Sut Jhally

The films in the Media Education Foundation (MEF) Collection encourage critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media. With a special focus on representations of gender and race, and the effect these representations have on identity and culture, MEF films are especially well-suited for use in Women's Studies, Sociology, Race Studies,Communication, Anthropology, Education, and Psychology courses.

Playing Unfair provides an in-depth critique of the sexism and homophobia that pervade media representations of female athletes. Sports media scholars Mary Jo Kane, Pat Griffin, and Michael Messner examine the disparity between the success of female athletes and sports journalism's often trivialized and (hetero)sexualized coverage of them.

Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the advertising tactics of the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose how it uses, manipulates, and sometimes creates illness in the pursuit of profit. With the help of health professionals and media scholars, the film dissects some of the most striking pharmaceutical ads on televison, in the end revealing how the industry exploits people's emotions to promote the use of prescription...

For years, debates have raged among scholars, politicians, and concerned parents about the effects of media violence on viewers. Too often these debates have fallen into simplistic battles between those who claim that media images directly cause violence and those who argue that activists exaggerate the impact of media exposure. Based on interviews conducted with George Gerbner before his death in 2005, the film urges us to think about media effects...

Given the wild popularity of violent video games, it has never been more urgent to encourage dialogue about how virtual killing might shape attitudes about real-life violence. Game Over examines the nature and consequences of simulated violence, and encourages high school and college students to think critically about how gender and race are depicted in the video and computer games they play. It is sure to spark lively debate about the complex and...

Robert McChesney, author of the award-winning book of the same title, examines the impact of media consolidation on journalism and democracy. He argues that far from delivering on the promise of more choice and greater diversity, consolidation has undermined competition, resulting in an increasingly homogenized media landscape and a news media system high on sensationalism and low on information.

Based on the forthcoming book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representation from American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows. This documentary breaks important new ground in exploring wasy in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a complex reading of television's often one-dimensional representations. Featuring...