Do movies teach stereotypes?

I really do not understand for the life of me. Surely by tagging you make sure the people mentioned have an opportunity to get involved, rather than being talked about unbeknownst to them?

He’s a ‘man’ because at the time of writing he seemed a bit older to me in my mind and I hadn’t, if you like, ‘got on board’ with him being 18. Adolescent, dear God. Don’t see the big deal. I will admit I find all this ‘young womanning’ of 17-year old females a bit funny, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m also aware, from personal experience, that should anyone do the opposite, i.e. call the male ‘a boy’ in this context, you’re accused of letting him off the hook even more.

(Seriously, getting replies from like 4 or 5 people at once is head-spinning).

Getting no replies is much worse.

Getting no replies is much worse.

Here you go.

That's fine. "Agree to disagree" is a perfectly okay place to leave this conversation. Like I said, it's made me think more deeply about things. Even when you don't change your mind in a conversation like this, I think it's beneficial to be forced to examine your own reasoning.

Nah. And now you know how I felt in the feminism thread!
(Seriously, getting replies from like 4 or 5 people at once is head-spinning).

Hi everyone!

As a teacher and a movie lover, I have found a great activity, and I hope you will help me prepare it. For that, I need a list of great movie scenes that children can understand even without understanding the language. This is to teach them about non-verbal communication.

Here is a little description of the activity. We are going to watch the clips together, and they will have to pick up on the body language and the situation, to try and decide what it was all about and discuss it together. Then, they will do the scenes themselves using their own dialogues, and maybe a few props.

Of course, I would like the scenes to be visually interesting, and to make them want to know more about the movie in question. They should be well directed so that the body language can be easily read, or at least the context should be clear enough that the kids can understand what is going on.

I would also like to have a great variety of scenes from many genres (humour, drama, horror, etc...) and languages (Russian, English, Japanese ... anything but French, which is their mother tongue)...

So, as promised, I thought I'd give you an update on how it went.

I did not actually host the activity myself, but I had prepared it for a collegue of mine. I had compiled a dozen clips for her to choose from, and those were the three she selected :







I think it was a good selection. I love that she chose the Boyhood scene, because the kids were there to prepare themselves for secondary school. Sort of a one-week summer camp about growing up, if you will.
I had selected the Limits of Control bit, because its director Jim Jarmush has stated in interviews that he likes to watch foreign movies without subtitles, which is exactly what we were doing during this activity. It's a bit meta, but I like it, and I'm happy that my collegue chose it.

But enough about the preparation. The activity itself went very well. The kids picked up on many interresting details, and were really concentrated on body language. They were happy to recreate the dialogues in their language and to roleplay the scenes. It made them aware of their own body while playing, and also to the non-verbal cues of the characters on screen.

For the most part, they were not really far from the truth ... except when they were not! I'd like to give you an example :

After watching the Boyhood bit, the kids thought Mason was coming back from work. I don't know why, but they couldn't just believe he was coming home after a party. But when we showed the scene again, and after it was made clear that he was partying, they went on believing the party took place after his work, and to preserve the coherence of this interpretation, they all agreed that Mason was actually much older than he looked.

I find it fascinating how they struggled to maintain the coherence of their false interpretation by adding more and more details that they fiercly believed, instead of dropping the first erroneous assertion about going home from work. I think it's a very human thing to do, and as a teacher I am aware that learning always involves the difficult rupture of previously held beliefs...

The most eye opening thread I've ever read was on MoFo. It was posted by a teacher who was looking for movies to show his students. The thread title was: "Interesting scenes to teach body language and communication skills"

His first post described the teaching project. Then later he posted a follow up on how his students reacted.

1st post


Follow up post



I learned something important from those two post: that humans have a great need to facilitate their truths by creating their own narrative. They will defend that narrative even when logical arguments are presented. I think this self fulling narrative tendency is the root of most problems through out history. Just try arguing with someone who believes an extreme conspiracy theory, there's just no way to get through to them...because they need to believe it and so refuse to have an open mind. Which describes humanity in general.

Yeah, that’s fascinating and scary. Also kind of depressing, but ‘opening’ your mind is painful and kind of futile anyway, so I think you’re right, that does apply to humanity in general. Thanks for sharing this, eye-opening to me, too, for sure.

Look, obviously no amount of explaining is gonna make sense if it doesn't already. I can only rephrase or repeat: it's kind of like being called out. Think of it more like having a loud argument in public and then yelling "HEY BRAD. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS?" You presumably understand why someone might not like that. This is kind of like that, or at least can be like that. And yes, some people would prefer not to dive into an argument even if they're mentioned in passing during it.

Also, in some of these examples people are not being talked about, but are brought in anyway, in which case it should be even more obvious why they might object.

This is pretty digressive, though, if people want to discuss it let's do it elsewhere.

the fact that it reads that way to me indicates that it can, indeed, be interpreted that way.

Charles Manson interpreted the White Album as a commandment to start a race war.

....would be a certain tendency to apply an appeal to extremes.... I would suggest being more mindful of avoiding such ungenerous hyperbolic inferences. Just a consideration....

No comment.

That wasn't an inference. I'm not inferring that you're Charles Manson. I'm illustrating that "the fact that it reads that way to me indicates that it can, indeed, be interpreted that way" is a specious inference on your part.

Oh, well, keep the first bit about ‘[appeals] to extremes’.

Yeah, it's not that either. It's just an example that one's interpretation, being possible, does not give that interpretation any inherent validity in itself.


You've been inferring a lot of personal attacks in my posts that simply aren't evident in the text. Above, I pointed out one example of a less-than-generous inference you've made in the thread. I didn't imply a motive for this misunderstanding. Rather than acknowledge this mistake, you've continued to infer a personal attack being made against you. Maybe you'll also find a way to turn this explanation into a personal attack as well. It's not. It's clarifying that you've made some ungenerous inferences throughout the thread, which can be quoted and identified. It's evident in black and white text.