The Chorus. A Psychoaesthetic and Socioeducative Analysis about a French Film

Abstract

This article analyzes the French film The chorus (Les choristes), in which a pedagogical intervention and innovation with children at social risk is presented. Six dimensions of the film are examined (interpersonal, intrapersonal, transpersonal, ideological, symbolic, and aesthetic), and the analysis approaches six levels of comprehension and appreciation (descriptive, inferential, interpretative, valorative, introspective, and heuristic or creative). Although the analytic exercise is based on an original perspective, in its elaboration several contributions converge: the education by art, the teaching for understanding, the pragmatics of communication,
the sociocultural and sociocritical focus on education, cognitive narratology, and the cognitive and evolutive perspective of Michael J. Parsons. The article includes a section with metacritical reflections, and a last part that offers specific suggestions
to apply at the field of the inclusive education. In both cases, we try to extract some implicit lessons from the film (whose protagonist is a motivating, creative and integrative educator), extrapolating those lessons by to a kind of a useful and at least partially replicable method.