A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
A Critical Forum on Media and Culture
Avi Santo examines the representational and rhetorical strategies used by toy companies to produce dolls for African American girls, which emphasize self-love and a broadening of traditional beauty categories to overcome internalized racism, and compares these with the past production and marketing of Black dolls.
Avi Santo takes a closer look at a few so-called industry outsiders who are leading the charge to change girls’ play culture and guide them toward future STEM fields.
Read moreAvi Santo explores the ways in which Project MC2 attempts to sell a brand and S.T.E.M to young girls.
Read moreIndigeneity for Life: Bro’town and Its Stereotypes
by: Ilana Gershon / Indiana University
The writers of Bro’town insist on a distinction between stereotypes used to reinforce historically and economically grounded inequalities and stereotypes used to indicate differences without consequences.
Merging With Diversity, or, Got MLK?
by: Jonathan Gray / Fordham University
Will the upcoming merger between the WB and UPN networks result in the whitewashing of what little African American programming network television has mustered thus far?
On The Set With Degrassi: The Next Generation ~ There’s Something to Be Said for Passion
by: Sharon Ross / Columbia College Chicago
Cast, crew, and personal perspectives on teen TV that matters.
An Arresting Development
by: Jason Mittell / Middlebury College
What can the cancellation of Arrested Development tell us about the present and future state of the television industry?
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Boy: Transgeneration‘s Meditation on the “Real”
by: Shana Agid / Sarah Lawrence College
Thoughts on Transgeneration and TV’s quest to create a viable “normal” transgender person.
Krebs, Recycled
by: Daniel Marcus / Goucher College
Remembering Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs, a rebellious figure in early television. He was a beatnik icon for suburban youths who dreamed of upsetting accepted morals and conventions.
Teen Choice Awards: Better Than The Emmys?
by: Sharon Ross / Columbia College Chicago
Hidden behind the surfboards is an awards show that celebrates much of what the Emmys have overlooked.
Boy Soaps: Liberalism Without Women
by: Allison McCracken / DePaul University
What’s old is new again on television, as prime-time boy soap operas like Everwood, Jack and Bobby, Life As We Know It, Summerland, The Mountain, One Tree Hill, Smallville and The OC have come to replace girl-centered teen dramas like My So-Called Life, Popular, and Buffy.
Rethinking the Digital Age
by: Faye Ginsburg / New York University
It is 2005 and the term “The Digital Age” is as naturalized for many as a temporal marking of the dominance of a certain kind of technological regime (“the digital”) as is the “Paleolithic’s” association with certain kinds of stone tools.