A2 Literature - The Bluest Eye audio-visual presentations

Click here to watch some audio-visual presentations on The Bluest Eye made by some of my students last year. I will be asking you to do something similar after Christmas connecting our 3 texts...

AS Language & Lit: Spoken Word Framework

This is a visual framework for analysing spoken language which I found on another teacher's blog (here) - I think it's really good.

A2 Comms & Culture: Your slavery footprint

Find out what your slavery footprint is by taking this survey: click here.

The next step is to consider your own cultural map: list your top 10 cultural influences (e.g. type of music, clothes, favourite food, sport) and find out where they orginate from. Then I would like you to explain in your own words what you have discovered about the global influences on your own cultural identity: click here to read how a student last year reflected on this.

A2 Comms - Immigration

Watch this to get a sense  of the impact of Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech, and to hear an extract from the speech itself...

AS Lang & Lit - work set in place of Thursday's lesson

I have training on Thursday so I am setting work in place of the lesson. Today we talked about the clip from The Wire: how it uses features of spoken language yet is clearly crafted dialogue. I have asked you to write 500 words about The Wire's construction of dialogue in the clip (answering the questions in the previous blog post), based on what we talked about today. Please email me the work by the end of the week - cdignum@rutc.ac.uk - to get your mark in the register. See you next Tuesday ...

AS Language & Literature - Spoken Language

Which features of spoken language can you identify in the following clip from the TV drama series 'The Wire'?

How can you tell that this is crafted speech rather than spontaneous speech?

A2 Comms: Edward Said & Orientalism

Watch this clip to see Edward Said explain what influenced him to write 'Orientalism' and the key ideas within it:

AS Comms - the power of body language

This is a 'Ted talk' about the power of body language (NVC) in influencing ourselves as well as others.

A2 Literature - The Bluest Eye

Here is a Feminist reading of The Bluest Eye: click here.

A2 Comms - Colonial attitudes

This advert for Pear's Soap is a great demonstration of colonial attitudes:

Thanks to Jennifer, Zoe & Dara for finding it...

AS Comms - how accents are perceived

Here's an article about how different accents are perceived as signifying different levels of power to different people: click here.

A2 Lit: The Bluest Eye - Imitation of Life

In The Bluest Eye, Maureen mentions a film which she believes features a girl called Pecola: "Anyway, her name was Pecola too. She was so pretty. When it comes back, I'm going to see it again. My mother has seen it four times."

You can watch the opening of the film Maureen refers to (Imitation of Life, 1934) below. It's particularly worth watching to the end of this clip so that you can see how black people were represented in films at this time:

IB - Death of a Salesman & Miller's presentation of time

Here are two interesting responses from our class in relation to the question:
What do you find interesting about the presentation of time so far in the play?

Response 1:
'Arthur Miller uses time as a dramatic device, to tell the story of Willy's past - but also his story in the present. Willy's lack of sense of time transports the audience, as well as the characters, to the most significant parts of Willy's life. I see this as a way of developing Willy's character, through watching the events that make Willy who he is today. However, I also see the change in time as a message for society: that those who have now entered a phase in their life that results in the deterioration of the mind, once lived active lives, full of work, children and other worries that fill the average person's head at some stage. Miller wants the audience to reconsider the attitude towards those who are deemed no longer of any use to society or the economy by presenting an image of what each member of the audience may experience. Time also separates the Willy that Linda once fell in love with and married from the one she now subtly takes care of, without damaging his pride. Time, again, separates the person that Willy dreamed of becoming from the one he has turned out to be...'

Response 2:
'The presence of time is felt in Death of a Salesman right from Miller's very first stage direction:'A melody is heard, played upon a flute.' Though the audience may not realise it at the time, by the end of the play they will almost definitely have come to recognise the sound of the flute as a symbol of Willy Loman's past, associated with his father the craftsman and their life on the road. When analysing Willy as a character, we can note this use of music before our first introduction to him as an indication that the past holds a huge sway over him; it could be said that it is the first thing people notice about him, just as the audience hears the music before the dialogue begins.

As the action on stage unfolds, we can see that when Miller stated that the past should be 'placed on stage' for the protagonist to 'grapple' with, he meant literally rather than figuratively. The use of dramatic stream of consciousness, in which the chronology of the drama follows a pattern identical to that which occurs in Willy's mind, means that the characters and relationships from the salesman's past are just as real as those in the present. In fact, the only way that we can come to differentiate between people past and present is the extent to which they observe the imaginary wall lines (those in the present do, and others do not). Otherwise, past characters are equally, or perhaps even more vivid, as they tend to occupy Willy's attention.

Thus it soon becomes clear to the audience that Willy is a man very much dominated by his past, and the 'burden' Miller describes is the physical presence of characters he continues to live amongst and engage with.'

A2 Comms - Colonialism & Kenya

This a good clip to watch to help us really understand how the processes of Colonialism started, in this case in Kenya:

Kenya and its colonial past is in the news at the moment because of a court case that is being brought against the British government by three Kenyans tortured under colonial rule in the 1950s. You can read about the case by clicking here. And - you can find out more about the Mau Mau rebellion which led to this torture by watching this.

A2 Lit: free indirect speech

This week in class we noticed that parts of The Bluest Eye are written using free indirect speech (or free indirect discourse). I have found a decent page on the internet, which explains this style of narration well: click here to read it.

Death of a Salesman & Expressionism

Here's a good presentation on slideshare, which contextualises Death of a Salesman as an expressionistic drama: click here to access it.

A2 Literature - another interesting blog

Here's another interesting blog entry on The Bluest Eye - this time from a Feminist perspective: click here to read.

AS Comms - applying Goffman to Facebook (extension work)

Here is an essay (warning: it's quite long!) about how we might apply Goffman to Facebook. It's a challenging read but worth having a go at, especially if you are aiming for a top grade. Click here to read it.

A2 Literature - The Bluest Eye

I came across this blog post on The Bluest Eye, which some of you might find useful: click here to read it.

A2 Comms - Marxist analysis of fairy tales

Click here to read a Marxist analysis of fairy tales and click here to read a Marxist fairy tale! Both are worth a  read and will help develop your understanding of Marxism further.