Naked Among Wolves Essay

4-27-16 Thinking About Books and Final Looks A big mantra of my childhood was “You can’t watch the movie until you’ve read the book first.” My childhood literacy devoted mother may have used this in an unnecessary attempt to add the ever growing stacks of books I plowed through, or, more likely, because she believes that you need to set up a story in your mind before you watch someone else’s interpretation. I’ve been thinking about this philosophy in relation to the two films I’ve watched this week. These musings combined with those on the course questions, about the avenues opens or opportunities created by teaching with film, have caused me to think. Both of the film I watched for this week, Everything is Illuminated and Naked Among Wolves are based on books. The first was based on a 2002 novel by an American

People can be disgusted, dismayed, enraged, etc. about a source and still be engaged, and therefore ready to discuss and learn. If a source is so upsetting or plot-less that is causes the viewer to disengage entirely then I would argue it becomes considerably less impactful as a learning tool. I think films (enjoyable or not) at least usually do a good job of engaging students, though some films we watched this semester, I would argue, lacked a central story to do so. However, films often provide narrative stories which are so central to engaging with human connection and learning. If we assume both this, and the fact that films can pack more story per hour in as compared to other types of sources, we find a key rationale for using films. Classrooms run on a limited time budget and this parameter cannot be ignored, so perhaps sometimes (sorry Mom), it is a good idea to watch the movie without reading the