Lycée Pyrène/ année scolaire 2023-2024/ LLCER Anglais Terminale/ Madame Nathalie

Fauré

Thématique 2 : Expression et Construction de Soi

Axe 1, Expression des Emotions

(When Feelings and Social Expectations Clash)

Step 7: Axe 1, Expression des Emotions (When Feelings and Social
Expectations Clash) (Victorian Era)

Semaine 6/ Dossier travaillé en classe

1/ Extrait, Paul Auster, Moon Palace, (1989) Chapitre 3, Marco Stanley Fogg’s confession to
the Army Doctor, a case of Counterculture. Marco Stanley Fogg appears as the alien, the
landless in his own city, pages 76-78 (analyse d’un roman)

2/ The Cure, Boys don’t Cry, 1979 (the lyrics)

3/ Sigourney Weaver about Alien Films: what drew Sigourney Weaver to the character of
Ellen Ripley (audio)

Key notions to tackle the dossier:

Key words:

-Adopting a deviant lifestyle = clashing with social expectations

-Education and Stiff upper lip attitude (back to Victorian period) = clashing with Feelings

-Expressing different emotions and Remapping Gender = clashing with traditions

Contextualise the documents:

1/ Extrait, Moon Palace, Marco Stanley Fogg’s confession to the Army Doctor, a case of
Counterculture/ Fogg, the alien, the landless in his own city, pages 76-78 (analyse d’un roman)

Guidelines for the lyrics:

-Pick out passages showing that Marco is confessing to the Army doctor.

-Pick out passages showing that Marco’s emotions are too violent and too confused to be told

-Conclude about Marco’s personality. Why does he embody the perfect “alien”?

-How does this passage from Moon Palace echoes the Counterculture?

2/ The Cure, Boys don’t Cry, 1979 (the lyrics)

The Cure is an English band with Robert Smith as the lead singer. Their music blends several genres:
Gothic rock, post-punk, new wave… They are famous for their dreamy and poetic lyrics. Their video
clips reveal a strange and provocative atmosphere: in the song Lullaby, a human spider is eats up the
terrified singer. In Close to Me, the whole band are locked up in a tiny cupboard.
Guidelines for the lyrics:

-Map out the lexical field of emotions in the song

-Explain why the singer expresses emotion by laughing instead of crying

-list the verbs used in the conditional and deduce the singer’s feelings for the person the song is
written for

-Pick out expressions that show how the singer feels about his past behaviour. Imagine his past
actions.

3/ Sigourney Weaver about Alien Films: what drew Sigourney Weaver to the character of Ellen
Ripley (audio)

Sigourney Weaver played Ellen Ripley in the sci-fi horror saga films Alien. She was a lieutenant of a
spaceship vessel. So, she embodied a man’s role. All her crew was slaughtered/ massacred by an
alien, a monster. At the time when the film was released in the 1980s, the image of the working
independent woman was emerging which shattered/ shivered/ pulled down (briser) the traditional
patriarchal model. the man was no longer the bread-winner.

Guidelines for the video:

-Pick out elements that define Ellen Ripley’s character.

-Explain what Sigourney Weaver criticises about how female characters expressed their emotions in
films at the time. Show how it was different for Ripley. Think on all the things about Ellen Ripley that
show that this film character was ahead of her time.

Vocabulary tool for the novel and the song:

Nouns: femi’ninity; ‘gender role; misunder’standing

Adjectives: stereotypical; unconventional; ‘daring = au’dacious; unex’pected; self-po’ssessed =

‘confident

Verbs and expressions:

to challenge = to defy ; to take a stance (expression) = prendre position

to blur the lines (expression) = brouiller les lignes

to put on a brave face

to choke back tears = not to show your emotions

to ful’fil/ meet society’s expectations

to be stone-‘faced = not show any e’motion

The role of the press, of the media (to analyse document 3):

to investigate = to e’xamine a problem; to provide information; to sensitive public opinion

to disclose/ to leak/ to break a story; to shed light on a scandal = faire la lumière sur
to comment on current events; to cover a war; to share newsworthy information;

to use reliable sources; to give unbiased = unprejudiced information = sans parti pris (adj)

Document 1: Paul Auster, Moon Palace, 1989 (chapitre 3), pp. 76-78
Document 2: The Cure, Boys don’t Cry, 1979 (the lyrics)