So, year 9s, in 'The Truman Show',
we have been discussing this underlying theme,
which is, "We accept the reality
"with which we are presented."
Now, who's very quickly going to explain what that means?
Shannon, do you want to give it a go?
It's that when you see something
and everyone says that it's real or it's true,
you start to believe it as well.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Year 9s, would you agree...
I'm Kerryn Dodson and I'm an English teacher here at Emmaus College.
I primarily teach English,
but I also teach humanities and some of our other new subjects as well
and I'm also in charge of our very small English department
here at Year 9.
So we're going to look at how overt -
and what we mean by overt is very explicit, very obvious -
control is established over Truman in 'The Truman Show'
and we're going to look at how that happens in our world as well.
Anything else?
Because there's something else that's being fed to him,
another belief that he's being asked to accept.
Yes, Taylor.
When his best friend tells him
that he doesn't want to leave where he is
because it's the best place in the world.
Absolutely. And doesn't that link to that as well?
Nobody is poor if they have...
ALL: Friends.
OK, so is it fair to say the media was overtly controlling Truman?
STUDENTS: Yes.
Absolutely.
So now let's talk about the Soweto riots.
Who's going to just very shortly summarise for me
what the Soweto riots were
and why you think we're talking about them today?
The black people in South Africa weren't getting treated properly...
KERRYN: I'm from South Africa
and I presented an example of my own reality,
but what I would like the students to do
is transfer this idea to their reality as well.
The way I'm going to do that is I'm going to show them a song
which they would be very familiar with
and which contains a lot of values and messages
that they might not be particularly aware of.
What I'm going to do now
is I'm going to show you a music video, OK?
It's one that you would probably be familiar with -
David Guetta's 'Sexy Chick'.
Now, year 9s, who would it be aimed at?
Teenagers who are into dance/electro/house music.
And where would it be shown? Where would you see it?
On TV, on music channels and YouTube and stuff.
OK. Yes.
I think the song is kind of trying to give in to, "There's a hot girl,"
and then boys would be more into watching it if it was a hot girl
that if it was an average chick.
So you have led us into what it's about just a little bit.
I'm going to give you a document that looks like this.
All I want you to do is identify
four messages, four ideas, four values
that this song is sending out to...?
-STUDENTS: Us. -To you.
So quickly arrange yourselves into groups of three to four.
Turn your desks around.
KERRYN: Well, what I was happy about
was that quite a few of the groups were mixed
and I was encouraging students to start saying,
"Well, girls, how do you feel
"about the way that you're depicted in this video?" for example...
They have to be pretty, they have to be skinny,
they have to have good looks...
-Get it? -Yeah.
KERRYN: ..and to get the boys thinking about those issues as well.
Music. Concerts. Mosh pits.
Having that dialogue between the different genders
was opening up ideas
which perhaps they hadn't been thinking about before.
What? They did! It's a fact. Did you not see it?
So what we've done is we've watched the film
and I have divided the learning program into different themes.
So we've looked at things like ethics,
we've looked at control, we've looked at freedom,
we've looked at a perfect world
and we've done a range of activities
in which they've discussed these issues as they relate to the film
and then also as they relate to their own lives.
Have we achieved that?
-STUDENTS: Yes. -Fabulous.