Tags: discourse/language, inequality, knowledge, media, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, genocide, media literacy, racism, representation, stereotypes, 61+ mins Year: 2009 Length: 88:00 Access: Netflix; YouTube (trailer; clip 1; clip 2; clip 3) Summary: Reel Injun explores the role Hollywood cinema has played in shaping the image of First Nations People. Starting with the silent film era, director Neil Diamond argues that "the Indian" first appeared in cinema as noble and dignified, but by the 1930s, classic westerns like, They Died with their Boots on, catalyzed the emergence of negative stereotypes. The Indian was newly imagined as treacherous, and Hollywood narratives began featuring white settler protagonists in their stagecoaches fending off attacks from the Indian hordes. Just as Indian characters in film became increasingly based on this one dimensional stereotype, native people were also losing the ability to play Indian roles. Instead, productions cast white actors, like Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, and Elvis Presley in Indian roles and even sprayed them with a toning agent to help them look the part. By the 1960s, films like Little Big Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and later, Dances with Wolves, introduced more complicated depictions of native people; however, dominant narratives still tracked the imperiled white heroes in their proverbial stagecoaches (see also our clip "Avatar Remix and Representations of the Other"). Not until the renaissance in native cinema did films like Once we Were Warriors and Smoke Signals portray native people as fully realized human beings and protagonists in their own right. In the documentary's conclusion, Lakota activist and poet, John Trudell, suggests that there has been a sustained effort to vanquish native people through war and violence and to erase or subsume their history. Attention to how native people have been represented in film suggests too that Hollywood has played a vital role in this genocidal project through its representations of the Indian in film. These persistent depictions of the Indian as treacherous, barbaric, and peripheral have worked to strip native people of their humanity. And those who lack humanity are easier to vanquish. Note that this documentary film would work nicely with another clip on The Sociological Cinema (here) that explores issues surrounding the representation and First Nations People in cinema and takes up the question, "Who has the right to represent whom?" Submitted By: Lester Andrist
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Tags: bodies, children/youth, consumption/consumerism, discourse/language, gender, inequality, marketing/brands, media, political economy, sex/sexuality, social construction, violence, feminism, media literacy, representation, self-objectification, sexism, sexual objectification, stereotypes, symbolic annihilation, 06 to 10 mins, 61+ mins Year: 2011 Length: 90:00, 8:52 Access: no online access, Vimeo preview Summary: Jennifer Siebel Newsom directs this documentary, and following in the steps of the Killing Us Softly films, it draws attention to the very problematic ways women and girls are represented in contemporary media. To tell the story, Newsom weaves together a number of interviews from an array of experts and activists, including Erika Falk, Jennifer Pozner, Jean Kilbourne, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem. The dominant themes of Miss Representation can be described as the consequences of living in a world where one is virtually swimming in representations which consistently emphasize an unattainable beauty standard for women, and in a separate vein, encourage routine violence against women. In this environment, women increasingly self-objectify, they suffer from increased levels of anxiety and depression, a lack of political efficacy, and men increasingly perpetrate violence against women. Despite similarities, Newsom takes her film further than Jean Kilbourne's documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, by exploring more of the political economy behind these harmful representations. Specifically, she explores the large scale entrance of American women into the paid labor force during World War II as a watershed event (see also The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter). In Newsom's retelling of this story, once men returned to from fighting abroad, the media played a central role in encouraging women to surrender their high-paying jobs back to men in order to become domestic consumers in the brave new post-war economy. Today the marketing of corporations are regulated even less by Congress, and their ads continue to target women; they objectify them as part of a strategy aimed at creating ever more insatiable consumers. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: art/music, discourse/language, knowledge, media, advertising, art history, culture, feminism, film studies, media literacy, representation, semiotics, sociology of culture, walter benjamin, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins Year: 1972 Length: 120:00 Access: YouTube (Episode 1: part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4) (Episode 2: part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4) (Episode 3: part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4) (Episode 4: part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4) Summary: This classic BBC miniseries, narrated by John Berger, critically examines Western visual culture from the Renaissance to today (or at least 1972). Together, four episodes focus on the role of context in creating meaning, the male gaze, and the different functions of depictions of wealth in early modern and late modern imagery. In episode 1, Berger remarks on the way meanings and interpretations of paintings and photographs can vary depending on context. For instance, the way in which a viewer sees an image can change depending on how the viewer confronts the image. In episode 2, Berger draws on paintings and photography to explore his thesis that Western culture is one in which "Men look at Women," and "Women watch themselves being looked at," thus locating the nude in Western art as an objectification of women. In episodes 3 and 4, Berger argues that oil painting was a medium, which celebrated the privileged lifestyle of European aristocrats. If oil painting was developed to represent the texture and tangibility of objects, then color photography serves a similar function today and is carried forward in the work of advertisers. Clips from Ways of Seeing can be used as an effective way to introduce students to the study of semiotics, and more broadly, the sociology of culture. Submitted By: Matt Tags: violence, war/military, ethics, jus ad bellum, jus in bello, laws of war, military sociology, sidgwick's proportionality rule, sociology of war, social justice, world war II, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins Year: 2003 Length: 107:00 Access: YouTube Summary: In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara recounts eleven life lessons. One can draw on this post to examine Sidgwick's proportionality rule, which aligns well with McNamara's fifth lesson (beginning at 39:35). McNamara argues that "Proportionality should be a guideline in war," and he discusses his role in the decision to drop incendiary bombs on Japanese cities. The lesson concludes with McNamara looking into the camera and admitting that he and others (he specifically mentions General Curtis LeMay) were behaving as war criminals. He asks rhetorically, "What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" This excerpt from the documentary would be a nice accompaniment to Michael Walzer's book, Just and Unjust Wars, where Walzer begins with the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Jus ad bellum refers to questions about whether engaging in a particular war is morally defensible, while jus in bello, refers to questions about whether the conduct undertaken once the war is underway is morally defensible. Strictly speaking, Walzer argues it's not true that all is fair in love and war. Moral issues abound in warfare, and some actions are regarded as more "fair" or ethical than others. Discussions surrounding the morality of war are more than mere armchair conjecture. Morality matters because the ability of an armed struggle to acquire resources and inspire sacrifice is directly tied to whether the struggle is deemed just. Submitted By: Anonymous Tags: crime/law/deviance, durkheim, gender, theory, anomie, family, in-groups, out-groups, social change, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins Year: 1998 Length: 124:00 Access: no online access (trailer here) Summary: The film Pleasantville depicts an idyllic 1950's community that experiences profound challenges to its unquestioned, taken-for-granted social norms. The movie works well in an introductory sociology class as an allegory about a settled or stable society that undergoes rapid social change following a major disruption in the worldview and widespread norm breaching. Specifically, the film depicts challenges related to the use of language, modes of communication, family formation, sexual norms, social deviance, art, and media. I recommend using the film in its entirety to demonstrate how in-groups resist change, while out-groups often challenge norms and produce positive (or negative) adaptations to society. One could also use segments of the film to demonstrate concepts like alienation, anomie, and deviance. Submitted By: Michael Gillespie Murderball Tags: bodies, disability, intersectionality, sports, masculinity, master status, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins, 61+ mins Year: 2005 Length: 85:00 (or first 10 min) Access: no online access (trailer here) Summary: This documentary explores the world of quad rugby (i.e., murderball), which is a full-contact sport for quadriplegics, who compete with wheelchair specially designed to take the hard knocks of the sport. The film follows the U.S. quad rugby team through their competition in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. Recently, I have used the first 10 minutes of the film in a class period on disability, where we are introduced to the people on the team, and also to the sport. Watching these men physically compete in a competitive sport (and manage the activities of their daily lives) is great for breaking stereotypes about people in wheelchairs. It would also be a good way to explore master statuses (like being in a wheelchair); this film is a nice starting point to discuss both masculinity and how people maintain complex and multi-faceted identities despite disability. Submitted By: Molly Dingel Tags: crime/law/deviance, demography/population, economic sociology, education, causality, correlation, incentives, preferences, rational choice theory, 61+ mins Year: 2010 Length: 93:00 Access: no online access, YouTube preview Summary: Freakonomics: The Movie is based on the 2004 best-selling book of the same name by journalist Stephen Dubner and economist Steven Levitt. The film is broken up into a number of short segments, all of which might be useful in a sociology course tackling rational choice theory or wrestling with the idea of causality. (1) "A Roshanda by Any Other Name" explores whether the name a child is given can be plausibly blamed for the child's successes or failures in life. (2) "Cheating" and (3) "Pure Corruption" examine how cheating in Chicago public schools and Japan's sumo wresting circuit can be explained by uncovering hidden incentives. (4) "Cause and Effect" succinctly and clearly illustrates the aphorism, "correlation is not causation." In (5) "It's Not Always a Wonderful Life," Steven Levitt offers a relatively detailed and multi-causal account of the drop in US crime rates beginning in the 1990s. According to Levitt, nearly half of the drop in crime can be explained by the unintended consequences of the Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court. (6) "Incentives" explores how well intended incentives often lead people to act in unexpected ways, and finally, in (7) "Can a 9th Grader Be Bribed to Succeed?" we see Levitt and other researchers experiment with paying students cash incentives to improve their grades. Thanks to Jessie Daniels for suggesting this film. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: class, discourse/language, inequality, methodology/statistics, culture, ethnography, netnography, social stratification, working class, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins Year: 2011 Length: 80:00 Access: Facebook Summary: Andrew Filippone Jr.'sThe Status Films is a four-part documentary series culled from thousands of public Facebook status updates. The film draws on the found-language from Facebook status messages to conjure up the sound and feeling of America's culturally impoverished. Filippone describes this exercise in ethnography via social media as "pleas, laments, hallelujahs, and indictments...echoes of familiar voices from a distant working-class world." All four parts of The Status Films are viewable online, in full, via Facebook. (Filippone cites Simon J. Charlesworth's "A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience" as a key text influencing his project.) The film would work nicely in a methods class as an example of an innovative means of obtaining empirical data for what could be described as a netnography. Filippone describes his method as entering four separate, culturally-resonant queries into Facebook's internal search engine. Aided by screen capture software, he was able to code for themes, select the most relevant messages, and eventually reorder those messages for use in the documentary. Using the film, instructors might be able to engage students in useful discussion about the strengths and limitations of this approach for sociological work. Submitted By: Andrew Filippone Jr. Tags: class, gender, media, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, class consciousness, meritocracy, representation, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 61+ mins Year: 2005 Length: 62:00 Access: YouTube (preview; part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5; part 6; part 7; part 8) Summary: This documentary provides a great historical and contemporary analysis of the presentation of various marginalized groups on television. The film demonstrates how members of the working class are often depicted negatively in the media in the service of preventing the development of a class consciousness. Negative media depictions of African Americans, gay men and women are also explored. The film is great for stimulating conversation about stereotypes perpetuated by prime time television. Questions that follow from viewing the film include: is it the media's responsibility to depict the world as it really is or is it simply entertainment? Do people recognize that the images on television are unrealistic stereotypes or do they believe there is some truth to these depictions? What is the function of the "American Dream" in our culture, and does this ideal do more harm than good? Submitted By: Michelle Smirnova |
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