Since a dawn of time, learning a language has involved confronting your opinions to others. That means that you use expressions like, I beg to differ, I disagree, we must agree to disagree, and debating is central to learning a language, a new one, especially a foreign language. So that's why the first theme is this syllabus of Terminal, is debating about art.
All the forms of debates that art can represent or let's say trigger, okay, cause, provoke, that's it. So we're going to focus on debating in this first video about the different themes that you're going to study in LLCER classes. Okay, so all the videos are going to be structured the same way and we start with six keys to succeed. Three necessary steps to be able to set your arguments on the D-Day.
for the oral examinations. Here when you deal with debauching you have six letters to succeed. A and the first thing that springs to mind is the writer in his time. Okay social novel or the movement of social realism. B commitment and resistance okay which is definitely developed through art.
Transgression, derision and humour okay are also very important. Be careful because usually humor is very difficult to decipher for students and when you laugh after reading a sentence or watching a scene from a movie, it's important to be able to understand why. Okay, D for censoring or censored art.
Okay, is art being censored? That means being limited in its... development or is art censoring something?
Is art reducing the power of something? So E for rhetorical skills in famous speeches or debates. Okay, when we take Nixon and JFK's debate during the presidential elections in 1960, we understand that it was a turning point for Kennedy in winning the elections and it's important to keep it in mind.
So F for political debates, okay, including war literature? Are war poets denouncing something or just showing the atrocity of the war? Okay, so these six keys could be developed or could be illustrated by different works of art. And this is what I tried to show you in this next slide. It leads us to this part, what I call the unforgettable.
Ideas for your portfolios, of course. So, for example, you could illustrate social novels with The Enormous Radio by John Cheever or on Ken Loach's movies. This director is very famous. We could think about I, Daniel Blake, for example, which is very representative of the movement of social realism showing the problems of nowadays society or...
of a given society. More Flanders is in the same fashion showing the atrocity of poverty in Victorian England when this mother is stealing to feed her children. William Harguth, all the paintings and engravings by William Harguth are also representative of it.
B, of course, we couldn't miss George Orwell's Animal Farm, okay. I could also mention, because we shouldn't forget that African literature is also part, of course, of Commonwealth literature, but also, to a certain extent, to a larger extent, it also fits in, let's say, British literature. So, Chichua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, is about colonisation in Africa.
V.S. Naples, In a Free State. same way, in the same way, is dealing with colonization in the West Indies. Everything that is deeply rooted in Elvis Presley's music is also important.
Okay, he was playing black music, singing black music, in a very segregated society. So it's also interesting to see to what extent he managed to make the two parts bond in the end. Iain Foster, A Passage to India, of course. See... okay so mr bean charlie chaplin beckett waiting for godot okay the absurd in british literature the equivalent of unesco in french literature d for lady chatelet's lover okay very controversial novel that created and it sparked a lot of debate in in the society of the time because it was um making sex accessible by anyone in this very novel, which was a bit shocking for some, for a few people at the time.
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Teenage Guys, is the same, in the same fashion is a way to trigger debate in the society because it's seen from the point of view of a teenager like you, almost your age. So I've decided to insist on two phenomenon, phenomena, sorry.
So should I say, je reprends. I've decided to focus on two phenomena at that time. Don't forget a phenomenon, two phenomena, okay? So on two phenomena at that time, banned books week, which is a regular moment in the United States, and during which we can focus on banned books and wonder why they were banned, banned, forbidden, okay? And trigger warnings during exhibitions at the beginning, is it a way to brainwash people that are about to see the exhibition?
Or in another way, is it a way to just warn them, okay, about what they are about to see? And at some point, we can wonder at how much it influences the way they consider the works of art. Okay, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, especially in the preface, is giving a new definition of the role of art. Okay, especially in triggering debates.
Trigger, to trigger is like to shoot with a gun. To trigger something is to provoke it, to provoke it, sorry. So, Danza Washington, The Great Debaters, very good movie in which we see the art of debating and we see how much people can train and practice before being able to debate properly.
Obama, Yes We Can, of course, this famous pitch. Mandela, I'm Prepared. to die two very famous speeches that fit in that part about famous speeches and debates okay i mentioned it in the introduction you could definitely add to this part the debate between kennedy and nixon during the presidential elections in the united states in the in the 19 in 1960. last but not least um remond carver preservation okay war literature uh liam o flaherty the sniper And Graham Greene, the tenth man.
We could also mention The Red Badge of Courage, for example, by Stephen Crane. Another very famous novel assuring the atrocity of the war. Or why not Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.
Same, let's say, meaning and atmosphere. Okay, so... To each theme of the curriculum, you have corresponding classics in the list that is compulsory. I mean, teachers have to choose classics among that very list to study with you in class. So when I considered the list, the list that is used at the moment, we could definitely include The Handmaid's Tale, okay, to debatting.
and you will see it in the video about it. We could also focus on Death of a Salesman okay by Arthur Miller, another criticism of the society of his time. Of course we mentioned it in in the corresponding video 12 Angry Men and you can watch the video to get more details and the God of Small Things as well which is another classic that fits in the theme of debating about India and this caste system especially.
Okay, so iconic works that you could also add to your portfolio because before thinking about a precise classic, your portfolio revolves around a theme and I think this is what should help you find the issue you're going to try and develop and answer, I mean, in your portfolio. So, different works. I very much like this one. I like this one very much, should I say.
When I Hit You, the portrait of a writer as a young wife. It's a reference to a very famous novel, and I let you find the source. And it's really interesting to see how much this female writer in India, which is already an exploit, managed to show the atrocity of being a wife in this society.
Then we could mention, of course, pop art, which is very interesting. Gulliver's Travels, which has nothing to do with real travels, but which is actually, yes, a way to analyse the society of the time. And then we could mention the 27th Club, the 27th, sorry, Club.
All these artists that died at 27, including Amy Winehouse, for example. and different rock artists as well. So Janis Joplin, for example.
We can mention Prince EA, a very famous poetry slam artist, poetry slam, someone who is also called a spoken word artist, and he's very famous for that, and I've already mentioned Elvis Presley. In the same fashion as Prince EA, another Indian woman who lives in the UK at the moment, but who is very famous for her work, very famous for speaking her mind in her text and creating debates and provoking debates is rupee core she's famous for example for talking about her periods in her text or different taboo subjects that might make people uncomfortable in other ways that's it so these works are to be considered so it's nothing exhaustive i would like you to be able to investigate now and find other works of your own that echo your way of considering the theme, but keeping all these characteristics and landmarks in mind. Okay, so thank you for watching and see you next time.