Doc Mode Activity 2: Performative Mode

During the last week of school, I gave my students an assignment to create a short, flash fiction-type story with a clear conflict (or conflicts), with one condition: it had to be set entirely in the classroom because we were going to film it (logistically, it afforded us enough time to shoot sufficient footage for a 2-minute movie, and it also narrowed the students' scope considerably).  I gave each student a 12-panel storyboard and one and a half class periods to finish it; at the end of that time, each class voted on the storyboard they would most like to film. 

Though the results for each class vary greatly, each movie fits nicely into the Performative mode of documentary.  I gave students a general direction to go, but they came up with the conflict they wanted to enact or perform.  With the help of their storyboard, they filmed everything while I stayed in the background and observed.  My only involvement in this movie was a quick edit of the footage due to a lack of time remaining in the school year.

The movie above has a fairly simple storyline: with the teacher absent in the classroom, a bored Student A wads up his assignment and throws it at Student B.  Student B tries to retaliate, but instead of connecting with Student A, he accidentally hits Student C.  Student C does the same thing, hitting a sleeping Student D, who, now awakened, has no idea where this paper ball came from.  He throws it at Student E, which incites a class-wide paper fight.  When the teacher finally comes back in the classroom, he is incredulous about what is happening; after a short pause when the whole class is figuring out how much trouble they are in, a student throws his paper ball at the teacher, setting off a firestorm of paper-throwing. 

As described by Fox, the students in this video “are not representing [selves], but rather [are] performing a concept, event, or identity” (40).  They are social actors, “trying on and inhabiting personas not their own” (39).  The concept they are performing is familiar to any teacher: fear over what is happening when he or she is not present in the classroom.  Teachers are discouraged from leaving their classes alone and unsupervised, but circumstances make situations like this inevitable—a teacher may have to step outside of the classroom to speak to a parent, go to a meeting, or use the restroom.  In most cases, they do not return to a classroom like this.  Even in the best classes, though, one gets the feeling that something was going on during that few-minute interval.   

The featured students in this movie were certainly performing an identity not their own.  There are students in this class who would start a paper fight, but they were not performing this role here.  Because of the limitations I established—the story had to take place in a classroom, and we only had one class period to film it—students came up with a realistic hypothetical of what could happen in circumstances they face almost daily.