Musa Awais

FOA Reflection

My FOA was about the movie “The Dictator” by Larry Charles, and how the movie targeted individuals within ethnic groups (Arab dictators in this case; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein), and how it targeted American people’s views about themselves and other ethnic groups (Arabs, Muslims, etc.). All of this was connected to language through the verbal language (of characters), body language (of characters), language of the movie (scenes) and satire (humour, exaggeration, and irony). The main learning outcome I met through completing this is analyzing elements such as theme and the ethical stance or moral values of texts; specifically related to Sacha Baron Cohen (main actor). During my analysis, I asked myself several questions regarding the message of the actor’s role and what his intentions were; these questions helped me understand the role of the actor more clearly and his intentions, which were to represent the different dictators and American people’s views about themselves and others. I made sure to meet this learning outcome by paying attention to the language of the actor (both verbal language and body language); by doing so I was able to understand his message and intentions more clearly. Overall I believe my presentation was quite successful in its format, a debate; my partners focused on the other side of the argument, thus talking about how the movie targeted entire ethnic groups through race, religion, and gender, and I talked about how the movie only targeted individuals within ethnic groups (Arab dictators within the Arab race) as opposed to entire ethnic groups. This made the feel of the presentation smooth, as the points were clearly introduced in an easy to follow fashion; one side introduced by my partners, and the other side by me. Looking at the criteria/rubric of the presentation, I think I was well organized in terms of structure (following the debate properly), and another strength of mine would be knowledge and understanding of the text. In my opinion, I showed a good understanding of the text (movie); giving clear examples to support my arguments from the movie, and connecting those to real life examples (the dictators) which further showed my understanding. However, in regards to language, I was able to connect the text well to the different forms of language (verbal language and body language) but this could have been improved if I focused more on the language of the movie; I did bring up a few examples of language of the movie by explaining the scenes of the movie at times, but I should have concentrated more on this aspect of language as my text was a movie (the connection could have been stronger that way). This specific text type, a movie, was chosen by me, because I am more of a visual learner. I could have used a book or any other written text that

involved some visuals, but a movie gives the most visuals in my experience. By analyzing a movie, I was able to make out with greater accuracy what was going on (as opposed to a book), which strengthened my argument; this way I was able to pick out examples more easily. In addition, by observing a movie, connections to language were made easier for me, as I could actually hear the verbal language being used and see the body language of the characters. The main movie conventions I addressed through my examples were setting and scenes when talking about the language of the movie, and characters when talking about their verbal and body language. In the end, I learned a lot from this activity, such as how to better analyze a text (in this case a movie; The Dictator), and how to connect language to the text (verbal language, body language, language of the movie, etc.). Therefore, this will help me in similar future assignments (for example, IOC) through the improved text analyzing skills I gained from this FOA.