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> MEF & Films
MEF & FilmsSut Jhally is also the Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation. Since 1991 he has been involved in various capacities in the production of more than 50 films and videos. Six of the ones he has been most directly connected with are featured here.
Click here to learn more about the Media Education Foundation.
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Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video
Dreamworlds 3, the highly anticipated update of Sut Jhally's groundbreaking Dreamworlds 2 (1995), examines the stories contemporary music videos tell about girls and women, and encourages viewers to consider how these narratives shape individual and cultural attitudes about sexuality. Illustrated with hundreds of up-to-date images, Dreamworlds 3 offers a unique and powerful tool for understanding both the continuing influence of music videos and how pop culture more generally filters the identities of young men and women through a dangerously narrow set of myths about sexuality and gender. In doing so, it inspires viewers to reflect critically on images that they might otherwise take for granted.
To watch a preview click here
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Advertising and the End of the World
Focusing directly on the world of commercial images, Sut Jhally asks some basic questions about the cultural messages emanating from this market-based view of the world: Do our present arrangements deliver what they claim-- happiness and satisfaction? Can we think about our collective as well as our private interests? And, can we think long-term as well as short-term? Drawing from the broad arena of commercial imagery, and utilizing sophisticated graphics, Advertising & the End of the World addresses the issues these questions raise, encouraging viewers to reflect on their own participation in the culture of consumption. Making the connection between society's high-consumption lifestyle and the coming environmental crisis, Jhally forces us to evaluate the physical and material costs of the consumer society and how long we can maintain our present level of production.
To watch a preview click here
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Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering
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Wrestling with Manhood is the first educational program to pay attention to the enormous popularity of professional wrestling among male youth, addressing its relationship to real-life violence and probing the social values that sustain it as a powerful cultural force. Richly illustrating their analysis with numerous examples, Sut Jhally and Jackson Katz, the award-winning creators of the videos Dreamworlds and Tough Guise, respectively, offer a new way to think about the enduring problems of men's violence against women and bullying in our schools. Drawing the connection between professional wrestling and the construction of contemporary masculinity, they show how so-called "entertainment" is related to homophobia, sexual assault and relationship violence. They further argue that to not engage with wrestling in a serious manner allows cynical promoters of violence and sexism an uncontested role in the process by which boys become "men." Designed to engage the wrestling fan as well as the cultural analyst, Wrestling with Manhood will provoke spirited debate about some of our most serious social problems.
To watch a preview click here
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Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
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The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire examines how a radical fringe of the Republican Party has used the trauma of the 9/11 terror attacks to advance a pre-existing agenda to radically transform American foreign policy while rolling back civil liberties and social programs at home. Narrated by Julian Bond, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the mainstream: What, exactly, is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions? How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda? And what are the stakes for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented?
To watch a preview click here
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Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
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Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.
To watch a preview click here
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