This paper introduces five concepts that guide teachers’ and students’ critical inquiry in the understanding of media and visual representation. In a step-by-step process, the paper illustrates how these five concepts can become a tool with which to critique and examine film images of indigenous people. The Sani are indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. The culture, language and social life of the Sani has been represented in the film, “The Gods Must Be Crazy” (1984). Through the humorous images in the film, the writer-director makes jokes about the absurdities and discontinuities of African life. In films, through the manipulation of camera angles and other techniques, the viewer is given a sense of realism. Such ploys of visual representations of people demand a careful analysis to discover: (1) what is at issue; (2) how the issue/event is defined; (3) who is involved; (4) what the arguments are; and (5) what is taken for granted, including cultural assumptions. Each of these questions is explored in relation to “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” In critical viewing in general, a systematic mode of inquiry should be applied which focuses on the visual, source, origins, and the determinants of media and visual constructions. By using these five concepts in critical inquiry, the ways in which the language of visuals is socially and historically produced can be examined. (Contains 13 references.) (AEF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Quest of Visual Literacy: Deconstructing Visual Images of Indigenous People Ladislaus Semali U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Abstract The purpose of this essay is to introduce five concepts that guide teachers’ and students’ inquiry in the understanding of media and visual representation. In a step by step process, I will show how these five concepts can become a tool with which to critique and examine film images of indigenous people so as to expose the oppressive spaces in the daily dose of media and visual messages designed to provide information and entertainment to credulous audiences. This essay aims to be a model for teachers contemplating to use such tools in their own classrooms to teach critical viewing, critical thinking, and critical reading skills.The purpose of this essay is to introduce five concepts that guide teachers’ and students’ inquiry in the understanding of media and visual representation. In a step by step process, I will show how these five concepts can become a tool with which to critique and examine film images of indigenous people so as to expose the oppressive spaces in the daily dose of media and visual messages designed to provide information and entertainment to credulous audiences. This essay aims to be a model for teachers contemplating to use such tools in their own classrooms to teach critical viewing, critical thinking, and critical reading skills. Introduction Critical inquiry is a term currently used among educators that sparks controversy. For some educators, critical inquiry reflects a new approach that allows teachers to construct pedagogical practices which connect with their students’ experiences and provide students with a vision of social change by encouraging them to research their own topics and ask their own questions. This approach stands in contrast with teaching the classics and a canon of acceptable literary works far removed from the students’ experiences to be memorized for exams. For many other educators, critical inquiry is another fad, a resurrection of old ideas growing out of a long history in education of creating new labels for old ideas without any real change in classrooms and schools. Critical inquiry is not a fad. It draws from social theory studies of popular culture, the media in its many forms, literature, the role of the state in struggles over race, class and gender relations, national and international economic structures, and the cultural politics of imperialism and postcolonialism (Giroux, 1987; Giroux & Simon, 1989; McLaren, Hammer, Sholle, & Reilly, 1995). Simply put, critical inquiry means questioning. This practice of questioning requires both teachers and students to account for their own beliefs and practices by exploring the contradictions that are necessarily inherent in their own lives. EST COPY AV ILA LE 247 In the study of visual communication and visual literacy, critical inquiry is not used widely in classrooms as a tool for deconstructing visual images, particularly those images that represent people’s culture, identity, or ethnicity. While this has began to occur in some schools, it is not yet common practice in all schools. With critical inquiry, students learn to become critical consumers who are aware of visual manipulation and stereotyping as an important project of critical literacy education. In order to illustrate the current inquiry movement, I decided to apply the work which I and other university researchers in critical pedagogy have engaged in over the past 10 years. This method of inquiry is based on the rationale that if we hope to create media and visual environments that will help us change oppressive literacy practices, we have to think critically about what kinds of learning we want to go into the classrooms and the pedagogical spaces in which learning occurs for most students; how these literacy practices are projected or articulated with other social, political, and ideological forces. Deconstructing Images of Indigenous People In this essay, I introduce a discussion about the Sani.
