Teachers’ Notes

Hatching the egg

You won’t be short of ideas for follow-up work after watching 'Attila the Hen' and there should be ample enthusiasm in the classroom to foster a variety of responses and imaginative work. Starting with discussion, these could develop through drama and storyboards to the use of writing frames developed for the study of media texts.

The first challenge for the class with an animation like this is to make the jump from seeing it as a story about some hens who make a break for freedom to understanding that it is intended to have a much wider meaning – that it is also an allegory addressing aspects of the human condition.

Linked with the above is a second challenge – the need to understand what kind of media text this really is. Cartoons, as well as the original story from which this programme is adapted, are associated with children and with entertainment, but if one can get across the notion that the film is both that 'and' something more, the class will be well on the way to exploring a set of deeper meanings.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of this ability to read beyond the text and make connections with other areas of human experience, but there is plenty of evidence in our culture that this is a way of seeing that some of us take for granted and others have almost no experience of. If you can use 'Attila the Hen' to make those connections, the class will soon see how the witches in 'Macbeth' are rather more than old hags and that the capacity for evil lies within us all.

Chickens, English teaching, and Media Study

These notes are designed to help teachers make these two related breakthroughs within the framework of what the English National Curriculum has to say about media and the study of media texts. The notes are prepared in the light of the widespread perception that ‘media’ is not done well at key stage 3 and that some English teachers may feel uncertain about how to address the area. In the past, there has certainly been a tendency for the ‘gurus’ of media studies to be more than a little disdainful about the efforts of English teachers to teach media and that may have made some teachers uneasy about their abilities. There are also formulaic responses to ‘advertising’ and ‘soap operas’ which, while adequate, seem to miss the boat in terms of meanings and intentions.

One immediate problem is the use of the term ‘media’, now usually written without its qualifier ‘mass’. The notion that it refers to a medium of communication is not an easy one for students at Key Stage 3 to understand, and the typical categorisations often overlap with one another or confuse the medium and the message. So, for example, media studies looks at advertising, target audiences or journalism, across a range of media including print, broadcast and the new electronic media, in ways that are anything but exclusive.

Fitting 'Attila the Hen' in is no less difficult. It is an animated cartoon, a film, a television programme, an educational television programme and, for good measure, it is an adaptation of a book. Taken under any one of these headings it is possible that its audience, intentions, and even meanings might vary.

DEVELOPING SCHEMES OF WORK

Picking the right bird

The following questions are useful when attempting to place 'Attila the Hen' within a wider media context.

• What kind of programme is 'Attila the Hen'? As a cartoon what sort of expectations does it come with? How is it different from Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo or the adventures of Pokemon?
• What can you say about the length, format and structure of the film and the episodes within it? How is the story told on film?
• What makes it appeal to an audience? How does the use of language connect to its suitability for the target audience?

Gutting it

One way to study television or film is to use an analytical approach that explores techniques and methods of presentation. For 'Attila the Hen', interesting avenues are likely to involve the following questions:

Visual images

• How are the chickens portrayed?
• How are the chickens differentiated?
• How are people portrayed?
• How are other animals portrayed?
• How is the sense of a chicken’s-eye-view sustained? (camera angles, lighting, close-ups)
• How are dangers and threats indicated?
• How is background sound used to support the pictures?

Language features

• How are the chickens portrayed as talking birds yet at the same time made to seem chicken-like?
• What does the way the chickens speak tell the audience about them?
• How are other animals distinguished from the chickens by how they speak and what they say?

Plot features

• How do the chickens see dangers, death, and the Black Glove?
• How are other creatures used to move the plot along?
• How do the three programmes link to sustain tension?

Audience appeal

• What makes you laugh in the film?
• What makes you think?
• What makes you sad?
• What makes you happy?

• Who makes up the target audience?

Stuffing it

These are some of the questions that start to raise wider issues for students.

Questions about chickens

• Are the chickens stupid, innocently naïve, or the victims of cruel treatment?
• Are the chickens better off outside the battery house?

Questions about animals

• How do all of the animals view people and the things that people do?
• Are the things that people do to chickens acceptable just because they are animals?

Questions about people

• Are people that bad? Do people ever treat one another like they treat chickens?

Question about nature

• What view of nature does the film give?

Cooking it

Here are some of the major themes in the film:

A Better Life

A journey or quest is one of the oldest and most popular forms of story that there is. An individual or a group of characters escape from captivity, or experience extraordinary things in their childhood. They then undergo trials and dangers on a journey before finding a better life for themselves in a new place. The form of the story allows for a series of separate episodes and excitement but it might also mirror the wandering life of migrating bears, the life-journey of individuals seeking something better, or the Christian notion that suffering leads to redemption and resurrection.

Human cruelty and nature

In 'Attila the Hen' people are shown in a bad light, but there are also animals that prey upon one another. What differences does the film bring out between the human and animal worlds and in the way they relate to the environment? What part do the tree protesters play in this?

Innocence and experience

The chickens know very little while they are in the battery, but by the end of their journey they have more knowledge and the scars to prove it. Attila has lost her innocence along the way – she has learned to fight and survive – but she has found knowledge. Is this similar to what happens when nations rise up against the leaders who have not allowed them to think and act for themselves?