Exploring Film Through Academic Lenses

Today in class we moved onto a new subject which is academic lenses. To start of the lesson, the class first defined academic. Academic is something that has to do with academy, or education. To view something, specifically film, through an academic lens one must think of it in the context of education and the various subjects involved. Examples of academic subjects we looked at as a class were:
- English
- Health, physical education, and wellness
- Math
- Science, technology, engineering
- Social studies
- Technology, careers, consumer science
- Visual and performing arts
- World language

After going over the list above, each group picked a subject to explore further, using the school website as a reference. This included the classes Sparta High School offers under the subject and explanations. Each group the posted what the could gather in classroom like definitions and other important notes about it. After going over that and getting a general idea about academic subjects, the class then took it a step further to apply it to film. Specifically, films we’ve gone over in class.

No Country For Old Men, Wall-E, and Get Out were the films we applied academic lenses to. Each group came up with one sentence per film about what experts in each category would be interested in. These sentences were also posted in classroom. Some good examples we pointed out were “A psychologist would question the accuracy of No Country for Old Men’s serial killer, Anton Chigurh” written by Evan Silberstein and “A Musician would think that Wall-e's use of music from the musical ¨Hello Dolly¨ shows how even though wall-e is a robot, he enjoys the performing arts and the music throughout the movie impacts the tone” written by Vaughn Thomas.

Film can cover a wide variety subjects including the ones on the list above. To be able to apply a academic lens to film is important, especially if you are pursuing a college education in the future. Basically any major at one point is going to involve film and having these skills will be valuable.