| Cases Of Change Intro |
Contents References |
Devel In Urban High |
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Social Relations In Urban High’s “Sex Talk”Skinny, Ed, Turkey, Lynn, Rosemary, and Abbey were observed to have a generally positive student-school relationship based on their level of participation, regular attendance, and interaction with the teacher, though they rarely interacted with other students in the class, resulting in an isolation that became extreme when an intra-group conflict led to Lynn sitting entirely alone for the last weeks of class. Conflict was observed only within the confines of the group, including comments about other people during the group interview (of part of the group). The usual positive quality and their associated isolation are evident in the microanalysis but largely in the passivity of the camera and routine expressions of solidarity with nearly everyone who appears on camera. The microanalysis is of the interviews from the “Sex Talk” project, which contain repetition yet spontaneity, therefore presenting an opportunity to consider similarities and differences that are more illusive in the other two focal projects. There are 31 shots containing 30 interviews with a number of variations including length, location, number of questions, number of people questioned, number of shots per interview, number of interviews per shot, the power relations among people, the identity of the interviewer, etc. All the interviews have an essentially strategic stance to the action in two senses. First the camera displays the interviews, but these displays do not include any sort of overview or establishing shot and they do not display the spatial organization. As already described and pictured in Illustration 7, the interviews begin with an assertion that Skinny is “downtown” but does not present an image that places him. The context of the interviews is ignored or manipulated to lessen power differences, thus in this project, the general act of displaying does not truly have a strategic nature. Secondly, an interview, by its very nature, creates an inequality in relations: One person (or persons) is the interviewer and the other (or others) is the interviewee. Nevertheless, this group of students never asserts their own agenda beyond broad questions, and the dynamics of the interviews demonstrate a constant effort to maintain solidarity, thus reducing the power inherent in the activity. As in traditional camera work, the camera operator (usually Ed) does not ask questions or narrate; there is no direct effect on the interviews beyond the creation of an audience. There is little subjectivity also. The camera gives power to the interviewer, but the camera operator seems to disappear in her role as passive and cooperative audience. The small zooms, pans, and shakes are the only indications that the camera has an operator most of the time. It is for this reason that the slight adjustments have been closely examined for evidence of meaning. It was found that there were only three true close-ups within the interviews; people are nearly always shown in a medium shot, ranging between a long shot to slightly closer than a standard medium shot. This lack of close-ups is not uncommon in student work but explaining it causes some difficulty. Worth and Adair (1977) assert (with additional evidence) that not showing faces in close-up relates to the culture of their informants. By contrast, the analysis of this project suggests that the lack of close-ups is partly a developmental issue. What became clear after attempting a number of approaches to examining the issue of distance is that not only did the frequency of close-ups increase with time but that in general people were shown in tighter shots as they did more interviews and spent more time recording in general.22 The major exception to this was when the camera was placed on a tripod and there was no camera operator. The actual distance, however, was influenced most clearly by the number of people present; the camera operator moved closer apparently to either hear what was being said or to reduce the chances of someone walking between camera and subject. Due to the fact that there simply were not enough interviews or other work and that the movement within a shot tended to be small, the search for additional meanings for actual and symbolic variations in distance remain speculative. There are not clear differences in camera activity that depend on place or identity of the interviewee or number of interviewees. Nevertheless, the distance between the interviewer and interviewee, particularly the existence or absence of physical contact, is revealing about the nature of the relations between students. Other evidence, such as ways of smiling, supports the conclusions based on distance between interviewer and interviewee. Context, on the other hand, clearly made a difference when off-task images are compared. Illustration 16 shows examples from shots taken during interviews and during off-task recordings from the end of the year. The off-task recordings (by Turkey and Ed) were made in two different classrooms, including the video production room. The recording was not a central part of events but represented play during free time while others talked. Most of the shots were in close-up, and those that were in medium shots were of people busy with their own activities. The general activity and the shots demonstrate greater intimacy. On the other hand, the interviewers tended to be closer to the subjects and were not cut out of the scene. During the off-task recordings, the students sat at tables with more space between people. The only shot in all their work to include an extreme close-up (see Illustration 17), which in this case is even closer than a normal extreme close-up, was also taken during end of the year, off-task recording. In pilot data, when a student showed a vice-principal in a similar shot, it was taken as a distortion—a tactical mockery of sorts—of an authority figure. This seemed particularly accurate due to the fact that the teacher had pushed the student into interviewing the man, and the interview itself was conducted by handing the vice-principal a piece of paper with a list of questions on it (Beaty, 1998). Does this shot represent a friend mocking a friend? The students clearly teased one another regularly and were willing to express conflict toward one another, whereas they were never observed on video or in real time to assert a difference with others. Thus this extreme, extreme close-up is interpreted as being an experiment in mockery. The relative passivity of the camera operator and her relationship with the interviewer resulted in the need to consider the actions of the interviewer more generally for a rich analysis. As has already been noted, the camera operator in this project worked in close coordination with the interviewer. The microphone, despite not being useful for improving audio, extended the power of the camera to the interviewer, making her or him a participant in operating the camera. Therefore, the actions of both individuals are worth consideration. The first interview stands out because the interview is not authentic; Lynn—a member of the production team—is the person who is interviewed. A “fake” interview was also conducted with Ed later on, but this was the first. Interview 1 also stands out because it is one of only three interviews with any kind of introduction to it: Skinny pretended to speak with others in the studio before “looking” for someone to ask about safe sex. This search for people to interview makes it distinct as well. Only this interview and the interview of Ed involved asking someone for an interview while on camera. This in and of itself is an indication of the level of solidarity regularly expressed by the students: They always sought permission for the interview before recording, and the one time a student asked for the camera to be stopped, it immediately was. By contrast, one of the few actions that asserts power and conflict also occurs in Interview 1. Illustration 18 shows Skinny holding his hand up to stop Lynn as she walks by. As he lowers his hand, he asks, “Can I ask you a few questions?” This action—the gesture and the words—is viewed as strategic because it causes a direct effect on the activity, but it is also scripted and therefore is not genuinely creating an effect. In the interruption of Lynn’s activity (walking), it represents an expression of difference—a difference in purposes—but this also in not genuine. This type of scripting is less conducive to this type of analysis, but the fact that more strategic activity occurs only when scripted emphasizes the lack of power and level of solidarity expressed elsewhere. Another small assertion of power occurs in Interview 23 (see Illustration 19). The girl who is being interviewed was busy spreading cream cheese on a bagel and kept the interviewers waiting 17 seconds before the camera operator turned off the camera and abandoned the interview. Turning off the camera strategically had a direct effect on the activity. A lack of solidarity was also expressed by ignoring (tactically) the girl’s instructions to wait. The interviewer or camera operator could have used speech to assert their unwillingness to continue waiting. Whether or not this was expressed more strategically off camera is not known, but the students’ on camera actions suggest that their actions remained largely tactical. Thus this shot, as one of the most strategic and hostile, is barely either, but it is marked as different because the interviewer is not shown. Most events were completely void of strategies and conflict. One of the many examples of a lack of power and high level of solidarity that the students express happens in Interview 2. When Skinny was ready to end the interview, the student being interviewed asked, “That’s it?” So after stopping the camera, they cooperatively started it again, re-shooting the initial question. In this second shot, the interviewee became gradually more expressive until he took hold of the microphone and walked toward the camera (see Illustration 20). Skinny maintained his hold on the microphone but permitted the student to take it also. Skinny was then dragged forward as the interviewee moved toward the camera, and the camera operator showed her cooperation by zooming in on him slightly after he had walked forward. Skinny did not allow the boy to assume power, but neither did he assert his own. The same “sharing” of the microphone happens in Interview 8 with a teacher (though she does not take the microphone quite so aggressively), but in this case, the whole class burst into applause to show their solidarity with the teacher. The fact that the class was described as an “AP” (advanced placement) class is significant in understanding the quality of relations in this class, including the fact that it was the only class approached for interviews. (The identity of the class was especially meaningful when contrasted with observations of the non-college track New Media courses). Other examples would confirm this high solidarity, low power communication. There is a high degree of regularity in the approach these students had in interviewing that illustrates both the strength and the weakness of the students’ relations with school. Even when they had the symbolic power of height in Interview 21 (see Illustration 21), it was mediated by the interviewer lowering himself. (In this shot as in every shot from this study, it did not occur to camera operators to adjust their own height.) By kneeling, Skinny shows solidarity with the students sitting on the ground, though his power as interviewer is not entirely lost; he still asks the questions and holds the microphone. In such events, the students demonstrate no desire to assert power. Their positive relations with school enabled them to produce the most complete and purposeful project in the class and to discover a new freedom to move around and establish agendas by asking questions. The problem is that the students maintain a simple question-answer format and fail to seek any depth in their interviews. As previously discussed, the purpose of the interviews is ambiguous. This loss of purpose may relate to their avoiding conflict. An avoidance of conflict may also be expressed in maintaining distance, which is seen in their tendency toward actual and symbolic distance. They cooperate so thoroughly with everyone that they are forced to follow the simplest interview genre and take all statements at their surface value, adding additional information rather than seeking questions that will draw out deeper dialog. In this way, the positive student-school relationship seems to support overt participation but to limit their development in communication. |
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method that was settled on was to draw a circle around the person’s
face in a drawing program and to note the dimensions. The height
from selected images within different sequential clusters were averaged
and compared. A more rigorous use of this technique would allow a
detailed statistical analysis, but such an analysis was not viewed as
contributing meaningfully to the analysis at this time. A way to assign
a reliable value to actual distance has not been established. |
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