Steven Ross
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Film, Power & American History
Historian and Cinephile Steven Ross in the Classroom
By Katherine Yungmee Kim
"What are you willing to fight for?”
A roomful of 18- to 20-year-old students were asked to consider this
question during this general education history class lecture on the
Vietnam War.
The talk is initiated by a discussion of reinstating the military
draft. Then, Professor Steven Ross asks students to contemplate what it
would be like to be fired upon, or to aim and shoot at an enemy. A
young man raises his hand and says he would serve in the U.S. military
to protect the nation and its people. Another woman asks, “Why fight
violence with violence?”
Students in this class examine many of the fundamental social,
political and economic problems that have shaped 20th century American
history. The class combines schools of historical thought with elements
of film studies. Each two-hour class begins with a historical overview
and is followed by a viewing of several films — fictional feature
films, documentaries and newsreels — that relate to that era.
Students are also asked to read primary documents that shed light upon those issues.
“In short, we will triangulate our way through American history,” said
Ross, history department chair who has been teaching this course since
1998. “It is the student’s job to figure out which of these
perspectives seems most convincing, why it seems so, and the
implications of one form of knowledge being more powerful than another.”
Ross came up for the idea for this class when he was finishing up his book, Working Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America
(Princeton University Press, 1998), which examines silent films’ impact
on political issues, such as what it meant to be working class, or to
belong to a union, or to be a radical. “There is an old cliché that
research and teaching are mutually reinforcing,” he said. “This was
true in this case.”
Recently, Ross was recognized for the innovative class when USC College
honored him with a General Education Teaching Award for his work in
History 225g.
He says that USC’s proximity to Hollywood draws a lot of students to
the university to study film. Ross admits to seizing upon that student
interest to help them understand how films can reflect or distort the
complexities of an age. “I use their passion for film to make them care
about history,” he explained.
And students learn to discern the role of film, as the “great medium of
mass culture and mass persuasion,” in the civic and social life of the
nation.
The Vietnam lecture started with an overview of the Cold War and the
history of the Southeast Asian region. Then students were challenged to
consider their own values towards war. Ross also raised the idea of an
“informed citizenry,” tying the historical lesson to the present by
asking students how they feel about an administration lying to the
American public.
When the lights dimmed, excerpts from “The Green Berets” (1968), “Easy
Rider” (1969), “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “The Deer Hunter” (1978)
were screened. Nationalistic and nihilistic portrayals of the war
riveted the students.
Other subjects include the Great Depression, when students watch “The
Grapes of Wrath” (1940), and the Women’s Movement, when students watch
“Kramer vs Kramer” (1979), “Silkwood” (1983) and “Working Girl” (1987),
and supplement the topic with readings, such as Susan Faludi’s Backlash.
Marcus Spagnoletti, a history major, said he has learned to consider
not only what he sees on the screen, but also what he does not see. He
cited production codes prohibiting the circulation of anti-Fascist
films during the 1930s, and how such restrictions “seen throughout the
history of modern American film undermine the foundation of our free
society.”
Spagnoletti said he had never thought about history through film
before. “It is the most interesting class I have taken at USC,” he said.
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