roachboy

uber:
my apologies to you as well, sir, if i did misunderstand your idea for the viewing.

it seems like a good idea....

if i were doing it, i might set it up with other material, however, even partisan material, as you call it...the reason for this has to do with two main things--first my assumptions about the audience and second the nature of a "deconstruction" (which i assume you do not mean in any technical sense).

the second one first: by "deconstruction" i assume that you mean a kind of critical dismantling of a given text/event?
generally, the way this kind of operation functions is to violate the implied limits of the text/event and link it to other networks of references--to perform a kind of ad hoc fabrication of what amounts to an intertextual network and to run interpretations through that network.
the asumption behind this is that you cant really think about what is being presented if you limit your assumptions to those which frame the event itself (in this case, the "debate")

...which leads to the first--the assumptions you have about the audience. if you can assume that there will be an adequately dense, mutually comprehensible set of networks in place to allow the participants to play more or less the same game as they move from event to a bigger frame of reference--the pre-requsite for developing interpretations/arguments about interpretations--then the way you propose to go about things is fine--but if you cannot assume that, i would consider showing some material prior....not the same day.....maybe as a short series--one or two viewings--which would be geared toward simply providing a set of common referencepoints from which discussion of the debate can depart.

one thing i have figured out from teaching where i do is that you cannot overestimate the naievete of the students in political matters.

this is not a question of their being stupid by any means (nor does it work across the board--there are always exceptions)--rather they do not seem accustomed to political debate, nor are they terribly informed about the questions at hand--most information seems to come from tv---a political effect of the stultifying conformism of most high schools, it seems to me.

i have often been surprised at how much work i had to do simply in exposing students to possibilities of other viewpoints--which i try to present as clearly as i can--and then let them make up their minds later.

underlying this is a bigger problem--trying to prompt students to think for themselves. which is, it seems, something they are not getting much in the way of prompts to do.

if there is anything that shocks and disappoints me about the "way of things" at present, it is this. this and the fact that a kind of reaction-driven conservativsm functions as a default position--an inherited conservatism, not thought out--the image of the dominant discourses in the major media.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite