Abstract

DUSSEL, Ines. Iconoclasm in cinema and pedagogy. Some thoughts on two children’s films from the 1930s. ETD [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.2, pp.437-455. ISSN 1676-2592.  https://doi.org/10.20396/etd.v19i2.8647562.

Iconoclasm is a part of a history of images in education that takes into account multiple senses. In the many, intense passions triggered by images, iconoclasm stands out as a strong feeling that attaches enormous powers to images -a reverence and fear that leads to the point of destroying them. Yet, it has been scarcely studied in the history of education. In this paper, I would like to propose a first approach to iconoclasm through an analysis of two films on children and schooling from the 1930s, Emil und die Detektive (Germany, Gerhard Lamprecht, 1931) and Zéro de conduite (France, Jean Vigo, 1933), which include several scenes in which monuments and other icons of traditional authorities are desecrated. Through these films, I would like to reflect on the ambivalence of the iconoclast gesture in the history of pedagogy, as a history of revolt against constituted authorities but also as a movement that remains trapped in a circle of “fascination, repulsion, destruction, and atonement … generated by the forbidden-image worship” (LATOUR, 2010, p.70) -a circle that might need to be questioned if another politics of the visual is to be fought for.

Keywords : Iconoclasm; Film; Children’s Films; Pedagogy; History of Education.

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