Tag Archives: media criticism

Mainsteam media, On Campus Issues, Pop-Culture, Rape Culture, Sexual Assult

“The Hunting Ground”: A Horror Pseudo-Documentary on a Serious Issue

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By Sabrina Schnurr

Summary

CNN’s The Hunting Ground focuses on the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses in America and the way colleges neglect to address it. The documentary seeks to highlight the roles that money and reputation play in college administrations’ choices while chronicling the journey of Annie Clark and Andrea Pino, two former students at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who filed a Title IX complaint and sparked a movement against sexual assault on college campuses. The film criticizes schools’ actions while also examining the culture of fraternities and college athletes. The Hunting Ground includes testimony from many student victims of sexual assault, as well as interviews with psychologists, authors, professors, administrators, police officers, and parents. Lady Gaga recorded a Grammy-nominated original song, “Till It Happens to You,” for the film.

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The film opens like a blockbuster thriller: a montage of high schoolers and their families happily opening college acceptances immediately sets the scene for the emotional rollercoaster to come. Even the title itself establishes fears in viewers. Dramatic images of a doorknob and bathroom tile resemble that of a crime scene remake on a television drama, and voice-overs telling terrifying stories contrast with their corresponding montages of beautiful campus scenery. All in all, the film is hard to watch. Images of fraternity signs reading “sexual assault expected” and “thank you for your daughters” land a giant knot in viewers’ stomachs, and specifically, one father’s account of his daughter’s suicide is heart-wrenching and almost impossible to listen to. In this regard, the film does what it was made to do: draw an emotional reaction from audiences.

However, this emotional reaction is then irresponsibly paired with a quick hero-ending and a weak focus on the facts. Almost instantaneously, two students at UNC transition from broken victims to national heroes taking on Title IX to solve college rape; the ending segment presents a suddenly uplifting montage of women standing up. A quick cut between the national map of reported campus sexual assaults and the nearly identical homemade map hanging in the students’ apartment serves as comforting, but irresponsible closure. While these young women may have started a movement, this ending segment credits them — and solely them — with “solving” college sexual assault.

After this quick transition, women are suddenly shown strongly standing up and taking action, and administrators (formerly pessimistic about the future of the issue) suddenly see an optimistic solution. Footage of President Obama giving an address on the issue and a montage of new federal investigations into colleges make it seem as though these national achievements were a direct result of only these two students’ mission. Visually, this creates a false cause-and-effect relationship, in which the middle step is never shown. Where is the mention of Emma Sulkowicz, the student who started a movement in 2014 after carrying her mattress around campus after being assaulted? What about all the administrators, politicians, families, reporters, and students that played a role in this movement (a movement which started long before these young women even started college)?

The journey of the two students at UNC did not happen in a vacuum, but they are portrayed as if they did. Gillian Greensite, director of rape prevention education at UC Santa Cruz, notes that the first peak of activism in the rape-crisis movement occurred after the Civil War. Considering how these incidents are analyzed in isolation, the film lacks a rational evaluation of the then-current state of discussion about sexual assault and consequently, does these victims a giant disservice. Its happy ending also does not leave room for future discussion of this issue. Sexual assault is a dynamic problem in the United States; recently Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that the administration was formally withdrawing Obama-era campus sexual assault direction.

In addition, it has been argued that many of the statistics used in the film are outdated or merely inaccurate. Slate’s Emily Yoffe, who also writes for the Atlantic, spoke to Alyssa Keehan, director of research at United Educators — a higher education insurance group that recently released a study of 305 sexual assault claims they received from 104 schools over three years. Keehan noted that the “most common narrative you hear” — institutions not caring about sexual assault — might not be true. Their data found that when a formal complaint is brought against a student, he is found guilty 45 percent of the time, and when that happens, the attacker is given the “most severe penalty available” (expulsion or suspension) over 80 percent of the time. Nonetheless, while the choice of statistics used in the film can be arguably biased or inaccurate, it can hardly be debated that some are outdated. Specifically, in a portion of the film discussing student athletes as the prime attackers who get away with assault, two statistics are held onscreen; these statistics date back to 1993, over twenty years before the film was released. In using this data, the filmmakers ignore how college culture has changed tremendously in the past twenty years and continue to deny the viewer of a fully-informed, unbiased discussion on college sexual assault.

Any documentary has a responsibility to be fact-based, and in conveniently excluding major pieces of the investigations noted, the film loses its legitimacy and sabotages its powerful message. For example, a large piece of the film focuses on the rape allegation against Jameis Winston, a former Florida State University quarterback who was found not responsible after a criminal investigation. His accuser, Erica Kinsman, went public saying that after drinking a shot at an off-campus bar she started feeling strange and was “fairly certain there was something in that drink.” However, the filmmakers fail to note that two toxicology reports found that she had no drugs in her system nor do they reveal that at the December hearing, Kinsman did not insist that she was drugged or unconscious. Granted, these young women are beyond brave for speaking out about their experiences; sexual assault on college campuses is a real problem that needs to be addressed. Yet while testimony from real victims has raw, emotional power, it isn’t enough. If the students are looking to inform the public about this very serious issue, an ethical stance of fairness does not leave room for picking and choosing what critical pieces get included.

Ultimately, The Hunting Ground does its viewers a disservice by focusing on passion over information. In a world where the media rules our daily lives, documentary-makers have an ethical responsibility to provide fact-based films. However, some could argue that the pushback from schools on the accuracy of things mentioned in the film perhaps proves the film’s point: colleges do not want to put their reputations on the line by addressing this very real issue. Yet, in terms of the film itself, it poses serious questions about bias and our consumption of media. Can a documentary still be a good documentary if it only presents one side of the story? Additionally, Emily Yoffe brought up an interesting point in an NPR interview: what does this mean for CNN? This news network is attempting to present the film as a “fair exploration of an important subject,” but it very easily might not be “fair” at all.

 

Featured image by Christopher Serra, courtesy of the LA Times.

Archives, Awareness, Media Criticism

More than meets the eye, perhaps

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As is noted in the comments section of the original post at Crates and Ribbons, the identity of those pictured is contested. But even so — imagine even if the photo was staged — that the image is so productive of interpretations that fail to take into account the possibility that something untoward is going on, is an object lesson in the way that a rape culture works upon the collective consciousness.

Archives, Body Image, Feminism, Media Criticism, Objectification

Matchmaker, Matchmaker… DON’T make me a match!

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Hoochies, I really don’t want to admit this, but I will. I watch The Millionaire Matchmaker.  Now, on many counts, this show is pretty despicable. The premise is addictive: Patti Stanger, a 3rd generation matchmaker in LA, sets up rich men through her Millionaire’s Club, the website of which looks like an advertisement for a brothel. These millionaires are allowed to handpick women who are usually a) way too nice or b) way too young.  Criticizing this show is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I’ll give you the highlights:

1)  If you want to marry a millionaire, and you’re above a size 6, good luck. Patti reserves “bigger” (i.e. a size 10) women for her “chubby chasing” clients. Now, I take offense at this on a couple of levels. First, the idea that a woman should be telling other women that they are fat and unworthy to compete for male attention is disgraceful. This kind of attitude teaches men that only the slimmest of women are worthy of love, and it teaches women that in the competition for rich men, their bodies are the greatest weapons.  Insidious female on female attack is destructive and demeaning.  If we tell men that they should only be attracted to certain body types and that the rest are undesirable, it feeds right back into a damaging sizist cycle that we need to end.

2) I guess money trumps idiot? These men are often rude, strange, misogynistic, witless and boring. And yes, many of them are pretty ugly. But millions of dollars seems to give them a free pass on many qualities one might look for in a mate. However, the few woman millionaires on the show have no such luck. They are still judged for their looks and admonished to let the man take control. It would appear that money only makes things harder for women because they have to prove that they are still “feminine.” Hoochies, I ask you: why does “feminine” have to mean docile and simpering? Unfortunately, in the Millionaire’s Club, women do not have power unless expressly allowed. In her 10 Dating Rules for Single Ladies, Stanger writes, “do not offer to outright pay for something: once a woman touches money/credit card in front of a male she becomes masculine energy, which is undesirable.” Basically, according to this line of thought, men are not attracted to women who are remotely self-sufficient – in Patti’s words, the penis will definitely not get off the couch.

3) Patti Stanger gives matchmaking a bad name. The whole point of matchmaking should be to make a match, but these women are never asked what they want in a man. Granted, it’s their choice to turn up for the vomit inducing “casting sessions” (really an appropriate name when you think about it, eh?), but the only criteria on their lists is “loaded.”  The Millionaire’s Club does not take into account what both sides are looking for, or even considers that a woman might want more than a rich husband. It is merely a vehicle for spoiled, rich and awkward men to sample the never-ending bounty of the LA babe buffet, and perpetuates the ever gaping gender divide.

Archives, Body Image, Media Criticism

A Lot of Big Boobs

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Sheyla Hershey believes bigger breasts will reveal her inner beauty, just as a bigger telescope reveals deeper secrets of the cosmos. What drives her to pump more and more silicone into her chest? Well, she’s “got a dream inside” — a dream “to look better each day, every day,” and “it’s good when you can make your dream come true.” To that end, she’s just completed her eighth breast augmentation surgery, and now carries two record-breaking, seam-busting liters of boob goo in each exaggerated mammary.

How readily her case demands to be explained by the simplesboobst explanation: a conspiracy between superficial media culture (whose distortions of the healthy female form pollute even the youngest minds) and unscrupulous plastic surgeons(ever ready to ignore the Hippocratic oath in favor of that more fitting Greek icon, Pluto, captain of wealth and death). Whatever reasons led her to first consider chest enhancement, her motivations since have been corrupted, co-opted, by a self-image disorder. However, instead of working through the moral and medical background of Hershey’s situation, let’s instead look at the responses to her situation left by Internet users at two different but predictably similiar articles: one from ABC News and the other from the Australian paper The Daily Telegraph. First, the comments left by the largely American readers of ABC’s hard-hitting news piece:

  • “Natural is better. Scientific devices cannot make a woman more attractive. A romantic figure is defined, sleek, and smooth.”
  • “Natural of any size are great. 😉 Certainly if they’re too large a woman should consider a reduction if they’re affecting her health.”
  • “I love how this article brings out the comments from all of the large breasted readers, “I have a 36 H naturally, I am naturally a 44 DD, my size G breasts, a natural 44 DDD, and I’m a 34 G”. I love it. How do I meet you women!?!?! I love large breasted women!!!”
  • “I don’t care to see the freak show’s implant canisters, but the stock photo for this story caused me to click 🙂 niiiice” [This photo is pictured above -Eds.]
  • “I would rather see a fine looking set of long legs.”
  • “I am a male who loves breasts of any size but I don’t advocate implants and recommend that women who are too large get reductions. They should not ruin your health. All of them are fabulous in my book”
  • “If that is her in this picture then why change them. They are very nice already.”

What did Australian readers have to say?

  • “Does being fake, false and fraudulent make her a “real” woman?”
  • “Well, you’ve given her her 5mins of fame. Maybe that’s what she wanted. Maybe the best help that we can give her is to not report it.”
  • “Ridiculous. What makes her think they look better? Most people would laugh and stare, not think they look good.”
  • “What will she do and how will she cope in another 10 years or so, when her breasts flatten out and droop down to her knees ? Or maybe she doesn’t have the brains to see that far ahead?”
  • “Why would a healthy young woman push her limits on her health by enlarging her breasts to such a size. Its ugly and just plain stupid!”
  • “Well she will get into the limelight with no talent . She will need steel supports on wheels to transports these puppies”
  • “my natural E’s are plenty big enough and give me enough back pain. i couldn’t imagine having to drag something that size around – i could also think of better things to spend my money on! it is hard enough to buy a pretty E cup bra let alone FFF! what a fool!”

Don’t trust my editorial selection — follow the links above, go to the sites yourselves, and tell me if you agree with the characterization I’ve indicated here, that American readers are grotesquely pro-tit, showing little regard for the person behind the flesh, while Australians show a laudable skepticism towards both her decision to Go Big, and the media’s decision to devote attention to the topic. None of this is sufficient data from which extrapolate sweeping cultural generalizations. Instead, I’ll just close out the discussion with two observations.

One: it is better to be silent and not leave online comments, and let people wonderif you are a boob, than to leave thoughtless, misogynistic comments that prove it.

Two: while the foundational principle of liberal society is the freedom to do with our bodies what we please, regardless of how the exercise thereof may displease, discomfort, or disgust our neighbors, Sheyla Hershey is not actually exercising her freedom with this surgical obsession. No — she is powerless, clearly, to resist the compulsion to her enlarge her breast size, even so far past the point of safety. Compelled by what? By psychological and societal factors, in the absence of which, she certainly would make different decisions regarding the body it is her right to control.  This powerlessness, this debasement, is what we need to keep in mind as we consider her situation, not whether she is more attractive with or without the sacs of silicone beneath the overstretched tissues of her chest.

Archives, Media Criticism, Objectification, Politics

Oh it’s sooo serious.

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When asked about his involvement with super-sexy-super-witty-super-model-super-singer Carla Bruni, President Sarkozy responded: “It’s serious”, according to a CNN sound byte during NH primary coverage.

However, a little YouTube digging revealed his ACTUAL answer: a five-minute response that ranged widely through the historical precedents for asking a president such a question, the difficulties of human relationships in general, and the ludicrousness of the media caring so much about the personal life of a man who is fundamentally like any other… which goes hand-in-hand with the contemporary media misconception that being covert about one’s private life somehow corresponds to corrupt and nontransparent leadership (COUGH Bill Clinton).

I wish the current U.S. Presidential candidates could give this kind of response to media badgering. It was bitingly sarcastic, well-informed, and evinced a level of sophisticated contemplation beyond mere pre-press-conference maneuvering (“Being the President of the Republic doesn’t guarantee one the right to happiness–no more happiness than anyone else has. But no less, either”), and it certainly wasn’t cut into slogans meant for endless replay in news commercials. He reminisced about the days when “A chacun sa vie” (“to each his own”) was the reigning philosophy when it came to personal presidential matters, and it made me miss those days, too.

Ironically, carrying on about this for so long–even though he was criticizing the nature of the question–actually lowered his approval ratings, since citizens complained he was spending too much time talking about his relationship and not about real politics… imagine THAT public response in OUR country…

Sarkozy’s tone and perspective remind me of Hillary’s sarcastic response to the fact that people don’t find her “likable”: “That hurts my feelings! …but… I guess I’ll just have to carry on, somehow…” And, to reference the over-played Hillary-tears-up tape, her message that behind the rehearsed responses to debate questions, beyond the stark polling numbers, she is deeply and personally invested in making our country a better place and in pointing it away from what she sees as a darkening future is… refreshing (and sounds a little like that guy who just won the peace prize). As much as I don’t like Sarkozy, and though I am reluctant to vote for Hilary, that kind of meta-level perspective is what we’ve been sorely missing in the presidency lately; without it America has gotten into serious trouble.

These little glimpses of politicos’ evolution States-side and abroad give me at least a little hope. But if I have to go through a whole election year watching CNN cut rich, challenging rhetoric down to “It’s serious,” and furthermore have to watch candidates cater to that simple-minded standard, I’ll have trouble believing my vote is in any way ‘informed,’ or that our election process is anything more than a tabloid-triggered shot in the dark.

[This cutting diagnosis of media’s preference for sound bites over reasoned responses — and for sexual gossip rather than political intelligence — comes from Julie Johnson, editor of Clarion at Boston University. When she told me how CNN had chopped President Sarkozy’s responses, I shook my head first not at the infantilitzation of our public discourse, but rather at the sad fact that media outlets find it profitable to fix their cameras on the face and body of politicians’ partners like Carla Bruni or Camilla Parker Bowles. How offensive that mascara should play any role in a campaign plan; that it can and does speaks to the pervasive view of female companions as possessions owned by men in power. Are the male companions of female candidates subjected to this scrutiny? I don’t believe they are, since that deep-rooted tradition of political dimorphism lodged in our media psyche favors men, demeans women, and altogether ignores those outside the heteronormative groove. –CivilizeMe ]

Archives, Media Criticism

Mammalian misogyny in mammoth movie?

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Over at The Hathor Legacy,  C. L. Hanson lays out a case for the unexamined misogyny of the Pixar film “Ice Age,” in which the adventures of the protagonist mammals is launched by the death of a mother for the sake of her child. Does this mean that the filmmakers consider female characters disposable, or that they failed to realize that they treat female characters in this disposable fashion? I happen to think that the mother died of natural causes, and rather than being abandoning her to an unaided demise, Manny the Morose Mammoth was watching her last act before exhaustion and injury closed inevitably upon her.

Not the most imaginative plotting; the lazy device of the mother’s death in this film does not set female characters back a few millennia; but it does reflect a gender imbalance, a lack of concern for that imbalance, and is an amplification — albeit a quiet one — of the role of mother mere vessel, fulfilling her noble duty: bear the baby, birth the baby, save the baby, expire.

Whether you agree with the author or not, the question is a fair one, and a smart one, the sort of discerning interrogation of culture that is bound to expose even the most firmly rooted gender preferences.

Archives, Media Criticism, Rape

Smut, rape, and premature conclusions

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Steve Chapman, writing for The Chicago Tribune, doesn’t endorse the theory that easy access to Internet pornography explains the decline in sexual crimes reported by the FBI in their annual Uniform Crime Report: rape is down 72% since 1993, and other sexual assaults have dropped by 68%. He even paints the theory — proposed by Clemson University economist Todd Kendall — in dubious terms, as the “most surprising and controversial account” of this downswing. What then is the point of drawing our attention to a remarkable phenomenon in need of explanation, and then offering up an explanation put forth by a credible expert? Come on, Chapman, don’t be coy. If you agree, say so, and your only misstep will be leaping prematurely to a conclusion that is wholly not supported by the data. At least you won’t be accused of being disingenuous.

Klemson presented “Pornography, Rape, and the Internet”in October 2006 at Stanford, in front of students enrolled in a Law and Economics Seminar. Since his research was presented as a working paper, it did not purport to demonstrate clear causation between web porn and the incidence of rape. Indeed, Klemson is quite cautious in his conclusion:

The associated decline in rape illustrated in the analysis here is consistent witha theory, such as that in Posner (1994), in which pornography is a complement for masturbation or consensual sex, which are themselves substitutes for rape, making pornography a net substitute for rape.

Given the limitations of the data, policy prescriptions based on these results must be made with extreme care. Nevertheless, the results suggest that, in contrast to previous theories to the contrary, liberalization of pornography access may lead to declines in sexual victimization of women. [bold mine]

So an economist throws an analysis at some data, observes what may be something worth investigating, and cautiously reports that he’s looking into it. When journalists do their job, they are condensing and repacking news about this sort of scientific development; when they fail to pay attention, they are distorting and exaggerating the claims of scientists in order to nudge public perceptions.

People are properly interested in learning what science has to say about the origins of sexual assault. The media is going to continue misrepresenting scientific research for the sake of the sales that come with sensationalism. So please be skeptical of what you read; the gravity of rape demands more than sensational, unreflective explanation.

When this paper was making the rounds last fall, it caught the notice of more than one blog. At Freakonomics, Steven Levitt is skeptical of the conclusions being attributed to Kendall, his former student, explaining that “the concern is always, with this kind of approach, that there are other factors that might be driving both the adoption of the Internet and the decline in rape.” At 2x3x7, blogger Falstaff proffers a thoughtful analysis of the maths, and wonders whether if it “isn’t it more likely that what we’re seeing is just multicollinearity unrealistically inflating the regression estimates?” Translation: it looks like correlation rather than causation.

But the economist jury is still out. Rape, like any other (anti-) social phenomenon, is the product of multiple causes interacting in manifold ways. That the moral aspect of the crime is as simple as they come does not mean we should settle for simplistic explanations of the causes behind it. Simplistic answers, attractive though they may be to pundits eager to thicken their opinions with a little research,  beget ineffective policies and inaccurate perceptions.