Films

This paper intends to examine Woody Allen’s films from the perspective ofIris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. By exploring the possible relationshipbetween humor and unselfing, we try to highlight the moral dilemmas of thecharacters and the audience’s ironic response to the use of humor. Focusingon three films (Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hanna and Her Sisters), it isargued that the films depict morally complex scenarios where humor has atherapeutic function as well as a morally ambivalent one. In Manhattan andAnnie Hall, Isaac and Alvy’s form of self-deprecating humor does come offas self-love but it falls short of unselfing. Their self-love is only in the serviceof ego, while on the other hand, Mickey in Hannah and Her Sisters, and Tracyin Manhattan show how considering the singularity of other people’sexperience will help one unself. Mickey is the only character in these threemovies that achieves unselfing through humor and the attendant detachment.If the audience is caught up in the ego trip of the characters, they will miss awhole other level of humor  

With the explosive expansion of digital content in the present media landscape where almost every aspect of our lives is intertwined with the online interconnected spaces, extramural English—otherwise known as informal learning of English—has gained remarkable popularity among the youth, most notably the digital native generation or the tech-savvy. Informal learning of English in general, and extramural English in particular, occur outside of classroom settings—be it online and in real life—through learner-initiated activities. Notable examples of such activities include, among other things, watching films and TV shows, listening to songs, or playing video games (Sundqvist, 2024). Indeed, (online) informal learning of English, as Lee and Lee (2021) and Jurkovič (2019) note, consists of self-directed activities in digital settings, often driven by personal interests and undertaken independently, without teacher supervision. Typically, users engage in these activities without the explicit intention of improving their L2 skills. On this ground, the legitimacy of researching informal contact with English is rooted in a confluence of various factors, including contemporary communication practices, the evolving nature of language learning and the proliferation of free and user-friendly online resources and technologies worldwide.