Killing us softly 3 & Dreamworlds 3 Review

Killing Us Softly 3
This post-viewing guide is intended to deepen the audience’s critical engagement with the documentary film, Killing Us Softly III. It is targeted at women and men between the ages of 15-30 who are bombarded with advertisements every day. Possible ways that the guide might be used include: recognition of to the role of advertisement in American society and culture, research projects aimed at exploring discrimination against women and/or the role of advertisement in America, and finally, for pure reasons of interest. Kilbourne says that advertisements give the message that what is most important is how we look. We must spend time, energy and money on our outward appearance or else we are failures. Advertisements say that we can look a certain way if we try hard enough. However, the fact of the matter is that we all fail because there is no such thing as perfection. It is this kind of powerful message that influences self-esteem and also men’s perceptions on acceptable ways of treating women.
Kilbourne argues that advertisements treat women as though they are objects. Advertisements have turned women’s bodies into objects such as beer cans and scissors. This method of turning a woman into a thing can be violence. She also states that advertisements portray women as not being fully human. For example, in many advertisements, only one part of the body is focused on, such as the rear, legs or breasts. Men do not live in a world where their bodies are scrutinized; only women do.
Kilbourne asserts that five percent of women have the ‘ideal’ body type that advertisements portray. However, this is the only body type that we ever see. She also shares the statistic that one in five women has an eating disorder. Advertisements are significant contributors to the intense pressure women feel to fit a category that only five percent actually occupy. One advertisement shared by Kilbourne is for Armani Exchange which reads, “The more you subtract, the more you add.” This statement implies that the less of you there is the more attention you will attract.
Women are cut down to size and silenced. They are also shown as passive and vulnerable in their body language. This asserts a message of power which is almost always masculine in advertisements. Advertisements establish the idea within American culture that women must be innocent yet sexy and virginal yet experienced. This has had repercussions in the past. For example, the sexualisation of little girls in advertisements has occurred in real life with the Jon Benet Ramsey murder. Calvin Klein even ran advertisements that were reminiscent of child pornography Sex and violence in advertisements also go hand in hand.
Heterosexual sex is sold; there is no emphasis on relationships. Bondage in advertisements has turned pornography into the mainstream. There is also the common idea shared in advertisements that women want to be violated and that they are actually asking for forceful sex. To be partial, Kilbourne says that there is an increase in men objectification in advertisements. However, men are never raped, harassed or beaten in these advertisements. She also establishes that there are some positive advertisements in distribution. She stresses the fact that advertisements keep us trapped and emphasizes the need for drastic change. We are citizens first and then consumers and advertisements affect us all whether we are conscious of it or not. As humans, we have the ability to choose freely. Kilbourne contends that advertisements should be received with both an open mind a0nd a level of awareness. It can be concluded that today advertisements portray women in an extremely dangerous and unfavorable light. Women are used as objects, animals and are suitable to subjection for male violence.
These kinds of portrayals can be embarrassing and devaluing to the female self-perception. At the end of Killing Us Softly III, Jean Kilbourne quotes, we of course should applaud positive images and we should protest damaging ones. But most important, we need to get involved in whatever way moves us to change not just the ads, but these attitudes that run so deep in our culture and that affect each one of us so deeply, whether we’re conscious of it or not. So what can be done in order to change the current attitudes? We must get involved. If there is a certain advertisement that is found offensive, first trigger the reason for its offensiveness. For example, does it promote an eating disorder or stereotype? Second, take action! Write a letter to the editor of the magazine in which the advertisement was published or television networks it was shown on. Whatever the action may be, it is integral that both men and women take a stand against the objectification and violence of women portrayed in advertisements for future generations.

Dreamworlds 3
Dreamworlds 3 is focused on analyzing how music videos both inform and are informed by our culture’s dominant attitudes regarding femininity, masculinity, sexuality and race. One of this documentary’s strongest points is its close attention to music video’s “storytelling techniques,” not only in terms of its lyrics and images, but also in terms of filmic techniques (camera angles and movement, for example) and the stories that these techniques tell. Other strengths include its discussion of how the “pornographic imagination” and the porn industry inform music videos, as well as its portrayal of music videos as a constructed “fantasy” and “dreamworld” that is not the “real world” but is still in constant dialogue with it.

Another of Dreamworld 3’s crucial contributions to making more productive the often sterile dialogue surrounding gender and popular culture, is its framing of the question of sexism, not by asking if an image is “good or bad,” but through an analysis of whose stories are being told and how. According to the documentary, the problem is not that there is too much sex in music videos, but that there is no diversity in the stories being told since they are monopolized by the “heterosexual male imagination.” Furthermore, the documentary makes it very clear that female objectification itself is not the problem; the problem is that females are only being portrayed as objects. Once again, the key issue for Jhally is the lack of diversity in how gender is represented.

Though the aims and strategies of hyper-sexualizing women in music videos are thoroughly covered, one is left wondering how (and if) sexualisation and objectification works in terms of images of men. The question of how women viewers receive and respond to all this imagery is also left somewhat unclear. Surely, it is the male heterosexist pornographic imagination constructing the dream worlds of music videos “to draw in male viewers.” But what about women? What are the details of their attraction, repulsion and/or indifference to hyper-sexualized images (of women, of men)? How are their responses different from those of (most) men? But frankly, faulting the documentary for failing to hone in on these questions seems like nitpicking, given all that it does do.