Students will analyze their communication artifact for their oral interpretation project. The artifact is an excerpt from the movie "ANTZ". The artifact to analyze in the paper is provided here....The

Hayley Witham

COMM 333

Prof. Romo

California Baptist University

I have chosen a piece that is somewhat meaningful to my childhood and growing up feeling a little “abandoned”. The piece I have chosen for my oral interpretation project is an excerpt from the movie “Antz”. This artifact begins with “Z,” a worker ant and main character played by Woody Allen, talking to his therapist about living a lack-luster life as a worker. It is easy for us, as humans, to relate to animals because we tend to empathize with them so a film such as “Antz”, was what I felt to be a great artifact because I believed that I could interpret the emotion in this piece accurately. Ants are noted for their work-obsessed mentality and this artifact portrays how we can feel the hamster wheel of life more than we wish and how we want to jump off of it. While most of "Antz" is pure fun, centering on a neurotic hero amazingly close to the characters Allen has played in his own live-action movies, the directors acknowledge a political undertone in its depiction of a society filled with job-obsessed conformists at the mercy of self-centered rulers and a military tyrant who could destroy them all (Sterritt 1998). This is my way of telling a story about how to find your individuality among the rest of the world and how to sort through life’s complications by talking to someone and letting them listen. I believe this piece will give the audience a heightened experience because of the emotion in this piece. Due to the social interaction in this artifact, framing will be necessary when performing. Framing is the method by which we organize social interactions and interpret their meaning to those situations (Romo, 2019). This will be extremely useful in my oral interpretation of “Antz” for a more effective interpretation of the message.

References

Romo, S. (Director). (2017, January 12). [Video file]. In YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=846&v=rdBW0z_rTAk
Sterritt, D. (1998, October 02). Learning Life Lessons From a Colony of 'Antz'. Retrieved January 18, 2019, from https://www.csmonitor.com/1998/1002/100298.feat.feat.4.html