Films, world politics and the International Relations classroom: Learning to do a postcolonial analysis of The Breadwinner

INTRODUCTION[Up]

This article presents and evaluates a film analysis activity designed for an upper-level undergraduate course in International Relations (IR). The activity was developed for the first time during the Spring Semester 2020/21 with 36 participants. The participants were the students sitting in Political Challenges in the MENA Region, the area studies course I have taught at University of Deusto since the Spring of 2019. The course is presented as an introduction to the study of the region and world politics. The course establishes postcolonialism as a preferred analytical approach^[1]. This is justified by the importance that postcolonial thinkers attach to imperialism and colonial history in the constitution of the contemporary world, and to the role of cultural discourse in the legitimization of power practices (‍Loomba, 2015). Accordingly, understanding the theory of Orientalism (‍Said, 2003) is a priority affair. Amongst the many discursive spaces that can be subjected to analysis through the lens of Orientalism, popular culture —in particular, films— is one of the most fertile ones.

Analyzing films is politically significant due to their capacity to elicit in audiences’ questions about truth and accuracy, but film analysis in an educational setting requires thoughtful planning. This means that learning objectives, assessment and learning methods need to be carefully defined. The Breadwinner (‍Twomey, 2017), an animated drama film about Afghanistan in the lead-up to the 2001 invasion, was my choice (see ‍Tomé-Alonso and Ferreiro Prado, 2019, for other options). The activity’s general aim was to teach students to do a postcolonial analysis of the film —namely, to learn to read the film in terms of the truth effects it produces rather than of its trueness— and, more specifically, to identify Orientalist elements. This aim is closely related to two key competencies my course seeks to improve: analytical and critical thinking^[2]. The article thus evaluates the activity’s effects on a) the development of the said competencies (with a focus on critical thinking), b) awareness related to the potential of theory, and c) sense-making of one’s own learning process. The question guiding this research is whether by planning a student-centered, active learning activity, we will achieve a satisfactory result in terms of the critical thinking skills developed by the students and their understanding of the potentialities associated to the selected theoretical approach.

This article can be generally read as a contribution to the literature on teaching and learning IR and Political Science with “new” methodologies, which in recent years has seen an exponential rise (‍Ferreiro Prado, 2020; ‍Ishiyama et al., 2015). The buzzword in this literature is often “active learning” which involves moving attention from the instructor to learners and getting them to take responsibility of their learning process^[3]. But, more specifically, the article contributes to the literature on teaching IR with films. Thus far the literature has not offered the small planning details and practical ideas that can help instructors to incorporate film analysis in their courses. IR instructors can find relevant indications in the literature about films that can be used to discuss realism, neoliberalism, or constructivism (‍Weber, 2001), but we lack mentions of postcolonialism as well as works that offer detailed insights into and evaluation of comprehensive pedagogical experiences. Besides, while some reflections can be found in the literature referred to the teaching of problem-solving vs. critical theory informed approaches to IR (‍Lamy, 2007), no works have been done on teaching postcolonialism and associated methods. The only mention can be found in Díaz Sanz and Ferreiro Prado (‍2021), where we concluded that, when teaching postcolonial approaches to IR, it is important that learners become aware of their condition as world political subjects.

The article is organized as follows. The first section offers a review of the literature on teaching IR with films. The second section introduces the postcolonial approach in IR that orients my activity design. The third section presents the activity design and highlights the stages in which data for analysis were collected. The fourth section explains the methods. The fifth section presents the results relative to a), b) and c) (above). The sixth section discusses the results and considers areas for improvement. Lastly, a brief conclusion is offered.

TEACHING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS WITH FILMS[Up]

The use of films as teaching material in International Relations (IR) (and Political Science) courses is a long-established practice (‍Gregg, 1998). The literature, which often underscores the positive learning results, has discussed manifold aspects related to teaching with films (‍Genovese, 1984; ‍Kuzma and Haney, 2001; ‍Lobasz and Valeriano, 2015; ‍Simpson and Kaussler, 2009; ‍Valeriano, 2013; ‍Waalkes, 2003). Overall, scholars underline the political quality of films, the potentialities associated with film viewing in courses that seek to foster active learning, and the specific opportunities for learning IR. Genovese (‍1984: 3) starts off from the premise that films make “political statements” about socially relevant topics such as war, peace, power, diplomacy, or political campaigns. They can, therefore, be easily picked up as “discussion-generating tools” (ibid.: 4). Films can be used as primary course material in combination with a reader or textbook to cover basic concepts (‍Valeriano, 2013: 55; ‍Lobasz and Valeriano, 2015), or to engage in advanced discussions in IR (‍Kuzma and Haney, 2001; ‍Weber, 2001). They can also be used in combination with other teaching methods like simulations and role play (‍Simpson and Kaussler, 2009).

Films normally arouse interest and might address world political issues that are less available in non-entertainment media (ibid.: 425). Waalkes (‍2003: 157) sees in the work with film clips the possibility of reflecting on ethical issues and thinking up “advanced” research questions. Generally, films offer students an experience that breaks with traditional instructional models that foster students’ passivity. Contrarily, teaching with film is highly related to active learning (‍Prince, 2004). Kuzma and Haney (‍2001: 34-‍35) consider film viewing as a multisensorial experience that can be emotionally very powerful, and foster learners’ creativity and freedom of interpretation. Valeriano (‍2013: 52) associates the potency of visuals with knowledge retention, finding that “visual analogies are a superior instructional method compared to other options”. One reason for this is that films have the capacity “‘to dramatize the undramatic’ aspects of global politics” helping to bridge the gulf between filmic narratives and abstract concepts (‍Gregg, 1998: 4).

Teaching with films might seek to illuminate these said abstract concepts (see, for example‍, Lantis, 2013) or IR theories more generally. With respect to the latter, Cynthia Weber (‍2001) suggests that both films and IR theories be inspected as two realms where world political narratives are produced. In this way, she encourages us to look at IR theories as “cultural practices where stories that appear to be true get told” (ibid.: 282). Teaching students “to be critical readers and writers of narratives about international politics” (ibid.: 281), therefore, implies developing the ability to unpack the truth effects of the theories any IR student is expected to be knowledgeable of, and of the other media participating in world political talk. As far as we are concerned, this boils down to films.

ORIENTALISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM: NARROWING DOWN THE MEANING OF ANALYSIS[Up]

With a genealogy that harks back to literary studies in the case of postcolonialism, in the early 1990s, postcolonialism and IR were two uncannily “self-referential” fields (‍Darby and Paolini, 1994: 372). Over the last three decades, however, dialogue across fields has notably expanded (‍Barkawi and Laffey, 2002; ‍Chowdhry and Nair, 2002; ‍Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004; ‍Loomba, 2015; ‍Seth, 2013). Like other critical developments within IR, postcolonialism questions the neorealist onto-epistemology and Westphalian myths that dominate IR analysis. It investigates how the legacy of colonialism shapes the contemporary world and contributes to the construction of global hierarchies. It draws attention to culture, trying to understand how cultural institutions and cultural discourse produce the subjects of international relations.

One major contribution to the study of culture and global power is Edward W. Said’s theory of Orientalism. In Orientalism (‍2003), Said illuminates the relationship between colonialism and Europe’s cultural discourse of the Orient. The Oriental Other is the condition of possibility of the modern Western subject (‍Hurd, 2003) and a source of legitimization of Britain and France’s colonial adventures in the “Muslim Orient” throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Later, the U.S. takes over the great power status and the leading role in the production of the Orientalist imaginings. This task sees tipping points in the aftermath of the Cold War and of 9/11, when Muslim/Arab Others are increasingly associated with anti-hegemonism and anti-Westernism. This is also a period in which the imaginative construction of the Middle East and North Africa as a terrorism exporting, anti-democratic and gender equality averse region crystallizes (‍Culcasi and Gökmen, 2011; ‍Falah, 2005; ‍Tuastad, 2003). If there is one subject that embodies the most extreme negative ideal of the East, it is the Taliban’s Afghanistan (‍Manchanda, 2020).

Today, reflection on Orientalist discourse and practices is part of a broader program of postcolonial studies that aims to decolonize world politics. Decolonizing involves placing dominators and dominated in the same analytical framework and unpacking their relational ontology; questioning the universality of Europe’s historical experiences; challenging the modern categories of thought that underpin world political discourses; and incorporating the voices and experiences of “the subaltern” to narrations of the international (‍Sabaratnam, 2011). In this regard, it is important to mention that, despite the great popularity of Said’s ideas among many critical intellectuals, the original formulation of Orientalism’s theory in the late 1970s is not without flaws. For the purposes of this article, it is important to highlight feminism’s critique of Said’s theorization in two respects. On the one hand, feminists argue that, by implicitly assuming that the conqueror and producer of Orientalist cultural discourse was a European male, Orientalism occludes the active participation of metropolitan women (writers, travelers, wives of diplomats, etc.) in the whole colonial enterprise (‍Lewis, 1996). On the other hand, Orientalism also fails short to register instances in which “Oriental” women actually resisted the domination staged by white male conquerors. This is particularly important today when the tendency to picture “Oriental” and “Muslim” women as lacking agency and victims of evil males persists, thus paving the way for narratives about liberation enabled by Western saviors (‍Abu-Lughod, 2002).

In short, postcolonial analysis is one of the possible paths for analyzing the international reality. Taking this path is associated with an onto-epistemology of the international that is anti-foundationalist as compared to those of realism or liberalism. In our activity, the purpose of enhancing the critical and analytical competencies of students is linked to the adoption of a postcolonial approach. In the choice between rationalist or reflectivist, positivist or post-positivist analysis, postcolonial analysis is aligned with a philosophy of science that questions the subject/object divide and the neutrality of knowledge and representation (‍Hollis and Smith, 1991; ‍Lamont, 2015). It is also associated with a general critical attitude towards the stories that, woven into theories or into films, appear to be true (‍Weber, 2001). As in the famous Coxian wording “film and literature are also for someone and for some purpose” (‍Lobasz and Valeriano, 2015: 406). Therefore, by adopting a postcolonial approach the students sitting in my course must develop skills that enable them to “recognize that cultural artifacts not only represent but also participate in politics” (id.: 406).

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION[Up]

The Breadwinner (‍Nora Twomey, 2017) is an Irish-Canadian animation drama film that narrates the story of a 10-year-old girl (Parvana) and her family in the lead-up to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. It is based on a best-selling book by Deborah Ellis and had Angelina Jolie as co- executive producer (‍Wikipedia, n. d.). The film shows the harsh life conditions of Afghans under Taliban rule. The protagonist’s father, a mutilated from the Afghan-Soviet war, has been taken to a prison on the outskirts of Kabul. Without the tutelage of a man, the women of the family remain vulnerable and isolated. To break their confinement, Parvana adopts a boyish appearance. Against the backdrop of Afghanistan’s troubled history and constant fear of the Taliban, Parvana’s struggle culminates in the liberation of her father on a night when the first American bombers fly over Kabul.

The activity is related to a specific module in the course that deals with the representation of Muslims/Arabs/Middle Easterners in media and cultural discourse, thus using The Breadwinner as a study case. The activity is designed on the hypothesis that, after the first viewing of the film, students will carry out a non-critical and fundamentally descriptive analysis of the film; and that, the seminar/online discussion stage will allow students to take their critical and analytical skills to a higher level by being able to detect the Orientalist assumptions nourished by the film through both the story and the visuals. It is also expected that by doing this analysis students will develop an awareness of what it means to do a postcolonial analysis of a film and, more generally, of postcolonialism’s potentialities as an IR approach. The learning objectives are:

The activity develops in several stages during the second half of the semester. It combines several teaching and learning methods:

Stage 1: Lecturing

The lecturing stage takes up a single 50-minute session in which students are introduced to the theory of Orientalism.

Stage 2: Film screening and first data collection (initial reflections)

The film is screened once during class hours. After this, students are requested to write a 150-word text addressing this question: “Why is the film The Breadwinner interesting for an IR student?”. Students submit their individual responses in the course’s Moodle platform.

Stage 3: In-class reading seminars (3 seminars/1-2 hours each) and group discussions in online forums

The seminars begin with a presentation of an assigned reading (see Table 1 left column) by a class group followed by debate and summary of the main take-aways. After the seminar, students must discuss the film based on the ideas presented by the different authors in the reading list. The discussion develops in online forums, where students are presented a series of questions (see Table 1 right column). Within the overall activity plan, the only relevant step for student assessment is Stage 3. Students are assessed based on whether their responses in the online forums show accomplishment of the learning objectives. The activity is 10% of the final grade.

Group discussion is one of the strategies by which students can significantly improve their analytical and critical thinking competencies. Group discussion is a form of collaborative learning in which small groups of students cooperate to construct “knowledge through consensus building among the individual group members” (‍Wolfe, 2012: 421). The use of small groups (3-‍4 students) seeks “to increase student knowledge and to enhance higher order thinking skills” (id.) and “students’ interdependence” (‍Bruffee, 1995: 17). Specifically, studies of film teaching have shown that “collaborative learning practices can help achieve educational objectives, including: (1) promoting a deeper understanding of the concepts being taught; (2) allowing students to make conceptual linkages between theory and real-world examples; and (3) increasing retention of knowledge” (‍Lantis, 2013: 234).

The groups in the learning experience presented here were rather medium-sized (5-‍7 students). The purpose of group discussions was to get students engaged in answering the questions, exchanging ideas, and benefiting from each other’s interpretive and analytical capacities to generate a theoretically informed conversation around the film. Each student had to contribute to each forum thread with short texts of about 80 words and follow-up on group members’ contributions.

Stage 4: Second data collection (Closing reflections, debriefing and survey)

Once group discussions finish, students are asked to a) write “Closing reflections”, and b) participate in a debriefing session. To complete the “Closing reflections”’ stage, students are asked to go through their initial analysis and think about how the reading of postcolonial texts and the group discussions have affected their interpretation of the film. They are then asked to address this question: “What does it mean to analyze world politics or international relations from a postcolonial perspective?”. Students are requested to write at least 150 words. Students submit their responses in the course’s Moodle platform.

To wrap up the activity, a debriefing session is conducted during a 50-minute session, the purpose of which is to critically assess the learning process since the onset of the activity. To ensure the collection of enough feedback on Step 3, an online survey is made available to students on the Moodle platform. The survey is anonymous and includes 13 Likert-type questions. The questions seek to know whether the readings-based online discussions facilitate the fulfilment of the learning objectives, whether students understand better the potentialities associated to postcolonialism and IR approaches in general due to the activity, and their level of satisfaction with group work.

DATA AND METHODS[Up]

The article seeks to broaden our understanding of the effect of the activity on a) the development of analytical and critical thinking competencies, b) awareness related to the potential of theory, and c) sense-making of one’s own learning process; and, from this draws conclusions on the adequacy of the student-centered and active learning philosophy that informs the activity planning. The data set consists of 32 textual units of the category “Initial reflections”, 30 textual units of the category “Closing reflections”, notes from a debriefing session and survey data^[4]. The 62 textual units were imported into Atlas.ti software. Following a mainly inductive strategy, codes have been generated to systematize the data. The main methods of analysis are interpretivist research methods. Through thematic analysis (‍Boyatzis, 1998) the article illuminates a) and b); narrative analysis is done to unpack c) (‍Bevir, 2006).

RESULTS: THE FILM AND THE REAL (DEVELOPING COMPETENCIES)[Up]

RESULTS: POSTCOLONIALISM’S POTENTIALITIES[Up]

RESULTS: MAKING SENSE OF THE LEARNING PROCESS[Up]

DISCUSSION[Up]

The results offer substantial indications that the activity contributes positively to a) the development of competencies, especially of critical thinking, b) the development of awareness related to the potential of theory, and c) to making sense of one’s own learning process. It has also achieved to prompt students to construct a map of the potentialities associated with the postcolonial approach in IR that is not restricted to the specific theory of Orientalism. The latter achievement has exceeded my initial expectations. Given that students had not previously been instructed in Weber’s (‍2001) or Sabaratnam’s (‍2011) theses, this has largely been an inductive journey. By engaging in the exercise of dissecting the film through theoretical arguments that were somewhat more limited in their explanatory scope (those in the reading list), learners have been able to move away from the understanding that the film represents reality as it is to the vision that the film participates in the construction of that reality, thus generating truth effects.

Overall, I read these as indications that critical thinking skills have been developed. But to test the impact of the film on the analytical capacities of students, one should analyze the online group discussions in Step 3. Grading was based on that step (obviously the most important for students!), but the focus of my analysis here has been on the “before” and “after” Step 3. This article has not provided enough data to draw all possible conclusions regarding the activity’s capacity to enhance analytical skills, which also depend on additional objective assessment tools such as replicating a cognate exercise —namely, asking learners to apply what is by now a learnt theoretical approach to a different film (or a similar cultural product). The truth of the matter is that this logic was applied in the final grading of the students enrolled in Political Challenges in the MENA Region in 2019/20, since they were asked to submit group projects consisting of a film analysis (40% of the final grade). But an analysis of the resulting projects has not been developed for the purposes of this article.

Still, it is important here to get some sense of whether the activity design was overall successful and that includes mention of Step 3. Data from the debriefing session, the survey and the “Closing reflections” offer relevant insights. In the “Closing reflections”, group work and collaborative learning have 12 mentions, often to underline that it was “nice”, “entertaining” and “enriching”. Only once a student admits that “I found very hard to discuss the films with my mates because I felt each one didn’t want to share personal opinion”. References to the adequacy of the seminar/online discussion dynamic are also frequent (15). As one student notes, “As postcolonial perspective requires critical analysis and deeper linkages of ideas, group work has also nourished the experience, enabling us to go further from our initial interpretations and correlation between the texts and the films”. Also, during the debriefing session, students pondering over group work and the active learning methods opined that “It’s good to learn in a way where we are put in an active position and the teacher is there facilitating the learning”; or, what is perhaps the most epic sentence uttered by one of the students in the class, “on your own you go faster, but together we go further”.

We cannot, however, ignore that a potential desirability effect is behind students’ overall positive responses and that the less enthusiastic simply did not voice their opinion. The survey data actually confirm that group work elicits mixed feelings. It must be also mentioned that less than half of the student population attended the debriefing session, with only eight students openly expressing their views on the learning experience. Some bits of overheard conversations between students participating in the debriefing session, allow me to think that, at least for some of them, the activity sowed a seed. Their position as receivers of popular culture material and consumers of representations of Arab, Muslims and Middle Easterners was transformed. They acknowledged to be then much more conscious of the embedded Orientalism, especially when it comes to women^[7].

Thirty students completed the survey. The data teach us three main lessons. First, the level of satisfaction with linking the film to readings is very high^[8]. For example, 13 students “Totally agree” with the statement “Discussing the film based on academic texts has helped me to analyze the point of view about the story”; 16 students “Agree” and only 1 student “Neither agrees nor disagrees”. Secondly, answers are more distributed across the Likert-scale in questions relative to group work. Eleven students “Totally agree”, 12 students “Agree”, 2 students “Neither agree nor disagree” and 4 students “Disagree” with the statement “Group work on the film has served to build a more complete analysis of the film”. This casts doubts on the overall satisfaction with group work but, on the other hand, students acknowledge that they benefited from their peers’ inputs. This comes to view when we see that 15 students “Totally Agree”, 12 students “Agree” and only 3 students “Neither agree nor disagree” with the statement “Reading the contributions of my peers in each thread has made me reflect on elements of the film that had not caught my attention”.

Thirdly, survey data show that the activity needs to improve its capacity to teach the limitations attached to postcolonialism as an analytical approach and its stand within the broader repertoire of IR approaches. Sixteen students “Totally agree”, 8 students “Agree”, 3 students “Neither agree nor disagree” and 3 students “Disagree” with the statement that “The work on the film has helped me to understand the contribution of postcolonial studies to International Relations”; whereas 11 students “Totally agree”, 11 students “Agree”, 6 students “Neither agree nor disagree” and 2 students “Disagree” with the statement “The elaboration of a postcolonial analysis has helped me to better understand what other approaches to IR (realism, liberalism, etc.) are useful for”.

In this regard, I must acknowledge that while in the design of the activity and throughout its development, I have focused on students understanding the potential of the postcolonial approach to IR, I have made less effort to share the criticisms coming from the rationalist-positivist camp regarding the great deconstructive potential of approaches steeped in critical theory but lacking in problem-solving capacity. I do not necessarily agree with the assumptions behind this point, but surely the theoretical training of my IR students would be richer and more honest if the critiques levelled at the “non-mainstream” IR approaches were made evident. This could also help students to grasp better the distinct analytical horizons that rationalist-positivist vs. reflectivist approaches to IR illuminate.

Finally, it is important to mention that the experiment was carried out with only one group of students due to the need to assess everyone with the same criteria. Organizing a group control was not an option. A group control would have allowed us to know whether the learning objectives can be achieved by following other learning methods, and in which points the achievement differs. Nor can we know whether an alternative activity design would have had a comparable effect to that obtained here in terms of the development of critical thinking and understanding of the theoretical approach.

CONCLUSION[Up]

Teaching is an exercise in continuous learning and many of us will surely continue to ask ourselves questions about how to turn a nice idea in our heads into a solid pedagogical experience. Here I have shared the effort of planning a film analysis activity for students majoring in IR. The question guiding my research has been whether by planning a student-centered, active learning activity, the critical thinking skills of my students and their understanding of the potentialities associated with postcolonialism would see themselves improved. Considering that the only traditional teaching method employed in the activity was a 50-minute lecture, and based on the results from my analyses, the overall conclusion is that the idea was successful. However, it is also important to bear I mind one should not think about critical thinking as a competency that can be attained once and for all. Critical thinking requires long-term commitment with estrangement with the things we believe in, and with the stories than films and theories tell.

Also, the path traced here is not the only option available to teach about postcolonialism. The activity discussed is especially useful if one is interested in teaching the relevance of the culture-power nexus for postcolonial thinkers. Following in the footsteps of active learning defenders, I have betted that getting students to do the analysis of a cultural product themselves (getting into the story, looking at the details, drawing connections with other films) would be a more lasting learning experience than hearing or reading about how others conduct cultural analyses. Postcolonialism nonetheless is a broad program and might be addressed from different (and complementary) angles like the international political economy which other colleagues might find more useful. Similarly, film viewing can be combined with learning methods I have not considered here. The options are infinite for IR instructors.