Learning to Think: Deterritorialization in Mona Lisa Smile and Dead Poets Society

The paper situates Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and Dead Poets Society (1989) as period films that reflect the educational, social, and political climate of 1950s America. Drawing on the view of cinema as a medium that represents reality and provokes reflection, the authors frame education as a democratic right whose purpose and “right kind” remain contested. In the 1950s, amid the Red Scare and heightened state surveillance of dissent, conformity permeated social, cultural, and educational institutions. The paper proposes that the pedagogies depicted in these films deterritorialize learners from rigid, arborescent norms, enabling a rhizomatic exploration of identity and knowledge beyond conventional curricula and roles.

The review highlights films and scholarship that foreground transformative learning and mentorship. Good Will Hunting (1997), Freedom Writers (2007), and Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) illustrate teacher-learner relationships that catalyze personal growth and broaden perspectives. Scholarly works include Pamerleau (2009) identifying Nietzsche’s free spirit in Dead Poets Society and Harold and Maude; Spirou (2016) analyzing transformative learning in Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, and Patch Adams; Holland’s (2013) guide to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus; and Humphreys’ discussion of rhizomatic writing and pedagogy. Humphreys aligns rhizomatic learning with experiential shifts (e.g., learning to swim), emphasizing deterritorialization as an exploratory process for teachers and students. The review thus positions the two films within discourses on non-hierarchical, transformative, and rhizomatic education.

The study employs a qualitative, theoretical analysis grounded in Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization, using the rhizome as a metaphor for non-hierarchical, heterogeneous growth. Drawing on A Thousand Plateaus and related scholarship (Holland; Stivale), the authors treat rhizomatic learning as a democratic mode that resists fixed outcomes and rigid curricula. They analyze scenes from the two films to identify pedagogical practices that encourage learners to think independently, reject prescriptive templates, and map new intellectual and personal territories—thereby deterritorializing dominant social, cultural, and institutional norms and tracing how learners reterritorialize into new identities and trajectories.

• Both films depict rhizomatic pedagogy that challenges rigid, hierarchical educational norms of the 1950s United States.
• In Dead Poets Society (1959 Welton Academy), John Keating’s unorthodox methods (e.g., “carpe diem,” learning poetry beyond metrics, outdoor classes) deterritorialize students from exam-centric, disciplinary routines and the era’s privileging of science over arts, rooted in Cold War imperatives. Students revive the Dead Poets Society, reimagining poetry as lived experience rather than a graded exercise.
• Socio-political constraints and institutional surveillance at Welton (Tradition, Honour, Discipline, Excellence) limit durable change; despite momentary liberation, the boys largely remain in stasis due to parental authority, school control, and economic dependence.
• In Mona Lisa Smile (Wellesley College), Katherine Watson’s pedagogy fosters independent thought, nonconformity, and critical engagement (e.g., Soutine’s Carcass discussion—“What is art? Who decides?”—and pushing students to form original interpretations). She addresses themes of marriage, career, contraception, and social roles, urging students to rethink prescribed female destinies.
• The college-aged women more successfully reterritorialize: they transgress boundaries, gain confidence, and make autonomous decisions about education and life pathways, contrasting with the boys at Welton whose transformations are constrained by schooling and social control.
• The 1950s context (Red Scare, Cold War, gendered division of subjects and roles, early marriage norms) functions as an arborescent system producing conformity; rhizomatic pedagogy enables learners to perceive and resist these structures to varying extents across the two films.

Analyzing the films through deterritorialization clarifies how rhizomatic teaching disrupts arborescent educational models. Keating’s and Watson’s methods cultivate independent thinking, embodied learning, and the integration of personal and academic identities, directly addressing the research aim of showing how pedagogy can transform learners’ subjectivities. The differing outcomes underscore the importance of institutional conditions, learner autonomy, and life stage: college students at Wellesley could leverage new lines of flight to reterritorialize into self-defined futures, while Welton’s preparatory students, constrained by parental authority and school governance, struggled to sustain change. The findings highlight the broader significance of educational environments that value heterogeneity, creativity, and critical inquiry, especially under socio-political pressures privileging conformity, STEM dominance, and gendered expectations.

Deterritorialization enables subjects to depart from fixed destinations and embrace multiplicity. Both films portray the 1950s as a heavily territorialized milieu policing education, gender, and cultural norms. Within this context, rhizomatic pedagogies facilitate critical awareness and self-authorship. In Mona Lisa Smile, students transgress social, academic, and gendered boundaries, redefining their intellectual and personal spaces and committing to self-directed paths. In Dead Poets Society, although students experience moments of liberation, institutional and socio-economic constraints prevent durable shifts in their fields of activity. The study ultimately argues for educational practices that move beyond imitation toward inquiry, autonomy, and discovery of the unknown within, validating Deleuze and Guattari’s insights while revealing how context shapes the extent of learners’ reterritorialization.