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Title: The crisis of the cultural environment Reference: Director & producer, Sut Jhally. Abstract: Turning to issues of media policy, George Gerbner delivers a stinging indictment of the way the so-called 'information superhighway' is being constructed. By examing the logic of globalization, he shows the ineffectual nature of our present responses - such as the v-chip - to deal with the urgent crisis of the media. Showing the real uses to which the 'information superhighway' will be put by its corporate masters, he urges the citizens of the world to struggle for democratic principles in the cultural environment. Library of Congress subjects: Reviews and Numerical Ratings (2.5) Earnest narrators against monotone backgrounds make up about half of what’s on screen, leading me to daydream now & again. But I also took plenty of notes, with assistance from the soundbites organizing the different sections of the video (“channels proliferate, owners concentrate!”). The U.S.-based information is more accessible here than in the related Rich Media, Poor Democracy video, & the analysis was superior too. Last, I finally saw scenes from Zena, Baywatch, & the Power Rangers. Maybe if I already owned a TV, the media images wouldn’t interest me as much and a reading would do just as well. Kathy Bischoping (1.5) To me, this title was very intriguing so I was interested to see what the video was about. The video focused on how the media defines & controls the information we consume, creating a culture that is highly uniform, designed to meet a global market, and formulated to create a universal culture embodying sex & violence while lacking a sense of diversity, of values and aspirations. The video also looks at how the media defines democracy and damage our way of thinking. I felt it was extremely important to know the alternative epistemology of the media that this video provides. But, I felt the video was extremely boring in the format of how information was provided. George Gerbner gave a lot of information but the video was mostly about him talking against a monotone background. I couldn’t wait for this to be over! I didn’t find him convincing and maybe it’s only because I already had some information about this topic that I found it credible. There are so many more interesting formats in which this information could have been presented, e.g., including other interviewees besides Gerbner. And, at the end of the video, they showed a cultural movement that is critiquing the way the media is presented: this is such an important topic that it would have been good to spend more time on this and to hear from the people in that movement. On the whole, I couldn’t wait for this video to be finished. Marsha McQueen (undergraduate) (3) This film depends solely on Dr. George Gerbner
to provide an analysis of the cultural environment in North America.
In this film Gerbner systematically deconstructs some of the common
assumptions about media in the United States. He effectively explains
how the process of capitalism has shaped how media is owned and produced
in the United States. Gerbner suggests that democracy cannot exist within
society where the cultural environment is centralized and monopolized
by private capital and challenges the viewers to change it. Sarah Newman
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