Showing posts with label consumer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumer. Show all posts

Friday, December 3, 2010

Killing Us Softly



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 49 -- December 3, 2010

This week in New World Notes, radio program #144, December 7:

Killing Us Softly:
Advertising's Image of Women

In brief

A smart, funny, and important talk. With wit and humor, Jean Kilbourne shows the preposterous body images, emotional styles, sexuality, and attitudes towards violence that consumer advertising presents to women (and men) as desirable and normal.

Kilbourne's critique is far from radical, but it is very sound, very interesting, and in places very funny. Both men and women will find this talk well worth a listen.

Caption contest!

Vote for the caption(s) that best explain the five graphic images on this page. (Winners announced next week.)

  • WTF??
  • This can't be happening
  • Please, dear Jesus, . . .
  • I dreamed I incinerated Madison Avenue . . . in my Maidenform Bra
  • OMG
  • Seven inches? I'm supposed to be impressed?
  • How do I join N.O.W.?
  • [Write in:] ____________________________

Notes, credits, & links

Based on the video (Edition 3, year 2000). Condensed and adapted to radio by KD. This video is available on The Internet Archive ( http://www.archive.org/ ). An updated version--Edition 4, 2010--is available for purchase from the Media Education Foundation ( http://www.mediaed.org/ ).

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "unisex bathroom") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for. Coming soon (Tuesday air debut dates shown)

  • December 14 -- Why We Fight. Not Frank Capra's classic but a new documentary on the post-9/11 world. Adapted to radio by KD.
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net

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Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Culture of Celebrity: A Second Look


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 26 -- July 3, 2010

This week in New World Notes, radio program #122, July 6:

The Culture of Celebrity:
A Second Look

In brief

The corporate media enthusiastically promote "the culture of celebrity." This culture does worse than yield trivial entertainment. It make people more passive and powerless, more inclined to blame only themselves for their misfortunes, less able to organize and fight back against The System. Celebrity Culture is a tool used to pacify the masses. Or so argues journalist-prophet Chris Hedges.

We'll hear more of Hedges' October 14 talk in Winnipeg. This week Hedges focuses on Michael Jackson's career and especially on his funeral-- "a variety show with a coffin." (Other parts of this talk are in New World Notes #115.) I'll add additional specific examples--a few dozen headlines from a popular news-and-entertainment Web site--and some commentary.

Top: American Idol, 2010, Lee DeWyze.
Bottom: Miley Cyrus.
Most photos: Click to enlarge.

Notes, Credits, & Links

This week's music: I read a few dozen celebrity-culture headlines over a "bed" of hit instrumentals by The Ventures. They are, in order: Wipe Out; Pipeline; Walk, Don't Run; and Out of Limits.

Hedges' speech was recorded on October 14, 2009, by Ethan Osland, of Black Mask Winnipeg. Thanks to Ethan and Black Mask for permission to rebroadcast.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "first floor") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

New World Notes is archived at both radio4all.net and The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut date shown:

  • July 13 -- Interview with health-care activist Susan Rosenthal, M.D., on her new book, Sick and Sicker: Essays on Class, Health and Health Care

Top: Michael Jackson. Bottom: Chris Hedges.

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):



A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net




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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Story of STUFF


Volume 2, Number 3 -- January 20, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #48 -- January 20 & 23:


Apart from the speaker's voice, this is great radio! I know: we're getting pretty close to, "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" But hear me out.

Annie Leonard is a serious person; a good researcher, writer, and editor; and a talented filmmaker. On-screen she's dressed and made-up comfortably and very plainly, with only a smidgeon of conventional femininity--as though she planned to go out back and dig up the garden as soon as filming was over
.
But her voice! It's the cutesy, squeaky, faux-kindergarten-teacher style: high-pitched, with too great a range of intonation. She's the lady on the supermarket PA system, cooing about how your cat will love Acme-brand Kitty Treats . . . and you! But speaking twice as fast. Melanie Griffith on amphetamines. (Shirley Temple, for you old-timers.)

But don't touch that dial! Two minutes into her talk, the voice was bothering me much less. Three minutes in, I stopped noticing entirely. What she was saying was a brilliant, cogent synthesis of politics, science, and economics. She was explaining--clearly, persuasively, and in ways almost anyone could understand--why our globalized system of production, consumption, and disposal is bad news for almost everybody everywhere and also completely unsustainable.

Let's go back a few steps. Leonard produced a 20-some-minute video called The Story of STUFF. It's available, free, on the Internet. The visuals alternate between her (speaking to the camera/viewer) and some animated stick-figures drawn in pencil. This was the easiest video in the world to adapt for radio, since the heart and soul of the work are Leonard's spoken words. Though, I hafta admit, the stick-figures are awfully cute.


Auld acquaintance and now acclaimed Lefty folk-singer Anne Feeney turned me on to the video. Thanks, Anne! Later I discovered that the Unwelcome Guests Collective (http://www.unwelcomeguests.org/) had already broadcast the piece on their nationally-distributed radio program. Well, if you live in southern New England, you may have missed it, so here's another chance.

I still have no idea why God gave the world Melanie Griffith. I should check the Book of Job for clues. But Annie Leonard's contribution to the universe is easier to discern. Everyone--especially every American--should either see her video or else listen to a fine radio adaptation of it, such as . . . well, modesty forbids. . . .


This week's music:
  • Chumbawamba, The Good Ship Lifestyle
  • Intro: Warren Zevon with Something Happens, Werewolves of London

Catch New World Notes . . .


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