Multiculturalism in France as bought up in Entre les murs

MULTICULTURALISM IN FRANCE AS SEEN IN ENTRE LES MURS
Entre Les Murs is a fictional work detailed by French writer Francos Begaudeau. A closer review of this work reveals a semiautobiographical account of Begaudeau’s experiences while teaching literature in an inner-city middle school in Paris. Film director Laurent Cantet takes the story and produces a humanist, realist, and optimist cinema. The film is a reflection of a school setting with students from diverse backgrounds. The director adopts the novel concept to explore the challenges immigrants face in foreign schools, the power play between students and teachers, and the need for multicultural education and society.
Entre Les Murs features the experiences of immigrants in class in a white French society. It explores a school setting where all the teachers are white, and most of them are minorities. The film is based on a novel focused on the challenges in France’s ethnically diverse communities. It tracks a year in the life of a French class in a Parisian college founded in the twentieth arrondissement. The film founds on the extreme close-up shots within the Claus trophic space at school. The film initiates a minimal plot line which features the tension between teacher Marin and his disengaged and defiant students. It focuses more on capturing the volatile dynamics of the classroom. Cantet uses the three Cameras to create a sense of spontaneity to impart the aura of documentary to the film (Strand, 2009). The film is dominated by the changed verbal jousts and places language as the core. Most of the lessons deal with the French language, and the most significant plot-movers involve conflicts brought to the head by language. Mr. Marin notes the immature behavior of two students in the representation of the class council. He refers to them as petasses, a remark which triggers a rebellion in the class. Another student defends the two girls and is ejected from the class when he refers to Mr. Marin with the familiar pronoun “tu.”
In both cases, the audience is driven to the language's contextless communication mode and more of a social marker designer. It is loaded with emotions and cultural baggage that extends to the words' linguistic content and sends a warning to the intergenerational and class battle lines. When Marin transgresses from his social status as an insider when he calls the two girls petasses, he shifts into the unfamiliar position of people classified as outsiders. These are the youth, racial and ethnic minorities, and the marginalized population as a whole. The reaction of the target population shows that Mr. Marin is standing on shaky grounds. When they call him out, the girls affirm the legitimacy of the connotations they ascribe to the word on their turf. As a result, they assert their claim to the optional meaning. Marin has the power to blame them for selecting the inappropriate register or indulge in non-standard use in the classroom. They hold on still against the incursions of Marin into the lexical space. The process sends a signal that they will not cede ground to him on their language terrain (Lykidis, 2012). When Mr. Marin attempts to back-pedal in explaining that he did not accuse the girls of being petasses, his efforts to get the upper hand is launched through language control. Their denial to accept his language implies the implicit appreciation of the power games at stake in the confrontation. Based on the inequalities in the system, it should be evident that the results of the transgression by Souleymane are severe, and he is directed to face the disciplinary committee. The scene reflects one of the educational bureaucracies' limitations to the different though unrelated language failure.
The film revolves around the issue of powerplay between the teachers and the students. The teacher, the protagonist, tries to accommodate the diversity but fails to achieve his goal and eventually disrespects the minorities in the class. The visuals in the classroom reflect the social and ideological distance between the teacher and the students. As the scenes roll out, the students redirect the class's emphasis on the subject matter to the ethical issues of how the teacher presents the subject matter to them. At some time, the students begin to challenge the rhetorical styles used by Mr. Marin, the word choice, and double standards on the student-teacher classroom behavior and favoritism for some of the students. They also protest the teacher's choice of assignment, his approach to discipline, and the misunderstanding of the cultural domains and inability to contextualize and make the lesson plan relevant. The learners contest the irreproachable behaviors by Mr. Marin, as expressed in his teaching style. The students reveal how the particip...