and it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was bom Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning he is Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S" that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Rents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of dark Kent? He's weak. He's unsure of himself. He's acoward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race. (Tarantino 2004b)
Bill then goes on to make the point that Beatrix Kiddo (the Lima Thunnan character) was a natural born killer. Tarrantino. the writer, at first contuses us. What does a speech on superheroes have to do with anything, but eventually this line of !light weaves back into the film's major plot. Tarrantino also has created another film with multiplicity. The martial arts, revenge film, interspersed with Latin music. Japanese philosophy, Roy Rogers movies, samurai swords, and Suicide Squads is a way of explaining multiplicity. Different genres, different cultures, different genderroles, different presentations of past, present, future (time orientations) are found to have passages that can be used to express an artistic creative moment. Popular film can instruct and demonstrate complicated philosophical points in a fairly brief time, by using comic books and superheroes, juxtaposed to a background of pastiche. It is Deleuze's idea of the creative, to think something new. Of course, it is with caution that such claims can be made for Tarrantino films or any films for thai matter, but Deleuze used Hitchcock films as a model for examples of creative thought. These notions of film and creativity can be found in Deleuze's two books on cinema (see Cinema I (1986) and Cinema 2 (1989).
So, what does this have to do with cultural curriculum studies? It is a brief example of the ways in which interweaving various and unlikely phenomena works. Also, there is the use of contemporary culture to highlight philosophical ideas. Perhaps, in studying such creations with students we can foster multiplicity and cultural curriculum studies can find a way to begin to temporarily break (he grip of our control society.
Control and the New Cinematic-Machines: Critical Documentaries
The truth is so ironic. The best information we may get about the election may come from a combination of The Control Room, Fahrenheit 9/11. John Sayles, and the nightly news from Jon Stewart. (Seymour llersh in Moore, 2004. p.234)
Moore is playing for keeps. The somber tone notwithstanding, this film is on fire. It's an exhausting, shattering thing to watch, and the mood it casts lasts for days. What both exalts the experience and grounds the picture is Moore's essentially patriotic faith that a sincere, invested argument can get a hearing in America. To see Fahrenheit 9/11 and experience its passion is to wonder why there haven't been popular political films like this since movies began and from all points of view. It seems like such a reasonable use of cinema, and an inexpressibly worthy one. (LaSalle, in Moore, 2004, p. 237)
Another foray into multiplicity and cultural curriculum studies might be the viewing, discussing and analysis of what could be called critical documentaries. In the last few years a number of these have been produced. Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), and Morgan Spurlok's Super Size Me (2004) are primary examples of this genre. All of these award winning critical documentaries interweave animation, rock music, television advertisements, corporation spokespersons, vintage television and film, and a number of representations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They are certainly a line of flight, momentary and tactical confrontation with our control society. Especially in the case of Moore's films they have caused controversy and discussion in the larger society.
In over a thousand cinemas across the country Michael Moore becomes with this film a People's Tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it. Whilst the Tribune, informed by popular experience, acquires political credibility, not as a politician himself but as the voice of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist... It declares that a political economy that creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs-in order to survive-a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It needs ceaseless war. (Berger in Moore, 2004b, p. xi)
In Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), Hardt and Negri discuss that war in the time of empire is long lasting and has effects on democracy.
Traditionally, democracy has been suspended during wartime and power entrusted temporarily in a strong central authority to confront the crisis. Because the current state of war is both global in scale and long lasting, with no end in sight, the suspension of democracy too becomes indefinite or permanent. War takes on a generalized character, strangling all social life and posing its own political order. (Hardt & Negri, 2004, p. xii)
I think Deleuze would find in this film that the creative act could function as an act of resistance in a time of ceaseless war. And the claim for cultural curriculum studies would be that the study, discussion and analysis of such films demonstrates both multidisciplinarity and tactical politics. Moore acknowledges the fact that film was perceived as dangerous and politically volatile. Walt Disney Company would not distribute it.
Michael Eisner, the head of Disney, said that he didn't want his studio putting out a partisan political film that might offend families who go to their amusement parks. Of course he didn't mention that he had a problem with Disney syndicating the Scan Hannity radio show (which they do) or Rush Limhuugh on their ABC-owned stations (which they do) or broadcasting Pat Robertson's 700 Club on the Disney Family Channel (which... well you get the point. What Eisner meant to say was that if my movie had been a piece of right-wing, hate-tilled propaganda that supported the Bush administration's every move, then that would be OK). (Moore. 2004b, p. xiii)
Maybe a now famous scene in the film, George W. Bush sitting in a Florida elementary classroom for seven minutes alter being informed of the second plane hitting the tower has demonstrated the power of these critical documentaries and why significant forces are allied against them. This scene has become part of the campaign for the presidency of the United States. In the film the narration states that nothing happened for seven minutes.
Nearly seven minutes passed with nobody doing anything. As Bush sat in that Florida classroom, was he wondering if maybe he should have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism with his head of counter terrorism? (shot of Richard Clarke, head of Counter terrorism, testifying in Congress)
Or maybe Mr. Bush was wondering why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI. or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001. (Moore, 2004b, p. 35)
These critical documentaries may be a way of tactical resistance in our control society with its Patriot Act.
In control societies, on the other hand, the key thing is no longer a signature or a number but a code: codes are passwords, whereas in disciplinary societies are ruled (when it comes to integration or resistance) by precepts. The digital language of control is made up of codes indicating whether access to some information should be allowed or denied. (Deleuze, 1995. p. 180)
These critical documentaries can be what Deleuze would call rhizomatic warmachines or maybe rhizomatic cinematic machines. Deleuze and Guattari described war-machines.
We (Deleuze and Guattari) define war machines as linear arrangements constructed along lines of night. Thus understood, the aim of war machines is not war at all but a very special kind of space: smooth space, which they establish, occupy and extend. Nomadism is precisely this combinat ion of war-machine and smooth space. We try to show how and in what circumstances war-machines aim at war (when state apparatuses take over a war-machine that's initially no part of them). War-machines tend much more to be revolutionary, or artistic, rather than military. (Deleuze, 1995. p. 33)
Certainly films like Fahrenheit 9/11 need further analysis. But, critical documentaries are a productive avenue for cultural curriculum studies. They are part of the popular culture and even though these films are rated R (this, of course was a politically motivated rating) and most likely cannot be shown in public school classrooms, kids see them anyway. So, they are part of the curriculum.
Since Deleuze was interested in creating new thought and new problems not solving problems given to us by our system, we could not only study, discuss and analyze these critical documentaries, but also advocate that we and our students separately and/or together pick up our video cams and head out to make documentaries. I wonder if students armed with video cameras filming issues of their interest might just be one way of tactical resistance? Certainly it would scare the hell out of certain segments of our society!
Our present historical moment is one of control and attempts to stress identity over difference and disciplinarity over multidisciplinarity. It is in this milieu that cultural curriculum studies can emerge as an attempt at creativity and multiplicity, which engages in momentary tactical resistance. It can be a line of flight. Maybe as scholars of curriculum studies and cultural studies we can cross our strict disciplinary boundaries and find that bridge that crosses the divide and work together for the advance of knowledge over information and provide our students with an education that is filled with knowledge, erudition, intellectuality and moments of creativity. And just maybe we should be held accountable for that.
[Reference]
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[Author Affiliation]
William M. Reynolds
Georgia Southern University
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