The Tale of Desperaux

As I watched The Tale of Desperaux, i realized that there were a lot of interpretation involved even when watching cartoons. Some of the basic questions include - What kind of features were given to the cartoon characters who were good/bad? What is the environment surrounding the characters? Why are they presented as such?

Hence, by selecting this cartoon movie, students will be able to their informal knowledge on cartoons or cartoon characters, which most of them would have experience with. Teacher can select a cartooon that students have watched have an informal discussion on the features or factors that tells them whether a character is good or evil. (A simple cartoon example would be those superhero ones, where the villain and hero is clear, with distinct attributes associated to each character respectively.)

Students will then watch portions of this movie, where they will be exposed to different lives - the lives of humans, mice and rats with certain characteristics and way of presenting these lives. As they watch, they will be asked to note down the clues in how the images were presented - the differences and similarities.
Students will share their observation with the class and teacher will elaborate on the points that were given.
Teacher may guide students towards looking at the colour contrast/ brightness and darkness. There is different degrees of darkness and lightness for the different lives portrayed in the movie.

Students will then be asked to critically think about why the different lives were portrayed with different colour and brightness intesity. They will then be asked to think of the implications of changing the colour contrast for the different lives projected, for e.g. what if human lives was in a darker shade or tone compared to the lives of the rats.

The above activity can be carried out for books and visuals as well - negative or bad characters are usually darker compared to those positive and good characters. Siggapore curriculum encourages to be literate in a broad range of texts, including visual texts, and in making meaning of these texts, students need to be aware of the abovementioned systematic knowledge and to critically think about the implications of such features.