- OPPRESSED MAJORITY (Majorité Opprimée English), by Eleonore Pourriat - YouTube
On what seems to be just another ordinary day, a man is exposed to sexism and sexual violence in a society ruled by women… (10 minutes) | With Pierre Benezit, Marie-Lorna Vaconsin, Marie Favasuli, Céline Menville…First song: Comme un garçon, by StereoTotal
Last theme: Pocket Harmony feat. Moïra Conrath - In this movie, it’s the men who are constantly harassed by dominant women | Public Radio International 021414
French filmmaker Eléonore Pourriat released her film “Majorité Opprimée” or “Oppressed Majority” five years ago, and it quickly won an award in Ukraine. But otherwise it got little attention.
- When commercials ‘Keep it real’: The rise of realistic advertising | Marketplace.org 020714
Lindsay Foster Thomas: “There I was just watching TV when out of nowhere, he appeared: The guy with one arm selling Swiffer dusters. When I first saw him, I didn’t know that his name was Zack Rukavina. Or that he’d lost his arm to cancer. Or that I was watching him interact with his real family while he spoke about all the ways Swiffer helps him help out around the house. | All I knew was that the commercial I was watching was compelling in a way I hadn’t experienced as a TV viewer before. | Had I seen a person with a disability in a mainstream commercial before? Most likely. Certainly war veterans, paralympians and the elderly have been cast to push products from sneakers to remote alarm systems. | But, what struck me about the Swiffer ad was that his disability wasn’t the highlight of the commercial. It was certainly what got my attention, but by the end of that 30-second spot, I was remembering more about how Zack poked fun at his wife for being a terrible housekeeper and the way his two adorable children seemed to vie for his attention in every scene. The commercial didn’t provoke pity, embarrassment or portray its leading man as any kind of superhero. The Rukavinas are a totally normal family and that’s what Swiffer was successful at conveying. That and if you must dust, don’t skimp on the brand name. | Diversity in commercial advertising still has a long way to go in reflecting the appearances and experiences of America’s various populations. However the Swiffer ad and others seem to be stepping into reality TV territory – more inclusive casting choices, less pretending that we all look, sound and behave alike in our homes and communities.”
- Interview: Marilyn Nelson, Author Of ‘How I Discovered Poetry’ : NPR 020814
Marilyn Nelson is one of America’s most celebrated poets. She is a three-time finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Newbery and Printz and Coretta Scott King awards. Many of her most famous collections are for children. Her latest work, How I Discovered Poetry, is a memoir about her own childhood. It’s a series of 50 poems about growing up, traveling all over America in the 1950s to follow her father’s job in the Air Force. Each of the poems is identified with a place and a date. “[My father] graduated in the last class of cadets from the flight school at Tuskegee. So they are now the Tuskeeee Airmen,” she tells All Things Considered host Arun Rath. “The story I tell, the family story, is of the family of an African-American flying officer.”
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About the Flaneur
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Letting Go of Sight
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Media in Transition @ MiT
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]