youthworkblog.co.uk: Dodge Ball

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Dodge Ball

Dodge ball is a film about two rival gyms. One is owned by the token "bad guy", White Goodman, and the other by the "good guy", Peter La Fleur. The "bad guy" is trying to close down the "good guys" gym...the only way they can be saved is by raising 50k to pay off their debts. Anyway, they come up with this idea to win the 50k prize for this dodge ball competition. There are lots of scenes in this film that could be used in a discussion, here are some specifics:

Scene 1 (from the start - 1 min 50 sec) - you could use this scene to explore different ideas about body image. It's an advert for White Goodman's gym and is full of slim "pretty people"
Scene 8 (21 min - 23 min 40 sec) - in this scene they are watching some old film that explains dodge ball rules. It has some good non politically correct quotes. For example, when picking your team the advice is "remember to pick the bigger stronger kids...". You could use this to look at popularity etc.
This involves four scenes...scene 9 (25 min 21 sec - 28 min 40 sec) then skip ahead to scenes 11-13 (33 min - 38 min 10 sec). The team play their first dodge ball game and it's fair to say that they are rubbish. A veteran player, Patches, offers to coach them. Basically he shows them the ropes and the "disciplines" of the sport. You could use this to talk about spiritual disciplines...draw some parallels.