Project Brainwash: Why Reality TV is Bad for Women (…and men, people of colour, the economy, love, sex, and sheer common sense!)

CanWest Global Speakers Series *no registration required, seating limited, snacks and refreshments will be available Please join the Department of Communication and Culture on Friday, February 28, 2014 for the CanWest Global Speakers Series featuring Jennifer Pozner, author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV. Do you ever wonder… Why reality TV frames humiliation of women as the “perfect fairy tale romance”? If men should be valued for more than just the size of their … wallets? Why women of color are typecast as deceitful divas and “ghetto” sluts? …Then don’t miss this rousing multimedia presentation! With humor, razor-sharp analysis and provocative clips from shows like The Bachelor,America’s Next Top Model and Flavor of Love, media critic and author Jennifer L. Pozner exposes the editing tricks and ideological agendas producers and advertisers use to create a world in which women not only have no real choices, they don’t even want any. Pozner pushes back against “reality” TV’s regressive stereotypes about women, men, love, beauty, and race and class in America, and reveals how unreal so-called “unscripted programming” really is. You’ll never see mating, modeling and makeover shows the same way again… and you’ll laugh—a lot!

Location:

Gallery Hall – Taylor Family Digital Library

Speaker:

Jennifer L. Pozner is a media critic, journalist, activist, and founder/executive director of Women in Media & News (WIMN), a media analysis, education, and advocacy organization. A noted public speaker, Pozner has conducted interactive multi-media presentations and participated in panels and debates at dozens of high schools, colleges, and conferences across the United States. She has been published in Newsday, Chicago Tribune, Ms. Magazine, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, Salon, The New York Times, Macleans and more, and has appeared on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC News Now, CRITtv, PBS, NPR, and The Daily Show. She was an advisor and commentator for the recent documentary Miss Representation, and is a well known figure in social media, named by Forbes as one of “Twenty Inspiring Women to follow on Twitter.” Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure Television is her first book.

More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/project-brainwash-why-reality-tv-bad-women-and-men-people-colour-economy-love-sex-and-sheer