Abstract
Waiting for Superman (2010) is a film directed by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Academy Award for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006). Billing itself on its DVD cover as a “groundbreaking feature film that provides an engaging and inspiring look at public education in the United States,” Waiting for Superman received mostly glowing reviews in the mainstream media, won several film festival awards, and Guggenheim and the film’s heroes have been celebrated guests on dozens of news channels and talk shows, along with receiving high praise from President Obama, Bill Clinton, and other powerful political luminaries.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anderson, J. (2010, January 25). Review: Waiting for “Superman.” [Review of Waiting for “Superman” ]. Daily Variety. Retrieved from: http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941947/.
Ayers, R. (2010, Sept. 7). What “Superman” got wrong, point by point. Washington Post. Retrieved from: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html
Bowles, S. (2010, Sept. 24). The children are the heroes of “Waiting for Superman.” USA Today. Retrieved from: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2010-09-24-superman24_ST_N.htm?csp=34news
Collins, P. (2010). Another kind of education. Boston: Beacon Press.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Debord, G. (1963). The Situationists and the new forms of action in politics and art. In E. Sussman (Ed.) (1989), On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time: The Situationist International, 1957–1972 (pp. 148–153). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Debord, G. (1995 [1967]). Society of the spectacle. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Debord, G., & Wolman, G. (1956). A user’s guide to detournement. In K. Knabb (Ed. & Trans.) (2006), Situationist International anthology (pp. 14–21). Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets.
Denby, D. (2010, October 11). School spirit: “Waiting for Superman.” The New Yorker. Retrieved from: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/10/11/101011crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=all
Freire, P. (2000 [1971]). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.
Friedman, T. (August 24, 2010). Steal this movie, too. New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/opinion/25friedman.html?_r=0&gwh=5E6BE730CE4D7F52B4BE2D655F6D5F9E.
Gilman, C. (1997). Asger Jorn’s avant-garde archives. October, 79, 32–48.
Goldstein, D. (2010, September 23). Grading “Waiting for Superman.” The Nation. Retrieved from: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/10/11/101011crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=all
Grassroots Education Movement (2012). The inconvenient truth behind Waiting for Superman. Retrieved from http://gemnyc.org/2012/05/20/the-inconvenient-truth-behind-waiting-for-superman-now-online/
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis, (Eds.) (1980), Culture, media, language (pp. 128–138). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hoffman, A., Izak, H., and Cohen, B (1971). Steal this book. New York, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Jappe, A. (1999). Guy Debord (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Karp, S. (2010, December 10). Who’s bashing teachers and public schools, and what can we do about it? Retrieved from: http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/Issues/Karp-TeacherBashingText2010-12-10.
Knabb, K. (Ed.). (2006). Situationist International anthology. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets.
Knabb, K. (Ed.) (2003). Guy Debord: Complete cinematic works, scripts, stills, documents. Oakland: AK Press.
Krauth, K. (2011). Battling against the odds: An education system in crisis. Screen Education, 62 (winter), 116–121.
Kurczynski, K. (2008). Expression as vandalism: Asger Jorn’s “modifications.” Anthropology and Aesthetics, 53/54 (spring/autumn), 53/54.
Levin, T. (1989). Dismantling the spectacle: The cinema of Guy Debord. In E. Sussman (Ed.) (1989), On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time, the Situationist International, 1957–1972 (pp. 73–123) . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lieberman, A., & Friedrich, L. (Eds.) (2010). How teachers become leaders: Learning from practice and research. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Marcus, G. (1989). Lipstick traces: A secret history of the twentieth century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Miner, B. (2010). The ultimate superpower: Supersized dollars drive “Waiting for Superman” agenda. Retrieved from: http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/Articles/20101020-MinerUltimateSuperpower
O’Hehir, A. (2010, September 23). Waiting for Superman: Can public education be saved? Salon. Retrieved from: http://www.salon.com/2010/09/23/waiting_for_superman/
Olorunda, T. (2011). Heroes and myths: On Davis Guggenheim’s “Superman.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33 (2), 161–212.
Plant, S. (1992). The most radical gesture: The situationist international in a postmodern age. London: Routledge.
Ravitch, D. (2010, November 11). The myth of charter schools. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
Ripley, A. (2010, September 23). “Waiting for ‘Superman’”: A call to action for our schools. TIME. Retrieved from: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2019663_2020590_2020592,00.html
Sharkey, B. (September 24, 2010). Withering exam of schools. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/24/entertainment/la-et-”Superman”-20100924.
Sussman, E. (Ed.) (1989). On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment of time, the Situationist International, 1957–1972. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Swalwell, K., & Apple, M. (2011). Starting the wrong conversations: The public school crisis and “Waiting for Superman.” Educational Policy, 25 (2), 368–382.
Trier, J. (2005). “Sordid fantasies”: Reading popular “inner-city” school films as racialized texts with pre-service teachers. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 8 (2), 171–189.
Trier, J. (2006). Exemplary introductory critical media literacy documentaries. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50 (1), 68–71.
Trier, J. (2007a). “Cool” engagements with YouTube: Part 1. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50 (5), 408–412.
Trier, J. (2007b). “Cool” engagements with YouTube: Part 2. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50 (7), 408–412.
Trier, J. (2007c). Guy Debord’s The society of the spectacle. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51 (1), 68–73.
Trier, J. (2007d). The spectacle and detournement. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51 (3), 274–278.
Trier, J. (2008a). The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Part 1. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51 (5), 424–427.
Trier, J. (2008b). The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Part 2. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51 (7), 600–605.
Vienet, R. (1992 [orig. 1968 ]). Enrages and situationists in the occupation movement, France, May ‘68. New York, NY: Autonomedia.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Sense Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Trier, J. (2014). Challenging Waiting For Superman Through Detournement1 . In: Trier, J. (eds) Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis. Breakthroughs in the Sociology of Education. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-800-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-800-8_7
Publisher Name: SensePublishers, Rotterdam
Online ISBN: 978-94-6209-800-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)