The kids in Son of Rambow are most likely the kind of kids that will be the first to tell you that they aren't children. Yet, as adults we see this film as being one about childhood. Perhaps it's because we understand that children deal with hardship in a very different way than we do, and that's what this film is about: it's about kids kind of doing self-therapy for hard stuff. First we have Will, who doesn't seem to have any friends, doesn't have a dad, and is held tight to the strict guidelines of religion. He isn't allowed to watch movies and then the first movie he sees is Rambo, which is hardly a movie for kids. Yet, it is more important for him than what we might deem an "age appropriate film" would be. Then there is Lee Carter, who is mostly left to his own devices and has an inclination towards filmmaking and manipulates Will into helping out, most likely using him as a way to exercise control over someone the way his brother is able to over him. The third is Didier, a foreigner in a new land, seemingly bored by everything except his desire to be a movie star. It's clear that the common denominator among these three is that they aren't properly equipped to handle this middle ground of being a kid yet having adult problems. It makes sense for them to cling to a film like Rambo, where the hero is able to handle anything that comes at his way with absolutely no problem. It makes sense that Will fancies himself as the son of Rambo, since his father was killed by something beyond his control, whereas Rambo is the master of control: physically and emotionally. it makes sense that Lee takes on the role of director and producer, assuming creative control of the film and becoming frustrated when that control is taken away from him. It's like Max in Where the Wild Things Are, frustrated with his mom and escaping to a land where he gets to be in charge. It makes sense that Didier wants to be an actor: his whole persona seems like an act. He puts on costumes and says lines as if in a script. Probably because he is not sure who he is, and he is teased back home in his school in France.
So is this film media for children? Media about childhood? Or media consumed by children? As we determined last class, it's not really a question that can be easily answered. This film is unique in that it is about children and media. These kids basically work through their problems by creating a response to a film they have seen. It's a productive way of working through things and is teaching them how to take a situation and react to it in a creative way. Sometimes they slip up and deal with things through violence, but they are also learning empathy by trying to recreate scenes they are familiar with and by building relationships with each other, so the violence is always met with guilt. Ultimately, what mends the relationship between Will and Lee is the completion of Son of Rambow and it becomes a testament to friendship, the joy of being able to exercise creative control over a project that has a final product to show for, and being able to experience closure with the problems they unconsciously worked through with the making of this film. This film prompted me to do research on publications about how filmmaking might be beneficial for children and I came across a wide range of examples and theories about how kids can develop better thinking skills, awareness of space, overcome illness, and control emotions through media. This particular article does a good job of exploring what I expect this film is suggesting.
"Some educators believe that
reading and language are directed most
effectively when they are used in action.
Jerome Bruner argues that when language
conveys the content of experience, there is,
. . more often than not a requirement of
developing correspondence between what we
do, what we see, and what we say. It is this
correspondence that is most strikingly in-
volved in reading and writing, in school learn-
ing, and in other abstract pursuits."
If this is true, then filming and role
playing are ideal ways for children to em-
ploy language and reading actively, and to
make reading and language live. George
Spache calls this kind of activity "active
reacting to reading"and maintains that
it is a key aspect of good reading compre-
hension. It is my belief that there are few
activities elementary children would find
more interesting, stimulating, or active than
filmmaking."
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