Civic education SCORES WHICH MADE HISTORY 14 Read the text and answer the questions. It can be said that much of the classic American cinema of the 1940s was made by European immigrants. Los Angeles in 1942 wasn t too different from Rick s caf in Casablanca. It was the place where Jewish exiles from all over Europe gathered, practised their English, enjoyed the hospitality and the companionship, and dreamt 1. Who is a refugee? 2. What contexts does the word apply to? of happier lives. And if the plot of Casablanca argues the case for helping refugees, the film s very existence is a strong argument, too. After all, if it weren t for the refugees in Hollywood, then it couldn t have produced its most beloved classic. Adapted from: https://www.goldderby.com/article/2022/ casablanca-80/ 3. Why do you think refugees leave their country? 15 Another song related to the same historical period dealing with fighting for freedom against dictatorship is The Partisan by Leonard Cohen. Go online, listen to the song, and answer the questions. 1. How does the song capture the essence of the wartime experience? 2. What is the main message conveyed by the song? 3. What is particular about this song from a linguistic point of view? 16 O R D Go online and listen to the song Strange Fruit, which deals with horrible human rights violations in the USA. Then, complete the following passage on its story. W S silence play award lyrics bestselling music century performances The Story behind the Song Abel Meeropol was a Jewish teacher. He was disturbed by racism in America and wrote the poem Bitter Fruit after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of two Black teens in Indiana in 1930. The poem was published in the journal in 1937. Then he decided to turn the poem into 1. ........................................... and set it to 2. ............................................ The song first came to Billie Holiday s attention when she was working at New York s first integrated nightclub, Caf Society in Greenwich Village. Holiday hesitated at first to sing it because she didn t want to politicise her 3. ........................................... and was (rightfully) worried about being targeted because of them. But the positive audience responses and frequent requests for Strange Fruit soon prompted Holiday to close out every performance with the song. Ahead of time, the waiters stopped serving so there was a deathly 4. ........................................... in the room, then a spotlight highlighted Holiday s face 188 Creative arts and she began to sing. Despite strong resistance, especially from radio stations in the South who refused to 5. ........................................... Strange Fruit, the song rose in the charts, eventually selling 1 million copies to become the 6. ........................................... record of Holiday s career. It was named Song of the 7. ........................................... by Time in 1999 and was included in the National Recording Registry on January 27, 2003. Holiday was also posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement 8. ........................................... in 1987 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2021 Lee Daniels directed a movie on the song called The United States vs Billie Holiday. Adapted from: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ the-story-behind-billie-holidays-strange-fruit/17738/