LECTORAAT CHANGE MANAGEMENT – De Haagse Hogeschool

*no real spoilers

Does Bob Dylan do any critical thinking? That was the question I went to the cinemas with to watch the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. I have to say I had a strong alternative reason: watching this film together with my dad. It was a good thing that the movie was not a sing-a-long. He could only not restrain himself for about 3 or 4 songs, but I did not spot angry faces turning around and looking at us, and overall I could focus on the film without list of nasal voices surrounding me.

I was on the lookout for clips we can use to stimulate students’ critical thinking, which is part of our course and research at THUAS (for more see FlickThink.org). The ingredients for such a scene is that it has a beginning and an end – is a story on its own which you can understand and relate to without having seen the whole movie, and that it triggers some critical thinking.

I found something, but I don’t really know if it was Bob’s critical thinking – I am sure he’s capable of it but overall throughout the movie it is hard to know what he’s thinking. Does he think similarly to what he writes in his lyrics? Does he explain his moves and motives? A few times you see him struggling with his popularity and people wanting things from him. Mostly throughout the film Dylan stays an enigma and overall ‘does’ things, like making music whenever he wants to.

But the scenes that stood out for me in A Complete Unknown, based on the book Dylan Goes Electric!, is his move from playing acoustic to electric. In the final scenes Bob is playing at the Newport Folk Festival he has played at for years, which is all about acoustic folk music. His latest songs are electric and Dylan has been told by the organizers to play his acoustic songs, as that is what the festival is about.  I still wondered a bit if he would give in to the organizers. Most Bob Dylan fans like my dad already know that he followed his own path, like a ‘rolling stone’ and went fully electric.

Maybe not immediately relatable to a student task but it certainly captivated my own thinking about:

• Was it the place to go electric?
• Do I feel the urge to go electric?

Claim: The Newport Folk Festival was the place to go electric

As we teach students about argumentation (Toulmin) I though this to be a claim to practice with, as you can be for and against. Let me give it a try:

Argument For:

As the festival was the place where Bob Dylan developed his music it was also good for the audience to experience his next development, and get acquainted with it. You could see in the film that the audience at the start was set against it booing him away but as Dylan and band kept on playing half of the audience started appreciating it. Therefore it was good that Dylan to the space to make the audience experience something new, as he also was creatively moving forward.

Argument Against:

Even though Bob Dylan had to create music with new instruments and amplifiers for himself, he clearly knew that the Newport Folk Festival was a place for acoustic music and he could have found a new setting to do so. Some musicians as friend and mentor Pete Seeger (musician in its own right) can keep playing acoustic and come up with new tunes and songs using the same instruments. That is what this festival was for, and what the audience expects.

Urge to go electric

What these scenes also do is relating it to one’s own situation.

It started me thinking about my own change management as a teacher and applied researcher. About my art as a the teacher: creating a new curriculum, lessons and teaching methods in the classroom. Teaching film with critical thinking for business students was a set up seven years ago that was new and fresh, we even won a great Educational Award for it.

Now I feel the pull of it needing to go electric. I love updating and improving the courses I teach, not just for students’ development but also my own. Even when certain film clips and lesson plans work well, and can continue to work well, there is the need to come up with new things. New things I can do with film, with critical thinking but also with new art forms like theatre, and new materials.

My audience is certainly not the same appreciative audience as at the Newport Folk Festival. First of all it is school and my business students don’t buy tickets to watch me perform in class – they also have different ways of responding to the course (more to be published soon in research chapter). But is interesting to think about what to try out in the international business classroom or when it is good to find another venue. I have no answer to that yet.

A Complete Unknown. Even though I did not discover Bob Dylan’s reasoning, there are some very nice clips to stimulate my own. Maybe yours as well.

This film is certainly a film to watch, even when you are not a fan of Bob or wanting to critically think about it when watching a movie, even though you should of course.