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Media Lit. Conference Day 1
Introduction of Participants


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Bob Kubey:

Thank you Joshua, good morning, it is Saturday morning in Taos and each of you probably needs to be diagnosed for why you're here and not in bed or hung over or looking at the scenery but we're glad you are here. The few little technical difficulties we had here today is as far as I know, the first, slight bits of disorganization in this first annual Film Festival and I'm already hearing from people who've been to Telluride that this one is already better organized than that one, so I think hats are off or on to Joshua for that.

Let me quickly introduce our panelists, then we're going to see a video, we'll turn off the lights please, no necking... and then we'll address some general questions--necking is for people who are old enough to remember what that was. So, in order here, we have a truly stellar panel.

First we have Adam Clayton Powell, III, he is Director of Technology Studies and programs at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He has served as Vice President of News Programming at National Public Radio; Manager of Network Radio and Television News for CBS News; News Director of the ABC News Westinghouse Satellite News Channel and as an Executive Producer for Quincy Jones Productions.

Next we have Leslie Savan, Advertising Columnist for the New York Village Voice, she's the author of the book called The Sponsored Life: Ads, TV and American Culture. In her collection of essays which are adapted from her Village Voice column, Ms Savan dissects hundreds of contemporary commercials and points out the mechanisms they use to manipulate us. She should have a particularly incisive commentary on the video I'm going to show shortly, given what I just read about you.

Next we have Victor Masayesva, Jr., he is writer, producer, director, editor, cinematographer on the film Imagining Indians. He is a Hopi and the Hopi are part of the Pueblo. He is an independent producer who has been making films for twelve years. His work is often an investigation into the commercial forces which serve to exploit the sacred aspects of Native American culture and that undermine the authenticity of tribal rituals. His films portray a culture in which information is earned and inherited through ritual and ceremony and is not a commodity which can be bought at any cost.

Next we have Fay Kanin. Fay Kanin is Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Foreign Film Executive Committee. She was four term President of the Academy, only one of two women who have ever occupied that position. I don't know who is currently in charge, but maybe they'll do a better program next year--I don't know if she'd agree or not, but. She is on the Board of Trustees of the American film Institute, Co-chairs its Center for Film and Video preservation. Also Chairs the National Film Preservation Board; a writer, producer stage, screen and television her films have won awards in every field.

Next we have Jonathan Wacks. He is the Chair of the Moving Image Arts Department in the College of Santa Fe; the producer of an Academy Award winning student film, Crossroads/ South Africa ; Repoman; Director of Powwow Highway and former President of Production at Samuel Goldwyn, Company. He has always had a strong force on promoting Independent film making and is the driving force behind establishing an alternative film community in Santa Fe.

Next is the infamous and famous D D Downs, who we have already mentioned once. A former television writer, producer and consultant for the film industry. She is Executive Director and Co-founder of the Downs Media Education Center. She founded the National Media Literacy Project and in 1993 instituted the nations first state wide Media Literacy Program in New Mexico. Let me make my own little comment because I know her best on the panel of the people there. There is, I think, unquestionably no one more responsible for the current more advanced state of media education in New Mexico than is D D. She is also, in my esteemed opinion, a brilliant and innovative media educator. She does a lot of very clever things that no one else has thought of before.

Lastly, and maybe even leastly--we're not sure yet. We have Steve Nicolaides. He is mostly a film Producer and among them are The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, Boyz 'n The Hood, Poetic Justice, and A Boy Called Hate. In these most recent: Boyz 'n The Hood and A Boy Called Hate there is a rumor in Hollywood that you are making too many films with the word "boy" in the title, but--never too many--okay.

Well, that's about it. We can go home now. Uh, if we can dim the lights, we thought we'd start--uh, let me explain what I brought in here. This is just a way to start things. I thought we might all have the same media text in common to bounce off of a little bit today. It doesn't mean we have to stay with it, and I think this is very interesting, in fact, most of the panelists, if they've seen it; I don't think they've studied it when they saw it.

This is about six minutes from the half time show of this most recent year's Super Bowl, which is arguably one of the large, secular holidays in America. And let me note a couple of things-- I don't want to tip too much because let me point out that in media education, at least I think among the people who are fairly knowledgeable about how to do media education. It is generally thought that it is best when first exploring a text that the panelists or the teacher does not lay out too clear a frame about what the interpretation might or should be. The idea is let the audience interpret, let's see what different interpretations are there. But, I'm going to violate this rule a little bit. Let me just say a couple of things about this.

Supposedly, this half time show in the game itself was seen by seven hundred fifty million people around the world, just a quarter billion short of the Academy Award audience. You'll notice the sound isn't going to be very good unfortunately. It's a cross promotion between Indiana Jones, which is a new ride as I understand it in Universal Studios or Disney World--Disney World in Florida, and Doritos-- They're getting all these big cross promotions with the Democratic Party and so on. And let me point out, I'll give you a hint what you might be looking for in here from my point of view, there is a notion in media education and also in media studies that's been around for a number of decades that ideology is most powerful and most persuasive and most penetrates our common sense understandings of things precisely at those times when we don't perceive the message as being ideological. And so if you see a campaign ad and you know it's a campaign ad, you're more likely to analyze it and think about it. However, if something is just imbedded in the middle of the Super Bowl half time show, or it's a movie like An Officer and a Gentleman, it's just an entertainment product, right? But obviously, there's ideology in these films-- and not always intentional.

Let me make it clear, I'm not saying that the ideology that you might perceive in here is intentional, it's an outgrowth of the nature of common sense understandings of the culture we inhabit. So, look at who the heroes are, look at who the victims are here, think about seven hundred fifty million people watching this world wide and if we can have the lights, I'll just crank this thing up.

(1995 Super Bowl half time footage)

Now, in formal media education circles I would never say the following, but the "vomitorium" is right... But I think in also keeping with the model of media education is that it is part of the education reform movement which is supposed to breakdown in part the notion that the people up here have all the answers or the teachers have the answers and the students are there to take notes and listen, so I'd prefer that if there are some comments from the audience to start and if Karen, you have that microphone, would someone like to make any observation about what they've just seen?

Audience Member:
It was bad
Bob Kubey:
This is what I was talking about yesterday about the depth of critical commentary available to Americans, it was bad. I thought it sucked, actually. Other comments?
Audience Member:
Yeah, the cost of this thing exceeds the gross national product of how many countries?
Bob Kubey:
I don't think--I mean, are you serious? The production here?
Audience Member:
Yeah, the cost of that whole thing?
Bob Kubey:
I have no idea, I didn't say, I don't know.
Audience Member:
The entire GNP is less than the cost of this.
Bob Kubey:
Well, I don't know if that's possible, but it might be possible. But I mean, let me ask you a question. Where did the heroes come from? They parachuted in, right? Into this other land, and they had every right to go in there and re-acquire the critical and important Super Bowl Trophy. I mean, what if the people they were killing had yarmulkes on or were clearly all say, African American? I would argue that there are only a couple or a few ethnic or racial groups that are still happily and readily maligned in American culture, with almost no recognition on the part of the public. You had a comment?
Audience Member:
Just in terms of gender roles, what happened--what kills me is it seems so blatant but it has so many meanings to it. Just how she kicked a little ass, you know, she did some karate and then she's like ooh, save me, when her legs were straddling the bald, big guy's head. When she's in a sexually compromising position she can't protect herself, and then at the end she awards the phallus to him. I mean she grabs it and puts it in his hand and then supports it--like a good woman.
Bob Kubey:
And his first statement to her is stay behind me right?
Audience Member:
Stay behind me--
Bob Kubey:
Did you notice she was wearing those panty liner things? You can't see the panty line in her-- I don't know, it's blatantly phallocentric from a--Ah, yes, good point--yes she was wearing clothes. Yes, ma'me
Audience Member:
For me it was still the same white man in Hollywood deciding what we're going to see. And what is real and what is entertaining. Not white women, white men.
Bob Kubey:
Yeah, other comments?
Audience Member:
It was an enormous spectacle, I believe. And it was also everybody that wasn't an American, which was the exception of the girl, I mean white. They were all dressed in various kinds of costumes that were foreign or exotic and they were all bad except the two Americans.
Bob Kubey:
Yeah, they are clearly American, he's got the flight jacket from World War II and his fedora. And it's interesting, I was thinking about the Persian Gulf War and so on where, otherwise known as Operation Desert Storm, the PR handle for it. You know, where again, you come in from the skies and take over things. But again, I would argue that an awful lot of the stuff that were citing was not really terribly intentional on the part of the producers. I mean, they're using Indiana Jones, so they've got to kind of play off the film itself which is full of racism and so on. But, I argue that this is for my money, more problematic because it's all seen at once live. It's at the very center of our culture for a moment and worldwide. You had a comment?
Audience Member:
I thought that all the multilingual foreigners were wonderful and exciting and that the message was that we should be trying to join them.
Bob Kubey:
Oh, interesting. Aha, A different interpretation. Okay.
Audience Member:
What do you think would have been politically correct, appropriate entertainment for the half time for Super Bowl?
Bob Kubey:
Well, I don't know, I would say I have seen interesting productions that have opened the Olympics in France and other countries and I don't recall quite this level of hegemony, but then maybe I'm missing it. See, I've got this sense too when they're making their way around these chaotic hordes of middle easterners or people from the subcontinent wearing turbans and so one, that this is rough kind of making your way around here. I mean they're making it hard to get that Super Bowl trophy. Don't they understand? But the other comment may be germane.
Audience Member:
The thing that struck me as an overall, the whole spectacle was trying to give the symbol of the Super Bowl trophy this great cosmic meaning that it really doesn't have. And therefore, sort of connote that this whole event is so important and so meaningful and therefore that the advertising is worth what's spent on it, which it is not.
Bob Kubey:
Well, it is particularly important in a game that everyone knew the result of ahead of time so that there is like no drama in the game. But, I'm sure the thing was story boarded months before. I'm wondering what comments any of the panelists would like to add, Fay?
Fay Kanin:
Well, I think beyond the racism that it exhibits, it exhibits something else that I think is very sad, which is that entertainment has come to be fighting, killing, hitting, guns. All the ads for movies, the most popular movies have guns in the ads and if there's an ad that comes out without a gun they quickly put a gun in because they know that will bring in a bigger audience. So, I just think what's happening to what we call entertainment, ugh, that was supposed to be entertaining. Well, first of all, it was awful. But then, I just thought it was sad.
Bob Kubey:
I'm saying that one of the things that I think is assumed, that bad people, people who wear turbans or dress like people would dress in the middle east or the subcontinent--keep in mind that when it goes out to seven hundred fifty million people around the world, there are people in these very countries who dress like this, although they were fairly careful that the people dressed in turbans were white. They were caucasian in all likelihood. But what do those people make of it. And there are hundreds of thousands of people of Arab background, millions in this country, in New Jersey, the state that I come from. You had a comment?
Audience Member:
In Hollywood, they really don't give much thought to the content, what that spot is meant to do is sell products.
Bob Kubey:
This was produced in Florida. It's not a Hollywood production--
Audience Member (continuing):
The problem is, that we keep tuning into it. If we stopped tuning in to it, production values will change.
Bob Kubey:
Yeah, we want to get to this because one of the topics we want to deal with today is: Who is responsible for the impact of media on society? Is it the producers? Is it the audience, and so on. One of the other things I want to just piggyback on what Fay said, not only is it assumed from my point of view anywhere here that it's okay to have certain ethnic groups still be certain kinds of bad guys and so on. But, it's also assumed that level of violence--lighting someone on fire is a perfectly reasonable response to his being in possession of a Super Bowl trophy. Even thought you're on his land and so on, and I don't really understand how they got the Super Bowl trophy in the first place--But, it doesn't matter they're bad.
Adam Clayton Powell, III:
These symbols were chosen by the producers precisely because they believed they would be successful means of communicating what they wanted to communicate in the story. They were storytelling tools.
Bob Kubey:
By the way, did you notice the Doritos logo in the middle of the surface of the stadium at one point, yeah.
Audience Member:
it was the same old thing being told again. It was the Super Bowl half time gig mixed in together with the film of Indiana Jones. That formula plus this formula equals puke. And there was really no story or content where like you mentioned opening scene in the Olympics for the winter Olympics in Yugoslavia was just beautiful. It was all about an idea.
Bob Kubey:
Well, this was about an "Idea".
Audience Member:
It was? Yeah, Tony Bennett shows up and...
Bob Kubey:
Well, Tony Bennett is all niche marketing. You know, a lot of old people dig him and now he's got a new audience with younger people so he's retro.
Audience Member:
And then there all kinds of inconsistencies like the African American woman who was part of the act. She comes up and congratulates them at the end. Wasn't she an enemy too?
Bob Kubey:
That's Pattie LaBelle you're talking about.
Audience Member:
The thing that was interesting to me is that there is a meta-narrative here of a Judeo Christian ethic that's, Mary get behind me I will protect you and we will go into this beastly land of horrible people and the holy grail will prevail and we will find it, and we will overcome. And that's the meta-narrative here. And it lifts what you said at the beginning, this secular event into a communal, constant gratification of, He got the thing and brought it home.
Bob Kubey:
You get an "A". "A" plus, absolutely, at least from my point of view.
Audience Member:
It's a metaphor for Hollywood conquering the world. That it is the white message to Hollywood that should conquer the world.
Bob Kubey:
But again, I can't overemphasize how, to the degree that you might be right in your analysis that these things are implied in this whole thing. And it's assumed, this is again how ideology is most powerful. I don't think that the producers were intending to do that. They're drawing on existing popular notions in order to make something popular.
Audience Member:
They frame everything that we live and do. That's the story that we live out every day without being conscious of it.
Bob Kubey:
Well this is the idea also in media studies and media education about how cultures always work to reproduce themselves. Whether they intend to or not, they must draw on existing notions and you see it here. I don't want to go too much further with it. Well, someone's dying here to--he's a white man, I think.
Audience Member:
Yeah, thank you. I'm overjoyed that you noticed that. You know, Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. When is a cigar not a cigar? Isn't that an important question to ask when you look at what's out there?
Bob Kubey:
Well, I would answer, being fairly knowledgeable about Freud--I'll remind you that he died from his oral cancer which was caused by his cigar that he sucked on numerous times every day. I mean he had a prosthesis in his mouth for years.
Audience Member:
You still haven't called it anything but a cigar.
Bob Kubey:
Well, he was sucking on the damn thing for an awfully long time and I'm a Freudian at heart but sometimes Freud was wrong too. It's just happy entertainment--is what you're saying, maybe?
Audience Member:
No, my question is, when is a cigar not a cigar? When are the images that you think are one thing really not what you think they are? Where is that line?
Bob Kubey:
Well, there's no science to that. It's largely subjective which is--how do you deal with it. D D has got a point.
Deirdre Downs:
I would like to point out that one of the key concepts of media literacy is that audiences negotiate their own meaning so, someone may see simply a cigar or someone may see, I don't know, a wicked stepfather. I also have to say that it is very hard for me to knock anything that has Pattie LaBelle in it. Because if there is reincarnation, when I come back you'll know who I am because I'll have her voice. But, aside from its really easy to see the racial and gender stereotypes. I think anybody, even young people in school, even fifth graders can identify that as an issue. The deeper issue in Hollywood has to be the economy which drives these stereotypes.

And to go to the question of who's responsible for the media impact on society, I think that's a really critical thing to think about. Is it the responsibility of the producer of the Super Bowl half time extravaganza to do something as someone said earlier, "politically correct?" Is it the job of the producer in Hollywood to make sure that we don't reinforce and perpetuate stereotypes like that? How do you know when you're creating a film, how do you know? You know for a fact that a lot of yourself is going to get in there, but the reality is that most filmmaking is a real group project. It takes a lot of people to bring something to the screen. Everybody involved in that is going to have a bit of themselves there. A bit of their vision. Of course the amount of that depends differently.

We are really fortunate today to have on this panel, several film makers who have, by their work, exhibited a tremendous amount of compassion for society and a sense of responsibility about the messages both overt and subliminal that are in their films. And, I would like to ask the film makers on the panel how they get positive value messages on the screen, considering the state of the political economy in Hollywood.

Bob Kubey:
It's fine with me, we could go right down, or we could--
Deirdre Downs:
No, I think we have three actual film makers. How do you deal with that?
Victor Masayesva, Jr.:
Well, going back to when is a cigar a cigar, I'm thinking, I wonder if we saw Forrest Gump as a black man if he would be as cute? I see him in certain situations being very threatening. Now, what if he were an Indian? Now that will be other situations. So this is a deliberate attempt, well it's a deliberate choice from Hollywood. So I wish I had a budget to be able to paint him. And I think that is a good example of what I hope I answered your question there.

Entertainment, it's here in the Pueblos. I have to explain that by a story that we--an event in 1984, we made a run through the pueblos from Taos, from here to Hopi. It was in celebration of the Pueblo Revolt, the first organized revolt against Europeans in 1680. And we organized it as a run. Now running is not just an unimportant activity. It's ceremonial, it's ritual. And so, each village we entered, we were treated differently.

In the case of Santo Domingo, which is a very conservative village, downstream near Albuquerque, we experienced a lot of confusion. There was a lot of dust in the air and we knew that we were not just running as a physical exercise. So they confused us there, and led us away from their important areas. We shouldn't have been running at that time through that village. So we clearly have those distinctions in these pueblos, what's entertainment and what's not.

What we are doing--and those of you who are knowledgeable, who live around here know, it looks like the village is open, the tours here to Taos Pueblo--but it's another way of confusion--creating a mask. And it's as deliberate as some of the villages being closed. We, far out west in Arizona, I think we're more liberal. We're more accessible, but recently, we too are closing down and we are closing down deliberately to the non-Native people. We feel that is the only way to control people who come to be entertained and that's not the purpose of what looks like, might look like entertainment to most people. So we're closing down.

Jonathan Wacks:
I'm not sure what's meant when people talk about positive messages. The films that I've done--I think of film making as a form of personal expression. Obviously, there is a collaboration that goes on, the most critical collaboration is between the director and the writer, but obviously there are other elements: production designers, cinematographers, editors and so forth; but as a director, I can't make a movie until I can find myself in the screen play. And, whether I write it or whether somebody else writes it, I have to adjust it to the point that I can say what it is that I want to say and sometimes that means that under the movie because I don't see it or because the screen writer doesn't think that I see what they want me to see.

So when we talk about positive messages, I think that that's kind of a misnomer, I think no film maker really goes into making a movie with the intention of meeting the criteria that is set up as to what is a positive or appropriate or correct message. I think you say what it is that you are moved to say and you use the medium to try to express that.

Now obviously, that comes down to who it is that gets to say what it is that they want to say. And the mechanisms that are at work in Hollywood to do that tend to be kind of reproducing mechanisms. In other words, those who have been successful the terms that Hollywood works, which is essentially box office, get to do it a lot. Those who are not, get to do it less frequently. Which is why I think the most interesting and powerful side of film making in this country, is independent film making because primarily, independent films do not have to meet the criteria that is set by the Hollywood system although it would be naive and silly to think that independent film makers don't have to go out there and recoup the investment that's made in a project.

I remember that when I did Powwow Highway, there were a lot of people who thought that scenes that were in the movie which showed Indians on the res' drinking and doing drugs and what have you would not send a "quote" "positive" message out. Well, I spent several months at the res' up in Montana, the Cheyenne reservation, and 85% of the people are unemployed. Most people don't have indoor toilets. There is almost 90% drug and alcohol addiction up there and that's a reality. That's the reality of what people live in and my interest in that story was about these two guys, one who is very political and one who is very spiritual, who were able to create something for themselves in the context of that reality. So, maybe in some people's opinion I was not sending out a positive message about Indian People because I showed people holding, clutching brown bagged bottles of alcohol, but that's the way it is.

I think very often you have to look ultimately to what it is that you are trying to say, and what it is that you are personally trying to express, and let the chips fall where they may.

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