Policy Futures in Education Volume 9 Number 6 2011 www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE 686 http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2011.9.6.686 Breaking into the Movies: 1 public pedagogy and the politics of film 2 HENRY A. GIROUX 3 English and Cultural Studßies Department, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada 4 ABSTRACT This article argues that how we think about education must extend far beyond matters of 5 schooling and include those spaces, practices, discourses and maps of meaning and affect produced 6 through a range of cultural and pedagogical technologies. We live at a time in which the educational 7 force of the larger culture has become the major force REPETITION OF FORCE – CHANGE ONE 8 INSTANCE? in producing subjectivities, desires and modes of identification necessary for the 9 legitimation and functioning of a neoliberal society. If pedagogy has become central to creating 10 particular modes of agency, public pedagogy represents the new force of a politics in which pedagogy 11 has become central. One such mode of public pedagogy is film. As a form of public pedagogy, film 12 combines entertainment and politics, and a claim to public memory, though in contested ways given 13 the existence of distinctly varied social and cultural formations. In this article, I argue that films not 14 only provide a pedagogical space that opens up the ‘possibility of interpretation as intervention’, they 15 also make clear the need for forms of literacy that address the profoundly political and pedagogical 16 ways in which knowledge, practice, discourse, images and values are constructed and enter our lives. 17 Central to this article is the belief that the decline of public life demands that we use film as a way of 18 raising questions that are increasingly lost to the forces of market relations, commercialization and 19 privatization. As the opportunities for civic education and public engagement begin to disappear, film 20 may provide one of the few mediums left that enables conversations that connect politics, personal 21 experiences and public life to larger social issues. Not only does film travel more as a pedagogical form 22 compared to other popular forms such as television and popular music, but film carries a kind of 23 pedagogical weight that other mediums lack. As a quintessential element of a screen culture, film offers 24 both a way to rethink the importance of cultural politics, and public pedagogy as central to what it 25 means to make the political more pedagogical and the pedagogical more political. 26 Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to make its 27 appearance. (Arendt, 1977, p. 149) 28 My memories of Hollywood films cannot be separated from the attractions that such films had for 29 me as a young boy growing up in Smith Hill, a working-class neighborhood of Providence, Rhode 30 Island in the 1950s. While we had access to the small screen of black and white television, it held 31 none of the mystery, fascination and pleasure that we found in the five or six grand movie theaters 32 that populated the downtown section of Providence. Every Saturday afternoon, my friends and I 33 would walk several miles to the business district, all the while making plans to get into the theaters 34 without having to pay. None of us could afford to buy tickets so we had to be inventive about ways 35 to sneak into the theaters without being caught. Sometimes we would simply wait next to the exit 36 doors, and as soon as somebody left the theater we would rush in and bury ourselves in the plush 37 seats, hoping that none of the ushers spotted us. We were not always so lucky. At other times, we 38 would pool our money and have one person buy a ticket, and at the most strategic moment he 39