Module A – Language, Culture and Identity – One Night the Moon

Resource Description

Module A – Language, Culture and Identity on the related text: One Night the Moon

PAPER II

Section I — Module A: Language, Identity and Culture
Key terms/points:

• Language has the power to both reflect and shape individual and collective identity, how responses to written, spoken, audio and visual texts can shape their self-perception
• Language can be used to affirm, ignore, reveal, challenge or disrupt prevailing assumptions and beliefs about themselves, individuals and cultural groups
• Textual forms and conventions are used to communicate information, ideas, values and attitudes which inform and influence perceptions of ourselves and other people and various cultural perspectives
• Experiment with language and form to compose imaginative texts that explore representations of identity and culture

Theme: Racism and prejudice

Technique: A high angle shot

Analysis:

• Opening scene, where Albert’s daughter waves to emily, and emily waves back, only to have her mother force her hand down
• A high angle shot of Albert’s family is used to construct an image of someone insubstantial and inferior in comparison to that of Jim’s family who is an embodiment of superiority as indicated by society
• Also reveals the vulnerability of Albert’s family and their constant subjection to discrimination
• Reveals the learned behaviour of indirect forms of intolerance and racial discrimination from adults to children, and the challenging reality of unconscious doings of racism, ultimately addressed through the language form of camera shots
• Cultural perspectives: Entertains the notions that people of colour face discrimination and shadowed in societies

Technique: Mise-en-scene

Analysis:

• Mise-en-scene, another technique, utilises figure movement and expression in order to efficiently convey racism and prejudice
• The physical performances of characters like rose, uses the force of hand on emily to communicate the indifferences of the Indigenous people to their family and the supremacy their family upholds
• Mise-en-scene functions in order to express rose’ prejudicial thoughts and the influence she has on emily’s cognitive behaviour by denying her the right to do things as simple as wave, as an outcome of hostility towards Indigenous culture
• Cultural perspectives: Racial prejudice comes from learned behaviour and is not inherent, thus emitting the perspective that mannerisms can be toxic, especially those with negative connotations