Videos/DVDs in MWSU Library collection that work well in a composition course
NOTE: these are some suggestions that have proven effective in the context of a rhetoric/research
course. Any sort of movie or visual text will work in the context of a lesson where you are asking
students to analyze things like audience, context purpose. Questions you can ask students to analyze in
relation to any visual text include:
1) Who is the intended audience for the text? How do you know?
2) How does the writer/director use ethos, pathos, logos?
3) How do issues like camera angles, use of color, use of tight shots or wide angles also impact the
message off the text?
4) What is the argument for the visual text? What is the author/director trying to convince his/her
target audience of?
Do You Speak American? This is an excellent 3 DVD set that chronicles the language differences across
the nation and is organized according to geography. The section on African American English in
California and “California Slang” works well for analysis of language and thinking about language for
different contexts and purposes.
Sicko is Michael Moore’s documentary on Health Care in America. You can show any part of this and talk
about how Moore uses ethos, pathos, and logos in his argument. How does he document his sources
within the context of a visual text? What is his argument? Who is his audience?
Bowling for Columbine is Michel Moore’s documentary on gun control in American. You can show any
part of this and talk about how Moore uses ethos, pathos, and logos in his argument. How does he
document his sources within the context of a visual text? What is his argument? Who is his audience?
Crash Students tend to hook right into this popular film about race/class stereotypes in America. You
can also couple the viewing with some scholarly articles critiquing the film. The film, written adirected
by a white man, was supposed to challenge people to think about racial stereotypes. But does the
author end up re-inscribing the very stereotypes he attempts to disrupt?
China’s Lost Girls A great National Geographic documentary on the “one child” policy in China and the
preference for boys that has lead to a population imbalance.
Tough Guise Jackson Katz creates a very compelling documentary about how masculinity has changed in
the past 40 years. He focuses on contemporary models of masculinity as “violent, oppressive, dominant”
and how that is damaging not only to individual boys and men, but the culture.
Killing Us Softly is Jean Kilbourne’s documentary on the damaging impact of how women are
represented in the advertising industry. You can couple this with an essay by Kilbourne and ask students
to analyze their differences based (one a visual text and one a written text). You can also pair this with
the youtube clip of “Dove Campaign for Beauty” and have students discuss the arguments in each.
A Class Divided is a classic documentary on race in America. It shows the original study done by a school
teacher in Iowa who divided her class into groups of Brown Eyes and Blue Eyes in order to make a point
about how quickly and effortlessly we internalize arbitrary biases and stereotypes.
Boy I Am A fascinating documentary about Transgendered/Transsexual young people (the film profiles
three of varying race/class demographics, but all of them female-to-male in transition). The film covers a
lot of bases (gender theory, theories of class and race, feminist theories of identity and body image).
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is a fabulous documentary about rap music from an African
American male’s perspective. Byron Hurt, a football star turned scholar and activist, interviews rap
artists and struggles with the big issues of violence (black on black), misogyny, homophobia, and drugs
that are features of popular rap music. He talks to rappers and theorists. It is a 60 minute documentary,
so works well within a class period. Because it is an African American male talking about music that he
loves (but also sees problems with), his argument has more currency with many of my male students.
Slumdog Millionaire is a independent film that gained much popularity. It is the story of rags to riches (a
child living in the slums of Bombay who eventually wins the lottery). When coupling this with news
paper articles on the stars of the film (actually children from the slums who returned to the slums even
after the huge success of the film) there are interesting discussions that arise about class v. caste, the
“rags to riches” story we love to believe in, and the ethics of the film.
Milk, a Hollywood version of the Harvey Milk story, does a solid job of showing not only how far the gay
rights movement has come since the 1970s (when Harvey Milk was tragically assassinated), but how far
we have still yet to go. Sean Penn gives a believable performance. This coupled with articles written by
or about Harvey Milk will make an excellent unit on argument for political action.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. This will get your students talking about something beyond the prochoice/pro-life issues of abortion. The film is the story (in real time) of a young woman who is pregnant
and trying to seek a back alley abortion in a country where abortion is illegal. It is bound to complicate
the argument of abortion for students and an excellent way to talk about how binary arguments
(pro/con) ignore the complexities of any issue.
Ma Vie En Rose is a French movie about a transgendered child. The story is whimsical, but also a
fabulous commentary on gender. The film squarely disrupts the American belief that trans people are
tortured souls or had screwed up childhoods. In this film, the child is certain in hir gender identity. It is
the family who struggles with that identity. The family members take turns being angry and supportive,
a realistic portrayal of the complexities of family life and parenting.
The Namesake is a film based on the book by the same title by Jhumpa Lahiri. I have had great success in
teaching the book in class (analyzing issues of colonialism, immigration, and identity) and then watching
the film and talking about how the text was written. The film audience is very different from the book
audience and therefore the argument shifts rather dramatically.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices is a documentary that lays out the labor exploitation and sweat
shop conditions of both the people who produce goods for Wal-Mart and for the employees of the
worlds largest corporation. The argument articulates six or seven reasons why Wal-Mart is a corrupt
corporation and students will be engaged by the argument, but also by identifying how uses of ethos,
pathos, and logos are employed.
Ironed Jawed Angels is an HBO film that does a phenomenal job of telling the story of women’s suffrage
in America. Hillary Swank stars as one of the feminists who bring the Fourteenth Amendment to a vote
in 1920. The film portrays the passion, the commitment, the hunger strikes, and the horrors of the
movement in a way that students really connect to. Most say they had no idea what feminists went
through to make sure women had a the right to vote.
Malcolm X is Spike Lee’s story of the great African American activist. Starring Denzel Washington, this is
a compelling counter-argument to the popular myth that X was an angry activist who hated whites. I
have taught this in conjunction with his autobiography. I also like to teach this during the first part of
spring semester to talk about why we have a Martin Luther King day (King = the good African American
in the dominant mythology and X = the bad Black man). This film disrupts that myth and is a good sight
for critically thinking about cultural narratives of race and racism.
Four Little Girls is another Spike Lee movie that works well in class. The film is based on the true story of
the four little girls who were killed in a church basement, a racist act performed at the height of the civil
rights movement. When a bomb tears through the basement of a black Baptist church on a peaceful fall
morning, it takes the lives of four young girls; Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and
Addie Mae Collins. This racially motivated crime, taking place at a time when the civil rights movement is
burning with a new flame, could have doused that flame forever. Instead it fuels a nation's outrage and
brings Birmingham, Alabama to the forefront of America's concern.