Call Me American

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“What Messages Do Movies Send?”

This activity encourages students to consider and evaluate how the United States is presented in movies and how fiction compares with people’s actual experiences, such as Abdi’s when he arrives in the US.

Abdi quickly becomes fascinated with the United States after watching American films at the cinema in his neighborhood. He references movies like The Terminator and Titanic to demonstrate his familiarity with American culture. For him, it becomes an escape, a way of imagining a life outside of Somalia.

Select 3 movies that you think would provide an accurate representation of American life to someone who is very unfamiliar with the United States. Under each title on your list, write 2-3 sentences summarizing what someone would learn about the US from the movie.

As a class, list your movies on the board. Then discuss the following questions:

1. If these were the movies Abdi saw, what would he learn about the United States?

2. Are there any themes that emerge across the films?

3. Who is represented in these films? Are they inclusive, featuring people of different races and ethnicities, people of all genders and sexual orientations, etc.?

4. Is there anything important left out from these movies?

5. Do you think these movies would have prepared Abdi for life in the United States? Why or why not?

6. How is the America that Abdi experiences different from the one he imagines? Could he ever have been fully prepared?

After discussion as a class, write a journal-style paragraph on your personal takeaways with the activity. What new ideas that you hadn’t considered came across in discussion? Considering the class list of movie suggestions, do you strongly agree or disagree with any of the choices? Explain.

Teaching Suggestion: It may be beneficial to encourage students to think beyond the first movies that come to mind, especially if all or most are from recent years, and to dig into earlier decades of cinema history or into films by smaller, independent production companies for some representative examples.

Differentiation Suggestion: For students who would benefit from advance preparation, you might have students submit their movie titles anonymously and provide additional time for them to think through the discussion questions and write short responses before the larger class convenes.