ABSTRACT
In the classroom ‘bad cinema’ is often determined as much by questions of pedagogical value as it is by cultural and/or aesthetic value. These three short papers explore some of the diverse ways in which teaching ‘bad’ film and television raises questions about the relations between cultural value and pedagogical value. Through reflections on particular teaching experiences, these papers contribute to a larger international conversation in anglophone film theory about the state of the discipline by offering insight into particular instances of film as a bad teaching object in Australian universities. Belinda Smaill argues that what counts as bad cinema or bad television in the classroom is not simply those forms of film or television recognized as (and often celebrated for) falling outside the bounds of ‘proper’ cinema or ‘important’ television but series that students are overly familiar with. Therese Davis examines the ways in which Australian non-Indigenous students approach Indigenous film and video. Jodi Brooks looks at the way in which film studies and film and screen theory themselves seem to be taking on the status of a bad object.
