Cyrano de Bergerac: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
| Author: | Jeana Rock |
|---|---|
| Summary: | This is a seven-block-day unit using media activities to teach the French play, Cyrano de Bergerac. It is not intended to cover the whole play. Instead, it will give several lessons using the play to teach media literacy. In reality, these lessons could be adapted to many other literary texts. Also a teacher should not attempt to use all of these lessons in one unit. The intent is to show the language arts teacher ways to incorporate media education into the literature classroom. NCTE has widened the definition of text to include: “…informational and academic texts, such as textbooks, lab manuals, papers, and reference materials; student-produced texts, including peer writing, journals, and student newspapers and literary magazines; technological resources, such as computer software, computer networks, databases, CD-ROMs, and laser disks; mass media and other visual texts, including films, selected television programs, magazines, and newspapers; socially significant oral and written texts, such as speeches, radio and television broadcasts, political documents, editorials, and advertisements; and everyday texts, such as letters, bulletin board notices, memos, and signs” (NCTE 11). |
| Subject: | |
| Objective: | Students will be able to examine and question modern notions of beauty by undergoing media analyses on topics inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac. |
| Main Concepts: | Beauty and culture, beauty and science, beauty and philosophy. |
| Curricular Goals: | Students will ask and answer the following essential questions: • What is beauty? How is it defined scientifically, philosophically, and culturally? • When should beauty matter? • How does our appearance affect how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us? • Where so we get our definition of beauty? |
Lesson Plans
Using computers, the students will explore websites that explore cultural, aesthetic, and scientific definitions of beauty. They will then formulate their own definition of what is beautiful.
By viewing music videos, advertisements, and websites, students will examine the construction of beauty in modern media.
Students will investigate the construction of male beauty in American media by examining magazines and other advertisements, and by discussing articles addressing the subject.
Students will learn how to adapt a scene from a play into a scene for a film. It is assumed that the students already understand how the codes of film work.
Students will examine songs with unrequited love as a theme as a gateway to writing poems and understanding the play more fully.
Students will create MySpace accounts for fictional characters as a form of character analysis.
Projects
Author's Notes:
Rationale Historically, literature has been taught in the language arts classroom with written text-bound instruction. Reading quizzes, writing assignments, classroom discussions and tests have been the driving methods of teaching the content. These strategies may have worked for past generations, but they no longer appeal nor engage the media-savvy generation of today. With easy access to iPods, cell phones, Internet social networking sites, email, and video games, doing traditional approaches to literature study is quite frankly boring to middle and high school students. If we, indeed, intend to teach centuries-old literature to the generation raised in 2008, we must update our methods to be relevant to the age. Using media and technology is the simple answer. Although using these media can be daunting for the older teacher (most students have a better grasp of technologies), old dogs must learn new tricks to stay current with the changing educational pedagogy. Enduring Understanding Although every culture has standards of beauty, it is subjective. Even people, who are considered beautiful by a large population, don’t fit the cultural standard. People’s character is often judged by outward attractiveness. In American society outward beauty is highly prized, but impossible to achieve. People who are obsessed with being beautiful often go to extremes to become so. Homeliness is considered bad, even by small children who will choose homely men over handsome ones as criminals.