Documentary Films

I don't know that I have favorite documentary, and I have been out of the documentary loop in recent years, so I haven't seen many newer films, but I do enjoy films like Spellbound and mockumentaries like Best in Show. One piece that we show to students is called Young @ Heart. This is a very sweet and funny film about an elderly rock choir/band, which wouldn't necessarily be thought of as appealing to teenagers, yet they really seem to enjoy it. At first glance, this documentary seems to be targeted toward a middle age to older audience, but it turns out to be perfect for all ages and we use it to introduce our ethnography paper. If there is time, we also show the film, Trekkies, with is about Star Trek fans. It works well for this assignment because even though the first instinct may be to laugh at many of these people, after watching the film, we see that many of the core values of Star Trek are very good, such as respect and acceptance for all people (or beings). This movie really lets kids look at reasons why people do things (like dress up in Star Trek ...or professional sports team... uniforms) and they eventually can come to the conclusion that all people have their quirks and passions and, even though this one may be nerdy or weird, that it is ok to accept them as, even if you can't understand them.

Watching the News

For this week, I participated in something that I don't do very often, and that is to watch the local news. I get basically all of my news from listening to the radio, specifically MPR. I listen to the news on the radio when I wake up and when I drive to and from work- probably totaling about an hour a day. I feel like I am fairly well informed because they have in depth coverage on local, national and international topics. Everyday I usually also glance briefly at the Star Tribune which is delivered to my desk at school every morning. This is often very very brief- front page headline and maybe flipping through each section to see if anything catches my attention (at which point I might stop to skim an article, but probably not). I do not listen to any radio station other than MPR and an occasional field trip to The Current. In fact, I only have two buttons programed on my car stereo (#1= MPR, #2=Current). I don't really take the time to watch television in general, but I also sometimes turn on CNN as background/unwind noise. Basically, I am not a very typical media user (in my perception).

But back to the local news from this morning...

I watched the WCCO morning news.
I was surprised at the amount of diversity I noticed, in the anchors and the stories. The anchors were an African American woman and a white man. Right away in the first story was about a man that was rescued from a burning car (as Rick mentioned, very visual: shots of the car and the guy in the hospital). I tried to notice the discourse of the reporting on a black man being rescued by two white state patrolmen, and I didn't notice any "othering." The reporters just said, "A man was pulled from his burning SUV," and then in the interview, the officer simply refered to the man and his friend as, "Two gentlemen." It seemed that they just gave a few brief facts about injury status and whatnot and that was it. This, and everything in the broadcast was very quick and I found myself struggling to keep up with everything. They then went on to report a killing in a small town and to talk about the Foot Hood "shooting rampage." In this story, they did refer to the shooter and his strange behavior and made sure to mention, "His Muslim faith," but then stressed that, "Authorities insist that he is not a terriorist." So, even though his faith didn't seem to have anything to do with the story, it was still linked to terroristm and identified (which probably wouldn't happen if he had been of the dominant Christian faith).

Advertising Analysis

Bonus ad: this ad was created for a contest that Grainbelt puts on every year, and this particular ad took 2nd place a few years ago. I wouldn't call this ad a spoof, because it could actually be a commercial for beer and I could see this on TV if our society would allow it (maybe Logo or Bravo would show it). It is playing off of the typical beer ad theme of using sex and the promise of hooking up in a bar after drinking said company's alcohol, with a little twist.

Grainbelt Ad