Sex in Sorenson??

I knew not what to expect as I wandered to the third row of seats in Sorenson’s auditorium. I honestly hadn’t done any research on the speaker and was only there because I was promised five extra credit points for writing this blog. However, I must say, I was open-minded and highly-curious about what this self-proclaimed left-political feminist had in store for the audience. Katha Pollitt began her talk in a rather traditional way. She introduced herself and she told us that she had written for The New York Times and The Nation. Quite impressive. It seemed like the typical presentation.
Pollitt, then, picked up her book, entitled “Learning to Drive” and without the slightest shift in tone or expression, told us the title of her selected reading: “Memoir of a Shy Pornographer”. I could hear the hushed murmurs around me as people assumed that they had misheard or misinterpreted Pollitt’s words. No…she said it, she was to read from “Memoir of a Shy Pornographer”. She said she selected the reading because it was probably one of the few stories that we would not have previously read. Then, she began. The story was actually about her previous job as a pornography editor. Within the reading, she gave a few examples of the writing she would have to edit and touched on the epic dilemma between choosing words that were grammatically correct, but that would also put people in the mood. I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed watching my classmates shift in their seats as the mention of the word “fellatio.”
What I found most interesting was her discussion on the difference between porn films and books. Reading, in her opinion, “took more work”. It also gave the reader a higher sense of “freedom and power” than one would have when watching a video. The video imposes images into our mind’s eye—dictating that this is THE WAY to do it, or that is how it SHOULD look. Books, in contrast, allow one to utilize his or her “imagination”. Needless to say, I found this talk, very interesting.

Non-Information: A response to McKibben's "The Age of Missing Information"

The role of television in society is one of the least contested positions of power today. Sure, people fuss and fight all of the time about how television contributes to over-consumptive, overly-violent, and over-sexualized nature of society, but this is merely an objection to specific notions, not to the television itself. Rather than focusing in the more demonized programs on television and supporting or dispelling the connection between the above-mentioned problems and their promotion on television, McKibben literally looks at television—itself—in the most general way. What he found was a huge influx of trivial matter parading itself as information.
One of the more interesting examples in the book concerned the images portrayed in nature programs. Channels like the Discovery Channel or Public Broadcasting station, which often include nature documentaries, are considered some of the most “educational” on television. Yet, what information do they actually teach. According to McKibben, the information given to us about animal life is not really actual information. All of images we see depict situations that only rarely occur in the animal world. After watching a lion for a couple of weeks or months and then editing out all of the normal, tedious things the creature does, the videographer may be capture only a couple of scenes in which the animal is aggressive, threatening, and…active. These scenes are what is displayed on the nature programs and what are used to define the animal. The lion is presented as threatening, “the king” of the jungle that dominates the animal kingdom. The show fails to disclose that the events that are depicted only happen once in a “blue moon”.
Believe it or not, these channels, too, are concerned more with holding the audience’s attention than with the distribution of accurate information. Thus, after watching a nature documentary, one only has the illusion of attaining knowledge and learning something new and concrete. In reality, he/she has learned nothing at all, but how the animal may act in the extreme instances.

Power Play: Investigating McChesney's Argument

This topic is one of particular importance to me. McChesney’s argument about the concentration of power of media owners and its resulting bias in the media channels can be seen and understood in a micro environmental way for me. As one of the more “involved” members of the Free Press, I have a similar relationship to the presentation of media on Babson’s campus—at least in most theoretical sense. I have recently accepted a role largely aimed at recruitment of writers and other staff members. My strategy was simple. I decided to begin by recruiting people within my social network. This choice reflected my assumption that these people would be more likely to agree to offer their help. As a person of color on Babson’s campus, I have the greatest affinity and more often than not, the closest relationships with those who also constitute a minority on Babson’s campus. This meant that the people I recruited did not normally represent the “white male”, which composes the majority of Babson’s student population, but were women or ethnic minorities, or, more often than not, were a combination of the two. This inclination was not intentional, however, it definitely, even for a short while, shifted the type of news that was covered.
In example, I remember seeking out a couple of my friends that belong to Black Greek-letter organizations during the Greek rush season on-campus. I felt it important for people to be exposed to different organizations that essentially serve the same purpose, but may not be considered as viable organizations to mainstream society. This article, entitled “The Divine Nine”, was featured on the front page of an issue of the Babson Free Press. I am not deranged enough to believe that this article would appeal to the masses of the Babson community. I am also aware that the fact that the Babson Free Press is only read by very few members of the community probably played a huge role in both my pursuit of the project and my ability to give the article such a large role in the issue. However, this little exercise proved that the bias of those in “power”—though in my case, this power derived from access, not resources, can be easily and perhaps unquestionably passed downward.
Given my personal experience with how simple it is for one who has the access and resources to manipulate the media, I am very supportive of McChesney’s argument. The concentration of power in the mass media can’t help but project the biases of the owners down the chain to the consumer.