To Kill a Mockingbird: Exploring the Text

Although beloved by generations of readers, Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird—the story of events in the life of Scout, a young girl from the Deep South, whose father defends a black man falsely accused of murder—has fallen into semi-disfavor among contemporary politically-correct critics, who detect a whiff of condescension towards black characters in the novel (much like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, another book lambasted for period-specific insensitivities by readers who somehow miss the overriding outcry against social injustice). To Kill a Mockingbird: Exploring the Text is an Australian production in which two literature teachers—Dr. Michael Polack and Pam Garlick—square off in semi-Siskel & Ebert-style over the novel's themes (racism, justice, and childhood innocence), punctuated by readings from the book overlaying scenes from an archival iconographic-animated film. Because the conversation is unscripted, viewers experience a genuine give-and-take on various aspects of the novel, ranging from its suitability for Marxist or feminist readings to the way that Lee blends both a child's and a reflective adult's voice in the narrator Scout. But the production assumes complete familiarity with the book (the program offers neither plot synopsis nor character introduction) and the two presenters (who don't appear to be all that comfortable on camera) have a tendency to either subject-hop or ramble (and I found it odd that two Australian teachers discussing To Kill a Mockingbird found no occasion to mention any parallels or contrasts between the social treatment of American blacks and Australian aborigines). Very optional. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)