Originally published in the Spring 2010 issue of POV Magazine.
Einstein on the screen
Recently, Disney, the largest children’s entertainment firm in the world, offered rebates on its hugely popular educational DVD set Baby Einstein. While the company refused to acknowledge the link, many point to the ongoing lobbying efforts by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood as the reason behind the company’s capitulation. Apparently, research shows that little Abdul or Suzy can’t learn much at all from screen media, that is, if they’re under two years old.
Disney had marketed Baby Einstein to eager parents and created the impression that toddlers could indeed benefit cognitively from screen media, maybe even picking up a little physics along the way. But the information proving the contrary was all in the documentary Consuming Kids by the Media Education Foundation, an organization of academics and media makers based in Northampton, MA who produce educational documentaries on topics ranging from homophobia in hip hop culture to corporate greenwashing. Their documentary had warned of such marketing ploys.
This begs the question: if babies can’t learn from screen media, can the rest of us learn from documentaries?
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Protest for Housing
If anything is making its slow way out of the Downtown East Side (DTES) and into mainstream Olympic news flows, it is the issue of homelessness. The Red Tent Campaign, the Tent City Squat on a VANOC parking lot, the homeless banner strung from the Cambie Bridge (for a VANOC sanctioned 20 minutes, and time immemorial photo-op), Saturday’s national housing rally …
This was the topic of conversation at last Sunday’s Safe Assembly Newscast at the VIVO studios. Safe Assembly is a gesture to protect the critical conversation about the Olympic games. Hosted by VIVO, a media arts collective who chose not to participate in the Cultural Olympiad, the Newscasts are opportunities for those critical of the Olympics to come together and reflect on the events of protest and dissent taking place in Vancouver.
What follows is a brief summary of the gathering — topics of discussion included the housing protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery last Saturday, update from the Tent City squat, a look at the growing phenomena of Olympic fans protesting against protesters, and the potential effects of university students as shock troops of gentrification in the DTES.
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On the bustling streets in Manila the world moves fast, traffic winds quickly over roads, street vendors push popular food, rivers of people move in mass, currents amongst the infamous traffic jams, all is moving in Manila while the beautiful Pacific ocean shimmers under the sun.
Behind the urban beauty and chaos that shapes each day in Manila lies a major political crisis that shapes contemporary politics in the Philippines. Since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001, hundreds of progressive political activists have been murdered—most often executed by paramilitary death squads—in a chain of killings pointing to a pattern of politically-driven murder targeting left social movements in the country.
Amnesty International reported that “the attacks, mostly carried out by unidentified men who shoot the victims before escaping on motorcycles, have very rarely led to the arrest, prosecution and punishment of those responsible,” in an extensive report on political killings in the Philippines published in 2006 by Amnesty, continuing later in the document to say that “the common features in the methodology of the attacks, leftist profile of the victims, and an apparent culture of impunity shielding the perpetrators, has led Amnesty International to believe that the killings are not an unconnected series of criminal murders, armed robberies or other unlawful killings. Rather they constitute a pattern of politically targeted extrajudicial executions taking place within the broader context of a continuing counter-insurgency campaign.”
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One day prior to the earthquake in Haiti last week, Darren Ell’s art exhibit Haiti: Holdup opened in Concordia University’s Media Gallery. His photographic documentary pieces were a prescient warning about the vulnerability of Haiti’s fragile infrastructure — a fragility directly caused by American, Canadian and French manipulation.
Ell’s exhibit consists of three enormous photographs, seven feet wide and five feet high to be precise. Each is intended to make the viewing experience as immediate as possible, to enable viewers to enter the scene. Two photos deal with UN-led arrest operations in the slums of Port-au-Prince. They are meant to bring the viewer close to the reality of foreign occupation and ongoing colonial control. The third photo is more romantic, with smoke billowing around a beautiful tree and flung open gate. The light beauty of the scene sets the viewer up for a thud when one realizes that the smoke comes from extinguished fires following a student demonstration against the high cost of living. This protest was one of many during the food riots of 2008.
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What can make a giant tremble? When a penniless student group gets a threat from New York lawyers – in this case, Coca-Cola’s lawyers – on account the students want to show a film condemning human rights abuses, the optics suggest that the giant has something to hide. ‘Screening truth to power’, it seems, has its consequences.
Earlier this month, Coke threatened legal action to prevent the screening of a new documentary film The Coca-Cola Case. The $141 billion company (with annual revenues of $28 billion) threatened a small non-profit media-arts group called Cinema Politica which shows documentary films for free at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and through a network of independent locals across Canada, in the United States, and in Europe and Latin America.
(For the record, I volunteer help for CP and my colleague here at Art Threat Ezra Winton is one of the founders. Let’s just say this story hits pretty close to home …)
What may have the soft drink giant so jittery is that the film is slated to be shown at 24 network locals from Halifax to Stockholm in an upcoming international tour co-sponsored by one of the film’s producers, the respected National Film Board of Canada. Seventeen of those screenings are located on campuses. Coca-Cola is well known for the agreements made with universities for the exclusive sale of Coke products.
Students want a chance to see the documentary and to decide for themselves not only about the fairness of the film, but also about the fairness of Coca-Cola’s business practices. It is David and Goliath yet again, this time a corporate giant fending off filmmakers, activists, students and – as the film makes out – workers and union leaders. And, like the Bible story, it seems this Goliath too is the one facing the rougher ride.
So what is it Coke doesn’t want you to know?
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