MOVIES: WHAT CAN OR CAN NOT WE TAKE FORM THEM?

THE GROUP:
LAGOS, ANA.
MORALES, DELIA.
TEACHER:
JHONNY ANGOLA.
SAN CRISTÓBAL, JANUARY 2010.
Learning about another country´s culture
might be a challenging experience specially if you don`t have the chance of travelling to the specific place you want to know. Most people want to have kwonledge about the world arround them, but if you are a person who is studing to be an english teacher that knowledge is not just for fun, it may become a useful tool in side of the classsroom. All humman being, generally create for themselves a picture about foreing people´s life style, but where are most of those ideas taken from? The media and the art forms related to it.
Based on the previous statement a profesor in our university desinged some activities to led us live and analize the experience of watching a movie and the role that the elements presented there, play in the creation of a cultural image. The current paper narrates the development of some class activities at the University of Los Andes in San Cristóbal Venezuela in 2009, specificaly a subject call English IV. Those activities were made in these order, first, the reading of some research articles, second the viewing of a movie call “Borat”, the discussion of the movie and article`s topics and the writing of a class report.
First of all, the reading asigment was about two articles, one of them called “Intercultural Moments in Teaching English through Film” written by Zoreda and published in 2006, this paper describes an EFL course in Mexico and the way they used films to try to understand people´s behavior on the situations shown in the film, making a selection of movies that may present a useful scene to that course students. It also talks about how people take the afirmations made in movies, tv series, music and so on, as irrefutable truth without thinking that most of these creations are made to a specific audience and show just the information that their producer wants. That is the reason why the viewer can not take these information as a fact to understand or judge an entire society. The second article is a little older, it contains tips about aspects that can be worked with a movie in class, manage the movie analysis form a depeer perspective, taking into account its scrip, dialogues, scenery, between others.
On the other hand, the movie Borat,
tells the story of a man, Borat interpretated by Sacha Baron , he is form a place called Kazajistán, the movie presents the events lived by Borat, from his birth place, Kuçzek, Kazajistán, showing his family, hobbies, community and plans to go to The United States of America with a camera man and his documentary producer called Vassilli. As he arrives to U.S.A., he gets himself involved in embarrasing situations with different people during a journey from Washington D.C to California where he expcts to find Pamela Anderson, the actress who he fells in love when he saw her in a TV program. Sadly his travel through the country becomes really hard, when his producer discovers he has been foolishing him, he leaves him alone without his passport or money. His producer only left him a plane ticket, a chicken, and a special magazine with pictures of Borat´s love: Pamela.
Now on, waching this movie was a little fun sometimes, but also there were things that leave the viewers stunned,
because of the images shown, the people´s reactions to Borat´s behavior, and the believes he expresed he has, about women, sex, racism, even war and world politic. I think he played with diferent situations and the people involved in them, because sometimes he insulted them and maybe as he was a foreing man he was able to get out of them with less problems than a native man with plenty knowledge about the U.S.A. culture could have get into in the same situations, I wish I could know which were his intentions when he decided to do this, for me it seems to be made just for entertainment. On the other hand, if we try to see in it a message, according to this movie I wouldn´t like to visit the U.S.A. or Kazajistán if I`m arabian or jew! The movie makes us think that they are really hated in some parts of those countries.
Watching this from an out side point, this film may aware us about the extreme care we have to have when we choose a movie to present to our students in class, because they may get the wrong idea or its content might not be appropriate for that specific audience.
Adding to these statements, to prepare and apply activities of previewing and post viewing, can make the experience more productive, the students may have more time to think about what they saw and the teacher may have feed back and also learn from it, for future references, and on these way improve his teaching.
Finally, as students or teachers, we have to be aware that “an image worth more than thousand words”, being careful to evoid missunderstandings and the spread of incorrect information, most human being get more impresed by pictures or movies than for written infromation, that is why movies can become an excellent tool to try to teach and learn about the world and its inhabitans, movies and other visual aids are small windows to little worlds but as their perspective may be deeply subjective, we have to be concious about it, but most of all enjoy them.