This is a guest post from Reel Change reader Michael E. Douroux. Have decades of finger pointing and complaining altered in any way how the entertainment industry, centered in Hollywood, is cultivating and marketing — particularly to our young — gratuitous, graphic violence as a socially acceptable form of mainstream entertainment? No. I spent 25…
This is a guest post written by Evelyn Hunt. With the topic of gender equality, abortion, and women’s rights in the opinion and feature headlines of nearly every American publication as of late, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the fact that contemporary Americans seem to want to talk about feminism and what it means for…
An early scene in The Last Stand finds three of its characters firing a giant handgun at a huge slab of beef. It’s an apt snapshot of a movie that fetishizes the use of firearms and places little value on human life. At this time when pundits and policymakers are considering the impact of movie…
This morning, President Obama revealed his policy proposals on gun violence. The White House fact sheet pointed to 10 major policy proposals that the president will take to Congress, along with 23 executive orders that he will enact in the near future. As predicted, strengthening of gun control laws and ensuring access to mental health…
For the last two weeks, Vice-President Joe Biden has been working with Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and others to formulate policy recommendations on curbing gun violence in America. Biden will deliver those recommendations to President Obama today, and while no one knows precisely what they will be,…
So much has already been written about Zero Dark Thirty, and yet we seem no closer to a consensus on whether the film depicts torture as producing information that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian has argued passionately that the film suggests that it does, and that it…
In the wake of the shootings last year in Aurora and Newtown, movie violence is under heavier scrutiny than we have seen in years. Many pundits and elected officials have raised the issue as a potential part of the problem of gun violence, but due to Wayne LaPierre’s polarizing press conference, it seems less likely…
The producers of Les Miserables have owned the film rights for decades, and they have stated in recent interviews that they were waiting for the right time and the right director. They got the time right – the film’s themes of economic oppression, income inequality, and a rigged criminal justice system seem tailor-made for our…
Reel Change 
You must be logged in to post a comment.