Episode 031: CinemaPsych at the Midwestern Psychological Association Conference 2021—What’s Your Film Pedagogy?

Join Alex in a special episode of the podcast! In this ep, Alex hosts a Roundtable Discussion at the Annual Conference of the Midwestern Psychological Association, held virtually in 2021 due to the ongoing COVID pandemic. Several educators in psychology joined to discuss their film pedagogy. Here are their details:

Sara Bagley, Lindenwood University
Crystal N. Steltenpohl, University of Southern Indiana
Thomas Dirth, Bemidji State University
Jordan Wagge, Avila University (and past guest host)
Bonnie Ekstrom
Alan Zheng

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Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro (“Self-Driving”). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: “Et Voila” and “Weekend in Tatooine”. Used under license.

Episode Transcription

Alex Swan: Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the CinemaPsych podcast, the podcast where Psychology Meets Film. I am your host, Dr Alex Swan and today’s episode—in this episode we are going to be doing a little bit of a special episode. So recently, about three weeks ago, I had the opportunity to host a roundtable at the Midwestern Psychological Association’s annual conference. Now, we held it virtually this year because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So if you’re listening to this in the past, well, hopefully the pandemic is all gone. One can hope. But in in case we held this, we didn’t hel-hold the conference in 2020. And so I was going to do the roundtable in person there, but it didn’t get around—I didn’t get a chance to do it. So I resubmitted my proposal for this round table and it was accepted and I was able to, you know, have fun with several of my colleagues talking about films and we did it on Zoom. So this is a special episode of film pedagogy. Now there’s several films that are mentioned by me and by my colleagues and you can—I will have their names and information in the show notes online. And you can just, you know, listen to the various ways—some of them are going to be on the show very soon, and I’m looking forward to that because after our discussion, I was like, “I need to have some of these people as guest hosts talking about films. So, what you’ll hear in this episode is: first and foremost, I want to apologize. Zoom sound effects are going to be heard throughout. People leaving and leaving my Zoom room or coming into my Zoom room. I forgot to turn off sound effects before I started recording, so unfortunately you will be hearing the comings and goings of people while some of the roundtable guests are speaking, so that’s that. We’ll get that out of the way. My apologies on that one. That is a noob error right there. But other things you’ll hear is: so this was like a 20-minute round table. We ended up going beyond that, not all of it was recorded, but you’ll definitely hear very quick questions on my part. Quick responses to answers on my part and quick responses from those who attended the roundtable. But they did a fantastic job by recognizing that they were going to be on a podcast and so every time they speak they mention who they are again. So I think it’s extremely easy for listeners to follow the context of the conversation and follow who is speaking at various points and you know, it’s going to be-it’s going to be a shorter episode than normal, and it’s not going to be like some of the others. There’s going to be no major film discussed in this particular episode, so just be aware of that. And so without further ado, I’m going to toss it to myself to get started with the special episode of the MPA 2021 Roundtable CinemaPsych edition.

Alex: Well hi, everybody! We’ve got some newcomers in here. Welcome to the CinemaPsych Podcast Roundtable discussion here at MPA 2021. As I mentioned, I kind of want this just to be a fun conversation. Sort of an exponential increase in the kind of program that I create for the podcast, which is specifically talking with one person about a specific movie. But in those episodes, I tend to have a chat about film pedagogy at the beginning of the episode. If you’ve if you’ve ever caught an episode—I know that Jordan has been on the show before, so she knows the deal on that, and so I just have a few questions that we have in the, you know, 20ish minutes for this particular roundtable, and feel free to just jump in like I said. Is it—it is recording. OK good. My first question to you all is: because this is a podcast about using films and teaching, what are some of the reasons that you choose to use films and movies in your teaching and in your pedagogy? Floor is open.

Sara Bagley: Hey this is Sara Bagley. I would say one of the reasons that I used film is to capture a broader perspective than I can provide in the classroom. And to connect stories in ways that the students might have that ability to connect with that maybe my interactions won’t provide for them.

Alex: Yeah, I think that’s really crucial. It broadens our perspectives.

Crystal Steltenpohl: This is Crystal. I-I don’t use film all that much in my classes, but I have used it in Community Psychology. So I teach that, that’s an undergraduate course and part of that class is talking about like activism and talking about living by your own values and figuring out what those values are and how you want to live by them. And so in the past, I’ve used films like—actually a German language film SophieScholl-Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. So, it’s about the White Rose movement, which was a movement in-in Germany of college students that were fighting against Hitler. And-and it was illegal to distribute. What they considered anti-Nazi propaganda and so she gets caught and she’s interrogated and you can see through—it’s just like the whole like her last days she ends up dying at the end. It’s not-it’s not a surprise or spoiler or anything like that, but just kind of showing, like, people putting their literally their lives on the line. And I think it brings an emotionality and a connection to it than just reading about it in a book would not.

Alex: Yeah, I mean I-I did—I you cut off there or…?

Crystal Steltenpohl: No, I’m just done.

Alex: Yeah, right, because a book would require your own imagination, but now you have the imagination of some filmmaker who has an idea here. And yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Any other-any other comments about some of the reasons why you would choose to use films in your pedagogy?

Thomas Dirth: This is Thomas here. I typically use them for two reasons. One is, I find that their good teaching tool for recognizing phenomena, so they provide kind of a nice tight narrative and different scenes, so like with social psychology, it’s nice to put the situation onto the the screen and let students kind of recognize different phenomena, different concepts and choose the movie or create the-the movies that are really good at demonstrating those things. And then I also teach a class called Psychology of Disability. And so it is very helpful for comparing positive representations with negative representations or stigmatising representations, and so I also think in terms of social justice and and diversity representations, movies can be really beneficial for pulling out the symbolic, you know, harms that can be done in portraying different marginalized groups in positive versus negative ways.

Alex: That’s really, that’s really awesome, Thomas! I—this is a later question, but I thought I’d ask you since you were-you just mentioned that the comparison in Disability Psych. What are some movies that you use to compare positive and negative representations of disability?

Thomas Dirth: It’s actually it’s funny because most movies don’t kind of live up to, so I have to like find the the narrow few that are pretty beneficial. So I-I will have them watch, actually the 1930s movie “Freaks”, which is surprisingly, you know, a lot of people might say, “oh this is objectifying” and that sort of thing, but it’s it’s actually one of the more progressive movies in the sense that it employed a bunch of people actually with disabilities to portray themselves, and it also shows kind of—I don’t know if any of you have heard it, heard of it, but it creates this portrayal of empowerment even and and solidarity within this group that they get—actually they actually get revenge on the nondisabled person and the who-is an impostor into the group. But I also use like “Murderball.” It’s a great one. I use “Children a lot—of a Lesser God” because that portrays some challenging portrayals of stereotypes. And then I will also use themes from like “X-Men,” as a-as a kind of agitating social change and that sort of thing. So and then “Born on the 4th of July,” I think is another one that is, shows activism and, so yeah, there’s plenty. There’s some out there that are really— I-I look for the social group portrayed in the film and not as an individual. Story of tragedy.

Alex: Sure, OK. thank you for sharing those. Those examples— well, I have another question about examples toward the end of the discussion. Thank you for those insightful comments. My next question is about, you know, pedagogy in general with respect to assessments. So we want to use these fun—especially if they’re comedy movies—want to use these fun forms of art to allow us to expand horizons, but we have to assess their usefulness right? And we have to assess obviously thinking. So to start off this question, what kinds of assessments do you use specifically with film? I’ll go ahead and explain what I’ve been doing recently, which is I assign a short paper. When I assign a movie, I assign a short paper and two to three pages and they have to choose—if they’re watching the full length film—they have to choose three scenes that express or portray various material or concepts from the class that we are talking about, and so they have free reign to write what they want. Choose whatever three scenes that stick out to them as representative of the material, and then sort of write about that. They have to bring in primary sources to support their arguments. What kind of— so to that— In that vein, what kind of assessments do you all use?

Bonnie Ekstrom: Hi, this is Bonnie. So I teach abnormal psychology asynchronously and I created a group project where. Each individual in the group has to choose a depiction of one of the personality disorders that were studying. So if they choose borderline personality disorder, they each choose a clip and then they have to get together and assess which clip seems to depict more criteria for borderline personality disorder. And then they have to kind of give justification for why they chose a particular movie clip that better shows the personality disorder. So I get a lot of good feedback from students that it intimidates them initially. And then once they kind of get into it and draw together as a group, it-it becomes kind of a fun project for them.

Alex: That’s awesome, I like the the-the aspect of where you choose something and then you determine which clip. Sort of in the reverse of-of what I described other assessments from the group regarding film-film projects papers to anybody. Does anybody test on material in in their classes?

Sara Bagley: This is Sara. I don’t do tests, but I also assign papers depending on the level: intro, psych, behavioral, neuro. The section of the course concepts we’re covering. Usually I do it by paper form, but often I will do discussion-based activities where they have to apply things like what ethical scenarios or how would this exist in today’s culture? Or like, we just bring up various discussion questions. I also teach a whole class called Memory in the Media and we as a class watch these different movies at certain points and then I stop halfway through the movie and they always have discussion groups to say. One of the questions is “how do you think the rest of the movie will play out?” So, you know, getting them the social aspects communicating with each other, building on those skills. And then I guess in that class I do have some questions integrating concepts from the movie, but not typically tests.

Alex: Sara, I’m going to have to follow up with you on that.

Sara Bagley: That I like the discussion one because—especially guess how it ends— that-I love that. I love that. So I will-I will if you want to, if you want to send me a private message, your email so I can, I can get that to you. Other one is connecting, ’cause we watch multiple movies in that course such as, you guys have probably seen, “Inside Out” and the main character’s name Riley, but we also watch something like “Still Alice.” So when we talk about Still Alice’s mind. How would Inside Out’s Riley’s emotions look in Alice’s mind? So like connecting the class or the movies in those ways.

Alex: That is really awesome. I love that. I love that. See, this is why I wanted to do this roundtable. This is why I wanted to do this roundtable. That’s amazing. OK, any other comments about assessments? Yeah, Thomas!

Thomas Dirth: Just one additional thing I love. I love Sara that what you are saying and I definitely will think about that for future. But I-I was just thinking about one thing in particular that hasn’t been said that I do. I do this with several of the movies, but especially I like to do it with the movie, “Do the Right Thing.” In multicultural psychology, where I talk about the concepts or I get them to recognize the concepts that are being portrayed. But then I also take a step back and ask them to think about how this film will impact audiences. So as-as a stimulus. So thinking about films as a stimulus, that it-that are or films that are stimuli for audiences that go to the movie theater or watch these. And how does that portrayal instantiate some form of lay perspective about what racism is or what prejudice is and what we should do about it because, you know, you can contrast “Do the Right Thing” with something like, “Crash,” and it’s, you know, it’s like it gives you a different message about what the answers are or what we should do as a society. So I want them to to see the stimulus in the in the film, and I assessed that.

Alex: Yeah, I like the comparison there between”Do the Right Thing” and-and “Crash.” It’s very-is a very good comparison.

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Alex: So with that, I’m left that we have on this roundtable. I wanted to—sorry that were like, moving super quick. I have a lot of questions. Always have a lot of questions. One thing that I asked our STP colleagues and I want to get your feedback. I don’t know if any of you did the survey that I sent out at the end of last year. But one thing that I am curious about, and maybe we can end on this, and if you have any suggestions for films, you can drop those in the chat, because we probably won’t have the time to get to that. But my question, I-I guess my final question here would be…. Sort of a two-pronged question. What are the challenges that you’ve faced using films, either from the student, students, or administration sort of overstepping, maybe, or… and what kind of feedback have you gotten from your students about the use of film in your classes?

Sara Bagley: I would say one of the biggest drawbacks right now is trying to hold the in-person experience in this very weird hybrid virtual world, and especially because I like to say, I like to have discussions midway through the film. You can’t have everybody just go and watch it for an hour, come back, it feels very disjointed. Rather than having that community experience. So that’s my biggest struggle right now.

Alex: Yeah, that’s a-that is a big struggle too. I had to—I did a free trial for a film that I needed them to watch. The free trial for a streaming service and I said, “here’s the login, go watch it. Watch anything else you want to.” Other challenges, other comments that you received from students, positive or negative?

Jordan Wagge: Yeah, so I’m having a quiet moment here so I’m going to try to jump in, but— We-I like, we’ve talked about this before and you know, I don’t currently use a lot of films in my classes, but I’ve thought about it a lot and right now I think especially our time is so limited. I I’m not using it, but we do have—we have a class that somebody else teaches and I don’t-I don’t know them. And students complain about the class a lot, and I’ve been kind of thinking about it ’cause it’s-it’s a graduate level class. It’s a graduate level class and I’ll hear from my students that, you know, they-they’ll meet, they’ll watch a movie together on Zoom. And-and they-and they feel like it’s kind of-and then they discuss it. And it seems to me, so whenever I talk to students about it, I’m like, well, it’s not always obvious to students what the plan is that the faculty member has, and so, like give the benefit of doubt, trust the process a little. They’re counseling students, so it’s really easy to like, just trust what you say, trust the process, and they’ll understand it means. But I think-I think if there is one. It’s just sounds like there just needs to be more intentionality around, like, the instructor, being explicit about what they want the student to get from that experience and doing what Sara is talking about. That yeah, that-that—stop it. Talk about it a little bit. It-it-it seems-it seems like when I have done things in the past like that, students seem to have a little bit more by end of like, “OK, this is why that’s important and this is why this is an important experience and why the instructor is doing that.” And yes, in an ideal world, students give faculty benefit of the doubt. That, like you’re not just like wheeling out with TV on the cart. Right, but anyway, if you understand what I mean—

Sara Bagley: Substitute teacher day. That’s what I kind of think. I was substitute teacher day. Let’s pop in a movie!

Jordan Wagge: Right? Obviously, college—

Alex: That’s alright, Jordan. Totally understand. We may-I may have had a chattering girl here today had she not gone to school so I totally— Yep. I get the face. Get the face.

Sara Bagley: I think intentionality and sort of showing your cards is pretty important. I would say another thing is the possibility of triggers in the movies because a lot of these movies do deal with very intense concepts and I have to be very upfront and even include like we will be watching R-rated movies in my syllabus and I tell them exactly what movies and if they’re not comfortable with that, they should not be in that class. And then I even got it so far as a student with still having an issue and I had to substitute in a different movie so on the fly by had to change everything, change all of my discussions. So I think that is also something that is just a struggle.

Alex: Right and I have-I’ve dealt with similar things too. Actually, when-when it’s a-when it is a film that has strong themes, it’s rated R, and we need to give content warnings for that, I will typically link to the Common Sense Media page on that film, because Common Sense Media is I think—it is a family-based organization and-but they have great, like full descriptions of all of the gnarly stuff that might be in those movies. And so regardless of the organization itself, the pages on these films are wonderful. So I definitely offer that to my students and I’ve had to do that in the past for something like, for a film like “Black Swan” or something.

Alan Zheng: I’m wondering if I can chime in a little bit. Yeah, so-so I’m Alan. I’m a recent graduate from college. So-so I came from, like more student perspective and my major in psychology. My focus was mmore in cognitive and the search for truth. That was that those things focused, but I’m actually going to grad school for films. So that’s kind of like where my side is coming in. Sorry for that long-winded introduction, yeah, but the one thing-the one thing I guess I always really-really wondering, is in a lot of those points were touched on by you guys is first like-like film are being made by filmmakers, they are made by-they have somebody making it and there are intentions by them which sometimes are not accurate and which was mentioned by Jordan about like what are some embellishments when actresses in film and then and was curious like and you guys have discussed about this? Like what are some ways like including the instructions, intentionality to help guide the students on? I don’t know on like a specific parts of the film or like yeah like because filmmakers are not psychologists. They’re not perfect in depicting those those scenarios. So that was one thing that I guess I was wondering. It’s like it was kind of you guys can answer it I guess already, but the other question I guess is, one thing I really felt was that because like we grow up from all students and professors, of course grow from very different backgrounds and the movies we watch are very different and I and one thing, I guess it kind of leads into the question of diversity a little bit. I guess as well, but also this is, I think the examples being brought up in this conversation has been great. There has been a Spike Lee movie and there’s foreign films on like “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.” There are foreign films but I guess I wonder is like before I came I went to Carleton like a lot of films. I think that occupied my minds are Hollywood script productions are, you know, Western commercial productions. But also like I guess the question is, yeah, what are ways to, I don’t know, invite different perspectives and different spaces into courses, even though maybe maybe not-not just multicultural psychology courses or I don’t know. There still can be other ways, I don’t know, to-to invite different, I don’t movies, into-into each other spaces, I guess.

Alex: Yeah, so I mean that’s-that’s a great question, Alan, and I appreciate the perspective. I try to-try to grab as much diverse film as possible in my teaching. So recently I used Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” to discuss fallibility of memory, right, and you have a 1950s Japan—when the film was being made—but then it’s also set in feudal Japan, and so you have all of these elements of mysticism. The-the film is in Japan so it’s reading for non-Japanese audiences and it’s in black and white. So there’s a lot of buy-in for this one, and my students actually enjoyed it. They-they enjoyed going back 70 years to explore what is so-named the Rashomon effect. But, and so I encourage others to-to join in for that answer as well.

Thomas Dirth: So, so one of the things that I think is important is you really have to scaffold those viewing experiences for students. I found they-they do not willingly do that, like make that selection if you give them a choice between movies. They, I found, that they’re really averse to subtitles and black and white and then also like I really, I’m really intrigued because there’s a lot of this where you’re like recognizing psychology and film. But there’s also the psychology of the film, and I would-I would kind of argue that film makers are psychologists. They’re just trying to get people to be attracted to the movie rather than the actual facts in the movie and so talking students through the language of film and what the filmmaker is trying to do at here and-and in that sense. Like I think that makes it a really rich experience and-and do have some movies that are a little bit slower-paced, which anything outside of Western commercial is like slower-paced. But you have to like, I think you also have to break it up, and I find that for me, if I’m watching one of those, I have to watch it about like half an hour at a time because even my brain is-is like processing this at such a rich level of information and emotion that I can’t watch a- 90-minute like Kurasawa film or Bunwell or Bruce on like some of those are just like, overowering to me and I have to like, “OK, we need that. We need to stop here and we’ll just watch it at like half an hour or 20-minute clips at a time” and then talk about it. So I think scaffolding is a really big part to that.

Crystal Steltenpohl: And I think also—this is Crystal again throwing in some of that perspective—taking those skills and getting students to really put themselves in, you know, Germany is not that culturally different from the US. There are are some differences, but they’re not that drastic, and-but the culture of the 1940s versus now, students obviously feel very differently then they’re more likely to put themselves, at least explicitly in the-in Sophie’s position than in the people who are interrogating her. And-and so like getting them to think about like what would it be like to live in a culture like this? How do you see similarities between what happened in the 40s and what is going on right now? And how do you-how do you take steps in your own life to fight against injustice, to fight against discrimination, to fight against all of those things and really getting them to like, think about like what roles are people playing, not just in the movie but like in real life? Like what positions are they filling up? Whose rules are they following and how do we-how do we empathize with different people within the group? I think that-that-that was really helpful for my students as well.

Alex: Well, I want to thank everybody. We went a little long. I want to thank everybody for coming by and and chatting about films in this really quick roundtable. I was super-stoked to do this and it lived up to the hype so, in my own mind, so I appreciate everybody coming by. I think there are other sessions that people want to jump to. Nam, Oh, interesting to recognize the implied biases of the scriptwriter. Yeah, so that’s one of the things that I do love about being able to use film in class because it is coming from the perspective and this goes back to Alan’s question. It is coming from the perspective of, you know, just a small group of people and really, the director’s vision is what ends up on the screen and so, you kind of have to weigh that when talking about what you’re actually watching. So yeah, not my—I definitely agree with that. So with that I’m going to go ahead and end the roundtable. Enjoy the rest of MPA everybody! Thank you for coming by and chatting. It was absolutely wonderful! Your comments are great. Expect this episode to come by in May and yeah, it was lovely. Have a good day everybody!