Cours d'anglais pendant le confinement
23 Mars 2020
An important part of making the past present is commemorating. Watch this video and tell me what you understand about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3jGYHRQleY
(correction and next exercice in two days)
Voici le script de la vidéo:
Oise-Aisne Cemetery. Script.
Oise-Aisne American Cemetery is located 70 miles east of Paris. It is the second largest American World War I military cemetery in Europe. Many of the more than 6,000 Americans buried here lost their lives in the defense of the French capital.
This began as a temporary cemetery in the Summer of 1918 during the French-American counter-offensive in the Aisne-Marne region. The Romanesque memorial is shaped like an amphitheater with walls of pink sandstone. At its center is a large rectangular altar made of polished marble. Above the altar, an American doughboy stands at attention.
The memorial also contains a map room and a small chapel. Engraved on its walls are the names of the missing. Bordering the malls are Oriental plane trees and beds of roses. Among the graves are the remains of Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, a noted American poet remembered for his poem Trees. He was killed by a German sniper only 800 yards from the cemetery.
dans votre compte-rendu, il faut citer les chiffres, mais c'est encore mieux si vous êtes capables de convertir les mesures pour qu'elles soient compréhensibles par un Français. "70 miles", par exemple, cela fait 112.63km. Evidemment, il ne faut pas donner un chiffre aussi précis. "Une bonne centaine" fait bien l'affaire.
Pour mémoire, 1 mile = 1.609km
1 yard = 0.9144m
Lisez ces deux courts textes et renseignez-vous sur le traitement des vétérans de la guerre du Vietnam (le film Born on the 4th of July, avec Tom Cruise, en est une bonne illustration). Ensuite, répondez aux questions en anglais.
Today, the duty to remember the past and commemorate is considered a quasi-sacred obligation for any decent society and any decent person of conscience. Not to remember, it is commonly argued, is to betray the victims of past horrors and comfort their victimizers. It is also assumed, in George Santayana’s celebrated phrase, that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. But is this right? Are there not times when the only way to break the cycle of hatred and resentment created in the past is to forget it, or, even if it cannot be forgotten publicly, to remain silent about it publicly? If the answer to these questions is even a qualified yes, then commemoration and collective memory need to be thought about very differently.
https://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/headlines-events/and-what-if-there-were-duty-forget.html
Commemorating the Unwon War: On Not Remembering Vietnam.
Vietnam affords us a rare opportunity to study the symbolic practices by which war is brought to closure in U.S. society, precisely because of its delay. Here we find a community in dilemma: How does a society commemorate its failures? What reassurances can be found in confronting the implications of those failures? The tradition of U.S. public discourse in the wake of war is founded upon the premises of clarity of purpose and success; when such presumptions must account for division, equivocation, and failure, and when losing is among the greatest of sins, commemoration seems somehow inappropriate. Closure became impractical – if not impossible – for political institutions and public alike, when faced with the obligation to commemorate Vietnam and its veterans. When traditions called for acts of closure, the United States chose not to remember.
The end of war brings with it the obligation to remember. (…)
Peter Ehrenhaus, Journal of Communication, Winter 1989.
1) Should we commemorate all the wars?
What we should commemorate is the end of a war, not necessarily the war itself. It is easier to commemorate a victory than a defeat, but commemorating victories is an obstacle to making piece with the vanquished. They may feel humiliated.
2) What may happen if we choose to ignore commemorations?
It is often argued that forgetting the mistakes of the past means we will repeat them. Not only do veterans feel ignored if we don't, but this lack of recognition may deter people from joining the army and securing our future.
3) What could be the best way to commemorate the past?
Partying and rejoicing may be better than just observing silence. Remembering the dead is important, but we should celebrate what they fought for and treasured most: life. Otherwise, their death seems to be useless.
Of course, I expect each answer to be developed and argumented.
Voici enfin un derneir texte sur les commémorations. Répondez aux questions et essayez ensuite de répondre à la question d'expression.
To most, the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a place for quiet reflection, but for others, it’s the perfect Instagram opportunity.
It’s become a problem, and the prevalence of those images moved Israeli author Shahak Shapira to create Yolocaust, a satirical project that takes photos of people flippantly posing, and replaces the backgrounds with the horrific realities of the Holocaust.
Shapira took the pictures from various social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, and Grindr. The project is intended to explore “our commemorative culture by combining selfies from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with footage from Nazi extermination camps.”
Upon arriving to the Yolocaust website, people will see the original pictures. But as they hover their mouse over the picture, it’ll transform the background into something out of the actual Holocaust. Shapira decided to leave in the number of likes and reactions that these social media posts received.
The number of visitors to the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe continues to rise ever year, with about 475,000 people passing through in 2015. Shapira notes that a lot of people take “goofy” pictures, or do things like jumping and skating on the concrete slabs. There aren’t specific guidelines on what sorts of pictures to take while at the memorial, but it goes without saying that a place like this should be treated with a certain level of respect.
While it’s unfortunate that people turn visiting such an important landmark into an opportunity to get some social media attention, it’s not all that surprising and happens all too often, even with other sensitive places. In 2014, an Alabama teen faced intense criticism after tweeting a selfie at the Auschwitz concentration camp with a smiley face emoji.
Aushwitz also had to ask people to stop visiting simply to catch Pokemon during the Pokemon Go craze.
There’s also no shortage of pictures like the ones that Shapira used for Yolocaust. As of Thursday morning, the top post at the Instagram location for the memorial was a woman posing in a red dress. Her photo’s caption is simply the flamenco dancer emoji and has gotten 1,465 likes.
This isn’t the first project to blast those unaware enough to put a picture of themselves on their dating profile. Back in 2013, the website “Grindr remembers the holocaust” made a similar point by rounding up all the dudes who were using pictures at the memorial in hopes of chatting with some guys.
And for those that were unlucky enough to be put on the website, they can email undouche.me@yolocaust.de to ask for the removal of their picture. Maybe they’ll think twice next time they hope to get an Instagram out of visiting a memorial.
https://www.inverse.com/article/26621-yolocaust-shahak-shapira-holocaust-memorial-pictures
Questions:
1) What is the problem with many visitors to this site?
2) Why is that site famous?
3) How did the administrators decide to "fight" the problem?
4) Find in the text the words for:
-shamelessly and visibly
-historical site
-fashion
-aligning
5) Can you see the irony behind the mail address in the end?
EXPRESSION: Why do many people disregard the past? How could the past be made more attractive?
1) Many visitors consider the site as a purely touristic one and take selfies where they smile and have fun.
2) The site is run by the Berlin Memorial, but the pictures were taken in Auschwitz. This is the main concentration camp of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were exterminated and cremated in Auschwitz.
3) The administrators posted pictures of the site today, but you move your mouse, pictures from WWII appear, with people dying in horrible conditions. The sharp contrast with the selfies is supposed to sahme people who took those selfies.
4)
-shamelessly and visibly: flippantly
-historical site: memorial
-fashion: craze
-aligning: rounding up
5) To get your picture removed, the address you must use is "undouchme", which clearly means you are "a douchbag". People realize what they did was stupid.
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