Media Literacy - The Art of the Prank

July 9, 2007January 15, 2019

Spoiling: Just Mean Jackassery or Brilliant Culture Jamming?

Spoiling: Just Mean Jackassery or Brilliant Culture Jamming?
by Mark Pepper
Intertrash

If you were watching the Nathan”s Hot Dog Eating contest this weekend (and really, why wouldn”t you have?), then you may have been spoiled on the pop culture event of the season.

As the contestants were running onto the stage with visions of overstuffing themselves for glory, one of them quickly flashed a sign to the camera that read: “On July 21st, _______ Dies.” I have omitted the name, of course, cause I”m not going to even get myself into that business. But the name, is the identity of a major character who is being widely reported to kick the bucket in the final Harry Potter novel. Not too many people in the world know at this point if the name on that sign is going to be right; however, it matches the information given out on many spoiler websites right now.

Spoiling is an interesting and somewhat complex phenomenon. Continue reading “Spoiling: Just Mean Jackassery or Brilliant Culture Jamming?”

June 26, 2007January 15, 2019

The Culture of Celebrity

TV Reporting: Too much Paris, not enough news
by Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Miami Herald
June 20, 2007

One night 10 years ago, I found myself in a crazy place.

It was only the parking lot of a courthouse in Santa Monica, but craziness had come to that place on the wings of a jury verdict in the civil trial against O.J. Simpson. The Miami Herald had dispatched me there to gather color — i.e., anecdotes and imagery that gave a sense of what being there was like.

I found more color than a paint factory. A sky full of news helicopters. A guy with a guitar crooning Johnny B. Goode. An old lady chanting, ”O.J. is innocent!” People screaming right in each other’s faces for the benefit of TV cameras. A young woman fretting that she hoped she’d get a chance to scream, “murderer!”

”It’s weird,” Sidney Lee, an L.A. screenwriter, told me as we watched the crowd, ”because it’s not something that’s going to affect them. They’re not going to go to jail, they’re not going to get out of jail, they’re not going to have to pay.” These people, he said, would wake up the next morning and realize, “I guess it didn’t involve me, did it?”

But 10 years later, there has been no such realization. Ten years later, the Simpson trials seem less an aberration than a seminal moment in the de-evolution of TV news into something that might better be called “The News Show.”

And 10 years later, Stepha Henry is missing, and David Ovalle is livid. Continue reading “The Culture of Celebrity”

May 4, 2007January 15, 2019

Keep the Sticks and Stones Away From O’Reilly

From PR Watch:

“Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis,” Indiana University media researchers analyzed six months’ worth of Bill O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” editorials, which are aired on his TV show on Fox, posted on his website and printed in newspaper columns. The researchers found that O’Reilly “employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials.” The seven propaganda techniques are name-calling, glittering generalities, card stacking, bandwagon, plain folks, transfer, and testimonials. O’Reilly “called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute,” according to the University’s press release. Not surprisingly, “the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left,” along with illegal aliens, criminals and terrorists. “He’s not very subtle,” journalism professor Mike Conway said of O’Reilly.

Source: Indiana University press release, May 2, 2007

May 4, 2007January 15, 2019

Corporate control of profanity – Part 2

This video is presented by the Media Education Foundation, which produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.

Directed by Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, this is a “loving critique” of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood…

Dealing with issues of race, gender violence, and the corporate exploitation of youth culture, it is a terrific follow-up to yesterday’s blog post from the Black Agenda Report.

May 2, 2007January 15, 2019

Corporate control of profanity?

This article from Black Agenda Report suggests rerouting the responsibility for “…the anti-social aspects of commercial hip hop…” in that “…the bulk of Black community anger at hip hop products is directed at foul-behaving artists, rather than the corporate Dr. Frankensteins that created and profit from them.”

Hip Hop Profanity, Misogyny and Violence: Blame the Manufacturer
by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford
May 2, 2007

The often convoluted debate over hip-hop lyrics and images frequently misses the point: mass marketed rap recordings, videos and stage acts are corporate products, and the artists are virtual employees and subcontractors of huge multinationals. Corporate control of the cultural marketplace is the real villain in this story, not artists who did not pick themselves for stardom and cannot on their own alter boardroom business models. Corporations have been usurping and reshaping Black mass culture for decades – hip-hop is just the latest product line.

“What the public sees, hears and consumes is the end product of a process that is integral to the business model crafted by top corporate executives.”

Read the whole article at Black Agenda Report

Thanks to MediaChannel.org