Media Literacy II Evolution Literature and Pop Culture

Part I

Directions: Click on the link below and listen to the original tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. As you are listen you may want to take notes to remember characters names or specific events of the story. Next answer the following questions about the story.

Click here to listen to the original story

1. Who is the main hero of the story, and how did this hero save Ali Baba?

2. What is the theme or moral of the story?

3. What is ironic or unusal about the main hero of this story. Remember that this is an Islamic story and from that tradition.

Part II

Directions: Click on the links below and what the cartoon clip of the Ali Baba story? Anwer the following questions after watching the clip.

Click here to watch clip.

1. What is the lesson or theme of the cartoon?

2. What are some of the major differences between the cartoon plot and the original story?

3. Why do you think the themes of the stories are so different?

4. What literary American character created by John Steinbeck is embodied in the dim-witted character of
Hasan, and is the cartoon culturally insensitive to Middle-Eastern culture, why or why not?

5. What is ironic about the use of the magic lamp in this particular story, and how does its use reflect the
cartoonist’s extreme use of poetic license and the audience’s familiarity with this type of tale?

6. How does the cartoonist use dialogue and music and sound effects to add to the humor of the cartoon?
(Include specific examples)

7. How does the creation of the cartoon version of the story demonstrate how literature changes when it is presented in a new format? Does the video/cartoon format help people learn more about the originally story or confuse them? What is being lost by the transition from text to video? What is being gained by this same transition?