Intercultural Communication through Movies: Cultural Analysis Using

Fumihiro, Takase

Article

Journal of English Teaching through Movies and Media 2001;2(2):155-161.
Published online December 30, 2001.

Intercultural Communication through Movies: Cultural Analysis Using "The Matrix"

Abstract

Movies are a veritable treasure box, which have marvelous magical power to entertain people and give them various kinds of dreams and fantasies. Seen from an English educational perspective, the "box" provides English teachers with wonderful hints in teaching for the better usages that they'd never otherwise expect. The VHS, DVD, Caption decoder and the other electric devices also make it much easier to make use of movies for English education. Linguistic acquisition, intercultural communication, and the like are passed on to students through movies. This paper is intended to show the use of movies for intercultural communication, focusing on the clear connection between the names of characters in the movie "The Matrix" and cultural analysis. "The Matrix" is taken up for this paper because it is full of abundant cultural elements through use of Judeo-Christian motif, Greek mythical reference, the Alice in Wonderland trail and names of pertinent characters. I am sure that this paper can help illustrate movies as being very useful in teaching intercultural communication as well as in linguistic acquisition.