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CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: May 20, 2001
Latest update: May 20, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

3. What are the advantages of art in expressing emotions that we have difficulty expressing verbally?

jeanne's notes on one plausible response:

1. There are many sociological perspectives to the role of art in expression.

   • We have broken away from many of the rituals and taboos with whcih we once surrounded art. There is general agreement today that there is no "right" or "wrong" way to engage in art, though we are still tempted to teach our children to color within the lines. We have learned from the tremendous popularity of art in recent times to allow the artist of every age freedom to create. Picasso, Klee, and others taught us to respect the child's vision, as well as our own.

   • These are children's drawings we've used on the site in the past:
     

   • And here's Jim's dog. Jim was one of our tech assistants several semesters ago. He included his dog on his web page. And I remembered to go hunting for that dog. Jim is "grown up and has moved on to digital photography, but that playfulness still remains.
     

     Jim spoke of Avy all the time, as perhaps evidenced by "My baby, Avy." And she has to have been his friend. He knew, after all, what she was thinking. And art is a way to show love and affection.

2. We are often more comfortable with offering signifiers, a rose, a jewel, a picture, than we are with words of love.

   • Allan Knox did this painting of his granddaughter, and sent it thousands of miles away to speak his love for her.
     
     Allan Knox's Granddaughter

4. What are the advantages of sociodrama in expressing emotions that we have difficulty expressing verbally?

jeanne's notes on one plausible response:

Sociodrama frees our expression in much the same way that painting does. As with color, line, form in painting, we have tone, accent, dialect in sociodrama. Most especially, few of us have been dominated by being told that we can't act, especially "act out." Most of us are more confident with our voices than with our drawing tools.

We included sociodrama as an interactive learning activity in Spring 2001 in a systematic way. We had used it before, but never tried to integrate it into the course as we did this Spring. We did the drama with rough descriptions of roles for impromptu performance. And we placed no limitations. Our students made up their own characters, their own personalities, their own rules, as they enacted the drama. One of our first sequences, by request, was on Jean-Michel Basquiat. We had all read at least summaries of Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art. We put together Jean-Michel, his father, a middle school teacher, a middle school counselor, and a social worker. Devyn Johnson played Jean-Michel in full belligerent rebellion. One teacher tried to force cooperation to no avail. Another was appalled at Jean-Michel's "rudeness." A counselor did a very good job of keeping the others on track, but felt terribly frustrated.

After about a half hour exchange we stopped for discussion. We found that we were all frustrated, for we had hoped for a solution. At the end of the exchange we were no nearer a solution at the end than we had been in the beginning. We had a slightly better idea of what it must have felt like to be Jean-Michel's father. We had a much better idea of what it felt like to be Jean-Michel. And we were all grateful we didn't have to face Jean-Michel in school the next day.

We discovered that social relations are far more complex than we had allowed for. And we began to understand compromise and empathy a little better. I was particularly grateful that the students caught on very quickly to just feeling the situation out. This group figured out that the idea was to expand our imaginary, to try to feel what it must be like for someone in a very different situation from ours.

We did a similar impromptu in the criminology class that week. We enacted a parole board considering paroles. We didn't emphasize the rules; we didn't even know some of them. Our parole supervisor was on call that day. But that didn't matter. We discovered what it felt like to have a board of three people, very unlike you, making life decisions, and to have that depend on the presentation of self you make in that setting.

The following week we enacted an impromptu on Hispanic and Black juveniles fighting in a youth authority facility, and the counselor's attempt to get them to see that not fighting was to their advantage. About fifteen minutes into the impromptu the world came apart. Two actors confronted each other, and two counselors moved together like clock work. A Tanya jumped clear in what was temporarily real fear. The noise level in the room rose to a point I feared someone might come to be sure we were OK. And then it was over, as fast as it started, and Henry was saying "Now, that's what it's really like." And Nicole was agreeing with him. It turned out that Henry and Nicole were both probation officers, but had not known each other. The impromptu had elicited their quick moves. We were all taken aback by the extent of our feelings. I had never witnessed anything so frightening. And yet there had been no real action. The Hispanic "kid" was actually interning as a parole officer. How scary would it have been if this had been a real confrontation.

These were students we knew and trusted and work with, and who were never really in danger of losing control. We are urban folks and thought we were sophisticated, especially when it comes to unruly teenagers.

I suspect that that pitch of emotional tension will remain with us forever. It taught us in a profound and elementary way that we do not "know" a great deal. Students who had had a tendency to feel that juvenile camps were menacing and uncaring and shaping violence, had real occasion to realize that correctional facilities, for whatever reasons, can be dangerous places, if we do not understand the parameters. I think our correctional officers got the full respect of their classmates that day, as we all realized that nothing is so cut and dried as we might imagine.

Oddly enough, the experience brought us all closer as a group. We shared emotions; we shared real drama for which we had studied the underlying concepts. Trying it out was an experience we plan to keep in the course.

We also discovered that students who did not take part in the actual impromptu did join in, making it a little noisy, but often turning the impromptu into a group activity. And those who preferred not to speak out, sometimes did in their comments and later discussions. By using both the site and the classroom the activity provided learning for all of us.

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Sociodrama as a Means to Understanding by Teidra, Laneisha, and Lakeisha.