An alternate take on media literacy that goes beyond the standard anti-media rant. It’s from Henry “Convergence Media” Jenkins’ program at MIT. They run through a mouthful of terms at the end, but I find them useful because they acknowledge that these days the line between consumer and producer is bleeding the old definitions of literacy to death.

Produced by Anybody

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

This is the latest installment in the dumbing of America argument. The “dumbing down” polemic is pervasive in the media literacy movement and is also a subtext of Jean Twenge-inspired attacks on gen-y and the millennials so-called mediated narcissism.Though the article is compelling in its finely tuned arguments, riddle me this: if early educators in the US believed that universal literacy would produce a rational society, what happened? It appears to me that everything that the “dumbing down” crowd rails against is the product of highly rational, extremely well-educated people. From my vantage, rationality seems to be the problem, not the other way around.

You can download any commercials onto your computer and use them for teaching about media. Firebrand supports a number of formats, including iPod, iPhone, Windows Media and Quicktime.

OK media lit folks. Have at it!

From the Website:

OUR MANIFESTO

We love commercials. We submit, with rare exception, that they?re the best stuff on TV. In under a minute you get the best directors, the sickest special effects, the funniest writers?what?s not to love?

We love commercials. 1984. Mean Joe Green. Whasssup? You know you love them, too. So let?s gather ?round the best of them. Sort them. Judge them. Share them. Love them.

We love commercials. The eye candy. The laugh out louds. The did-you-just-see-thats. The most loved, the most emailed, the ones we still talk about today. Let every day be Super Bowl Monday.

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Upon reviewing the video I would not recommend it for media literacy. While it is true that the many people in corporate media are on the CFR, I don’t believe they take directives from a secret group. It’s an issue of them all sharing the same values and worldview in the same way the same people mentioned probably all went to Ivy League schools and were in the same fraternities. Also, in terms of its educational applicability, it’s my opinion that it’s better to demonstrate how coverage of certain issues benefit specific sectors of society. A good example of this would be from the Noam Chomsky documentary, Manufacturing Consent, because it has good case studies.

Furthermore, I really don’t like the idea of conspiracies and secret cabals. Life is chaotic and messy. It’s easier to create chaos than order, although there is a point that generating a perpetual state of disorder is one kind of control, and that certainly has been true through out history. But that tiger is not an easy ride. If mind control truly were possible, we’d all be pretty mind-frakked right now. The system is in place to do it. Why hasn’t it happened?

Also, all the media discussed in the clip are increasingly irrelevant because the entire mediascape is evolving into a new paradigm. The assumptions of the narrator is that we inhabit a one-to-many, vertical model of information distribution, when in fact we are now in a more horizontal, many-to-many distribution flow. I’m not saying that corporate media are not dangerous to the planet, but we need newer ways of understanding, and unfortunately this particular clip features some outdated views of how media currently operate.

Finally, I don’t believe in the “conduit” form of media: that is, the idea that information exists as objects that are delivered from one person to the next without being altered. Communication is messy, so ideas don’t transfer that well. For example, how many of you can repeat all Ten Commandments and agree on what they mean? What is dangerous about media is how they produce “subjectivities”: ways of thinking. In a sense, the above clip just repeats the same “subjectivity” of the people it purports to critique, yet another example of the snake eating its tail. Time to change our diet.

Ha! Got you to look. Here are some clips by the great deconstructionist, Jean Kilbourne, who critically examines images of women in advertising.

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A preview for a cool little documentary based on a great book that dissects Hollywood stereptypes of Arabs, Reel Bad Arabs. The author, Dr. Jack Shaheen, is a really nice guy. I met him at the Taos Talking Pictures Film festival and saw the talk that this film is based on. It’s powerful stuff and badly needed. Please support him and what he has to say by sharing this video.

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Anyhow, I came across the following article that argues for graphic novels in the classroom. I wholeheartedly agree!

Reading Online – New Literacies::

Educators need not worry that graphic novels discourage text reading. Lavin (1998) even suggested that reading graphic novels may require more complex cognitive skills than the reading of text alone. Some English teachers use graphic novels to teach literary terms and techniques such as dialogue, and they use works like the Victorian murder novel The Mystery of Mary Rogers (Geary, 2001) as a bridge to other classics of that period. Graphic novels can also inspire writing assignments. For example, the human interest story Jack Cole and the Plastic Man (Spiegelman & Kidd, 2001) intersperses an essay on the short, tragic life of comic artist Jack Cole with examples of his artwork, photographs, and even reproductions of a Christmas card Cole sent. The collage that results captures biography in a new way. For a challenging classroom project, students could create graphic novels based on literary works or their own autobiographies.

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1) INSIPIDNESS
2) BRATTINESS
3) “PRINCESS-NESS”
4) “STEREO-TYPING”
5) VIOLENCE
6) VULGARITY
7) SLUTTINESS

While I agree that seeing these attitudes expressed in media for youth is troubling, I’d like to argue that kids have their own culture independent of media (this is not to say it is influenced by media). I disagree with authors when the see children role playing TV shows as bad. Kids always role play, and I find the adult culture much more dangerous than what is being streamed to kids. Besides, look at the kind of role playing certain arm chair militarists are doing as they toy with people’s lives while they project their fantasy of virility upon the youth soldiers of the world.

I disagree with the solution stated below, which is to cut off the source. I think it is far better to let children be exposed to the world but to discuss it and teach them to critically engage what they are experience. This is coming from someone who grew up on a lot of TV (at least 4-6 hours a day) and as someone who used to role play such horrible programs like the Six Million Dollar Man and S.W.A.T. You may disagree, but I don’t think I’m damaged as a result.

The seven deadly sins of kid culture: One dad runs interference against the worst of children’s entertainment: Cover Story: Cover: Creative Loafing Atlanta:

For now, the Seven Deadly Sins of Kid Culture – or as I like to call them, Blandy, Bratty, Dippy, Bleedy, Gassy, Trampy and Jar Jar – can be exhausting opponents. Because of them, however, I appreciate the children’s arts that my daughter and I discover together all the more, such as the graphic novel Owly by Lilburn’s Andy Runton, or the catchy, hook-laden songs of Laurie Berkner, or the new Pixar movies.

But being well-rounded isn’t the only virtue I want to encourage in my daughter. The best way to fight the seven deadly sins is to cut off, shut down and unplug all their sources of entry. Even the best things about kid culture, even Ratatouille, can’t compare to a walk in the park.