10 films for a senior high student: ‘Dead Poets Society’ and ‘Mona Lisa Smile’

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By John Anthony S. Estolloso

(Part 4 of 5)

For October, something for our teachers as well.

Our generation found their love for literature and art with ‘Dead Poets Society’ and ‘Mona Lisa Smile’. Remarkably, younger viewers who discover the films for the first time still resonate with Mr. Keating and Ms. Watson’s charming albeit unorthodox methods of planting the seeds of aesthetic and literary appreciation among students. Oh, to stand on a chair and yawp poetry, or to walk through a gallery of masterpieces! Also, who would not want Robin Williams or Julia Roberts as their teacher?

Both films are heartwarmingly idealistic, in the sense that they attempt to punch through a hole in the comfortable fabric of academic conformity. Nothing about this is new: we practically lived through this. Rote memorization, standardized tests comprised of columns of multiple-choice items, simple recall questions for discussions; in fact, anything guaranteed to get students a high grade in the examinations and in the process, kill any iota of heartfelt appreciation for the arts and humanities.

But not for Mr. Keating and Ms. Watson. Like boats against the current, they confront and question conventions.

Released in 1989, Dead Poets Society has seemingly become an overrated Internet fixture. Reduced to sappy memes about seizing the day and making your life extraordinary, the film’s plot is highly romanticized. Then again, that is the secret of its relevance: the need to be reminded that there is more to human life than the shallow clout gained from the popular, the instant, and the flashy. For mentor Mr. John Keating, literature is not merely ‘read’, in the most mundane sense of the word. The noblest ideas written from the hearts and minds of men must be celebrated: recited with primeval verve, performed on the dramatic stage, written as a love letter, yawped atop a chair for the world to hear – and it is precisely these humanizing and whimsical acts which make us fall in love with literature and poetry

Mona Lisa Smile takes on a different angle about pedagogy. While Dead Poets provides a warm, bonhomie approach to an otherwise tedious subject, the latter is confrontational. Ms. Katherine Watson, as art teacher, faces head-on the stuck-up traditions of ‘art criticism’ in the academe. She questions authority – in art, ideology, curriculum, and moral upbringing. She fences with students stuck to the system, hoping that one might break through the constricting corsets. Framed through a feminist lens, the liberty of interpreting art mirrors the emancipation of feminine thought: free to make choices about her body, free to make decisions about her life – the same ascendancy which permits any aesthetic connoisseur to consider art as Art.

Both films highlight the idea of appreciation, something that is easily lost in pedagogy, especially if the harassed teacher is bound to the constraints of time and curriculum, or to the neoliberal notion that everything ought to be assigned a mark for it to mean something. Does recalling the characters from a story constitute ‘appreciation’? Does scoring a Joya abstract or an Amorsolo portrait from a scale of one to ten equate to ‘appreciation’? Beyond mere reading or glancing – or the uncouth impersonality of grading systems – the invitation of the films is to indulge on the subject matter: to savor language for its own sake, to peruse art for its own sake.

But they also serve as cautionary tales: Both Mr. Keating and Ms. Watson’s pedagogical styles attempt to dismantle the rigid conservatisms of education – and inevitably, they do not fare well at the end. For even with all our declarations of education as a liberating force and a light in the darkness of ignorance, at its core it remains as a Foucauldian shaper of conformity and a perpetuator of convention, and any deviation is meted out with swift condemnation and punishment. Qualms aside, the films were sharp enough to underline that.

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Great films ought to provoke and inspire viewers, especially the younger set. They could be a humanizing flame to spark in them a realization of the profundity and talent which humanity possesses and expresses through arts and letters, and how these in turn could become forces for what is good and humane. The stories on screen must remind that wisdom, transcendence, and the capacity to aspire for something better begin with the kindling spark of ideas: something which only passionate teachers can ignite in their students. On that note, we quote and take liberties with Mr. Keating’s statement: words and ideas can still change the world – and as always, they are bulletproof.

(The writer is a language and literature teacher in one of the private schools of the city. The posters are from IMDb.)