The University of Southern California has just announced this panel event for next month in Los Angeles:
VISIONS AND VOICES
In the Name of God: Terror, Torture and Television
Can television narratives influence or frame audience perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong? Did Sleeper Cell help to justify abrogations of civil rights? Has 24 inured us to torture? Did Battlestar Galactica succeed in showing us that "we" could be "them"?
Panelists Howard Gordon, executive producer of 24; Dalia Hashad, director of Amnesty International USA’s program focusing on domestic human rights; Ronald D. Moore, executive producer of Battlestar Galactica; and writer Kamran Pasha of Sleeper Cell will join moderator Anthea Butler, visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, for a conversation on television’s responses to 9/11 and whether they have shaped audience perceptions of good and evil. Refreshments will be served following the discussion.
This event will be presented as part of Live from L.A.: Good/God and Evil, a series exploring the religious and ethical ramifications of 9/11 in broadcast television. Organized by Diane Winston (Journalism and Religion) and Jane Iwamura (Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity).
Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 7:00pm
University Park Campus, Annenberg Auditorium
Admission is free
2 comments:
They should have invited a pollster to the panel.
If you're going to discuss the impact of fiction on audiences, it'd be nice to see some polling on the actual issue.
Though that'd be a triviality.
Because we already know how, in the overall sense, Americans feel about these things.
.......
Courtesy of the highly respected Gallup polls:
Right after September 11, support for things like torture spiked to 45%:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/4972/Impact-Attacks-America.aspx
After that the initial shock, the numbers supporting torture have consistently declined by almost 10%:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/5257/War-Terrorism.aspx
........
So obviously, any pro-torture message spread through 24 or Galactica has had zero positive impact.
But it'd still be interesting to see if these things have an impact within the small minority of people who follow these shows.
A triviality, of course.
Well, torture isn't the only thing. Just look at the campaign and how anti-Muslim America is right now. That has effects in people's positions on foreign policy and it's certainly allowed American backing for Israeli murder of Palestinians, which in turn drives up membership in Al Qaeda-type groups.
Is there video of this? I'd pay anything for a DVD of this discussion!
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