Bamboozled (2000)

inside the jihad

unit three: culture

return to art&auto

Films:

My Son, The Fanatic
Review

Bamboozled:  Review

Better Living Through Circuitry

Online readings:

Through White Eyes: The Packaging of People and Places in the World of the Travel Brochure

Agrarian Women's Resistance in SubSahara Africa

Women in Afghanistan:  Current Perspectives

On the Issues:  A Progressive Women's Quarterly

Toward a Critical Theory of Advertising

the atlantic (unbound)

Questions for Reflection

• According to Jess Olsen, how does the "travel brochure" affect how readers in industrialized nations and how they perceive other cultures and people? 
  
• Imagine that you had to write a travel brochure to promote tourism in your town or hometown.  What would you include?  Do you find yourself beginning to look at yourself and your community in a new way -- one that is trying to accommodate the tastes of visitors who are likely to have money?  How does trying to please or entertain the tourists change the way you feel about yourself and your community?  Is it positive?  Does it engender resentment?
  
• What do you think about "spectacles of ethnicity"?  Do you think that they lead to negative things, or can the lead to the preservation of a heritage?
  
• Respond to the readings about women in Afghanistan.  Do you think the authors are credible?  What do you think can and/or should be done?
  
• Do you think you are being manipulated by any of these sites to have an anti-Islamic attitude or prejudice?  What is wrong with stereotypes?
  
• How does advertising shape the way we view ourselves and our position in the world?  What do you think of Marshall McLuhan's observation that "advertising advertises advertising"?