Lesson Plan based on “The Truman Show”

This film is the (fictitious) story of a thirty-year-old man whose entire life has been broadcast to a global audience as a TV show. As Truman catches on to the made-for-television nature of his entire world, the film addresses issues surrounding the production of “reality TV” and advertising, responsibility and ethics, and the construction and perception of reality itself.

Objectives:

Getting students to think critically about:

·         effects of society on the individual.

·         our concept of reality.

·         what forces shape our mentality and how.

·         life transcendentalism.

·         responsibility for our own lives and others’.

·         determination and freedom.

Instructional Procedure(s):

1.      Warm-up activity (before viewing film)

Ask students to write a short essay or poem about their reality or what is real to them.

2.     Unpack the symbolism of various Truman Show characters.

Analyze characters (names, placement) and other symbolic devices used by the filmmakers.

Below there are some possible interpretations for symbolism in the film, but there are more possibilities that can also be valid as long as the students can provide a logical explanation for them.

Adam and Jesus: Truman as "True Man" in Paradise. Entire story can be seen as a parallel to the Garden of Eden story. He can also stand for Jesus, who knows of a higher world and is crucified on the boat, but in this case redeeming himself.

Alternate Reality: the "door" which leads to another reality toward end of movie.

Baptism or death to the old life and re-birth to a new one: since he must go through the water to reach "real" life. Note that the water is always there, calling to him in the film, but his fear holds him back. In his final surrender to the water, he finds life.

Courage: Truman confronts his fear of water (chaos/death) to escape his scripted "paradise."

The Great Hunger Lottery

THE GREAT HUNGER LOTTERY. How Banking Speculation
Causes Food Crisis.

Report by World Development Movement

Take the highest stakes, riskiest economic behaviour ever devised, and marry it to the most fundamental basic need of humankind, and you have the subject of this report.

Over the past decade, the world’s most powerful financial institutions have developed ever more elaborate ways to package, re-package and trade a range of financial contracts known as derivatives. A derivative is not based on an exchange of tangible assets such as goods or money, but rather is a financial contract with a value linked to the expected future price movements of the underlying asset. Derivative contracts are traded on a growing number of underlying assets, from share prices, to mortgages, bonds, commodity prices, foreign exchange rates, and even index of prices.

Derivatives trading has been one of the most lucrative parts of the financial industry, but it is the increasingly complex, opaque and disconnected nature of these and similar products that ultimately triggered the collapse of the banks and the worst financial crisis in human history.

Of course, the financial crisis has been an economic disaster of seismic proportions for millions around the world, plunging many countries into recession causing millions to be thrown out of work, soaring public debts and cuts in vital public services.

But while betting on the value of sub-prime mortgages or foreign currency values undoubtedly leads to disastrous consequences, there is another area where the speculative behaviour of the world’s largest banks and hedge funds represents a threat to the very survival of people: food commodities.

In The great hunger lottery, World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world. This in turn, has led to food prices becoming unaffordable for low-income families around the world, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports.

In the report we describe how the current situation came to pass, the risks of another speculation induced food crisis, and what specifically can be done by policymakers here in the UK as well as in the US and EU to tackle the problem.

But at its heart, The great hunger lottery carries a very straightforward message: allowing gambling on hunger in financial markets is dangerous, immoral and indefensible. And it needs to be stopped before any more people suffer to satisfy the greed of the banks.

Follow this link to read the full report: THE GREAT HUNGER LOTTERY

A Mine in the Dumpster

13.12.2011 - Humanjournalism

In Guatemala, dozens of people try to make a living in one of the worst jobs in the world. These people look for valuable objects in the foul waters that flow from the bottom of a 300 m deep cliff, located just a few blocks away from the Presidential Palace.

Dozens of people look for heavy metals in the foul waters at the bottom of Guatemala City’s biggest dumpster, known as “the mine”. Hundreds of informal workers dig every day through the filth looking for valuable objects to sell. The group is known as “the miners” and they expose themselves to the extreme risk of landslides. But many of them make about 150 Quetzals ($20) a day, almost double the country’s minimum wage. 

At the bottom of this cliff sits the junction of unique circumstances: on one side there is the boundary of the city’s general dumpster, with mountains of waste that never stop to grow, overflow, tumble down and advance gaining space.

On the other, a tunnel exit that spews out a great flow of water from the city’s sewer system. 

Gandhi Speaks of Christmas...

Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth: God for Christians, a prophet for other religions, and a reference of goodness and wisdom for humanity.

Gandhi Speaks of Christmas...

... Jesus preached a new life. He called men to repentance... For though we (sing), "All glory to God on High and on the earth be peace," there seems to be today neither glory to God nor peace on earth. As long as it remains a hunger still unsatisfied...

When, therefore, one wishes "A Happy Christmas" without the meaning behind it, it becomes nothing more than an empty formula. And unless one wishes for peace for all life, one cannot wish for peace for oneself. It is a self-evident axiom, like the axioms of Euclid, that one cannot have peace unless there is in one an intense longing for peace all around.

And so, as the miraculous birth is an eternal event, so is the Cross an eternal event in this stormy life. Therefore, we dare not think of birth without death on the cross. Living Christ means a living Cross, without it life is a living death. Jesus lived and died in vain if he did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal Law of Love.

It is my firm opinion that (the West) today represents not the spirit of God or Christianity... It is really worshipping Mammon. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.' Thus really spoke Jesus Christ. Here you have an eternal rule of life...

Christ died on the Cross with a crown of thorns on his head defying the might of a whole empire. The message of Jesus, as I understand it, is contained in his Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole. This teaching was non-retaliation, or non-resistance to evil.

The virtues of mercy, non-violence, love and truth in any man can be truly tested only when they are pitted against ruthlessness, violence, hate and untruth... by devoting the season to a real moral stocktaking and emphasizing consecration to the service of mankind for which Jesus lived and died on the Cross.