Citation: Akosu, S.K. (2025). Film and Children’s Literature: An Aesthetic Evaluation of Doug Atchison’s Akeelah and the Bee. Tasambo Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, 4(1), 115-125. www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2025.v04i01.012.
FILM AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: AN AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF DOUG ATCHISON’S AKEELAH AND THE BEE
BY
Akosu, Solomon Keghtor
Ahmadu
Bello University, Zaria
akosusolomon5@gmail.com
07066099106
Abstract
The paper undertakes a study of Film and Children’s Literature;
an Aesthetic Evaluation of Doug Atchison’s Akeelah
and the Bee (2005). To
achieve this, the interrelationship between film and literature is established,
and the concept of children’s literature is also examined. The paper employs
formalism as a theoretical framework through which the various literary
elements in the movie are surveyed. Thus, formalism as a framework is used in
this paper to emphasise literary form and the study of literary devices
employed in the movie above its context. The paper thus concludes that film,
like a written text, possesses the literary elements that qualify it to be
studied as literature. However, film, unlike written text, employs an
audio-visual mechanism through aesthetic representation to engage the audience
or viewers. In this case, the selected movie reflects children’s literature, as
the plot structure, characters, setting, and theme all reflect, to a large
extent, a literary text meant for children.
Keywords: Children’s
Literature, Aesthetic Evaluation, Formalism, Aesthetic Representation, Film and
Literature
Introduction
The relation of film and literature in
many ways proved a successful symbiosis; as society progressed, the medium of
film as well as that of literature made huge strides to register great impact
on human psyche. One form of literature (drama) blossomed into the film
industry. Such refinement with the aid of innovation
gave rise to silent movies and then to revolutionary and all-powerful art form.
In film and literature, a story is narrated but in different
ways. Films present visual images to the audiences who consume them as real
because they move in front of them, (p. 153).
Whereas in literature (fiction), for instance, the author
creates images in words using both written and verbal signs. This task requires
readers to immerse themselves in the text to grasp the meaning of the text.
Literature (fiction) involves looking at the word, phrase, and sentence. In
films, the filmmaker assists the reader (viewer) by visually representing the
external manifestation of the character's actions.
The
Concept of Children’s Literature
The
emergence, growth, and development of children’s literature could be traced way
back to the Middle Ages. However, the first texts to be considered enjoyable
children’s texts were published around 1484 and 1485. These were William
Caxton, England’s first printer, who published Aesop’s Fable
(1484) and Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d'Arthur (1485), (Osa 1984, as
cited in Shafil 2015). Lerer Seth (2008) has this to say about Aesop’s
Fables: “No author has been so intimately and extensively associated with
children’s literature as Aesop. His fables have been accepted as the core of
childhood reading and instruction since the time of Plato, and they have found
their place in political and social satire and moral teaching throughout
mediaeval, Renaissance, and modern cultures” (p. 35).
The
development of children’s literature spanned over the centuries until the 19th
century. The contributions and innovations of the 19th century
continued into the 20th century, achieving a significant boost in
children’s literature with numerous genres. Shafil (2015) asserts that from the
1960s through the 1990s, socially relevant children’s books have appeared,
treating different subjects and thematic concerns. This, therefore, has brought
children’s literature to the limelight and has been a focal point for most
continents and countries.
The
Origin of Film
Film
as an art form has drawn on several earlier traditions in fields such as (oral)
storytelling, literature, theatre, and the visual arts. Various forms of art
and entertainment have already featured moving and/or projected images. Ferrell
(2000) asserts that:
Ancient
cultures, relying on the storyteller or shaman, constructed a ritual or
ceremony that placed the myth in a visible or animated form. In today’s world,
the ritual or ceremony becomes a novel or film that by design informs the
reader or viewer how one ought to live or how one ought not to live. For
ancient cultures, this ritual or tradition began as myth; for Western cultures,
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became the novel; and for
twentieth-century Americans, it became literature and film, (p. 17).
Therefore,
what we have today as film is a product of the various oral traditions that,
over time, have undergone transposition and adaptation into literature and,
consequently, films.
The
Encyclopaedia of American Religion... posits that:
The 1914 The
Photo-Drama of Creation was a non-commercial attempt to combine the motion
picture with a combination of slides and synchronize the resulting moving
picture with audio. The film included hand-painted slides as well as other
previously used techniques. Simultaneously playing the audio while the film was
being played with a projector was required. Produced by the Watch Tower Bible
and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (Jehovah's Witnesses), this eight–hour bible
drama was being shown in 80 cities every day and almost eight million people in
the United States and Canada saw the presentation, (p. 22).
By 1900, the first motion pictures that can be considered
"films" emerged, and filmmakers began to introduce basic editing
techniques and film narrative. Within eleven years of motion pictures,
therefore, the films moved from a novelty show to an established large-scale
entertainment industry. Similarly, the first films to consist of more than one
shot appeared towards the end of the 19th century; a notable example was the
French film of the life of Jesus Christ, Guy (1907).
Formalism
as a Theoretical Framework
This paper deploys formalism as a theoretical
framework for analysing Atchison’s movie, Akeelah
and the Bee. Formalism, as a theoretical approach that is basically
concerned with the form and how the various components come together to make
any literary work beautiful, is a suitable tool for an aesthetic evaluation of
the movie. Thus, the premise for the application of this theory is its
relevance to the analysis of the topic under investigation. Formalism, as the
name implies, is an interpretative approach that emphasises literary form,
unity, and the study of literary devices within the text. Formalism as a theory
provides a framework through which literary works are explored on the basis of
what is specifically literary
in texts. Formalists produced a theory of literature concerned with
the writer’s technical prowess
and craft skills. Thus,
formalists are much more concerned with the “literary form” at the expense of “context”
(e.g., biographical, historical, or intellectual contexts, author, background,
the reader, ideology, worldview, etc.). They focus more on the text itself in
terms of its form, organisation, structure, word choice, beauty, and multiple
languages. That is to say, formalism is a text-based theory that places value
or emphasis on the form. Formalism thus seeks the autonomy of a text as a
self-sufficient entity and silences author-based, reader-based, and
context-based approaches to interpreting any literary text. Formalists,
therefore, believe that the form
of any literary work is what makes literature literary.
Abrams and Harpham (2012) assert that formalism is a
type of literary theory and analysis that originated in Moscow and St.
Petersburg in the second decade of the twentieth century. At first, opponents
of the movement of Russian Formalism applied the term “formalism” derogatorily
because of its focus on the patterns and technical devices of literature to the
exclusion of its subject matter and social values; later, however, it became a
neutral designation. Russia is therefore considered the starting point for
formalism and its flourishing. Thomas Schmitz (2007) observes that not only
were the Formalists the first clearly demarcated school of literary criticism
in the twentieth century, they can also be called the founding fathers of
modern literary theory in many other regards. Their movement put questions and
problems on the agenda that were to play an important role in later
discussions, and it is safe to say that today, Russian Formalism is not studied
because of the concrete results and contributions of its chief thinkers but
because of the important incentives it provided. The numerous contributions of
Russian critics to the development of formalism as a concept are overwhelming.
Among the
leading representatives of the movement were Boris Eichenbaum, Victor
Shklovsky, and Roman Jakobson, Abrams, and Harpham (pp. 138–39). Formalism
views literature primarily as a specialised use of language and proposes a
fundamental opposition between the literary (or poetical) use of language and
the ordinary, “practical” use of language. Habib (2005) clearly points out the
overriding influence of formalism on the interpretation of what makes a text
literary.
In general, an emphasis
on form parenthesizes concern for the representational, imitative, and
cognitive aspects of literature. Literature is no longer viewed as aiming to
represent reality or character or to impart moral or intellectual lessons, but
is considered to be an object in its own right, autonomous (possessing its own
laws) and autotelic (having its aims internal to itself). Moreover, in this
formalist view, literature does not convey any clear or paraphrasable message;
rather it communicates what is otherwise ineffable. Literature is regarded as a
unique mode of expression, not an extension of rhetoric or philosophy or
history or social or psychological documentary, (p. 602).
Furthermore,
Roman Jakobson (1921), as cited in Abrams and Harpham (2012), writes that “the
object of study in literary science is not literature but ‘literariness”, that
is, what makes a given work a literary work.” The literariness of a work, as
Jan Mukarovsky, a member of the Prague Circle, described it in the 1920s,
consists “in the maximum foregrounding of the utterance,” that is, the
foregrounding of “the act of expression, the act of speech itself.” (To
“foreground” is to bring something into prominence, to make it dominant in
perception.) Victor Shklovsky underlines that the onus of formalism is to
estrange or defamiliarize; that is, by disrupting the modes of ordinary
linguistic discourse, literature “makes strange” the world of everyday
perception and renews the reader’s lost capacity for fresh sensation.
The Major
Tenets of Formalism
Victor
Shklovsky (1893–1984) famously defines literature as “the sum of all the
stylistic devices employed in it." Using formalism as an approach, a
literary work could be viewed, but not limited to, in the following dimensions:
a. The literariness or artfulness of
literary work, which makes it an aesthetic object, is entirely in its devices,
which should also form the sole object of literary studies and analysis.
b. Formalists focus on the form,
literary constituents or elements, organisation, and structure of a literary
text above any other component.
c. Diction, multiple uses of language,
and choice of words are core to formalism.
d. Unity, decorum, sublimity,
aesthetics, and grand perception are also the thrust of formalism.
e. A systematic study of literature, or
that which makes literature 'literary’.
f.
Literary meaning is conceptual, concept-based; that is,
based on the concept of form.
g. What makes literature ‘literary’ is
the sum of literary or representational devices. Example: plot, sequence, point
of view, rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, repetition, and so on.
h. Literature provides access to a
special kind of truth through the use of connotative language (allusion,
metaphor, symbolism, and so on).
Form, diction, and unity all encapsulate the tenets of
formalism listed above. These form the basis for a formalist evaluation of the
movie. Form is considered the most obvious because it constitutes the frame of
any literary work. Form grows out of recurrences, repetitions, relationships,
and motif - all organisational devices that create the total effect. Looking
into the diction of a literary work poses the question of how the language
structure of the work can create meaning. This can be assumed in many ways,
depending on the actual structure of the individual work. Unity, in a similar
vein, considers the various components that contribute to the beauty and effect
of any literary work. Unity therefore accounts for decorum, grand perception,
and sublimity in literary works.
Film and
Literature
Film
as a literary text has elements of drama, poetry, prose, lyrics, and semiotics.
It is a powerful inter-textual medium where the presence of signs, gestures,
etc. is combined to create meaning. Both the film and the written text could
therefore be considered literature. Whereas the former could be seen as a text,
the latter is meant to be read. A written text is a written communication,
whether as a poem, drama, fiction, or non-fiction. It always communicates human
experiences and employs devices to represent ideas. Film, on the other hand,
mostly employs the audio-visual aspects of communication through various
literary devices. Written and spoken communication are very important sources
through which human beings gain wisdom throughout their life span. So, a critic
has to master the use of both words and sounds if he or she wants to make a
mark in the field of literature. Stam and Roengo (2004), opine that:
The
relationship between literature and film has been the subject of numerous
reflections and analyses. Despite their diversity, most of these researches
have a common starting point. Both literature and cinema have been regarded
essentially as modes of expression,
sites and ways of manifestation of an ability to give shape to ideas, feelings,
and personal orientations; in other words, as sites in which an individual’s
perceptions are combined with the person’s will/necessity to offer an image of
him or herself and of his or her own world (p. 80).
Film
and literature (the written text) are therefore not two different things, for
they have a similar goal: to create sublimity in human imagination and
understanding. Both film and literature work hand in hand to achieve the same
purpose. They are complementary in nature, and one is no substitute for the
other. Like letters and sounds in human communication, film and literature
inspire and enrich each other. They also enrich the human mind through action,
images, and words. Epitome Journals International (2016) posits that
“adaptation of literary genres for filming is not a new or recent phenomenon
but an old one. Adaptations of films have various sources, for example,
theatre, novels, music, and painting.” (p. 1). The Journal further states that:
Films also
capture the same like literature but due to its visual and sound effect, it got
wider popularity. The reading of literature is a
mono-sensory private experience of readers whereas witnessing a film is
multisensory
communal experience emphasizing immediacy. One thing is very clear and
one has to accept it that literature gives verbal literacy while films give
visual literacy. Thus, there is a link between literature and film. So
that
film is considered as a branch of literature (pp. 1-2).
No doubt, literature and film are the artistic expressions
that unify the human mind. Most of the films are adaptations of the written
texts. Film and literature have some features in common; both the narrator of
the text and the director of the film adapt the theme in accordance with their
goals and ideologies. The writer uses literary language, whereas in film, the
director uses a language peculiar and fit to visual imagination for the
appreciation of the audience.
Film
and literature have many similarities, but also many differences. In
literature, for instance, the writer uses language to show the interior of the
characters, while in films, the moving pictures show the character through
actions. In fiction, the author's role is to create word pictures for the
reader to delve into the character. While in films, the audience is saved from
the trouble of transforming words into images. Stam and Roengo (2004) assert
that:
The
interdisciplinary study of novels and films has tended to run along two sides
of a paradox. On one side, novels and films are opposed as “words” and
“images,” agreed to be irreducible, untranslatable, a prior entity by most
postmodern as well as prior scholars. On the other side, critics propound
film’s integral formal, generic, stylistic, narrative, cultural, and historical
connections to the novel. Somewhat perplexingly, the two sides of the paradox
tend to coexist within single critical works: they do not, by and large,
represent differing views of opposed critics, (p. 1).
The
slight difference between film and literature, therefore, is that of visual
images, which stimulate one’s perception directly. Film is a more direct
sensory experience than reading.
An
Aesthetic Evaluation of Doug Atchison’s Movie Akeelah and the Bee.
In
the continuing advance of technology throughout the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, film is joining literature in the quest to define and express life’s
rules. In reading fictional narratives and viewing films, children and adults
become witnesses to a wide range of behaviours and cannot help but be affected
by what they see, hear, or read (Ferrell, 2000, p. 18). It is on this premise
that the above movie is evaluated as a literary text. One of the major tenets
of formalism is unity (beauty, decorum, and sublimity). Aesthetics is one of
the key features that unite any literary work. The unity of any literary work
is its ability to fashion and marry the various components that create beauty
and effect in any literary work. Unity therefore accounts for aesthetics
(beauty), decorum, grand perception, and sublimity in literary works. This
evaluation therefore deals with how aesthetics is carefully employed in the use
of plot, characters, style of setting, and language, to contribute to the unity
of the movie as a literary piece specifically for children. These key features
clearly distinguish the movie from adult literature. The plot development, use
of characters, style of setting, and language are all woven around features
that are peculiar to children.
Aesthetics
The
use of aesthetics as a literary technique is very glaring in the movie Akeelah
and the Bee. Aesthetic is one of the major components that defines any
literary text, and it is one of the concepts that formalism builds on. Cuddon
(1998) asserts that “gradually, the term aesthetic has come to signify
something that pertains to the criticism of the beautiful or to the theory of
taste. An aesthere is one who pursues and is devoted to the 'beautiful' in art,
music, and literature”. Similarly, Abrams and Harmpham (2012), opine that:
German
philosopher Alexander Baumgarten applied the term “aesthetica” to the arts, of
which “the aesthetic end is the perfection of sensuous cognition, as such; this
is beauty.” In present usage, aesthetics (from the Greek, “pertaining to sense
perception”) designates the systematic study of all the fine arts, as well as
of the nature of beauty in any object, whether natural or artificial, (p. 4).
Aesthetics are very key to the work of art and to the study
of any literary piece. A literary work is expected to be appealing, grand in
perception, and sublime. The concepts of aesthetics are clearly depicted in the
movie Akeelah and the Bee; the music/sound track, the audio-visual, and
the graphic representation are aesthetic in nature.
A movie is premised on an audio-visual mechanism; thus,
aesthetic is very key as it connects the audio to the visual reality. Through
aestheticism, therefore, the various literary components—the plot structure,
the style of setting, and languages—are skilfully combined to form a literary
text. Below are some pictorial illustrations that help establish the synergy
created by aesthetics in the movie.
FIG. 1.
Akeelah and her Coach Dr Larabee
The
above picture shows a fascinating scene of Akeela and her coach, Dr. Larabee,
in one of their coaching sessions. The setting is a garden; as such, it is
adorned with flowery plants and trees that make up a good shade. This technique
of aesthetics is employed as a visual aid to correspond with the audio
component of the movie. Children are therefore fascinated by this, and even
those who cannot understand the audio message are guided by the visual message.
Aestheticism, as part of Formalism, believes in the unity and various
components that unite a literary piece. Thus, formalism as a literary tool for
a text-based analysis is the most appropriate to evaluate the concept of
aesthetics in the movie Akeelah and the Bee.
FIG. 2. Akeelah and her Coach Dr Larabee using Rope Skipping in
a Training Session
Here,
the movie director employs rope skipping to heighten and satisfy the curiosity
of children. Children are easily drawn to such sports and games, and through
this, the movie has been successfully made theirs. The rope skipping is used as
an aesthetic mechanism to skilfully tell the story. The storyline and the audio
mechanism are thus united by the visual effect through aesthetics. A child’s
curiosity is raised by the visual display of the action rather than depending
totally on the audio or written text.
The Plot
The plot is one of the key literary elements in any literary
text. It refers to the sequential arrangement of a story; it could be linear or
episodic. Like any literary text, the movie Akeelah and the Bee has a
plot structure that is simple, linear, and straightforward. There is no use of
flashbacks except for a stream of consciousness. The movie tells the story of
Akeelah Anderson, an 11-year-old spelling enthusiast who attends Crenshaw
Middle School, a predominantly black school in South Los Angeles. The age of
the main character, Akeelah, thus qualifies this movie as children’s
literature. The plot structure of the movie thus narrates and revolves around
the experiences of a girl, Akeelah. Though there are also young adults and
adults in the movie, the storyline is not woven around them and their
experiences but around Akeelah.
Akeelah lives with her widowed mother Tanya, her older
sister Kiana, her older brothers Devon and Terrence, and her infant niece. Her
principal, Mr. Welch, proposes that she sign up for the Crenshaw School-wide
spelling bee, which she initially refuses. She later ponders the option, gives
in, enters the spelling bee, and wins. Soon after, Dr. Joshua Larabee, a
visiting English professor and Mr. Welch's friend from college, tests Akeelah
and resolves that she is good enough to compete in the National Spelling Bee. However,
Dr. Larabee declines to coach her because she is impolite to him. As a result,
Akeelah studies on her own to prepare for the district spelling bee. Although
Akeelah misspells her word during the final round of the bee, she qualifies for
the regional bee when Kiana (her older sister) catches the other finalist cheating.
Akeelah also meets and befriends Javier Mendez, a 12-year-old Mexican American
boy and fellow speller. Javier invites her to join the spelling club at his
Woodland Hills Middle School. At Woodland Hills, Akeelah meets Dylan Chiu, a
Chinese American boy who had won second place at the past two National Spelling
Bees. Derisive, he asks her to spell "xanthosis." When she starts
with a "z," he tells her she needs a coach. After the spelling
club meeting, Javier invites Akeelah to his birthday party. At the party,
Akeelah nearly beats Dylan in Scrabble. The boy is scolded by his father for
nearly losing to "a little black girl."
After the party, Tanya is dejected over Terrence's bad
behaviour after getting caught by the police for acting out with his thugs, and
her husband's death, and is also anxious about her daughter's grades and
frequent truancy. When she finds out about Akeelah going alone to Woodland
Hills, she then forbids Akeelah from participating in the upcoming state bee.
To evade this ban, Akeelah forges a signature on the consent form and secretly
studies with Dr. Larabee. During the State Bee, Tanya comes inside and interrupts
her daughter before she can spell her word. Tanya relents after a side
discussion with Dr. Larabee and Mr. Welch, especially giving Akeelah double
chores for three months as a penalty for keeping it a secret behind her back.
Javier protects Akeelah from being disqualified by delaying until she can
return. Dylan, Javier, and Akeelah advance to the Scripps National Spelling
Bee.
As Christmas approaches, Akeelah goes out to buy Dr. Larabee
a gift, but when she meets him, he reveals that he is quitting being her coach
because she reminds him of his late daughter Denise: being very sick caused her
death, and that caused his wife Patricia to move into another city. Instead, he
gives Akeelah 5,000 flashcards to study. Without her coach, rejected by her
best friend Georgia, and feeling the pressure from her neighbourhood residents
to make them proud, Akeelah loses her motivation. However, Tanya tells her that
if she looked around her, she would realise that she has "50,000
coaches." Akeelah recruits her family members, classmates, teachers,
friends, and neighbours to prepare in earnest.
After reuniting with Dr. Larabee, Akeelah goes to
Washington, D.C., with him, along with Tanya, Georgia, Mr. Welch, and Devon,
unaware that her coach has paid for four of their tickets. Georgia rekindles
her friendship with Akeelah after she invites her. During the competition,
Akeelah becomes a crowd favourite. After all the other competitors are
eliminated, only Dylan and Akeelah remain. The two finalists are allowed a
break, during which Akeelah overhears Dylan's father harshly pressuring him to
win. Akeelah attempts to intentionally lose by deliberately misspelling
"xanthosis." Dylan, knowing that Akeelah knows this word,
intentionally misspells it as well. Dylan tells Akeelah that he wants a fair
competition, rejecting his father's obsession with winning. The two then
proceed to spell every word listed by the judges in the hopes of winning the
championship together, with Dylan earning a share of it by correctly spelling
"logorrhea," much to his father's delight. Akeelah spells the
last word on the list, "pulchritude," and the two are declared
co-champions amidst a cheering crowd.
Characters
Characters
are vehicles through which a story is being told, either as a narrative or as a
play text. Abrams and Harpham (2012), establish that:
Characters
are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are
interpreted by the reader as possessing particular moral, intellectual, and
emotional qualities by inferences from what the persons say and their
distinctive ways of saying it—the dialogue—and from what they do—the action.
The grounds in the characters’ temperament, desires, and moral nature for their
speech and actions are called their motivation. A character may remain
essentially “stable,” or unchanged in outlook and disposition, from beginning
to end of a work, (p. 46).
The use of characters in the movies Akeelah and the Bee
is unique, and it is a pointer to the fact that the movies could be referred to
as children's literature. The story belongs to children, and thus the
characters are predominantly children, especially the major characters. Though
adults are part and parcel of the characterisation, it is the children that own
the major roles in the movie. The characters are built to communicate with
children and address issues that are peculiar to them.
The major characters in the movie could be seen as children
between the ages of 11 and 13 years old. For example, Akeelah Anderson (11
years old), Javier Mendez (12 years old), and Dylan Chiu (13 years old) are the
major characters through whom the story is told. The above-mentioned characters
are children, and thus the movie could be best described as a children’s
literary text.
Setting
According
to Abrams and Harmpham (2012), “the overall setting of a narrative or dramatic
work is the general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which
its action occurs; the setting of a single episode or scene within the work is
the particular physical location in which it takes place” (p. 363). There are
two major considerations in setting: the historical time of the literary text
and the place where the events take place. Akeelah and the Bee is also
set within a specific time and location. The movie was released in 2005 in a
postmodern era, with a duration of about 1 hour, 52 minutes, and 54 seconds.
The location of the movie is dual: Los Angeles and Washington, DC, United
States of America. The beauty of the cities and their decor contribute a lot to
the fascinating nature of the movie, and a likeable one, for that matter, to
children. The scenery is one key factor that contributes to the beauty of the
movie. The costume, the natural environment, the flora, and the atmosphere
spell beauty; thus, the unity between the scenery and the story line is
established.
Language
The use of language is critical in any literary work.
Diction is deeply imbedded in formalism, and it forms an integral component of
formalism. Akeelah and the Bee is not exceptional; it is embedded with
the use of language that is simple but also standard. The language used is
simple enough to be understood by children since the movie is targeted at them.
The movie uses Standard English and African American vernacular known as
Ebonics. Akeelah, the main character from a black community, uses Ebonics to
communicate with people in the black neighbourhood and with friends at the
black-dominated school. However, aside from the black neighbourhood, Akeelah
and other characters use Standard English to communicate.
The
origin of Ebonics may be traced back to slavery. The African slaves, in an
attempt to communicate, engaged in what could be considered substandard
English, which over time has become a dialect. At some quarters, some
considered Ebonics to be similar to Creole English in Caribbean Island.
Wherever the origin might be, Ebonics is accepted as a language of
communication for blacks. To understand the concept of Ebonics, John R.
Rickford (2012), posits that:
At its
most literal level, Ebonics simply means 'black speech' (a blend of the words
ebony 'black' and phonics 'sounds'). The term was created in 1973 by a group of
black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms like
'Nonstandard Negro English' that had been coined in the 1960s when the first
modern large scale linguistic studies of African American speech-communities
began. However, the term Ebonics never caught on among linguists, much less
among the general public. That all changed with the 'Ebonics' controversy of
December 1996 when the Oakland (CA) School Board recognised it as the 'primary'
language of its majority African American students and resolved to take it into
account in teaching them standard or academic English, (p. 2).
Whatever the case might be, Ebonics should not be considered
substandard or full of errors but should be considered a unique way of
communication for blacks. Rickford, in the Linguistic Society of America,
establishes that these distinctive Ebonics pronunciations are all systematic,
the result of regular rules and restrictions; they are not random 'errors'— and
this is equally true of Ebonics grammar. To many people, the first example that
comes to mind when Ebonics is mentioned is slang words that are popular among
teenagers and young adults, especially rap and hip-hop fans. Ebonics
pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in
words like 'past' (pas') and 'hand' (han'), the pronunciation of the ‘th’ in
'bath' as ‘t’ (bat) or ‘f’ (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words
like 'my' and 'ride' as a long ‘ah’ (mah, rahd). Some of these occur in
vernacular white English, too, especially in the South, but in general, they
occur more frequently in Ebonics. The use of double negatives is also common in
Ebonics. For instance, expressions like "Ain't nobody here talkin' and
"I don't want none" are good examples.
Akeelah and the Bee possesses the linguistic quality of
employing both Standard English and Ebonics. Dr Larabee, one of the adult
characters, considers language and words of utmost importance. To him, one can
use the “word” to change the world." He also stresses understanding the
power of language and deconstructing it, breaking it down to its roots to
consume and own it. The use of language is thus key in the movie Akeelah and
the Bee and serves as one of the glaring literary elements. In the movie,
the following could be considered the use of ebonics: For instance, Akeelah’s
sister said, Akeelah, Mama says go eat!" The following expressions are
used by Akeelah in Ebonics: “I ain’t done for no spelling bee," “I didn’t
wanna do this," “Maybe I ain’t that serious." “Ain’t you got no
job?" “That’s gonna happen no more," and “I don’t want to talk
to any reporter." Similarly, Akeelah’s mother also makes the following
expression in Ebonics: “You too get (insaah) inside”, “You don’t (los) lost
your (maahn) mind”, and “There ain’t be no more spelling bees.”
On the whole, the use of both Standard English and Ebonics
creates a unique aesthetic in the film. This blending of language adds depths,
texture, and rhythm to the narrative, demonstrating the power of language to
shape the perceptions and experiences of children. By exploring the
intersection of language and aesthetics, Akeelah
and the Bee offers a nuanced and thought-provoking portrayal of the
complexities of communication in children’s literature.
Conclusion
The
study of the movie Akeelah and the Bee as a literary text for children
is worth exploring. The movie is embedded with several literary elements (plot,
characters, language, and theme) that qualify it as a literary text. The role
of formalism as a text-based approach has concerned the paper with the
overriding influence of form over context. Thus, by implication, the formal
structures of movies are very important. More so, Akeelah and the Bee could
be best described as children’s literature because it is informed by a plot
structure that tells the story of a child and uses characters who are
predominantly children. The movie should be studied within the context of
literary material since it is embedded with several literary elements. An
aesthetic evaluation of the movie showcases how other literary techniques have
come together to build a literary text in an audio-visual form. Language and
setting as literary components also serve as a unifying factor between the
audio and the visual. This paper thus concludes that film, like a written text,
possesses all the literary elements to be studied as literature. However, film,
unlike written text, employs an audio-visual mechanism through aesthetic
representation to engage the audience and viewers.
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