"Classic": Retro-grade TV in Our Digital Age

One of the three old movie channels, digital channels of local network affiliates, has an ad professing testimonials of people so happy "real" tv is back again, that they feel good about tv again and that they can let their children watch without being worried about what they'll be exposed to. These are the channels that play movies from the 30's to the 70's and many made later.  They are cheap to replay and bring in advertising revenue with films owned by particular studios now boughtbout by the media conglomerates that own the networks.  These are the movies with the most racist and sexist images, characterizations and narratives ever produced, with some of the widest distributions of their time, now getting even more distribution - and a free pass on their socially and politically retrograde storylines...they're "classics".  It's troubling to think that those testimonials might be real, at least that they might reflect many other people's idea of what 'good', 'safe' television programming looks like.

And yes, I just watched a bug-eyed Willie Best react in his "classic" stepinfetchit role to the idea of a ghost in a haunted Puerto Rican swamp while ferrying yellow-faced Peter Lorre in 1939's "Mr. Moto in Danger Island".  It just doesn't get any 'safer' than that.  Westerns also figure voluminous on these channels, most old, but many newer, very few with any redeeming, non-settler-colonial, non-genocidal qualities.  "Safe", they say.  Isn't it strange that this sort of story, much created before the bare beginnings of social and televisual/cinematice reforms of the 60's and 70's, is what they say we think is "safe"?

Oh, and with regard to those ghosts in the swamp, the USAmerican colonials....yes, colonials as in colonialism...were discussing the people that hold such ideas about Spirit beings and Ancestors and such.  They chided such claims of "ghosts" as "superstitions of a dangerously ignorant people".  (long pause)  "Dangerously ignorant".  Those are indigenous people and African descendants in those swamps.  Those are humans, children, women and men, freedom fighters in those swamps.  And don't let it slip by you that these anti-indigenous, anti-African, anti-woman narratives assume the ascendancy and presumptuous superiority of a colonial culture that deified a particularly "holy" ghost, but maybe merely a ghost nonetheless, albeit tied to a he-god and a so-called savior-son whose adherents would prove much more globally and ignorantly dangerous than any culture known to revere and keep intimate relations with their Dead.

Watching Where We Are Going

Young man texting feverishly as he walks off train into station deep underground, maybe fifty of us all walking toward the longest escalators in the Boston transit system, usually two escalators working to get commuters up onto the earth's surface. In this moment only one is working. Text-Fever guy heads assumptively toward the escalator not moving, full speed afoot, blazing speed afinger.  I spy with my little out of the corner eye his leg lift up in the air as if the steps are celestially predestined to always rise up to meet him. The analog world of blood, bone and mechanical contrivances is somehow a constant and regular bandwidth of experience in the digitized mind and body of this specimen of Post-Landline Man. 

And his rudely awakened goin'-nowhere dance was stellar!  An inebriated George Balanchine could not have produced such gross motor madness as this man stumbled back - if only for an embarrassed moment - into consciousness of a world that proves daily why our field of vision is actually about 180 degrees wide...or so I hope.  His feet groped their way back to truth then sped him back to The Matrix for his "blue pill" cocktail.  Thank goodness for him he lives in a world relatively "protected" from most semblances of natural realities like slimy snakes, scary bears, inconvenient trees and motivated stairs. The modern human did well to find a virtual place to hide from eye contact, embodied intercourse a la conversation, the perniciousness of soil and absolutely unncessary things like sacred naturo-spiritual energetic experiences and ritual that sustain our understanding of the primacy of nature and analog(ous), embodied experience as humans born into the Family of Being and Becoming (one large branch of hughly successful human cultural development calls it "All Our Relations"). 

Our little digital, virtual, electronic pseudo-world is stumbling toward an implosion of sorts. 

We are analog.  We are frequencies. We are vibrations. We are waves. We are wind.  We are rivers. We are rain. We are wings.  We are fins. We are blood and we are bone. We are not reducible to bitstreams. We are not equal to the zerosums of data. We are not predestined to accept The Singularity.  We need not take seriously the fantasies of the Terasem movement, though we must treat seriously the cultural implications.  We needn't give in to the idea or reality of immortality through matricizing with humanoid android technologies.

And we should watch - much more carefully and critically - where we are going.

(images from a Panasonic exhibit at a Boston shooping mall)

Death and A Double Tragedy: The Failures of Talk Radio

[This is a reposting of a submission to the Franklin Pierce University "Pierce Arrow" blog, posted originally on Oct. 15, 2009]

The following entry is written to help us gain perspective on some of the media communications concerning the recent, horrific crimes perpetrated in Mount Vernon, New Hampshire.  It is shared with you to contribute to a larger discussion that exists and should be engaged on a wider basis about media and violence and how we engage the very important issues of violence, crime and youth in this society.  It has been written knowing that this event is still fresh in the hearts and minds of people not only in the communities of New Hampshire, but all over the country.  Communities, families, youth and individuals are still shaken, questioning their safety, their family security and their lives.  It is out of respect for these communities, families, youth and individuals that this entry is submitted for public review.

This writer is aware that this situation is still fresh in our consciousness and emotions and that the issues that arise from it are important to have in correct perspective.  This discussion about the media handling of this crime is considered key in our on-going search for clarity, resolution and healing.

~~~~~~~~~~

It happened a couple of sundays ago….and became the talk of the region and beyond.  A “home invasion” planned and executed by four teens in New Hampshire, raising so many important issues of life, death, safety, class, youth, eldership, respect, gender safety, gendered violence, parenting, schooling, community, isolation, culture and more that eludes my consciousness at this moment.

The Keene Sentinel, in their Oct.8 edition, reported how fear has changed to anger in the community, how, at least from one person’s view, “..it’s just pure evil.  There’s no explaining it” (page 6).  Another story presented the “what ifs”, questions of the closeness to other families and homes, the unbelievable nature of this sort of violence in this sort of neighborhood.

Tragedy of this sort is devastating and life-altering among many other undesirable things and calls for clarity, understanding, communal embrace, patience and a rededication to compassionate ways of thinking and cultural production.   Tragedies such as these call us to look deeper inside ourselves to find not only the sources of these pathologies, why they exist in some and not others, but also to find the cultural practices that remediate and decrease, if not extinguish,  these abominable acts.  These tragic occurrences, that rend heart from heart, family from family, wife from husband, sanity from mind, challenge us to the core of our being and ask us to deepen our embrace of all that is good, right and loving in us and in the world.

We have seen countless numbers of situations from the Manson killings to Columbine to Virginia Tech, to Mount Vernon and so many other places and situations, where we are deluged with story after story about “why” and “how” and the human cost of murder.  The media have provided us with information, perspective (to some degree) and statistics that at once assuage our fears and feed them, too.  Particular dialogues and commentary in recent talk radio have created a dynamic that makes this recent local New Hampshire tragedy doubly reprehensible.

As I drove back and forth to the university last week, I scanned a few radio stations as usual on my ninety minute trek and was challenged by some of the problematic commentary from WTKK 96.9FM.  The discussions seemed to raise so many questions, suggesting so many of the underlying problems of a society out of touch with its own humanity, yet afraid to look itself in the mirror for clarity and honesty and the hope that grows from an intimate knowledge of the resilience of the human spirit.  It seemed that in the face of tragedy, talk radio was unwilling to be a real resource, relinquishing what I would call its responsibility to be a voice of reason, strength, maturity and hope.
So many things were said, but touched on in shallow form and content, seemingly as if they knew not of what they were talking about.  Issues of cities vs. the country/suburbs and what our expectations were of these geographical icons, issues of class, implied race,  capital punishment and parenting all came out in a confusing collage of emotional melodrama that at times chafed in juxtaposition to ads for bedding or hot-tubs or some such product.
Statements made on different days by different hosts seemed to validate the same message of emotionalism and sensationalism beyond compassion, of individualism beyond communal embrace and quick, violent reactionism beyond that clarity that comes from true introspection.
On October 7, while listening to Michele McPhee’s show, grand statements were being bandied about vilifying “shoddy  parenting” as being the cause of the four youth embarking on their violent excursion.  Through caller after caller and in her long tirades (well-matched to the horrific nature of the subject), the story of the failure of the suspects’ parents was told over and over.  Through the hours, the story deepened as new ideas about why the parents of these four young men and many parents in general fall short of even modest expectations for what is necessary to raise a socially-stable child.  There were more indictments than solutions, it seemed, as the stridency of the discourse narrowed the  possibility for real understanding and engagement of a core problem in USAmerican society – the support and development of youth in this culture.

Further into the evening’s exhortations, a 19-year-old woman called in, claiming to know or know of one or more of the suspects in the murder and assault case.  This woman, named Sarah, reported that one or more of the suspects had been seen days before the crime with newly-shaven heads and shouting “free Manson”, a reference to Charles Manson, a famous (infamous) and convicted murderer still serving time in prison for his crimes.  After claiming “breaking news”, McPhee correctly asked about the responsibility of the school in reporting such behavior in a world now informed by the dynamics of such events as the Virginia Tech and Columbine shootings.  McPhee correctly pointed to the necessity of communal diligence in the face of such pre-crime behavior, cleanly missing the point that she was beginning to contradict her earlier statements that this kind of crime was solely or mainly about shoddy parenting.  McPhee was now suggesting, and rightly so, that there is a larger social responsibility in being able to monitor and mediate such anti-social behavior, especially where there are gross and outward displays such as those reported by Sarah.  Caught up in her own momentum, it was apparent that clarity was giving way to narrow-minded sensationalism.  It always feels good at first, but never produces enough of anything good to move us beyond the emotionality of our own pain.  And pain is what we should feel when someone is killed, when ANYone is killed.

Which raises another issue embedded in the histrionics of the show.  There were many statements made by host and caller alike of the “unbelievable” nature of this crime.  This kind of crime doesn’t happen in places like Mount Vernon.  Clearly, this kind of crime is not endemic to Mount Vernon or other small towns.  The assertions came through that violence was not a product of country or suburban life, that violence in urban areas is one of the reasons WHY people move to places like Mount Vernon or other rural or small population communities.  Inherent in this type of account is the suggestion that crime and murder lives and breeds and belongs in cities, not like Boston (still a parochialized, balkanized and idealized municipality), but like Roxbury and Dorchester, like Detroit and Newark and Southeast Los Angeles.  Nowhere in this broadcast was there a clear critique of class and race that would have led us to a better understanding of the dynamics that actually create crime and violence and why crime and violence SEEM to be so prevalent in some areas and not in others.   McPhee and others suggested that there was no connection between the crimes in Roxbury (talk of which seems to be relegated to 1090AM) and that in Mount Vernon, that these crimes were urbanized, other-ized types of crimes that just don’t, can’t and shouldn’t happen in their midst.  There was a suggestion that different kinds of people, different than McPhee or her listeners, commit these crimes, that these suspects were merely and heinously thugs that have no social or private history or precursor, but their own evil lives.  These suspects are connected to nothing, but themselves and at best they are exhibiting behavior that, in essence, belongs somewhere else….somewhere more crowded, dirty, with less trees and less people who go to parent/teacher meetings and Whole Foods stores.

What McPhee and her show were communicating and cultivating was the idea that these crimes happen in isolation of the larger, prettier, more well-veneered society.  McPhee and her callers refused to engage deeply the inter-connected nature of urb and suburb, the connection of youth to adult and that the failure of  a set of parents is a failure of the community of parents.  We take credit as a city, state or nation when we look to our own wealth, opulence and material comfort, how many Lexi or Prii we have in our driveways and the sanctity of our greenspaces and cleanliness of our streets.  We claim that communally.  It is a part of our national jingoism, our fevered and immature patriotism in the face of the international mirror, often held up to us by the fingers of “third world” hands or the walls of “developING” nation political structures.  When we see the social structures fall apart in these difficult and painful ways, we rarely take it on the chin as a national pathology or even a localized , but, if not epidemic, then endemic disease, at least from the standpoint of what is said in the media.  The show made no suggestion that when OUR children CONTINUE to display anti-social and dangerous and pre-criminal or pre-dangerous behavior, we ALL have a responsibility to notice, report and address these issues BEFORE they become criminal and dangerous and horrific.
McPhee’s statement that the crime had “nothing” to do with video games, television or even society itself is short-sighted, narrow, misleading and without the support of well-known research.  Though cultural production such as television programming and video games do not directly cause (generally speaking) crimes and violent behavior, as powerful effects theorists would suggest, they do contribute to cultural and personal beliefs about violence and crime, of gender, race, class and access, of personal and social expectation, to our levels of self-esteem, agency and ability to project ourselves positively or negatively into our lives, communities and futures. The violence and anti-social behavior which seems to drive television programming and many popular video games informs us and validates ways of thinking and being in the world, creating cultural space conducive to such behavior.  Though there may be no television shows regularly lionizing Charles Manson, you can not get through one night of prime-time programming without hundreds of violent and anti-social acts across all the available channels.  When I ask my students of media studies and history what the predominant communicative icons of peace and love are in the media I am met with the same stark silence each and every time.  Our culture validates the presence of violence in its midst and its dominant media are the standard bearers of this presence.

On another note, the presence of the extreme validations of violence can be easily seen in a music industry that regularly supports violent and anti-social concepts in its lyrics.  McPhee was notably surprised to learn of the presence of “horrorcore” rap, a musical phenomenon that aggrandizes concepts of violence, death and gore and reported as a form of music listened to by the Mount Vernon crime suspects.  Brought to the forefront by another heinous crime allegedly committed by one of horrorocore’s adherents, Syko Sam, a Washington Post story about the crime highlights the “us” and “them” discussion that plagued the talk radio landscape here.

“FARMVILLE, Va., Sept. 23 — The town is what its name suggests, a little crossroads burg swaddled in crop fields and pastureland for miles around. God and country-western span the radio dial, the main street is Main Street and the barber sells Lucky Tiger flat-top wax.

Folks in Farmville figured that the town, population 7,000 or so, was their haven, an oasis of quiet sanity in what a lot of them think is a mixed-up, gone-to-hell world. That was before a 20-year-old Californian, a rapper of luridly violent lyrics who billed himself as Syko Sam, alighted in their central Virginia community last week.”

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304781.html)

The iconic descriptors of “little crossroads burg swaddled in crop fields” and “pastureland” and “main street is Main street” and “God and country-western span the radio dial” suggest that those of concern in Farmville didn’t see this one coming.  With all due respect to all of Farmville’s citizens, it seemed as though it would have been extremely difficult to extricatethemselves from their own cultural momentum to see the onset of such a horrendous occurrence in which four people were bludgeoned to death.  But someone in Farmville invited Syko Sam into their “oasis of quiet sanity”.  And it seems it was their youth.
Neither Syko Sam (officially named Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III and reportedly  from California) or the four youth suspected in the crimes in Mount Vernon created horrorcore rap or the idea of murder, but those ideas lived strongly enough in the core of our young minds and hearts in these country oases to manifest themselves in the hands of their youthful perpetrators.
What the above iconic descriptors also suggest is that the people in these communities and beyond expect that crime belongs more comfortably somewhere else and that, at least as far as the WTKK talk shows are concerned, there is no credible connection between the communities that the crimes happened in and the suspected perpetrators who lived in those communities.  There was in no plausible way any culpability on a larger social level for the creation and support of people who might do horrendous things such as these. The problem here, from the media’s standpoint, is that the discourse leads us to scapegoating and disconnection, rather than to a place of introspection and social responsibility, where the initial impulse beyond our natural and correct reproach of the behavior is remedial on the larger scale as opposed to punitive in the narrow scale, as indicated by McPhee’s call to put these young men to death.  Admittedly, those same impulses to murder those young people might exist in us all and the feeling that we should is supported by our deep sense of hurt in the face of unconscionable acts such as those perpetrated in Mount Vernon, Farmville OR “inner-city” ANYwhere.  We can kill these young men tomorrow, but will we have figured out what the pathological precursors are that exist in our society that validate and support this behavior beyond our own ability as intelligent, somewhat empowered and concerned adults to abrogate?  What, in our hearts and minds and intuition and research and spiritual knowing, is the key to preventing such growth and development of anti-social, anti-human and anti-life behavior by these or others so that this will not happen again or with such frequency?

These were the questions never asked by McPhee or Jay Severin, the next day.
Severin, host of a wildly popular talk show on the same station, did ask his callers to weigh in on the issue of capital punishment.  It is an important question, given that we, as a republic, execute many convicted criminals each year, so as a national aggregate, as a set of states “united”, we condone such behavior.  This sort of legally-sanctioned behavior ought to be looked into with patience, tenacity and diligence.  What if we find that our legal support of capital punishment is connected to the inference that violence is a practical and functional way of getting your national, state or privately-defined needs met?  What if?

Executions assuredly stop the back end of the crime.  That is clear.  That person can never commit a horrendous act again.  That is key to the discussion, but the larger issue is not the stoppage of the commissions of further crimes at that point in the continuum.  We have the technical ability to end the lives of every person in prison and beyond (weapons of mass destruction notwithstanding….and is the support of such creating socio-political culpability in the cultivation of violence in USAmerican life?), but when do we dedicate ourselves to eradicating the presence of violence in other pre-crime areas of cultural life and production?  When do we stand up as men and women and community and decry the high incidence of domestic, male-gendered violence and abuse and stop it?  When do we stand up as men and women in community and decry the high incidence of sexualized violence against children by men (predominantly…remember that even in the Roman Catholic church, where we also never saw the violence coming, it was priests – men – who topped the criminal ranks) and stop it?  Must we keep in mind that even McPhee and Severin would agree that victims of such heinous acts are indiscriminately peppered amongst the “criminal element” that lives and breeds ‘somewhere’.  So where in this talk radio melee do we come to clarity or true resolution?  If children are the fruit of the adult tree, how then do we conveniently assert that the youthful committors of heinous crimes have no connection to the tree that created that criminal fruit?  No, McPhee and many gate-kept callers did assert the culpability of the trees from which those four errant fruit fell.  The underlying and unstated problem truly lies in the nature of the forest.  If those young men or boys are “scum” as Jay Severin called them, then what does that say about the culture from which they come?  Is there no connection betweeen one tree and another? Do not their roots comingle in the social amalgam?  It is my assertion that we have a lot of root work to do and that, at least in these situations, for this story, talk radio failed us in getting to the root of our social responsibility, our own necessity to not only engage punishment, but engage youth and life and truth and how to support it and grow it in our young people, in their very spirits, beyond strident exhortations of being the “best and brightest”.  Do the “best and brightest” have no responsibility to the youth of the city, country or state or have they earned the right to sit in veiled conceit beneath their “Severin doctrine” laurels. If they do (and they don’t), then WTKK, McPhee and Severin owe them more than verbal banner ads for emotionalism and social separatism.  These subjects and stories and issues deserve more than passing disconnection driven by the need for higher and higher ratings.  Since when has advertiser satisfaction transformed itself into social invulnerability or safety from crime?  Not only the nature of the talk radio discourse, but the very nature of media-conglomerated and corporate, advertiser-dominated media are in need of real critique and overhaul if we are to seriously address the informational and emotional and social needs of a society that is still plagued with horrific and horribly frequent crimes like these that happen everywhere and, yes, anywhere.  It is not because these crimes only happen on the south side of Chicago, not because they just can’t or shouldn’t happen in Gloucester (as McPhee suggested in reference to another youth-crime), but because they happen AT ALL.  And these crimes are happening everywhere.   And if we are truly caring, intelligent and concerned adults, then we take responsibility for youth in our midst and beyond our midst if we hold the truth to be self-evident that this is a great nation.

We are a dysfunctional national family at best…but not without hope.
Talk radio, in this instance and many others as I have noticed on that station and not, has shown a keen ability to narrow discourse and breed a support of parochialism far beyond that of normal men, but who, in the guise of the talk show host, bring us  to a point of witnessing here, in the handling and packaging of this very difficult and painful story of death and the destruction of life, security, safety and happiness – and youth – a double tragedy.  We are witness to an awful commission of criminal behavior that behooves us to support the victims, family and friends with renewed and deepened compassion, love and vigilant engagement.  They are deserving of that as any victim of such a crime would be, no matter where they live.  We are also witness to the tragedy of a communications medium format that seemed unable to truly provide a deeper insight into the human dynamic of violence beyond their own predilection with feeding into the negative emotions that understandably surface when things of this nature occur.

The narrow discourse of this brand of talk radio obscures the growing presence and importance of rights-of-passage programs, youth leadership, spiritual and cultural intiation programs that immerse youth in the understanding and manifestation of the interconnective nature of human life and life beyond humanity, to all that is.  We don’t hear about men creating men from boys, women creating women from girls, adults in vigilant leadership in their communities supporting concepts of communal respect and personal responsibility beyond mere civics and citizenship.  Programs like the Sacred Fire community and the Rights of Passage Council and the work growing out of the programs of East Coast Village, amongst many others, many following forms of time-tested, indigenous cultural tradition that help youth (and adults) not only understand themselves better, but their place in the world, their communities and society at large and find a validation of their personal gifts, a real way to be seen and supported and then provide support as a caring, loving and empowered member of communal society, the goal of any enlightened nation
How talk radio has packaged this issue raises contradictions that exist between what is real and what we are comfortable with in our minds.  The contradictions in the apparent safety in the “country” or “suburbs” vs. the problems ‘inherent’ in the cities, “inner” or otherwise, obscure the responsibility that the society has in creating the very cities that it decries in its media.  This society created the cities and the kind of violence that cities and our deep-seated social pathologies engender.  It takes no newspaper reporter to know that those who support the social structures, corporations and cultural ideologies that create and support “city” or urban areas live in small towns and country homes, away from the hustle and bustle, nestled in their “oasis of quiet sanity”.  A focus solely on parents belies the reality that solutions lie in the communal dynamics of the society, not merely the personal family functionings of any young man, though the nature of such is important and undeniable.  If we simply kill those boys-trying-to-be-men, we will kill our very own consciousness of the resilience of the human spirit and consciousness of our neglected responsibility for youth and who they eventually become, not only as parents, but as interdependent, communally-empowered and supported adults, never satisfied to stop short of available solutions because of a band-leader only willing to play the catchy hook of a much deeper and harmonious song.

May our social values and our cultural, mediated communications be in harmony.
May the victims of violence everywhere  find love, support, resolution, closure, healing in the dawn of the new day, the dawn of a new embrace of and dedication to all that is good and correct in the human spirit.

May we find the courage to look into the mirror held up to us by the very faces and lives of the children we adults have created – our children.

Ukumbwa Sauti, Department of Mass Communication
Pierce Arrow Blogger

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

http://piercearrow.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/death-and-a-double-tragedy-the-failings-of-talk-radio/

"Masai: The Rain Warriors" film review

The following is a review written for the film "Masai: The Rain Warriors" as submitted to alibris.com and as posted on my Indigeny and Energetics blog (http://indigeny-energetics.blogspot.com)

""Masai: The Rain Warriors" is a beautifully, sensitively shot and rendered film that seems to have its feet firmly and fluidly grounded in the warm red earth of Kenya. All too often, when a film produced in Europe or North America about Africa or indigenous people reveals itself on screen, it exposes so much of the patronizing nature of the dominant political and cultural colonial discourse, telling more a story about the teller than the subject. The lens of "Masai" at once becomes the viewpoint of the Masai themselves, showing their challenging and tender, intimate indigenous life in the context of being the subject of deep consideration and not the object of brash, patronizing scrutiny for the sake of assuaging neo-colonial guilt (e.g., "Dances with Wolves") or for mere financial gain (e.g., "Avatar").

This look into the life of the Masai is refreshing, empowering and informative, enabling the viewer to genuinely feel as if they have "been there" for a time and had a common experience, if only through a cinematic window. There is much of the indigenous experience of life that is illuminated AND validated here, not held up for narrative and audience ridicule in conflicting cultural statements (done very well in "Avatar").



The story is simple, compelling, ultimately human and spiritually-inspired. The journey of the young warriors at the behest of their wise elders is a powerful connection to the legacy of respect for those who have earned life's tenure on this earth. It is immediately heart-warming to see youth not only carry their traditional culture with genuine and functional passion, but to also acknowledge deeply their elders AND their youngers, seen so beautifully in a ritual scene before they head out into the savannah to hunt down Vitchua, the uber-lion that embodies their supreme god. The path of these warriors is marked well by a masculine sensitivity unconventional only to modern colonial (this includes the USAmerica!) and colonized mindsets.



In addition to this newly empowering, though antique, way of being and becoming men, the positive story of womanhood and femininity is also embedded in the dreamy awakening of one of the lead warriors' into the troupe's desert salvation. The confirmation of the wise woman healer and her importance to the life of not only the village, but our world, enlivening the divine feminine in real-time, is very entrenched in this film.

"Masai" is an important cultural statement. Though we are still in need of validating and distributing widely the stories of indigeny by indigenous people in a modern world that does not yet remember itself and see itself as the progeny OF indigeny, "Masai" is a tactile and real expression of a part of the indigenous experience that is not only enlightening, but entertaining and emotionally moving. This is a good story told well about a subject often not represented with compassion and clarity.

Expect to have a cinematic experience that deepens understanding of the human experience. We need more of that."

That 70's Show: The Cultural Horror Show That Is Fez

(from "Cultural Bias in Prime Time Television", pg. 151)

Fez, played by Wilmer Valderrama, was the program’s infantilized, hypersexual ethnic Other, cute in his playfulness and socio-cultural ignorance, much like a three year old who said the word “tittie” for the first time - every day. Fez, like that three year old, might have engendered laughter, but Fez was not funny.

The program samples included an episode that provided a rare look into the shallow waters of Fez’s world, safe for viewers to walk through without fear of learning something new about the world or at least that of this one character. The episode trundled through each musical vignette laboriously and without any real passion, essentially a series of music videos all positioned to give exposition to another of Fez’s wants and desires as a young man from an undisclosed country who was constantly thinking about sex (or its absence) and candy. The episode seemed to be an unconscious display of the writers’ desire to keep Fez from achieving his innermost goals, whether as a young, lusty, Latin almost-lover (given, also a stereotype, but a more self-assured one) that he might have been or the emasculated, infantilized, de-nationalized clown that he really was.

The episode featured songs like The Joker (Steve Miller Band), Shake Your Groove Thing (Peaches and Herb), So Happy Together (The Turtles) and Sing (The Carpenters). The songs were performed as dream sequence production numbers with low-tech star wipes, smoke machines and shiny polyester outfits. The song vignettes were all dreams conjured by Fez as we waited impatiently for his “friends” to come to the school choral musical recital that he was a part of, presided over by 70’s rock idol Roger Daltrey, playing a pompous, brash, though also culturally unaware Brit music director, Mr. Wilkinson. Fez’s frustrations deepened as his “friends” failed to show while he waited before the recital, lapsing every so often into another musical rendition of what he thought the world should be like. Even Red exclaimed before Fez (and viewer) lapsed into another dream song, “Aw jeez, not another one!” (02/#6). Fez got to the point where he sincerely doubted his friendships, but turned it inward, calling himself a “goofy foreign kid” that no one wanted to be around (Program Sample 02/#6). Red, Eric’s father, gladly validated Fez’s feelings for him and was possibly the most egalitarian character on the program, never giving anybody a break, particularly his son or anyone seemingly not born in the United States of America or vociferously loyal to it.

Fez’s daydreams seemed to betray him as the physical performances were lackluster and the singing was poor. There was no hint of “sweetening” to raise the recorded quality of the vocals. None of the actors were accomplished or even fair singers to be performing as such. The pedestrian performances might have been produced to decrease the separation between skilled performer and presumably less skilled viewer. Fez was disappointed in his “friends” as the viewers may have been in the characters’ performance of the music segments. The story cut away at one point to find the gang smoking marijuana in Eric’s basement. They discussed how they didn’t want to go to the concert, completely dismissive of the idea that Fez would have any feelings about their actions. The program’s orientation to (or away from) Fez became apparent through the voice of Eric as they got caught up in their own pot-induced anti-Fez fervor. Each increased note of mockery was punctuated by a laugh track, the “OK sign” for viewer acceptance or dismissal of content, whichever came easier. Eric stated clearly in a close-up shot, saying, “That idiot actually thinks I’m his friend [Eric laughs]. Like I care. Iwish he were dead. [laugh track] Hey, we should kill him [louder laugh track]” (02/#6). No explanation or apology was ever made for their declarations against Fez, save for their excuse for their lateness - they were busy toilet-papering Wilkinson’s house and brought Fez his decapitated mailbox, presumably as a sign of their “friendship” and support for him. Wilkinson saw his mailbox in Fez’s hands, took it, aghast, and vowed a weak reprisal. The gang looked none too concerned, actually happy that they had “gotten him” in this way (which included a bag of dog excrement on his front steps and a symbol drawn on his door with some kind of cream or paste, interestingly enough - a peace sign).

Fez did at one point in this same episode strike a cord of nationalism and pride for the heretofore-unnamed country of his birth and its people. Wilkinson walked away from him after having leveled a barrage of insults and patronizing comments. Fez responded, “The British have always hated my people. We won the war, buddy. Get over it! Ah, good one, Fez. [laugh track]”. Fez, at least, got what he wanted - his “friends” with him at the concert. They did in fact go to the concert after all, but the ideological, socio-cultural and relational distance with which the narrative kept Fez from his “friends” was always there, too. Fez was allowed to share space with the “White Wisconsin Others”, but it seemed he could only get close to them in his cartoonish dreams.

The character of Fez was reminiscent of two of Willie Best’s characters, the “elevator boy’ Charlie” in My Little Margie and Willie in The Trouble with Father. Best, in the former “repeatedly bugged his eyes at the slightest provocation and looked stunned by the most ordinary of occurrences” (Bogle, 2001, p. 44). Bogle went on to say that “Best’s Charlie becomes delirious over the sight of the two [teen boy and girl] kissing good night. Widening his eyes, he goes into a romantic swoon. Apparently, he’s never experienced love himself nor known much about sexual desire (or fulfilling it)” (2001, p. 44). Bogle went on to say about Best in The Trouble with Father, “Again cast as a likable childlike dunce, he’s Willie, the family handyman, a nifty tagalong playmate for the family’s adolescent daughter Jackie. Mostly called upon to react and observe, he rarely initiates any action” (2001, p. 45). Much of this rang true for Fez. Fez was the consummate child, often swooning at the thought of candy or other ultimately simple things. This response could have been an expression of an immigrant’s stereotypical adoration for anything (United States of) American, an ideological frame of reference that would be easy to understand coming from a network like Fox, so deeply conglomerated and conservative in politics (Greenwald, 2004). Fez’s response was more likely the expression of a child. Fez was almost as enraptured by candy as he was for the prospect of sex. His simplistic reactions were the butt of the explicit and implicit joke. His dunce status was defined in every episode and his constant swoon and persistent, but contrived, lisp was always present to reinforce the consumption of his character as an ignorant child. If Fez walked on camera licking a gigantic lollipop and wearing knee pants, neither the audience nor the other characters would have thought anything of it.

Fez also showed his penchant for shallow, self-centered baby-isms when Wilkinson relegated him punitively to the back row during the recital, to which Fez retorted, “The back row is for the untalented and the ugly [laugh track]” (02/#6). Fez also stood his ground beforehand when Wilkinson tried to get Fez to understand the finer points of music appreciation. Wilkinson asked, “Have you ever been moved to tears by the warbling timbre of your own voice?”. Fez responded, “No - because I am a man! [laugh track]”, the laugh track almost bubbled over into a reserved, though macho cheer of support for his assertion of mainstream, narrow masculinity.

Fez, while at the school dance, was in the stairwell, along with three other couples, making out with a female dork stereotype. When word of the tornado warning reached them, Fez responded, “Oh no, I’m going to die a virgin!”. His partner expressed that it could be their last day on earth so they decided to “do it” and ran off to yet another stairwell. Word reached them later that the tornado warning had been lifted, though, before they got the chance to “do it”. His partner, then with a renewed sense of hope, snorted, chuckled and waddled off (literally) leaving Fez to tantrum before the Creator. Fez exclaimed, “Oh you can make a tornado, but you can’t make me do it! Oh you are not a just god!!” (02/#1).

The group’s flashback to their first meetings in the yearbook episode was telling of the characters’ and the programs relationship to this ethnic “Other” in the cast, the lone non-White token character for almost the whole run of the show. Fez was found hanging in a closet by his pants, preyed upon by cruel jocks. Kelso’s first response was to throw a gym ball at him. There was no major outcry to his treatment as the only “foreign exchange student” seemingly in all of Point Place or all of Wisconsin according to this program. Their empathy for Fez was underwhelming, all in the interest of the laugh track, ratings, repeat viewership and the bottom line. After they finally helped him down, Hyde asked him his name. Fez began to recite a litany of names (stereotypical and real for many Latinos/as), but as he did so, the school bell rang and obscured the viewer from hearing his name. Hyde responded, “I’m never gonna remember that”. It was not apparent whether Hyde heard the name or not, but it was apparent that he didn’t care to know his name or anything else about him.

The message was clear in all of the occurrences of Fez on screen that what was foreign was unwelcome in that world. Difference would not be tolerated and would be submerged for the greater ignorance of the self-centered (read ethnocentric) community. Fez was the butt of jokes from others and his own self-condemnation. He was the target of marijuana-induced assertions of hatred by people he called “friends”. He was neglected and disrespected off-hand. Intolerance of difference, of a different culture, a different national origin, was accepted wholesale by the characters and by the program itself. Fez might have been the best example of the worst that That 70’s Show had to offer teenage aspirational viewers looking for cues regarding how they should act and fit in - or allow others to fit in - or not - in this society.

Cultural Media Literacy

(from "Cultural Bias in Prime Time Television and Teenage Viewers: Cultural Media Literacy for High School and Higher Education", pg.196)

Cultural Media Literacy, a development borne of this study, was an important and necessary advancement in the growth of general media literacy education, research and organization. While most media literacy focused adequately on the dynamics of medium production and distribution, how it worked visually, graphically and/or sonically and possible effects in society (Strasburger & Wilson, 2002), these efforts did not show a marked trend toward deeper discussion of particular social issues as a whole. All of the aforementioned organizations and efforts were spectacular undertakings and deserve to be supported and grown. The discourse must have at some point advanced more deeply into the core of the social dynamic, the people themselves. That core was the source or container of the conflict and/or challenge in values and dominant life practice around which the discussion about media and television revolved. That human core was the locus of hope for the ultimate growth in positive human development.

Cultural Media Literacy sought to advance the discussion of television in
particular and mass communications media in general as a serious motive social force, but also to raise issue with the society’s grasp of its own negative and positive tendencies, to help redefine and broaden its understanding of itself and its pattern of cultural consumption and production. The media, the empty television stations, dark movie theaters or unlit fiber-optic internet cables were not the criminals, but the ways in which they had been manipulated by some people and consumed and used by so many more could have been considered as such. The hammer was not responsible for whether it was used as a tool for construction of home or a weapon of destruction of life, so the media in general and television in particular were also powerful, desirable tools of constructive change and transformation, almost innocent by themselves until imbued with the higher intentions of the creator and consumer alike.

Cultural Media Literacy defined conventional media literacy issues and elements as important, but only a part of the larger discussion that must happen with regard to mass communications in any society. Aside from the deleterious, anti-social forces and consequences of corporate media conglomeration, within Cultural Media Literacy, the media were simply the carriers of the message and these messages are important to society’s ability to observe itself, analyze its tendencies, whether realistic or fantastic, fictional or non-fictional, and make functional, practical decisions, actions and changes in its forward motion through time. Without a substantive discussion about the actual elements that television could only raise issue about or narrow discourse on, any society would only have been spinning its wheels with regard to mentioning mass communications media, cultural issues and social responsibility and positive social development.

Cultural Media Literacy defined culture and society as an organic and embodied human force that was simply and gloriously a macrocosm of the dynamism of the individual human being. Just as the individual must have been able to have insight into its own reality, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses, so must have society as a whole been able to look at itself and through informed observation and contemplative insight been able to lessen its pathologies and increase the effects of the best elements that it had to offer itself.

Cultural Media Literacy assumed that people cared enough about other people that we should have been actively and constantly engaged in each other’s development for the good of the society and each individual within it. This concept was essential for any conscious and active society to move forward, progressively and intelligently. The history of countless cultures pointed to the necessity of this one to, like them, make informed and conscious choices about its future, in the interest of those who would carry it forward. Teenagers were the beneficiaries of our greatest failures and achievements. They found information, crystal clear and deeply flawed on the millions of small screens lit by the culturally biased images given robust life in prime time television.

TV or not TV...

Here's just some of the skinny on the ol' cathode ray tube:

98% of United States of American homes have televisions. 1

TVs are on for an average of 7 hrs. and 40 mins. per day in each USA household 2

Children think the roles of secretary (79 per cent), boss (71 per cent), doctor (67 per cent) and police officer (53 per cent) on television are usually played by white people, while the roles of criminal (59 per cent) and maid or janitor (35 per cent) are usually played by African-Americans. 3

Teenagers and pre-teens with TVs in their bedroom are more likely to use drubs, smoke cigarettes, binge drink and have sex. 4

56% of 13-17 year-olds have TVs in their bedrooms 5

Says who?!

References:
1-Nielsen Media Research, 2000
2-Nielsen Media Research, 2000
3-Children Now, 1998
4-University of California, 2005
5-Gentile & Wash, 2002

Cultural Media Literacy in a Democratically-Challenged Society

...built upon the voice of each individual. How is your voice heard? Corporate-controlled media does not speak in your interest.
The people of the United States of America are deep in the process of expressing and embodying their democratic tendencies. This country and its people have a long way to go in this respect. People everywhere are searching for their collective voice.

Democracy is a set of principles, organizational structures and collective behaviors. It is a dynamic process that behooves us to be conscious and fully informed and socially activated. We are challenged to find a predominant validation of consciousness, clear information or ethical social action within the abyss-mal caverns of television.

We are likewise challenged to find it within the structures of mainstream United States (of America) society. We constantly butt our heads against top-down thinking and trends at work, our schools as well as in our information sources like television. We are advertised as individualistic consumers as opposed to collective thinkers and creators - which is what democracy requires. So what then is the role of media in this society?

Cultural Media Literacy is a vital and underemphasized necessity in a world in which popular opinion and, therefore, action or inaction is influenced by ever more powerful corporate media conglomerates. How do we as media consumers come to understand the growing seriousness of this issue?

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1) Become aware of your tv watching habits.
- limit viewing to specific choices
2) Get information from a variety of sources.
- don't forget to READ!
3) View with a discriminating, critical eye AND ear.
- information isn't true just because it's on tv
4) Watch with friends and family and discuss after.
- collective experiences breed deeper understanding
5) Learn how tv messages/programs are constructed
- book a Cultural Media Literacy workshop TODAY! : )

"Cultural Bias in Prime Time Television and Teenage Viewers: Cultural Media Literacy for High School and Higher Education"

Teenagers, as formative adults and aspirational viewers, look to prime time television programming to assist them with defining their roles, behavior and social expectations. Television continues to project characters and storylines steeped in cultural bias. Studies revealed that the programming showed persistent, overt and subtle, negative stereotypes of numerical minorities, women and young people. Current trends in corporate media conglomeration, centralization of control over all media outlets, help explain the challenges of the teen media and television environment. Teenagers are falling prey to the prejudiced characterizations, negative portrayals, wholesale omissions of sub-cultural populations and advertiser-driven balkanization of television audiences. The primary objective of this study was to qualitatively assess the level of televisual bias and segregation that is validating oppressive ideas and behavior that threaten the cultural life of the United States of America. Media literacy education, with a focus on communal and cultural issues is a positive, though still largely latent force, that can help to counteract harmful human messages that often lie hidden in the technically sophisticated, though narrowly conceived programming. Prime time programming watched heavily by teenagers was recorded and analyzed, observing five cultural parameters: Culture/National Origin/Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Age and Ability. By exploring these categories of sub-cultural presentation, patterns of portrayals were found that gave perspective to practical issues currently challenging social cohesiveness. This qualitative study gave rise to a cultural media literacy presentation, created as a proactive outgrowth of this research in the interest of addressing the issues of social discord, geared for high school and college students and adaptable for adult audiences.

Why Cultural Media Literacy?

Research by Children Now (1998) showed that children found it important to see characters that looked like them. It was also found that seeing those images helped contribute to their sense of self-esteem. As adults, as Dates and Barlow (1993) found, we strongly tend to watch television that reflects who we are. This means that people of European descent (Whites) tend to watch shows that feature Europeans and that Africans (Blacks) tend to watch shows that feature Africans. European viewers have been found to change the channel when they perceive that a program is about Africans (a show that features substantial
numbers of African characters). Individual shows and whole cable channels are geared toward smaller segments of the society. Viewing tendencies are narrowed, hence the opportunity for learning about those not directly like us is decreased. These findings point us to important issues when considering the importance of positive cultural portrayals and the viewing habits of people in a society still marked by racism, classism and sexism.

George Gerbner speaks of the human storytelling process being hijacked with the advent of electronic communication, especially with the development of corporate media conglomeration (companies such as Newscorp/Fox, Viacom, Disney and/or Time Warner). This change is detrimental to the long and short term development of the individual and the collective. In addition, the comprehension and understanding of the value of cultural diversity will not be fully realized until we begin to tell our own stories from and for a human frame of reference rather than a financial one, one championed by the strong influence of the ever-present advertisers. After all, the bottom line should be what is best for you, not what is best for money. The hypothesis I present to you today is that it is media and the capital that drive them that should serve the human, not the human serving media and its advertiser-controlled capital.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Michael Eisner, former CEO of Walt Disney Company said in a corporate memo, “We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective”
("Mickey Mouse Monopoly", Sun & Picker, 2001, Commercializing Children’s Culture section)"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Understanding the interrelationship between the forces of corporate capital, media content, character portrayals and relationships and media effects is key to gaining the perspective needed by media consumers in a media-heavy society such as this one.