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FRAMING EEF MASSON FILM WATCH AND LEARN EEF MASSON Rhetorical Devices in WATCH AND LEARN Classroom Films after 1940 Since the late 1990s, there has been a marked increase in academic “Who knew the long neglected WATCH AND LEARN WATCH interest in what are sometimes called ‘utility films’, intended for classroom film could yield such purposes of information, training, teaching or advertising. Although insights? Subtle and unex- pectedly subversive… In Eef such research was long overdue, the current academic output tends Masson’s able hands, a critical to be restricted in scope, paying little attention to the films’ textual reflection on the ‘purposive features: the means they deploy in defending their informational, film’ transforms into a brilliant meditation on the nature of film educational or commercial arguments. In the absence of such taxonomies, institutions and studies, the image survives of very ‘formulaic’ genres. This book audiences, and sheds new light on the rhetorical operations of seeks to modify this picture, and suggests a methodology that helps the medium and its texts.” to foreground the films’ rhetorical diversity. William Uricchio Taking her departure from a historic collection of Dutch Professor and Director, MIT classroom films, Masson proposes an approach that considers Comparative Media Studies an audio-visual text as part of a so-called dispositif: the set-up of “Far from contributing a mere technology, text and viewing situation that is relevant to the specific footnote to film history Eef Masson’s exciting new book corpus under scrutiny. shows that Dutch educational cinema has to teach us more than just a lesson or two EEF MASSON IS LECTURER IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA STUDIES about cinema as a cultural AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM. practice. Focusing on film at the crossroads of pedagogy, science and aesthetics Masson engagingly demonstrates the growing importance of work on the margins of film history to our broader understanding of cinema culture.” Vinzenz Hediger AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS ISBN 978 90 8964 312 4 Professor of Film, Goethe- WWW.AUP.NL FRAMING Universität Frankfurt FILM AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS 9789089643124 EYE FILM INSTITUTE NETHERLANDS WATCH AND LEARN FRAMING FILM FRAMING FILM is a book series dedicated to theoretical and analytical studies in restoration, collection, archival, and exhibition practices, in line with the existing archive of EYE Film Institute. With this series, Amsterdam University Press and EYE aim to support the academic research community, as well as practitioners in archive and restoration. Please see www.aup.nl for more information. EEF MASSON WATCH AND LEARN Rhetorical Devices in Classroom Films after 1940 AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Cover illustration: still from the film Een wens verhoord binnen 24 uur: De post (Stichting Nederlandse Onderwijs Film, 1953) Cover design and lay-out: Magenta Ontwerpers, Bussum ISBN 978 90 8964 312 4 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 411 3 NUR 670 © E. Masson / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2012 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 | 5 Introduction 11 PART ONE 1 Film for Education: Debates, Idea(l)s and Practices 27 Introduction 27 1.1 Film as an Educational Tool 29 1.1.1 Possibilities 30 1.1.2 Limitations 55 1.2 The Classroom Film: Institutionalisation 66 1.2.1 NOF: Organisation and Procedures 69 1.2.2 NOF: Rules and Regulations 77 Conclusions 96 2 Classroom Film Use and the Pedagogical Dispositif 99 Introduction 99 2.1 The Reception and Use of Classroom Films 100 2.1.1 Scepticism and Resistance 101 2.1.2 Some Hypotheses on Film Usage 109 2.2 Classroom Films and the Pedagogical Dispositif 117 Conclusions 124 PART TWO 3 Rhetoric: Text & Frame 127 Introduction 127 3.1 Rhetoric: Conceptual Exploration 129 3.2 Framing Rhetoric 133 3.3 Textual Rhetoric 138 Conclusions 143 4 Textual Rhetoric I: Motivational Devices 145 Introduction 145 4.1 Textual Motivation: Foci and Strategies 148 4.1.1 Matter Made Appealing 149 4.1.2 Viewing Made Appealing 174 6 | 4.2 Strategies of Motivation: Blurred Boundaries 195 4.3 Textual Motivation Reconsidered: Didactic Matter and Periphrasis 199 Conclusions 205 5 Textual Rhetoric II: Referencing the Pedagogical Dispositif 209 Introduction 209 5.1 References to the Dispositif: Discursive Variety 211 5.2 A Historical Perspective 226 5.3 Referencing the Dispositif and Issues of Authority 230 Conclusions 238 Conclusions: Towards a Conception of the Dispositif Notion as a Comparative Tool 241 Notes 255 List of Illustrations 321 NOF Films Online 323 Filmography 325 Bibliography 335 Index 355 WATCH AND LEARN AcKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to a number of people, without whom the | 7 writing of this book would have been much harder, but also less instructive, and above all less gratifying. First of all, I would like to thank Frank Kessler and Nanna Verhoeff at Utrecht University, who supervised the project in its early stages. Also, Roger Odin (University of Paris III), Joost Raessens (Utrecht University) and William Uricchio (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), for their valuable remarks during my PhD defense. Other members and former members of the Utrecht staff who I am indebted to for suggestions and support are Sjaak Braster (now Erasmus University Rotterdam), Ann Rigney, Martina Roepke (VU University Amsterdam), Simone Veld and various attendees of the Media Research and Media and Performance Seminars. At the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, I would like to thank present and past employees Bas Agterberg, Hans van den Berg, Bert Hogen- kamp, Peter Klinkenberg, Jan Pet, Tom de Smet, Richard Soeter and Karin Westerink as well as the late Henk Verheul (Smalfilmmuseum/Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision). At Nationaal Onderwijsmuseum, Lenja Crins, Jacques Dane, Tijs van Ruiten, and above all, Ed van Berkel, faithful guardian of NOF’s papers and memorabilia. At Eye Film Institute Netherlands, Rommy Albers, Giovanna Fossati, Rixt Jonkman and Annelies Termeer. At Cineco/ Haghefilm, Ed Frederiks and Juan Vrijs. I am indebted to both the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Eye Film Institute Netherlands for making a selection of films from the NOF collection dealt with in this book publicly accessible. Sound and Vision preserved and digitised the films; Eye provided the web space and put them online. For help and advice during the editing and publication process, my gratitude goes out to the people at Amsterdam University Press. For bits and bobs of information and advice, thanks also to Catherine Cor- mon (Eye Film Institute Netherlands/Heineken Collections), Leen Engelen (Limburg Catholic University College), Anita Gertiser (University of Zurich), Thierry Lecointe (independent researcher), Sabine Lenk (Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg), Floris Paalman (University of Amsterdam), Mette Peters (Netherlands Institute for Animation Film), Walter Swagemakers (Eye Film Institute Netherlands), Marjolein de Zwaan (formerly NIAM/TMS) and inter- viewees Harry Jongbloed, Gerrit Lansink, Kees van Langeraad, Ole Schepp and the late Jan Marie Peters. For language advice and editing, kudos to Guy Edmonds (Eye Film Institute Netherlands) and Joanna Poses, and above all, to Claudy Op den Kamp (Plymouth University) – indefatigable! – and Tawnya Mosier (University of Utah). And last but not least, for support and advice (and large quantities of food), my parents, brother and friends. And you Kaat, for love, care and lots of 8 | stamina throughout the process. WATCH AND LEARN Introduction Tidings of any ‘new’ audio-visual medium entering the domain of public con- | 11 sumption invariably seem to cause commentators to speculate on its poten- tial educational use. In recent decades, it was the advent of innovative digital applications that provoked such thought; earlier on, it was the promise of ana- logue media such as still and moving photographic images. Pronouncements on the subject tend to be made in rather grandiloquent terms: authors claim that the particular technologies they advocate might in some way revolution- ise current educational practice. The media they deal with are considered to hold the potential of radically changing didactic methodologies, and by the same token, solve century-old problems, both on the teachers’ part and on the pupils’ or students’. In practice, of course, the objects of such speculation do not always find access very easily in (regular, formal) education. As a rule, compulsory school- ing is financed at least in part out of public funds; therefore, the institutions that provide it can rarely keep abreast of the most up-to-date audio-visual developments. In addition to this, optimistic predictions are often countered with objections, originating among others in the teaching field itself. If any consensus between proponents and adversaries is eventually reached – often at a time when the technology concerned has not been so new for quite a while – one of the conclusions is that while it may indeed have certain didactic benefits, its educational use ultimately depends on the production of media texts that are sufficiently adapted to the specific purposes they should serve in schools. The immediate implication is that such texts necessarily differ from the kinds of material that are already available, and that are used in other, non-educational environments. ‘CLASSROOM FILMS’: What’s IN A NAME? In the early 1940s, entrepreneur A. A. Schoevers produced a memo, addressed to the Dutch government, that contained a number of guidelines for the estab- lishment of a new, official body. The agency he had in mind would take on the task of coordinating the supply of films for use in regular (compulsory) edu- cation.