recent thought / activity
See the full list at LibraryThing
audio
|
pretty persuasion I'm remaking my syllabus for this fall semester, throwing a lot of old stuff out. This makes room for some new stuff. Usually I show a movie once or twice during the semester, a way to break up the monotony of lecturing and to give us a hefty chunk of material to talk about / pick apart. This year, it looks like the movie slot will line up neatly with the unit on persuasive strategies. So what I'm looking for, then, is a movie that is overtly designed to make an argument. This probably means a documentary, since, although all fictional films convey a certain ideology, they don't usually do so by making use of traditional modes of argumentation. I've thought about some of the Michael Moore films, with the most didactic of the bunch probably being Fahrenheit 9/11. This would allow for some interesting discussion, such as talking about why Moore used some strategies that some commentators have called out (accurately, to my mind) as racist... it would also allow me to draw upon a thoughtful body of secondary literature about the film (I'm thinking particularly of this astute piece at N+1). But I'm wary of Fahrenheit 9/11 for two reasons. One, its overall argument seems oddly diffuse. Exactly what is Fahrenheit 9/11 arguing? "Bush is bad" obviously is the broadest banner being flown here, but, beyond that, "the 2000 election was stolen" and "the Iraq war is/was a bad idea" seem to get more-or-less equal attention, with the James Bath/House of Saud stuff forming a third distinct axis. Taking each of these individually is a task that I could maybe walk my students through, but I'd ultimately prefer something that was more focused. The second concern, of course, is that Michael Moore now serves so strongly as a representative of "the Left" and the film is so markedly anti-Bush that I'd worry that including his film in a syllabus would automatically alienate the more conservative students. I could frame it, of course, by saying that screening the film isn't an endorsement of Moore's argument, but merely a way to provide us with a handy example of polemicif students thought that some of Moore's arguments were fallacious, manipulative, or unfair (some are), that would be useful to look at in a discussion of effective vs. ineffective rhetorical strategies. But perhaps this argument is glib: I'd look cautiously at an instructor who screened something like Islam: What the West Needs to Know and made the same argument. Something like An Inconvenient Truth seems better: the argument is more coherent and singular, and although Gore is obviously a partisan figure (and the movie contains a partisan message), the argument is less easy to dismiss as mere "bashing." But I doubt it'll make it out on DVD in the next five months. (Aside: the alternate Inconvenient Truth trailer featuring Futurama's Bender is worth a viewing.) A movie like Supersize Me is possibly even better, given that the topic is not one that will easily slot into a standard left/right dichotomy (for students). I haven't seen it, unfortunately, so I'm not sure how much the movie relies on tools of traditional argumentation. I'm also a little irked by the underlying fat-phobic message, which I'd just as soon avoid. Any other suggestions for movies that are overtly didactic?
Saturday, July 08, 2006
| |||||||||||
|