COMM 141
Films of Persuasion: Social and Political Advocacy in Mass Society
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Films often provide commentary about public issues. Examination of how films communicate to large audiences about history, society, and politics. Critical evaluation of these works to understand power and limitations of films as social persuasion. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - I really don't understand all of the love for this professor. He seemed more interested in bragging about what a morally upstanding person he is than actually teaching us. He just came off so high and mighty and I found his arrogance really off putting, even though I almost always agreed with what he said. I found his many of lectures to be pretty useless, and it was often hard to focus because he would lecture for the entire 2 hours and 50 minutes other than a short break. He loved to repeat the same line over and over: "I hate racism! I hate sexism! I hate homophobia!" which I thought was cool of him at first but weird after he did it so many times, like he thought it was a hot take somehow. As for the class itself, you have to watch a movie every week, and there are 2 6-7 page papers and a short final. The final is super easy, I didn't study for it at all. I found a lot of the films he chose to be pretty boring or just odd choices in general with all the options available to him. We also had to use Packpack every week which was really tedious and the grading criteria was not clear at all. I also found section to be unhelpful since the class was already discussion-based, but attendance was required. My TA Micah would assign additional films for us to watch which was kind of unfair because the other TA never did for his students. Overall, this class was a pretty easy A but I really did not enjoy it, and I would not recommend Von Blum at all.
Fall 2019 - I really don't understand all of the love for this professor. He seemed more interested in bragging about what a morally upstanding person he is than actually teaching us. He just came off so high and mighty and I found his arrogance really off putting, even though I almost always agreed with what he said. I found his many of lectures to be pretty useless, and it was often hard to focus because he would lecture for the entire 2 hours and 50 minutes other than a short break. He loved to repeat the same line over and over: "I hate racism! I hate sexism! I hate homophobia!" which I thought was cool of him at first but weird after he did it so many times, like he thought it was a hot take somehow. As for the class itself, you have to watch a movie every week, and there are 2 6-7 page papers and a short final. The final is super easy, I didn't study for it at all. I found a lot of the films he chose to be pretty boring or just odd choices in general with all the options available to him. We also had to use Packpack every week which was really tedious and the grading criteria was not clear at all. I also found section to be unhelpful since the class was already discussion-based, but attendance was required. My TA Micah would assign additional films for us to watch which was kind of unfair because the other TA never did for his students. Overall, this class was a pretty easy A but I really did not enjoy it, and I would not recommend Von Blum at all.
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