Media(ted) Education sin Querer Queriendo

• In Event: Resonances of El Chavo del 8 in Latin American Schooling, Childhood, and Societies

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Mexican series El Chavo del 8 in reference to the idea of culture as embedded in Media education. The central argument is that media(ted) education happens "sin querer queriendo" (unintentionally) in an intermezzo space between the contents of the teletransmission and the process of subject identification (Deleuze and Guattari, 2006). This approach links concepts and authors that study the urban-popular (Monsiváis, 1981), cultural frames (Butler, 2010), and Mass Media (Eco, 1984; McLuhan & Powers, 1995; Sartori, 1998; de Certeau, 2000; Carbajal, 2003), that together shape a post-foundational view of Media Theory and Cultural Studies.

The methods of inquiry employed take some tools from hermeneutic analysis to understand the processes of subjectivation and culture through Media production. The empirical sources were the TV show, as well as historical studies about the configuration of Mexico City between 1920-2016, mobilized to understand how population growth and changing senses of community, informed popular education and the role of El Chavo del 8 in juxtaposing cultural references and subjectivation process.

Throughout this paper we state that the educational takes place next to, in, and against the Media. To claim that the educational takes place next to the Media implies a recognition of that intermezzo that is articulating the contents of Chavo del 8 with popular culture and subjective experience: the shared codes between TV and societies are an example of that mixture. Noting that the educational takes place in the Media refers to the aesthetic experience evoked by television: the urban dynamic from the seventies in the Twentieth century is moving to the Twenty-First Century, and inhabiting the neighborhood ("vecindad") is like living at the city’s core.Finally, we use the educational against the Media to explain how this TV show was a political source to break down the televised arrangements and generate unexpected registers. The audience’s reception was never fully determined by the dominant culture of poverty aversion and abhorrence of the popular, the “marginal” was recreated as a lifestyle and the emblematic figure of El Chavo del 8 arose loaded with affective and political elements.

The media(ted) education produced by the El Chavo del 8 is unintentional, and it would be a mistake to think that the subject is only a consumer of the massive teletransmission of ideological, political and cultural contents. Subjectivation always requires other articulations.

The significance of the work lies in linking different disciplines, such as Cultural Studies and Media Theory with Educational Research. We seek for educative forms in the spaces of the neighborhood, and inquire about how young people are appropriating the marginal as a way of life. Our analysis is an example of how the intercultural, affective and symbolic reconstruction evoked by the figure of El Chavo del ” combines different ways of living everyday urban life; simple and complex at the same time; the educational in its political, comical and aesthetic dimensions emerging "sin querer queriendo."

Authors

• Dulce Maria Cabrera, Benemérita Universidad Autonóma de Puebla

• Jose Carbajal Romero