Educational Video Center: Creating with Youth- Whats Valid in a Learnign Setting to Say?
Today Steven Goodman, leader and founder of Educational Video Center, came and spoke today. I enjoyed his book and he language it was written in, and was excited to see him speak. What stood out to me though, and what I am still thinking about it is not the insights he shared and the wisdom he brought into the classroom, though of course that was very informative.
What stands out to me was my own reaction to the two videos we watched. We were asked to write a response to each, and here I have scanned my responses….
So the first page of response is about a video made by a girl living in an apartment building in East Harlem filled with rats and without hot water. Its a bit crude, its very organic- girl chewing gum, man drowning a rat in hot water, baby getting bathed- there is an every day realness about it that makes it accesible. It really makes true the whole thing, it makes it real and it forces on to feel the story, to imagine other stories, to recognize people you know in the film, to inspire. The girl organizes her building to ign a petition and the young people take it to the landlord. This process of organizing an action is so powerful, so moving. It shines light on the learning process, and you know that this girl is part of the making process of the video and that events are unfolding before the camera as they happen, in the moment, it feels like you are part of the action. And overwhelmingly, there is a sense of hope and of collaboration and of moving forward and of liveliness and learning. Its inspiring and accesible.
The second peice of paper is a film made more recently by youth about a Katrina survivor trying to rebuild her home. It is also interesting, and pretty much the story of one woman, whose home was destroyed and eventually bulldozed against her will. The story is about how she is trying to rebuild, the tragic bulldozing, and the pain that ensues. She is by herself, and she is alone.
The first word I wrote down was alone. How alone she is. I don’t even get a sense the camera is there. She is simply by herself, moving a hammer in her home to chip away at the old broken walls. Its odd, this alone-ness as she is chipping away at the house, like it is an unsurmountable task and even if she continues to peel tiny peices of sheet rock with her hammer she is never going to finish. Its like she is toiling. We learn she built the house from money she recieved from the death of daughter. We learn more about her and her story, and then the home is bulldozed by the govenment without her knowledge, and we get the sense the dream is destroyed, laid flat. She becomes powerless. We are left with this sense of pwoerlessness that makes us feel like there is nothing we can do, no hope, nowhere to turn because the government is building casinos and this unjust world we live in is beyond our control, beyond the grasp of justice, just spinning out fo control and leaving women to toil in broken homes alone.
It does not feel hopeful, like there is something that we can grasp, it makes me feel like we are all little ants in this giant world, swept under logs by gusts of wind, nothing to hold on to, not even each other.
Scarier, I felt in class like I should not say this, becuase this is an accomplishment for youth. Because maybe my reading was so completely off since my peers talked about its depth and level of tragedy… I felt like I had to re-justify everything I was saying, “Not to say it makes it less powerful, but…” I don’t know why I always feel like I need to make it ok, not say what I mean because I am worried people will either get offended or hate the ideas. I couldn’t clarify what I meant. Sometimes people just jump in so quickly I need a second to think about my reaction and then everyone else’s reaction matches and mine is like way over in left field, and I feel like its less than appropriate to say it or something, like it won’t be taken seriously or is not valid… Sometimes I could say tis hesitancy has to with gender, or with needing to be respected, or with a thousand other things, but….
To be continued. But right now I must edit.
Isn’t it strange- I just re-read the above paragraph and feel like I need to revisit this, even if it is a tangent…- that I feel often in most classes, including this very inclusive one, that I cannot contribute ecause it is not valid enough, not academic enough, not cool enough? For the first two years of college, I did not say more than ten words in any class. Even last year, I did not speak in Media Theory for half the class, till after the midterm. During the midterm, we all met informally. We read each others’ papers. We talked about ideas and I realized people were confused about certain concepts I understood, and I explained them. I read other papers and found out that while some people were most definitely brilliant, not everyone was, some of them I thought were pretty uncritical and lame. And they talked in class all the time. So we turned in the midterms and I got an A. And then one night I was at an AMIGOS reunion, the youth program I worked with as a teen and in college, and did youth media with. I was with them, and when I got to class right afterwards I realized “fuck it, say what you think.” From then on I spoke in class. I particpated. But always with a moment of pause. Since its gotten better. I particpate in all my classes, but there is always this moment where I wonder if I should say xy and z, where I second guess my particpation. About half the time I say it anyways, even though often it comes out garbled and confused and unclear and doesn’t sound so eloquent as it sounded in my head. The other half the time I decicide not to say it. Then, either someone else says it or I find myself sometimes frutrated because the point is missed and sometimes forgetting it and going with the flow. I wonder who else has this experience….
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