We encourage all anti-porn activists to consider attending this summer institute at the Boston campus of Wheelock College.
Media Madness: The Impact of Sex, Violence, & Commercial Culture on Adults, Children, & Society
Dates: Tuesday July 8 – Friday July 11, 2008
Faculty: Gail Dines, Chair and Professor of American
Studies, & Diane Levin, Professor of Early Childhood Education
Earnings: Non-credit or 3 Graduate Credits; PDPs/CEUs
available
Tuition: Non-credit/Audit: $475; For-credit: $2,025
Course Description:
For the 14th consecutive year, Wheelock College is offering the very
popular summer institute on the role that the media (television, movies,
magazines, video games, advertising and pornography) plays in shaping
children’s development and behavior, as well as our overall cultural
attitudes. The institute will be held on Wheelock’s Boston Campus.
By focusing on the onslaught of violent, sexist and commercial images
that bombard us daily, participants will: understand harm caused by
this onslaught; build skills to educate and support children, youth
and adults to resist the dangers; and integrate broad-based media literacy
curricula and activism into classrooms and everyday life.
Who Should Attend
Human service providers, educators, anti-violence activists, parents,
media educators, producers, and graduate and undergraduate students.
Why Now
Media touches almost all aspects of our lives and shapes the way
we think about our culture, our world and ourselves. Children spend
more time in front of a TV screen than in school. By age 18, they have
witnessed more than 100,000 violent acts and more than 300,000 commercials.
The majority of children’s toys are linked to TV programs and
movies (many of which are violent) as are the clothing they wear and
the food they eat.
Emotional immaturity, narrow media-linked
play; violent and sexualized behavior; childhood obesity; rampant consumerism;
difficulty communicating; and poor literacy, math, and science skills
have all been associated with media consumption.
Banning media from our lives is rarely
a viable solution. Children and adults must become more critical consumers
of media to combat the harmful culture created by the media.
What You’ll Learn
- How media violence affects behavior and contributes to violence
in society; - How media influences children’s ideas about sexual behavior
and relationships with others; - How media affects children’s cognitive and emotional development;
- How media messages perpetrate and legitimize sexism, racism, classism,
and homophobia; - How political and economic forces shape and control the media;
- To analyze a wide range of media, including movies, cartoons, sitcoms,
MTV and advertisements for important messages about race, gender,
class and violence; - Strategies and resources for combating the hazards of media culture
with children using age-appropriate approaches to media literacy,
violence prevention, and conflict resolution; - To become active in advocacy, community building and policy around
media issues.
Institute Faculty
Gail Dines, Ph.D., Professor of
Sociology, Chair of Women’s and American Studies, author of Pornography:
The Production and Consumption of Inequality and co-editor of Gender,
Race and Class in the Media, a featured speaker in the videos The
Strength to Resist and Mickey Mouse Monopoly, and a nationally
acclaimed lecturer.
Diane Levin, Ph.D., Professor of Education, author
or co-author of So Sexy So Soon (in press) The War Play
Dilemma, Remote Control Childhood?, Teaching Young Children
in Violent Times, Who’s Calling the Shots? and Before
Push Comes to Shove, a featured speaker in the videos Beyond
Good and Evil and Mickey Mouse Monopoly, and a founding
member of Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment
(TRUCE) and Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children (CCFC).
See also:
Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit, 5/5/07)
“Now, I’ve been on television shows with many pornographers, and they
have the absolute chutzpah to turn around and say to me, ‘But we love
women. This is a celebration of women.’ Well I have to tell you, if you
think calling a woman a ‘cumbucket’ is your sign of love, sorry…
These men hate women…
“I do not believe that men go to look at
pornography because they hate women. I think for most males in our
culture, and remember the average age of downloading your first porn is
now 11 to 12… I don’t think that these 11 to 12 year-olds hate women.
Their hormones are going crazy, they live in a hypersexualized
culture…what passes for sex education is pathetic, so where are you
going to go? You’re going to go to pornography…
“I say this to
men over and over again. You might not go to pornography hating women,
but you’re sure as hell going to come away with that feeling. You get
much more than you bargained for with pornography, and that’s the
problem with it. The other problem with pornography is it sexualizes
the violence and degradation against women. And when you sexualize
violence you render that violence invisible, because when men see that
they can’t step back and critique it… You are basically trying to
have a rational conversation with an erection and it doesn’t work.”