Media Literacy and the Tyranny of the Narrative

Abstract

Media literacy seeks to address the proliferation of new literacy practices in an increasingly mobile, global, digital world. Broadly analogous to print literacy, media literacy promotes the analysis (reading) and production (writing) of texts in a variety of forms. In practice, conflicting assumptions about the definitions, practices, and impact of media literacy are at the heart of contentious debates about its fundamental aims, purposes, and value. Consequently, as media literacy promotes greater access to a wider range of tools and texts, it is increasingly mired in age-old debates about the uses of literacy to frame, shape, and control public discourse. In the process, it touches on the relationships between media literacy, cultural narratives, and the arts. Since literacy is inextricably linked to storytelling, non-narrative elements of structure and style are seen as peripheral, supportive factors with regard to reading, writing, listening, and speaking in the context of alphabetic literacy. This is especially true in formal schooling, resulting in the deconstruction of media messages as a common media analysis technique in media education. Narrative and documentary filmmaking are most often understood and taught as a craft of storytelling--much like creative writing. The dramatic question, the arc, and the resolution of conflict are the essential ingredients for traditional storytelling. The craft of cinematography and editing are in the service of construction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Just as an understanding of structure is essential to print literacy, a grounding in the arts is central to both media analysis and production. Without this knowledge, media educators are more likely to create learning environments that echo a narrow range of literal and traditions designed for alphabetic literacy. This is especially prevalent with regard to the uses of media literacy as another channel for the inculcation of values in formal schooling. When used as a vehicle for content delivery, media literacy talks the talk of critical literacy and walks the walk of a traditional do as I say school marm. The inordinate focus on storytelling at the expense of aesthetics represents a of the narrative that privileges content over form. The result is a misguided and stunted vision for media literacy that offers little creative flexibility for experimentation with either aesthetics or and ignores the role of artistic movements in shaping interpretive frameworks and contexts. Outside of school, students produce, distribute, and critique a wide range of media through open source global networks. In the process, some daring and creative experiments with both and form have emerged. Although the work veers from the formalist/structuralist approaches of non-narrative filmmaking in the last century, it is gratifying to know that the spirit of experimental media as a form of play, resistance, and subversion is still alive and well in a digital world. THE GUERRILLA MEDIA REVIVAL The tension between form and content is an age-old debate in artistic circles, but new to many media literacy advocates. In 1974, cineaste Amos Vogel presented an alternative to the tyranny of the in his bestselling book Film as a Subversive Art (1974). He notes that avant-garde artists experiments with both form and content function as a direct challenge to the ideological and political power of mainstream commercial cinema: The avant-garde offers no solutions or programmatic statements, but a series of intricate challenges, hints, and coded messages, subverting both form and content. In this fundamental sense, it is by definition an aesthetic and a political movement ... In its works, film is sacked, atomized, caressed, and possessed in a frenzy of passionate love. (1) As a subversive act. …