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CHAPTER FIVE: DATA ANALYSIS
P2: There is this video on YouTube about lorries, where the migrants climb onto
the back of the lorries but the police punish the Hungarian lorry drivers. Even
though they didnt know that the migrants had climbed on.
T: Lets stay with this story for the moment. We can come back to that video later.
P3: Maybe one of them [on the spaceship] is a scientist... °°°
The student (P2) was connecting the fiction and the contemporary reality
through this contradictory story circulating in the Hungarian media.
The video referred to was posted by a Hungarian truck driver on YouTube
in which he deliberately swerved towards migrants walking by the road to
Calais"? in revenge for the problems they caused lorry drivers.
The participants had a clear understanding of the story, and could explain
it clearly in the focus groups: “the drama was about a war between the rich
and the poor, because the Earth has been poisoned and they need to find
a new planet”.’?! They also connected the environmental aspects of the fiction
to the current situation: “I saw on the telly that there is an oil drill that has
poisoned the ocean. It has started!”°?
However, it was also clear that this series was not working well. The notes
in the reflective diary indicate this,*** and also feedback from the participants:
“The story doesn’t hold together. We leave out bits and then do something else.
I don’t see the whole picture. The story should just flow on its own”.°** This was
the only series in the cycle where any of the participants — 2 out of 17 — said they
would not like to attend such drama lessons in the future in the questionnaire
filled out at the end of the series.
The lack of success with this series is probably not because the narrative was
based so strongly on a contemporary issue, clearly the subject of migration
interested some of the participants, and many of them responded with
different ideas to the theme of space travel as well. In the discussion quoted
above one participant offered the idea of scientists travelling to explore,
another student proposed that there could be a B18 planet where everyone’s
fears were collected.” The story inspired drawings as well, but like this one
58 V2_F1
5% Hartley, Eve: Hungarian Truck Driver Who Filmed Himself Swerving Towards Refugees
‘Should Be Arrested’. Huffington Post, 1 December 2015.
http://www. huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/12/01/hungarian—truck—driver—films—himself—
ploughing-towards-refugees_n_8686520.html, 2015, (accessed 3 April 2020).
si F F2
52 F F1
53% RD_F2
5% F F1
55 V1_F1.