Hey there again,

I have the annoative bibliographies for the first five articles.

Roberta Gold, “I Had Not Seen Women like That Before: Intergenerational Feminism in New York City’s Tenant Movement”, Feminist Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 387-415.

In this article, Gold talks about the women’s liberation movement in tenants and housing. Her argument was the linking of young activists with Old Left generation of female housing organizers. One such example comes from Morningside Heights, where tenants were fighting the demolition of their homes but could do little except delay the evitable because they were fighting against private ownership by the University of Columbia. However, as the Left began to get steam they encouraged Columbia’s Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Afro-
American Society to increase protests. This gain media attention persuaded administrators to decide against the demolition. It also talks about how modern feminist at the time gained in-site on how to save the tenants from older 1930’s feminist activists. Jane Benedict, Frances Goldin, Esther Rand, and Jane Wood were all older activists who founded Met Council who would eventually grow and have younger activists who were up to the challenge take their place. Many of their techniques consisted of squatters who would move into a vacant house and provide muscle so those people there would not leave. Many times, landlords would not bother to get them out and just give them a lease. For example, Kimble’s family was moved into a vacant house in Morningside Heights by the Black Panthers which one year later the landlord gave him a lease.

Allison Perlman, “Feminists In The Wasteland”, Feminist Media Studies 7, no. 4 (2007): 413-431.

In this article, the author’s main focus is the National Organization for Women (NOW) through its development in the 60’s and 70’s has formed three primary purposes: to create a paper trail documenting the alleged abuses of broadcasters; to put pressure on broadcasters to improve or ameliorate their programming; and to engage citizens in the media policy and reform work as a means to revitalize a democratic public sphere. It talks a lot about the last resort method of NOW, which is a petition-to-deny, which is mainly a complaint to the FCC which can in the worst case scenario revoke a broadcaster’s license to air. NOW’s first petition-to-deny was against WABC-TV, which their biggest complaint is that in 1972 they showed one minute dedication to seven gold Olympic women winners and a two minute, fifteen second segment to a pancake eating contest. Most broadcasters during this time would describe female athletes through their sexual appearance, NOW activists would reply to such comments as “you would describe an African American man as a boy with some pretty good rhythms.” Unfortunately, even after the FCC stalled on its decision for a committee for two years, the committee did not revoke the station’s license. However, NOW did reach agreements with fifteen stations across the US by mid-1974 that dealt with media representation of women in the media in Denver, San Diego, and Houston.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated. DVD. Directed by Kirby Dick. Los Angeles, CA: Independent Film Channel, 2006.

The main argument this film makes it that the rating of a particular film makes a huge impact on its box office profits. He is correct mainly in the sense of what an R rated film is and what an NC-17 rated film is. The big difference between the two is that you can’t advertise an NC-17 movie on television which is the main area of movie success in advertisement. He got up in arms about this because the MPAA, the organization which gives a rating to films, usually gives NC-17 ratings to films which have more sexual content and R ratings to more violent films. Studies say according to the film that four times more movies receive NC-17 ratings for sex as opposed to violence. He particularly believes that Jack Valenti, the head of the MPAA, doesn’t represent the average parent. Many of the people whom he tracked down that were a part of the MPAA were in their 40’s or 50’s with children of ages 13-22. Also another big issue was the idea that many sexual scenes of the same nature in different movies would receive different ratings because of homosexual content. For example “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999) and “American Pie” have similar sex scenes but “Boys Don’t Cry” is NC-17 because it has graphical depictions of a homosexual act while “American Pie” is rated R.

Melissa A. Milkie, Contested Images of Femininity: An Analysis of Cultural Gatekeepers' Struggles with the "Real Girl" Critique, Third Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 365.
The main idea of this article is the critiquing of what is displayed in the media with regards to negative images of femininity. She interviewed several editors of big magazine corporations and she found that all of these people backed up their claims for the images being okay as two different responses: delegitimation and legitimate but beyond our control. The author states that media organizations reproduce narrow images of femininity is by “symbolic annihilation” which is portraying them in a narrow, demeaning, and trivializing way as to cast them as inferior and provides a difficult fit to between who they believe they are and what they are portrayed as being. There are two process which it is done, day-to-day operations where editors redefine femininity to fit it anyway they fell is needed, and editors call on scripts and norms of how the magazines should be viewed and interpreted.

Nick Couldry, “Does ‘the Media’ Have a Future?”, European Journal of Communication 24, no. 4 (2009): 437-450.
In this article, the author talks about what may happen to the media in future years with the introduction of the Internet. Facts from a US study indicate the average American watches 30 minutes of television news consumption to nine minutes on the internet. These are surprising facts since the Internet has only been around for the last ten or so years. The other big thing he talked about was how mass media was beginning to use the Internet towards their advantage. For example, President Obama used SNS in his 2008 presidential campaign and NBC is beginning to build social networking sites on the Internet to gain greater popularity. To conclude the article, he says that the media is not going to disappear but going to be a competition for ratings, actors, and many areas of interest which uses television as it primary outlet such as: politics, fashion, sports, and celebrities.

The reasoning for some of the articles is to get an idea behind what we're dealing with.  It is good to get some background from other areas feminist have affected and some of the problems faced by our media today.
I will have five more articles up by tomorrow and the last three articles I left out will also be posted tomorrow.

Chris