One of the reasons I started CommmTopics was a comment from a faculty member who wanted students to recognize that communication issues are all around them: in their personal lives, for sure, but also in the news and in events and activities in which the communication angle might not be obvious. (Except, perhaps, to someone who's studying communication.)
I was reminded of that recently when two students came to me for research help on topics that happen to be the subject of current movies.
One student was looking at the role of the press in getting Queen Elizabeth to comment publicly on the death of Princess Diana. (Subject of "The Queen.") Another was looking at the Dixie Chicks and how they handled the backlash in reaction to Natalie Maines' comments critical of President Bush. (Subject of the documentary "Shut Up & Sing.")
Both were in Communication Criticism, but the topics could well have been used in Crisis Communication, Mass Communication Theory, or any one of several other Comm courses.
Neither student was studying the movie itself, but I thought these were good examples of how communication issues are all around us.
Can anyone think of other current films with communication angles?
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1 comment:
Inarritu's "Babel" had more to say to me about how we communicate, or just as often fail to, on a global scale than any movie I've seen in a long time ... To be warned, though, it does feature frank nudity in one of the storylines, so I'm not sure you could recommend it to students
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