The idea of progress and myths and heroes

I. Present the notion you have to deal with:

o I’m going to talk about the notions of the Idea of Progress and Myths and heroes.

First of all, I’d like to give a definition of The Idea of Progress. The idea of progress

can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change - a technical,

scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place.

A Myth is a story about gods or heroes, it can be a popular belief or a tradition or a

false notion. A hero can be a mythological figure, a person who is admired for his or

her achievements, a superhero or maybe a role model or an icon.

o In relation to the notion, the subject of my presentation will be “Breaking Out” which

is the discriminations we face every day. I chose this subject because it is the first

theme we have studied this year and it is well related to the notion.

We may wonder if the notion of difference is compatible with equality and no more

discrimination.

o In order to illustrate the notions, I have chosen 3 documents.

II. Documents

o Video “A treatable condition ?”

To begin with, we will focus on the first document which is a video called “A treatable

condition ?”. It deals with the homosexuality and the controversy around it.

The video is divided into two parts. The first part shows a group of 700 persons who are

attending a conference on the subject of “being gay”. The message of the speakers is quite

disturbing because they are presenting the fact of “being gay” as an illness that needs to be

cured. Gay people are seen as last and weak with a difficult past.

The purpose of the video of the conference was to make people aware that being gay might

be a sort of dangerous illness that can be cured by redemption through the Bible. The goal

was also to teach children to avoid it.

The conference speakers appear as dangers because they do not really know what they are

talking about. They make the gay community appear as animals

In the second part of the video, several people are opposed to each other in a dialogue of

controversy about homosexuality:

- One father is defending his gay son (quoting the Bible : god does not reject his

children)

- In opposition, one woman pointed out the weakness and unstableness of gay

people to explain their state

 This video shows a real discrimination about gay people. It’s is really controversial. It

stresses the fact that gay people do not correspond to the “social norm”. It’s a good example

of the fight against this discrimination that we can saw between the father who is defending

the case of his son and believe in the idea of progress against the women who still believe

that being gay is an illness.

o Cartoon

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