The Movie Blackboard Jungle was extremely interesting to me as I am embarking on my own journey to become a teacher. I felt that the movie was quite dynamic, adequately representing societal tensions of the time era and the economical conditions experienced by inner city inhabitants. On this note (the idea of inner city) the movie was intriguing because, rarely do we as an audience experience seeing a representation of classrooms from the inner city and the delinquent students they held. Usually we see the whole “leave it to Beaver,” representation of what teenagers were, but the movie really did do a great job of showing the teenage delinquency that society was afraid of.
The whole concept of city kids being “left behind,” is an idea I want to address. In our conversation for class we really went in depth as to why this delinquent generation started. The whole idea of city kids, and white suburban kids that didn’t belong were really the beginnings of a new generation that would essentially rewrite the way Americans looked at life, as they knew it, from the beat poets to the hippie revolution. At a time when Elvis, rock and roll and blues were forming, the only thing the generation could do was to “multiply themselves.”
Now, I would like to bring up an idea that encompasses the ideas brought up in the movie, our conversation in class, and the reading, which was extremely pretentious and confusing in my eyes. It’s my hope to better illustrate the structural idea the reading poses and define what it means to me. All right, so basically the author of the reading lays out the characters roles in a structural or triangle format. This means in its simplest form that the character development, importance, and roles all line up in an actual triangle formation. Let’s address the first scenario, which is the concept of the movie representation societal issues as brought up in class. Secondly the concept of, “buddy movie,” comes up meaning that a male relationship has to from to achieve full potential of character developments essentially defined by Miller and Dadier. We’ll put them in two separate corners of the triangle with Ann in another. When dealing with the societal issue of the black man being a threat to the white woman, especially with her carrying child, we have to examine the tension between Miller and Ann. Though as the reading and our conversation in class indicates, they are never seen on screen together, extinguishing that said tension and opening the corner of the triangle, needed to be filled by a different threat who come in the form of Wes. We cannot remove Dadier because he is a constant “middle manager,” and Miller as well needs to stay because he is the still representation of societal fear, “the black man.” The movies camera work as well does a good job of defining for an assumed white audience his position as a stereotypical black man, as every time something bad happens, the camera goes towards him; perhaps a representation of the stereotypical views prejudged onto the race. So now, with Wes, Dadier, and Miller in the triangle, and trying to achieve the concept of a male relationship, the buddy idea, Wes needs to go, as Dadier already installs a bond between miller and himself. As the audience sees the connection between Miller and Dadier grow, Dadier is relieved of his racism and shown in a light of understanding toward Miller. Miller the whole time in either triangle plays the role of the delinquent, but the resolution is the relationship between himself and the white teacher. The more Miller sticks up for Dadier, the more Wes drops out of the triangle, which becomes basically just a line between himself and “teach,” resulting in the buddy idea.
This is what the reading in a lot of aspects looked like to me. Though I could debate this theory all day I think that the biggest ideas to draw out of the movie, conversation and reading, were the understanding of defining societal preconceptions of race and delinquency and better illustration the struggle of race that perhaps no white suburban person really wanted to address. All in all I feel as though the whole experience of Blackboard jungle yields for a great conversation and one I am happy to be a part of. It’s a good remainder of where we as a society have come from and even better indicator of where we are going if we don’t break free of our past mistakes.
