documentary film gunned down: the power of the documentary film gunned down: the power of the nra,...

Tom Robert – Lycée Municipal D'Adultes BACCALAUREAT ANGLAIS SESSION 2016 – LVA & LELE

• Documentary film Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA, NPR Frontline.

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BRUCE REED, Fmr. Chief of Staff, V.P. Biden: Newtown had the same impact on Barack Obama that Columbine had had on Bill Clinton. What happened in Newtown broke his heart. It was devastating for everybody.Pres. BARACK OBAMA: The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them— birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.BRUCE REED: You could see when he spoke just how sickened he was by the whole thing.Pres. BARACK OBAMA: As a country, we have been through this too many times. May God bless the memory of the victims, and in the words of scripture, heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds.NARRATOR: This time, Obama decided to try to do something.ED O’KEEFE: It was, like, “If this isn’t going to do it, then what is?” And so they knew they had to act quickly because you have to capture that concern and that attention that the issue’s getting.NARRATOR: He handed the job to Vice President Joe Biden, and told the staff to make something happen. (...)NARRATOR: This time, it was also a crisis for Wayne LaPierre.PAUL BARRETT, Bloomberg Businessweek: Within the inner circles of the NRA, the wives ofsenior NRA officials shedding tears and saying to their husbands, “Something has to happen.You have to do something different, honey.”NARRATOR: His advisers wanted him to lie low, but LaPierre had a very different idea. Expecting trouble, he hired personal security guards, and headed into Washington.ROBERT DRAPER, The New York Times Magazine: Without telling anyone, LaPierre himselfstaged a press conference in Washington, D.C.NARRATOR: The media gathered. Many expected a chastened and conciliatory LaPierre.ROBERT DRAPER: I think there was an assumption that, surely, he’s going to throw the gun safety advocates, and for that matter the Newtown parents, some kind of bone.NARRATOR: But LaPierre had something else in mind.WAYNE LaPIERRE: The only way — the only way — to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.ED O’KEEFE: And he almost immediately goes right back to what they usually say, which is that the answer to this is more guns.WAYNE LaPIERRE: What if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook elementary school last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security?Our children— we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless, and the monsters and the predators of the world know it and exploit it.NARRATOR: In Washington, they said the speech was a political disaster.NARRATOR: In New York City, LaPierre was called the craziest man on earth and a gun nut. But those who know LaPierre say the speech was no miscalculation.JOHN AQUILINO: Because the people that it resonated with gave more money, and this is what you need to do in order to keep that— that tough persona.PAUL BARRETT: And we’ve got to send the signal that this is not the time to compromise, that Obama is the enemy, and they want to take your guns away. Yes, it’s too bad about the kids, but we are not going to back down

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/gunned-down/


• Transcript from A brief History of the United States of America, acartoon by M. Moore extract from Bowling For Columbine, 2002.

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Now, it's time for a brief History of the United States of America... Hi, boys and girls! Ready toget started? Once upon a time, there were these people in Europe called 'pilgrims' and they were afraid ofbeing persecuted. So they all got in a boat and sailed to the New World where they wouldn't have to be scared ever again. (Oh, I'm so relaxed. I feel so much safer.) But as soon as they arrived, they were greeted by savages and they got scared all over again. (Injuns!) So they killed them all. Now, you'd think wiping out a race of people would calm them down, but no. Instead, they started getting frightened of each other. (Witch!) So they burned witches. In 1775 they started killing the British, so they could be free. And it worked. But they still didn't feel safe. So they passed a second amendment which said every white man could keep his gun (I loves my gun, loves my gun. ) which brings us to the genius idea ofslavery. You see, boys and girls, the white people back then were also afraid of doing any work. So they went to Africa, kidnapped thousands of black people, brought them back to America, andforced them to work very hard for no money. And I don't mean 'no money' like: (I work at Wal Mart and make no money.) I mean zero dollars. Nothing, nada, zip. Doing it that way made the USA the richest country in the world. So did having all that money and free help calm the white people down? No way. They got even more afraid. That's because after two hundred years of slavery, the black people now outnumbered the white people in many parts of the South. Well, you can pretty much guess what came next: the slaves started rebelling. There were uprisings and the old masters' heads got chopped off and when white people heard of this, they were freaking out and going(I want to live! Don't kill me, big black man. )Well, just in the nick of time came Samuel Colt, who, in 1836 invented the first weapon ever that could be fired over and over without having to reload. And all the settlers were like: Yee hah! But it was too late. The North soon won the Civil War and the slaves were free. Yup, they were free now to go chop all the old masters' heads off. And everybody was like: (Oh, no, we're gonna die.) But the freed slaves took no revenge. They just wanted to live in peace.But you couldn't convince the white people of this. So they formed the Ku Klux Klan and, in 1871 the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization, another group was founded: the National Rifle Association. Soon, politicians passed one of the first gun laws, making it illegal for any black person to own one. It was a great year for America, the KKK and the NRA. Of course, they had nothing to do with each other and this was just a coincidence. One group legally promoted responsible gun ownership and the other group shot and lynched black people. And that's the way it was all the way till 1955 when a black woman broke the law by refusing to move to the back of the bus. White people just couldn't believe it. (Huh? Why won't she move? What's going on?) Man, all Hell broke loose. Black people everywhere started demanding their rights. White people had a major, freaky feel meltdown and they were all like: (Run away! Run away!) And they did. They all ran fleeing to the suburbs, where it was allwhite and safe and clean. And they went out and bought a quarter of a billion guns. And put locks on their doors, alarms in their houses, and gates around the neighborhoods. And finally,they were all safe and secure and snug as a bug. And everyone lived happily ever after.


• Document personel: South Park Take on Gun Control Debate; CNN, January 2015.

• Image stills from South Park Season 19 Finale.


LVA- L'Idée de Progrès

• Extract from Technoslave by Eric Slate, adbuster.com.

Once, while I was riding on a crowded bus, the man sitting next to me threw his cell phoneout the window. (…) I was stunned. He looked at me, shrugged and looked away. I had noidea if it was his, if it was stolen or if he even knew what a cell phone was. But in oneseemingly careless motion, he managed to liberate himself from something that hascompletely consumed me.When my cell phone rings, it’s an incessant and incensed vibration that demands myimmediate attention. I curse its calling, but am unable to refuse. Whether I’m in the middleof a conversation, in the shower or sound asleep, the ringing causes such panic andexcitement that I feel forced to answer.(...)Technology is supposed to free us from the shackles / chains of work and give us moreleisure # work time. But it has proven to do the exact opposite. A 2005 Leger Marketingsurvey for the technology newspaper Computing Canada found that the majority of peoplefeel technology has meant more work and less # more time with the family. Whether it’scell phones, Blackberry’s, video games or email, we have become a culture enslaved byour electronics.As people fall further into their personal gadgets, scientists and psychologists are nowbeginning to classify technology dependency / addiction as a major health problem, puttingit in the same categories as alcoholism, gambling and drug addiction. The stress it createsis causing arthritis, migraines and ulcers. These physical attachments are causing weightgain / loss , back problems and bad skin. But most troubling, it is having a powerful impacton our personal development. It seems the more ‘connected’ we are, the more detachedwe become.Humans are being trapped # free in a high-tech cycle that is freezing their minds awayfrom living in the moment, looking at life and taking in what’s around them.(...) As I stare / look blankly into a computer screen for hours on end, sometimes I wonder ifthere’s a secret message hidden in this technological maze / labyrinth. But the more Istare, the more I keep coming up with the same answer: I am trapped.


• BBC video, Can We Really Become Addicted to Technology?, April 2014.


• Mike Lukovich, The Twitterer.


LELE - Rencontre avec l'Autre

• Extract from HG Wells War of the Worlds, 1898In the opening chapter of this novel, the narrator reflects on the possibility of a Martian invasion and men's failure to believe it would be possible. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world wasbeing watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal ashis own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they werescrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope mightscrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinitecomplacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in theirassurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under themicroscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sourcesof human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them asimpossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of thosedeparted days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars,perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet acrossthe gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts thatperish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes,and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century camethe great disillusionment. (…) Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end ofthe nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed therefar, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that sinceMars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoterfrom the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning butnearer its end. (…) And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alienand lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man alreadyadmits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is thebelief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is stillcrowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carrywarfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation aftergeneration, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utterdestruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanishedbison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their humanlikeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged byEuropean immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as tocomplain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?



• Extract from HG Wells, The Time Machine, 1895In this narrative, a Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to A.D. 802,701, where he meets the Elois who embody a vision of men inthe future.

In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He

came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any

sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him

and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these

exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed me. It came into my head,

oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and,

pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched

my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to

make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was

something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence -- a graceful gentleness, a

certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging

the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them

when I saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was

not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of

the machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my

pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication.

And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their

Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp

end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their

ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and

the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and -- this may seem egotism

on my part -- I was surprised even that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have

expected in them.



• Document personnel: Orson Welles, 'The Panic Broadcast', 1938.

Shortly after 8 p.m. on the Halloween Eve, 1938, the voice of a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin reporting strange explosions taking place on the planet Mars, followed minutes later by a report that Martians had landed in the tiny town of Grovers Mill,New Jersey. Although most listeners understood that the program was a radio drama, the next day's headlines reported that thousands of others plunged into panic, convinced that America was under a deadly Martian attack. It turned out to be H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds, performed by 23-year-old Orson Welles.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/worlds/


LELE – Le Personnage et ses AvatarsExtract from the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by R. L. Stevenson, 1886.

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`Did you ever remark that door?' he asked; and when his companion had replied in theaffirmative, Ìt is connected in my mind,' added he, `with a very odd story.'Ìndeed' said Mr Utterson, with a slight change of voice, ànd what was that?'`Well, it was' this way,' returned Mr Enfield: Ì was coming home from some place at the endof the world, about three o'clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part oftown where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, and all thefolks asleep - street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession, and all as empty as achurch - till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins tolong for the sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who wasstumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who wasrunning as hard as she was able down a cross-street. Well, sir, the two ran into one anothernaturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the mantrampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothingto hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. Igave a view halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to wherethere was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and madeno resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running.(…) We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this, as should makehis name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, weundertook that' he should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot, wewere keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies. I neversaw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of blacksneering coolness - frightened too, I could see that - but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan.


LELE – Extract from Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897.


DC Comics cover, Two-Face: Twice as Evil, Twice as Dangerous!, 1971.


LISTES ANGLAIS LVA / LELE

Lieux et Formes de Pouvoir• Documentary film Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA, NPR Frontline.• Transcript from A brief History of the United States of America, a cartoon by M.

Moore extract from Bowling For Columbine, 2002.• Document personel: South Park Take on Gun Control Debate; CNN, January

LVA- L'Idée de Progrès • Extract from Technoslave by Eric Slate, adbuster.com.• BBC video, Can We Really Become Addicted to Technology?, April 2014. • Mike Lukovich, The Twitterer.

LELE - Rencontre avec l'Autre• Extract from HG Wells, The Time Machine, 1895• Extract from HG Wells War of the Worlds, 1898• Document personnel: Orson Welles, 'The Panic Broadcast', 1938. /

PBS Documentary.

• Extract from the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by R. L. Stevenson, 1886.• Extract from Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897.• Document personnel: DC Comics cover, Two-Face: Twice as Evil, Twice as

Dangerous!, 1971.

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