Tags: capitalism, corporations, knowledge, marx/marxism, media, political economy, theory, censorship, fox, ideology, monsanto, news, 00 to 05 mins,  06 to 10 mins
Year: 2003; 1999
Length: 10:20; 4:17
Access: YouTube (clip from The Corporation)
                YouTube (clip from The Insider)

Summary: This pair of excerpts exposes corporate censorship of the news via a documentary (The Corporation) and through a Hollywood film (The Insider). In recent years, the news media has become increasingly concentrated and controlled by corporations. The implications of this is that corporations are responsible to shareholders and must earn high profits. This concentration of corporate news has led to conflicts of interests when a news source wants to air a story that could hurt their advertisers or their shareholders. The first clip from The Corporation shows this process. In 1997, investigative journalists Steve Wilson and Jane Akre of Fox News, had prepared a story about Monsanto and the negative impacts of their bovine growth hormones (e.g. their milk was potentially carcinogenic to humans). Monsanto was an advertiser for the Fox News channel, and the company threatened to both sue Fox and pull their ads. Because this would have cost Fox News significant advertising revenues, Fox decided to edit the news story so Monsanto would not pull their ads. The clip describes the process of 83 rewrites that either removed or minimized any negative effects of the hormone, until the journalists were ultimately fired and the story never aired. The second clip, from The Insider, features Al Pacino arguing how a story at 60 Minutes was being censored because of financial interests. The film is based on a true story about a whistle blower who worked for Big Tobacco and CBS was hesitant to air the interview on 60 Minutes because it might jeopardize the sale of CBS to Westinghouse Electric. Both clips illustrate the political economy of news media and Marx's concept of ideology, in which ideas and knowledge reflect the interest of the ruling class. Marx argues that the class having the means of material production (e.g. technology, money, labor, tools, etc.) also has control over the means of intellectual production (newspapers, schools, books, broadcast media, etc). One can see Marx’s claim come to life with the influence that Monsanto had over Fox News. Corporate interests shaped what news was aired, and a Fox executive later told the journalists "the news is what we say it is"; when the journalists used the courts to fight back, a Florida appeals court ruled that falsifying the news is not against the law. In both cases, financial interests shaped what constituted the news, and how it was presented--ultimately shaping knowledge in the interest of the dominant class.

Submitted By: Avery Winston and Paul Dean

Tags: culture, discourse/language, inequality, knowledge, media, race/ethnicity, colonialism, neocolonialism, postcolonialism, privilege, rule of colonial difference, white savior industrial complex, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 3:45
Access: YouTube

Summary: The broad claim that certain groups have power over others—that racism, sexism, and classism exist—is hardly controversial. Yet mention privilege and tempers flare. But privilege is simply the other side of the power coin. Just as some racial groups are systematically oppressed and marginalized, other racial groups are systematically privileged, and just as forms of oppression vary, so too do forms of privilege. For instance, a white privilege might simply be living in a world where one can count on being paid more on average than Blacks or Latinos. While pay gaps may be easily quantified, forms of privilege that are less amenable to statistical analysis exist as well. Consider the male privilege of being immersed in a media environment that consistently depicts men as important and powerful. Or consider the white privilege of living in a media environment that assures audiences that white heroes are nearly always capable of transcending adversity. The above clip is from "Africa for Norway" and parodies the narrative typically deployed by Western charity organizations in their campaigns to secure funds and drum up support. It draws attention to a kind of Western privilege, a privilege both forged from and bound up with the experience of colonialism, the application of the rule of colonial difference (i.e., representing the 'other' as inferior and radically different), and Western racism. Whether it is the Kony 2012 campaign or the 1985 song "We Are the World," the story being peddled to publics is of a compassionate West saving the 'other' from unbearable poverty or some other grave injustice. Author Teju Cole famously named this dominant cultural narrative and the practices it calls forth the white savior industrial complex. While the components of the narrative can be spotted in the viral videos of these NGOs, Cole points out that it can also be found in countless Hollywood films, such as Out of Africa and The Constant Gardener. Time and again, moviegoers and YouTubers are asked to consider a rather narrowly defined hero. He's a compassionate white westerner, who stands apart in his uncommon ability to recognize the basic humanity of the many black and brown foreigners he has encountered while on his journey through an unfamiliar land; and against the advice of civilization, he heroically commits himself to the mission of saving these people from their plight. Although the perception that it is a criticism against charity will likely be a point of contention with viewers, the real critique, which is aimed at neocolonialism and the privileges it supports is incisive. It is a peculiar kind of Western privilege to be able to wade through the media pool each day, soaked by the various incarnations of this narrative, a day full of subtle reminders of one's intrinsic goodness and extraordinary abilities.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: knowledge, media, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, internet, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 5:27
Access: Vimeo

Summary: This video, created by sociologist Jessie Daniels, explores how race is depicted on the Internet. It begins by arguing that how we think about the Internet is a utopian vision where "this is no race, there are no genders, there is no age ... there are only minds" (quoting from an MCI commercial). But as Daniels notes, "the reality is different. Rather than a 'raceless' utopia in the US today, hate groups are on the rise." The video illustrates quantitative data showing the rise of hate groups, and questions how this might be related to the Internet? Contrary to popular belief, Daniels argues the issue is not with people using the Internet to "recruit" people into hate groups; instead, the issue is how the Internet shapes knowledge and how people perceive realities of race. Everyday people use the Internet to spread racist messages. They create content themselves and share it with friends, normalizing common stereotypes. For example, the video documents "The Funny Racist" on Twitter with over 366,000 followers. She notes that one of the top searches for Martin Luther King, Jr, is a cloaked site that appears legitimate but was created by Storm Front, one of the largest hate groups online. Daniels argues the danger of this new medium is not its capacity to recruit people into hate organizations but through shaping knowledge, such as people's understanding of slavery or civil rights leaders. She argues we need more than "Internet literacy" but also "racial Internet literacy." Viewers may reflect on why Daniels argues that racism is built into the Internet? How does the Internet create new opportunities for promoting racism, and does this reflect the idealist notions we often associate with the Internet and "free information"?

Submitted By: Paul Dean

Tags: discourse/language, knowledge, media, war/military, ideology, noam chomsky, propaganda model, representation, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 6:09; 3:41
Access: clip 1; clip 2

Summary: Strike up a conversation with a crowd of students about the media and odds are you will encounter a deep-seated suspicion that even in democratic political systems propaganda exists. Many people believe the media powerfully shape the public's vision of the world; yet when pressed, few are able to pinpoint whose view is being propagandized. Thus the public is suspicious, but divided on where to direct its suspicion. Fewer still are in agreement as to how the media most effectively succeeds in shaping public knowledge. In their book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky famously proposed a propaganda model, which argues that government entities and powerful businesses are able to control the information the media reports through five kinds of filters: 1) ownership (i.e., media outlets filter information that is incompatible with the interests of their parent companies); 2) advertising (i.e., advertisers pressure the media to filter information that is incompatible with the advertiser's interests); 3) sourcing (i.e., the media are dependent on government and major corporations for news bulletins, and these sources filter the information they share); 4) flak (i.e., the government and major corporations are able to pressure media outlets to filter information); and 5) anticommunist ideology (i.e., the media is influenced by dominant ideologies and filters information to align with ideology). In the first clip above, Norman Solomon, founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, echoes this propaganda model. For instance, at the 2:35 mark, Solomon describes Herman and Chomsky's sourcing filter when he notes that journalists must take their cue from government organizations as to what is even worth mentioning. Lest students get the impression that propaganda is simply a matter of information either being "filtered" or reported, the second clip explores the way euphemism is deployed to cover up unpleasant events or avoid discussing events that reveal powerful actors, such as the state, in an unflattering light. William Lutz describes this use of euphemism in his influential essay "The World of Doublespeak," where he notes that in 1984 the U.S. State Department announced it would no longer use the word "killing" in its reports and would opt instead for the phrase "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life." Note that this is the second post on The Sociological Cinema to take up the topic of contemporary propaganda.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: children/youth, gender, marketing/brands, media, sex/sexuality, gender binary, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 0:29
Access: YouTube

Summary: This diaper advertisement from Australia is an excellent illustration of how sex and gender are treated as the same thing. Sociologists have long drawn attention to the difference between sex and gender, where sex refers to biological or physiological differences such as chromosomes, hormonal make-up, and sex organs (internal and external) and gender refers to characteristics that a society or culture define as masculine or feminine. In this ad, diapers targeting physiological differences are marketed with images of gender differences (and stereotypical ones at that). I find this advertisement useful for getting students to discuss gender binaries and the difference between sex and gender.

Submitted By: Michelle Sandhoff

Tags: bodies, consumption/consumerism, gender, marketing/brands, media, sex/sexuality, representation, sexual
objectification, 00 to 05 mins
Year:
2011
Length: 0:59
Access: YouTube 

Summary: In this television advertisement for the Fiat 500 Abarth, a man has a passionate encounter with a seductive Italian woman, who  turns out to be a car. Literally. I use this clip to teach the concept of  sexual objectification. First, I have my students read Caroline  Heldman's essay on how to identify sexual objectification in media images. In this essay, Heldman defines the term as follows: "If objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like an object, then sexual objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure." I then screen this Fiat commercial in class and have students construct it, using Heldman's 7-item Sex Object Test (SOT) as a resource to guide our analysis. This approach gives us a lot to talk about, including the way the woman in the advertisement stands in for an object, the interchangeability of sex objects (she only speaks Italian and appears to be incomprehensible to the fantasizer), the way in which her body is literally branded with the Abarth logo, and the ejaculatory imagery. Instructors can go on to discuss the harm associated with sexual objectification, which Heldman addresses in Part 2 of her series on sexual objectification, and which is also discussed in the films Killing Us Softly and Miss Representation.

Submitted  By: Michelle Sandhoff

Tags: bodies, health/medicine, media, prejudice/discrimination, fat shaming, obesity, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 2:04
Access: msnbc

Summary: This video is from the Today Show and can be used to highlight the very real health concerns associated with obesity, a problem which stems in part from living in a society that encourages people to move less and eat more. According to the news report, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia are the "fattest" states, while Colorado, Massachusetts, and Vermont are the leanest. While there is a tendency for people to conclude the issue boils down to personal choices, this report draws attention to a more systemic reason for obesity. The lowest rates of obesity tend to occur in the wealthiest states, suggesting that leaner states are able to encourage exercise by building more pedestrian friendly infrastructure. Class discussion can also be pushed beyond the explicit message of the report, and students can be encouraged to critically examine the discourse on obesity in the United States. Much like this news report, people often connect weight and health, but it is simply not the case that being overweight is the same as being unhealthy. Similarly, students can also be encouraged to examine the phenomenon of fat shaming and how the widespread practice of photographing overweight bodies without heads (a.k.a., "headless fatties") reinforces the message that having an overweight body is so shameful, identities need to be disguised.

Submitted By: Vicky Herbel, Associate Professor of Sociology

Tags: gender, media, sex/sexuality, sports, athletes, male gaze, olympics, self-objectification, sexual objectification, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 2:18
Access: LiveLeak

Summary: Hockey blogger for Yahoo! Sports, Greg Wyshynski, offered a scathing critique of NBC's video ode to the women athletes of the 2012 London Games. He sees straight through the flimsy defense that the video montage was merely a celebration of the human form, and he exposes it for the vulgar artifact of sexual objectification it truly is. He writes: "The 2012 London Games have been labeled 'the women's Olympics' thanks to record-setting performances and watershed moments like the dawn of women's boxing as well as the participation of female athletes from Saudi Arabia. How did NBC decide to help celebrate this incredible time for women in sports? With meaningless objectification, of course! 'Bodies in Motion' was an online video produced by NBC in which women competing in various Olympic sports were featured in softcore, fetishist slow-motion highlights, while porn-tastic jazz music played on the soundtrack. It looked like something a horny teenager with a DVR would have spliced together for YouTube; instead, it was the official rights holder of the Olympics in the U.S. that produced it.” Wyshynski's admonishment is spot on, but he doesn't go far enough. The sexual objectification during the 2012 Olympics needs to be discussed, not because its execution is reminiscent of low budget porn, but because widespread sexual objectification is harmful to girls and women. As political scientist Caroline Heldman has argued, an environment of sexual objectification leads women to self-objectify, which is the "phenomenon of girls and women viewing themselves from an external vantage point, constantly monitoring their behaviors and bodies to maximize their appeal." The harm for girls and women is quite measurable. For instance, Heldman notes the psychological harm. Women who self-objectify are more prone to depression, have lower self-esteem, and lower personal efficacy. They are also more likely to feel body shame, including shame about their menstrual cycles, and they are more likely to exhibit symptoms of anorexia and bulimia. They have lower cognitive functioning on average as well, which is expressed by lower grade point averages. Finally, they are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction, and Heldman's own research links self objectification to lower political efficacy.

Image by Brian Snyder/Reuters

Submitted By: Anonymous

Tags: art/music, children/youth, discourse/language, emotion/desire, gender, media, sex/sexuality, feminist criticism, hip hop, male gaze, madonna-whore complex, misogyny, rap, rhetoric, sexism, slut shaming, socialization,
06 to 10 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 5:35
Access: YouTube

Summary: In this music video, rap artist Lupe Fiasco addresses the issue of images in the media and how they are absorbed by children and incorporated into their lives as adults. He appears to be critical of the hip hop music industry for sending confusing messages when it broadcasts words like "bitch," sometimes as a deprecation, and other times as a compliment (e.g., Kanye West calls Kim Kardashian a "perfect bitch" in a recent song he wrote). Before Fiasco, cultural scholars already contemplated the use of the word "bitch" in hip hop. For instance, in her book Prophets of the Hood, Imani Perry discusses the way women artists deploy the term, and how some have even succeeded in subverting its negative connotations in an effort to create new space for women. It is clear, however, Fiasco is plotting a different course with his criticism. He raps: "You see the fruit of the confusion / He caught in a reality / She caught in an illusion." While it should be said that neither character can see things more realistically than the other, the line suggests that Fiasco is really interested in the term's inherent dualism, and in this way, his criticism maps onto a broader feminist theory that attempts to expose the modern workings of what Freud originally coined as the Madonna-whore complex. This complex refers to a dualism in Western patriarchal discourse, which seeks to circumscribe the behavior of women and the desires of men. On the one hand, women are rewarded for being the sexual play objects of men (i.e., whores), and on the other hand, women are given clear messages that true grace only derives from marital chastity (i.e., Madonna). The video might be useful for triggering a discussion about how this game is clearly rigged for women, but it can also be used to begin a discussion about how the discourse negatively affects men.

Submitted By: Kim Ward

Tags: children/youth, education, media, science/technology, social problems, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins
Year: 2009
Length: 90:00
Access: Frontline

Summary: This PBS special challenges the advertising image of technology as always "progress" or a "solution" to contemporary problems. Instead, this series of short topics highlights how technology has actually created a whole host of its own social problems related to digital over-saturation. This video is paired well with Kenneth Gergen's "The Saturated Self," or other readings that deal with how technology has changed our daily lives in very powerful ways. It can also be used to encourage students to disconnect when reading or writing for classes in that the video presents research that indicates that multitasking makes us dumber. I have found that students have strong (often defensive) reactions to this video, so I also make time for classroom discussion, or I assign a reaction paper.
 
Submitted By: Michelle Smirnova