Realism Isn't Real: The Need for Fantasy in Conflict Resolution Education

Conflict Resolution educators most often seek “realistic” representations and exercises in an attempt to prepare students for practice in the “real world.” What they fail to realize is that a consistent desire for realism undermines the ability of students to develop the kind of creative and critical thinking skills they will need when they enter that real world. There is an important role for fantasy in conflict resolution education. This article is the story of how Mr. Fox, along with his family and friends, made my conflict resolution courses better – or as one of my students wrote in a reflection on the activity, “engaging and somewhat ridiculous.”

On the 25th of November, 2009, 20th Century Fox released Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short children’s novel of the same name. The film is primarily the story of Mr. Fox, a reformed poultry thief who is living with his family and writing a column for his local newspaper. He is still haunted by the memory of his earlier life and, after buying a new home in a tree overlooking the three largest farms in the area, run by three men described by the local children as:

"Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. One fat, one short, one lean. Those horrible crooks. So different in looks. Are nonetheless equally mean."

Mr. Fox returns to his life of crime, aided by the opossum handyman Kylie and his nephew Kristofferson. The farmers come together to capture Mr. Fox. This rapidly escalates as the farmers blow up the new tree and start digging for the foxes and all of the other local animals, who are understandably upset at Mr. Fox. After a brief respite during which the animals live in Badger’s flint mine and steal even more from the farmers, the farmers flood them out with apple cider and they are forced to move to a damp sewer, without access to food. Kristofferson is taken prisoner and the animals decide to fight back through a detailed “go-for-broke-rescue mission.” They succeed, but are still stuck living in the sewer with little food until Mr. Fox finds a grate that leads to a grocery store that conveniently closes early on weekends. The foxes and Kylie rejoice as we are taken outside to realize that the store is part of Boggis, Bunce & Bean. Although Mr. Fox has won this battle, the conflict between the animals and the farmers is in no sense resolved. In addition to this overarching conflict, we see conflicts between Mr. Fox and his wife, Mr. Fox and his son, Ash, between Ash and Kristofferson, Ash and the school bully, Mr. Fox and the rest of the animal community, and more. Most of these do achieve some form of resolution or transformation.

Conflict Resolution Education traditionally relies on some combination of conflict analysis and conflict resolution skills, balanced differently depending on the topic of the course. Students are expected to be able to speak and write authoritatively about conflicts as well as choosing and implementing an appropriate intervention, either during or after the conflict. Although we have never been accused of being on the cutting edge of pedagogical innovation, there has been a recent push for the inclusion of experiential learning as well as service learning in conflict education. In part, this is a response to the Graduate Education and Professional Practice in International Peace and Conflict report issued by the United States Institute of Peace in December 2010. That report concluded:

"o better prepare peace and conflict professionals in the future, graduate education must align itself more closely with the expectations of employers in the field. The rapidly evolving and frequently unstable global environment demands that international actors devote more financial, human, and technical resources to international peace and conflict efforts." [1]

Setting aside the question of whether employers should be driving academic education decisions, service learning activities that involve taking students into the field have been a good response to this call. However, experiential learning is still underdeveloped.  Since we cannot simply drop students unchaperoned into a real conflict and yell, “Learn!” the predominant approach to experiential learning has been through simulation, role-play, and media response.  These activities focus on replicability and the realistic representation of actual conflicts.  These kinds of activities are well-suited to the traditional approaches of conflict analysis that focus on conflict mapping and the application of developed models, but less so when the expectation is not to produce the analysis of a conflict, but to produce a meaningful interpretation, one of many possible approaches.

When film is used in the context of experiential learning, it is often to illustrate a “real” conflict to which students can run apply the instructor-provided models.  For example, a popular fiction film for conflict programs is John Sales’s Matewan, a 2 hour, 15 minute depiction of the 1920 mine strike in West Virginia.  When documentary film is used, the particular films are often chosen for their applicability to the model or analysis tool being promoted.  The result of this is a closed process that rewards predictable student outcomes.

There are two primary drawbacks to the reliance on realist and documentary film in this setting.  First, it produces an experiential learning activity with a pre-determined learning outcome.  There is no difference between completing this kind of analysis on a film or a pre-written case study.  There is a small range of correct outcomes and a large range of incorrect ones.  There is no room for what Jack Mezirow called “reflective action” [2] in this kind of activity; there is nothing upon which to reflect.  Without this reflection, the activity is just an exercise in skill-practice, not learning.

The second drawback is that such simulations and role-plays are not suited to the newer approaches to conflict resolution that focus on meaning-making and the intervention in discourse or narrative.  For these approaches, including narrative mediation and insight mediation, “conflict” is a discursive and conceptual position, not an actual thing in the world.  As such, questions about cause and effect are pushed to the side in favor of questions of perception, insight, and story.  Close-ended, realist-oriented film activities are not well suited to such an approach, but there is an alternative.  We can create an environment where students need to rely on creativity and can have diverse experiences, leaving them open to high-quality reflection.  To do this we need to turn away from realist film and instead focus on the decidedly unrealistic.

My solution to this problem was to introduce the film Fantastic Mr. Fox into two of my conflict classes.  The first of these was a course for non-majors offered through New Century College. That class focused on interpersonal and intergroup conflict analysis and resolution.  To set the stage and prepare the students for the assignment, I put together a list of the concepts and approaches we had covered up until that point and asked the students to produce their own analysis of the conflicts in the film for discussion, based on the concepts we had discussed, other coursework they may have completed, and their general approach to conflict.  I stressed that I wanted to see their analysis, not any particular analysis, reminding them that this was what professionals in the field are asked to do.  I was surprised at the quality of work that I saw in both the analyses and their reflections.  Many of the students came up with reasonable explanations I had not considered, or focused on aspects of the conflicts I would not have expected.  The exercise was much more successful than I had anticipated.

I believe there are some characteristics of Fantastic Mr. Fox that make it particularly useful for a project like this, especially in a non-major classroom.  The first of these is that the film itself was not written or directed to teach about conflict.  This cannot be overstated. Fantastic Mr. Fox is open to many more conflict readings than a film attempting to represent a historical conflict, like Matewan.  While it may be possible to read Matewan intentionally from an alternative conflict perspective, I expect these readings would be uninteresting and unconvincing.  With Fantastic Mr. Fox, there is no expected reading and few hints as to what the film wants viewers to think about conflict, the students are able to bring creativity to the exercise.

This is closely related to another important characteristic.  The film itself is non-threatening. It is (arguably) a children’s film and the characters speak a little more pointedly about their feelings, intentions, and expectations than realist film.  As a result, Fantastic Mr. Fox presents more of a welcoming sandbox than an intimidating puzzle.

This sandbox, however, is held together by a story that promotes complex thinking about social and community conflict.  Interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, intracommunity, and intercommunity conflicts are not only evident, but the film represents them as interconnected.  Tensions between Mr. and Mrs. Fox contribute to Mr. Fox’s drive to steal, which opens the conflict between the Foxes and the farmers, leading to the conflict between the animals and the farmers, and so on.  Additionally, the film’s representation of conflict is at odds with its tone in an interesting way.  At the end of the film, it is clear that Mr. Fox has been triumphant.  He is the hero of this story and has vanquished the farmers, provided for his family and community and, probably, learned a little bit about himself.  However, as we draw back from the joyous animals dancing in the supermarket, we realize Mr. Fox is stealing from Boggis, Bunce, and Bean once again.  Narrative resolution is not the same as conflict resolution.

The animal characters themselves contribute to this complexity.  Mr. Fox is extremely likable, but not necessarily admirable.  Our sympathies lie with the more innocent characters like Mrs. Fox or Kristofferson, who are the products of their circumstances.  Other animal characters are not one-dimensional caricatures, but they bring their own perspective to what is going on, especially Mr. Fox’s lawyer, Badger, and Kylie the Opossum.

The humans are represented with far less nuance.  The farmers and Bean’s wife are uniformly evil toward the animals, and Bean’s son is a gluttonous idiot.  Supporting human characters are limited to their role, with the exception of Petey, who sings a song about the hunt for Mr. Fox before being disciplined back into blandness by Mr. Bean.  “That’s just bad songwriting. You wrote a bad song, Petey.”  While it is possible to see this as a weakness in the film, from a conflict perspective it is exactly what we would expect to see.  Each side in a destructive conflict dehumanizes and oversimplifies the other. The fact that this is the perspective in Fantastic Mr. Fox just lets us know that the film is presenting Mr. Fox’s perspective, not the objective “truth” of the conflict.  The farmer’s initial reaction to a fox stealing from them is understandable, although their escalation of the conflict is less so.  The film evidences the self-awareness that Mr. Fox himself develops to recognize that this isn’t a simple good-vs.-evil conflict.

Empowered by the success in the non-majors course, I incorporated Fantastic Mr. Fox into one my community conflict and conflict resolution course section.  This course is required for all conflict analysis and resolution majors and in it I can presume a much greater awareness of conflict theory.  The course also seeks to help students define and practice their own “professional voice,” the particular approaches that is the outward expression of what Lang and Taylor called their “constellation of theories.” [3]  I decided to change the assignment and make it a much larger component of the class, serving as our mid-term exam.  Again, I prepared a list of what I thought we had covered, in class and in our readings, and provided a little more guidance. In this case, the students were directed to take a community conflict approach to the film, and to avoid focusing exclusively on interpersonal conflicts.

I chose this mid-term for two primary reasons.  First, I felt it could provide a better assessment of my students’ ability to perform convincing conflict analysis, as opposed to being able to regurgitate particular models or definitions.  Second, I felt this film was closer to a real-world experience than a controlled case-study or realist depiction of a conflict.  I appreciate that it appears counterintutive that a film about talking animals could be closer to conflict practice than a documentary, but my concern was not for the realism of the conflict presented, instead it was the extent to which the assignment represented true conflict work.  In the field, especially when doing community work, you are not asked to apply a particular model or analytical tool to a conflict, but instead to step in and figure out for yourself what is going on.  Additionally, community conflicts are rarely reducible to a single, named conflict.  Instead, just as we see in the film, interpersonal, intergroup, and community conflict coexist.  One of the primary skills, then, is to separate and identify the conflicts most relevant and design interventions to address these.  Fantastic Mr. Fox is a better representation of this than any single-issue film.

Second, I wanted the mid-term activity to be in itself an opportunity for learning, not just a lost week.  A more traditional test can either be broadly focused, so that students study everything in a shallow way, or more directed at a particular concept or approach, so that what is being assessed is knowledge about only that part of the course.  I am not arguing that it is impossible to write excellent tests, but that in general undergraduates do not learn through that traditional test approach.  With Fantastic Mr. Fox, the goal is not to assess specific knowledge, but to assess the students’ ability to deal with ambiguity and bring their own perspective to the problem.

I was again surprised by the quality of work I received from the students.  I was pleased to find that it clear from the submissions which students were engaged and learning and which were less so, which is the purpose of assessment, after all.  As an additional benefit, we were able to refer to the conflicts in the film as a common pool of awareness later in the course.  This assignment also figured prominently in the students final reflections for the course.

Fantastic Mr. Fox was not a complete success.  I have some concerns about this approach to assessment and experiential learning. First, while most students enjoyed using the film, there were a few in my community conflict class who did not take the assignment seriously.  I expect that the characteristics that made the film approachable to most students made it seem childish and unrealistic to others.  The film is both childish and unrealistic.  Additionally, some students said they did not know how to prepare for a mid-term like this.  I am hoping to avoid this in the future by incorporating short film early in class to increase the students’ comfort.  The Looney Toons cartoon The Three Little Bops has been useful in this regard.

The one difficulty no amount of preparation seems to avoid is what I call the “Call of the Wild” effect.  Students who were introduced to basic narrative analysis in high school learn about narrative conflict, often through the Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Himself approach.  When they see another piece of fiction these students begin to write about “intrapersonal conflict,” in this case, Mr. Fox’s “conflict with himself.”  No amount of preparation seems to convince the students that they are writing about Mr. Fox being conflicted, and not participating in a literal conflict (especially not a social one).  Since our field is concerned with social conflicts, those with at least two parties, I try to encourage them to make the same observations under the category of psychological preconditions of the conflict, but more than a few still try to argue about “intrapersonal conflict.”

The risks of using fantasy, and specifically fantasy film, in conflict classes are outweighed by its benefits.  I have become something of an evangelical for the film in conflict classes, but this is just because I found something that works. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one solution to the problem of realism in conflict class films, but there must be others.  We need to identify and incorporate these into our experiential learning activities.

Notes:

[1]  Nike Carstarphen et al., Graduate Education and Professional Practice in International Peace and Conflict (United States Institute of Peace, 2010), 11–12,http://dspace.cigilibrary.org/jspui/handle/123456789/29492.

[2]  Jack Mezirow, “On Critical Reflection,” Adult Education Quarterly 48, no. 3 (May 1, 1998): 185–198, doi:10.1177/074171369804800305.

[3]  Michael D. Lang and Alison Taylor, The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).

[*]  This article is a revised version of “Engaging and Sometimes Ridiculous” – Teaching Conflict Analysis and Resolution through Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Washington, DC on March 28, 2013.