Abstract

This is a guide to the use of films, television, and other mass media objects as subject matter in the classroom. The unassuming thesis of the book is that the mass media products vary in their excellence, within their genres, and that a responsible teacher should introduce them into the classroom, so that the student may learn better "taste" and acquire generally better critical skills. Apparently, The Popular Arts is written for members of the British educational system. American educators and critics have been succeeding, for several years, with the sorts of curricular innovations these authors desire so strongly. Hall and Whannel are pleading their cause before a less "progressive" cultural establishment, and, in order to dignify the mass media, they feel compelled to undergo elaborate agonies of scholarly definition. In order to distinguish art from kitsch they rely on notions about the purity of the motivation of the creator, and make some elementary aesthetic blunders. This study, by the authors' own admission, is concerned with criticism and not with the vast research into the process and effects of mass communications. This same research, though, is intimately connected with new and experimental techniques in education. As a consequence, The Popular Arts tends to be a manual on the use of exceedingly modern subject materials in a rather old-fashioned classroom.—E. W.