FRONTLINE: the pbs documentary series not the flea medicine

what the f is frontline

Since 1983, FRONTLINE has served as American public television’s flagship public affairs series. Hailed upon its debut on PBS as “the last best hope for broadcast documentaries,” FRONTLINE’s stature over 30 seasons is reaffirmed each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience.

When FRONTLINE was born, however, the prospects for television news documentaries looked grim. Pressure was on network news departments to become profitable, and the spirit of outspoken journalistic inquiry established by programs like Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now and Harvest of Shame had given way to entertainment values and feature-filled magazine shows. Therefore, it fell to public television to pick up the torch of public affairs and carry on this well-established broadcast news tradition.

Since its inception, FRONTLINE has never shied away from tough, controversial issues or complex stories. In an age of anchor celebrities and snappy sound bites, FRONTLINE remains committed to providing a primetime venue for engaging reports that fully explore and illuminate the critical issues of our times. In the 2010-2011 season, the series expanded to a year-round broadcast presence that now includes several magazine-format programs, which have enabled FRONTLINE to respond more quickly to breaking news stories.

To support the creation of these new segments and programs, FRONTLINE has begun deepening its existing partnerships with ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and other respected news organizations. New partnerships with NPR, Planet Money, and other news outlets, meanwhile, are supporting FRONTLINE’s efforts to cultivate a new, younger generation of producers and reporters.

There are over 150 Frontline docs available to watch free online -- what are your favorites? I watch every new one that comes on because I have a bottomless stomach for bad news.

My personal favorites include:

The Interrupters
Money, Power, and Wall Street (all of the political and financial ones give me nightmares, I love it)
Nuclear Aftershocks
God in America

tbh I have so many favorites

Have never seen Harvest of Shame but it wins the best title award.

You can watch/browse here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

Oh man, Poor Kids totally broke my heart too. I listen to the audiocasts while I'm walking or trying to fall asleep sometimes. It's sometimes even more intense than watching the movies.

The one about the roots of the mortgage crisis was chilling. I couldn't get through more than 5 min of The Retirement Gamble before the fear got into me and I had to stop.

Honestly I can't believe that there's no thread for Frontline already -- does nobody watch PBS? I used to watch these with my parents, and then I forgot about it, then I downloaded a bunch of their podcasts and got obsessed all over again. These docs are so humorless and dry and informative. They're great.

Iran-Contra
The October Surprise (this really happened)
Iraq War II

Oh man, yeah the Iraq War ones were serious nightmare material. I should go back and watch Iran-Contra.

Sometimes the domestic ones can be a little goofy, but they have their charms -- my students LOVE Post-Mortem and The Real CSI.

Domestic meaning US-focused, not political/financial/doom-tinged

I expected the new one, Never Forget to Lie (about Holocaust survivors) to be a little drippy but for some reason it reminded me of The Land of Silence and Darkness. It's pretty austere, and the filmmaker's focus on memory is more interesting than if they had focused on the atrocity itself.

I used to have a ritual when I was unemployed, I would order a large pizza and eat the entire thing while watching Frontline. This was around the time we were well into the second Iraq war. Now I just watch the ones about drugs or the environment, the financial ones just make me angry and sad. I put it in the same category as Consumer Reports, hopelessly uncool but a touchstone, a quiet spot at the carnival.

That sounds like a really depressing ritual, but of course that makes me like it.

There's something about watching Frontline that feels like taking reality medicine, eating pieces of broken glass because the world is a tough and ugly place full of terrible people. But I'd rather know that than not know it. I'll eat the broken glass if it means that no one can hurt me by surprising me with a plateful of broken glass.

But like I said, I have a hearty appetite for doom and bad news.

Still, the one about retirement was a little too close to home! I'm going to have to give that one a shot on a strong sunny day.

The beginning, the first 5 min I heard, was just a bunch of people saying "yeah, I'll probably just work until I die, I have no plan b"

yikes

Wow, no old Frontline threads? Frontline is incredible. Off the top of my head, I recommend Country Boys, The Interrupters and ... I think it's called Poor Kids.

Poor Kids is about the young children of families on the extreme end of hand to mouth. It's both inspiring and heartbreaking.

David Sutherland (who made Country Boys) has a new one -- Kind Hearted Woman. I posted about it on the Country Boys thread and no one cared, but since you liked that you have to see it. It's amazing.

Poor Kids was so so so so so so sad. The scene with the dog? Gah.

"The Man Who Knew,""Money, Power & Wall Street" four-parter absolutely riveting. "The Merchants of Cool" good one from earlier.

I didn't like Kind Hearted Woman too well. Though we had a (sad) laugh at the constant shots of trains and sounds of train whistles until we realized that all the places she moved to were probably like a block away from the train tracks.

Why didn't you like it? I haven't made it through part 2 tbh but she is such a familiar person to me. I thought it was really beautiful and intimate.

I think it was just a little too repetitive and depressing, iirc. Like, so many shots of her walking down the highway in the bitter cold, that kind of thing, and almost every aspect of her life was so damaged. Just bleak all around.

Have never seen Harvest of Shame but it wins the best title award.

I watched this on YouTube. It's about migrant workers in the 60s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJTVF_dya7E

sponsored by Philip Morris!!

Tangential, but PBS making their own channel on Roku with a ton of content streaming is crazy. They're getting a pledge drive donation from me this year.

The one about mutual funds and retirement savings from just a few weeks ago was jawdropping. Good, but also miserable.

xpost But no Frontline on the Roku channel!

All-time favorite is, I think I have the title right, 'The Last Battle of the Gulf War' about Gulf War Syndrome. If it's the one I'm thinking of there was all kinds of horrifying revelations about the soldiers' exposure to depleted uranium. Terrifying stuff.

Country Boys was fantastic.

The one about the Anthrax investigations was excellent too.

I go on kicks where I get totally obsessed with it but I haven't been down the rabbit hole in years. So glad this thread is here!! (Also I love the thread title, LL)

I love the narrator! He has a lovely voice

Oh, wait, there it is, in regular netflix.

argh wait I was wrong.
the documentary I was thinking of was called Invisible War, Depleted Uranium and the Politics of Radiation, it was a french documentary they aired on the Australian version of Frontline. Sorry.
link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psfK8ijrzyc

Oh man I go on hard core Frontline binges sometimes. It has definitely influenced my decision to change careers and go into social work!

I make my students choose one film and then write about it. Then they have to give a little presentation basically selling it to the rest of the class so everyone super wants to watch it. My favorite project -- the whole process from choosing the movie to giving the presentation is part of the project. It rules.

As for Kind Hearted Woman, I think the bleakness is part of the point -- but I'll get back to you once I've watched...all 4 hours of it? Yikes. I love how long and unrelenting Sutherland's stuff is. I mean, if you thought it was hard to watch, imagine living in North Dakota.

uh oh your hospital could kill you
(this is actually no joke there has been a lot of this in my family and i know we can't be alone)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/uncategorized/interactive-your-hospital-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health/

At a week-long hackathon sponsored by the TriBeCa Film Institute and Mozilla and supported by the Ford Foundation, the two worked with Pro Publica reporters Marshall Allen and Olga Pierce, FRONTLINE’s own Sam Bailey, and the fantastic team at Ocupop to build “Your Hospital May Be Hazardous To Your Health,” an interactive video that highlights a number of inaccurate — and dangerous — assumptions often made about our health care systems.

It’s a fantastic piece of work, especially considering the short amount of time they had to pull together the story and construct the interactive experience.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

this may fall into the same category as the dollars for dentists one -- cannot handle under any circumstances

I finally finished the Kind Hearted Woman podcast on my walk to work yesterday, and to anyone who found it too boring or depressing, I have to ask -- did you watch the whole thing? Parts 1 and 2?

I might feel differently if I had sat in front of a computer at watched it, but the audiocast was such a rollercoaster of emotions/intensity that I have no idea how anyone could find it boring. Even if you don't buy Robin's subdued survivor life mission (these things are never as simple as they look), you have to at least admit that she is a fascinating person. I almost died when she was talking about her power point and how she was organizing her speech. Totally going to have my students watch this, or at least that segment!!

ugh at = and
typos but you get my point

Agree about the Frontline audiocast - especially when it's something not terribly visual, I get wrapped up in it way more just listening.

Currently watching David Sutherland's The Farmer's Wife -- a little over an hour in and desperately curious how he managed to get bedroom scenes? (Just lying in bed talking, but still there is a documentary filmmaker in yr bedroom). If you don't feel like looking it up, it's a tenant farming family in Nebraska circa 1995-1998 (it said 3 years were covered and it started in '95, so I'm assuming)

Reeeeally interesting how differently Juanita and Robin approach the idea of public aid/asking for help/social services. One of my favorite things about Sutherland, in addition to the fact that he is incapable of editing out mundanities (I love them), is that he is so absent as a filmmaker. Sure, there's some music and scenic sunset shots and w/e but I don't get a whiff of Sutherland while watching the movie itself. He seems really good at letting people speak for themselves in all of his movies. Part of that is showing their ugly/boring sides occasionally, and part of it is getting and staying out of the way from shooting through editing.

Anyway, recommended here since the Country Boys thread didn't seem very active anymore.

Next Frontline doc has a classic superbummer topic: rape on the job for agricultural workers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/rape-in-the-fields/the-hidden-story-of-rape-on-the-job-in-america/

The films are the result of a year-long reporting effort. Bergman and his team traveled from the almond groves of California’s Central Valley to the packing plants of Iowa, from the apple orchards of Washington’s Yakima Valley to the tomato fields of Florida. They spoke with dozens of women who say they have been sexually abused on the job.

And they found that in the vast fields and orchards of today’s agribusiness, it’s easy for a rapist to stalk his victims — who are often, but not always, undocumented women who dare not denounce their attackers for fear they’ll be deported.

“These women live in fear, but they were willing to go on camera to tell their stories at great personal risk,” says Bergman says. “They didn’t want to see it happening to other women.”

jesus

Also, interestingly, they're airing it on Univision as well as PBS in order to reach more Hispanic viewers.

really? that's actually awesome.

Really! I thought so too! Great idea.

Esp considering the quality of programming on US Spanish language tv in general.

Oof. That would be a good one to show to my next employment law class just to really bum them the fuck out. "Enjoy this movie, students! I'll be out in the hall reading a book so I don't cry in front of you."

that's great re: Univision.

tbh that latest one, I would totally read the facts in text but I might not be able to handle it through the eyes/ears. So abysmal.

watched the retirement one last night
really think it should be required viewing -- esp liked the part about how fiduciary agreements and how financial services professionals intentionally give the impression that they are on the customer's side when they decidedly are not.

super recommend powering through the heavy uncomfortable reality of the first 10 min (i'm going to work until i'm 90, when i will die at work) to learn about the stuff that the financial services industry has been selling us via retirements accounts/managed mutual funds and also to watch the CEOs squirm like worms under pretty serious direct questioning about their products.

pls mentally remove that first "how"

Next on Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/two-american-families/in-milwaukee-a-familys-struggle-for-survival/

In 1991, when Bill Moyers first began following the lives of Claude and Jackie Stanley, the parents of five had just been laid off from well-paying manufacturing jobs in Milwaukee.

They’ve been battling to keep from sliding into poverty ever since.

Two American Families, a 90-minute FRONTLINE documentary premiering July 9, tells the Stanleys’ story — and that of another Milwaukee family, the Neumanns — all the way up to the present, and raises troubling questions about trends toward part-time, low-wage work in America.

In this excerpt from Two American Families, meet Claude and Jackie, now approaching retirement age, and their son, Keith, now grown.

“My heart goes out to that generation that was promised something from America, by America — that they would have a better life. And that’s not the case anymore,” Keith tells Moyers.

Bill Moyers will appear tonight (June 26) on The Colbert Report to discuss Two American Families. The documentary premieres July 9 on FRONTLINE (check local PBS listings).

Also - I watched about 20 min of the one about agricultural workers and it felt too much like talking to one of my students, had to stop watching. It reminded me of how many truly horrific stories I've heard.

george packer wrote about this btw, it sounds really good

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/07/the-fall-of-the-american-worker.html

i saw bill moyers on the aforementioned june 26th colbert report episode. apparently this will be the 200th frontline episode!

I look forward to discussing it with fellow Frontline viewers here. Happy 200th bday, Frontline!

also to watch the CEOs squirm like worms under pretty serious direct questioning about their products.

Just watched this yesterday. Those fucking motherfuckers..."Well, we believe our commission-based financial consultants who are under no obligation to put the customer's interests ahead of their own are just as good as fiduciaries."

I'm so glad they believe that.

looking forward to that new one, will set DVR tonight

Their squirming was visible -- I could almost smell their nerve sweat through the tv. Assholes. But I do thank Frontline for giving me a seat at that worm show -- no one else has bothered to ask those questions in such stark terms.

the two families episode is still with me. i think of the woman at the table sitting there wondering where she's going to live and wondering why the bank wouldn't let her keep her home. her sons and their problems were also really familiar and resonant to me. the preacher/motivational speaker family had interesting complexities too. i like the investigative "go inside" frontlines better than the "domestic portrait" ones but the latter are always the ones that stick with me emotionally.

not sure if i can deal with the depressing facts revealed in "what's wrong with assisted living" coming up this week.

yeah i saw that scheduled on my dvr. feel like i'll watch it, but thru my fingers like a horror movie

i predict weeks of nightmares

Great, just in time for my trip to my (84 year old, still living independently) mother's.

Oh man I have had enough peripheral involvement in nursing home litigation that I neither need nor want to watch the assisted living doc. Ugh.

yeah i watched this, & i have some professional involvment also & kinda a high tolerance for it. there is always going to be some negligence and some of it will look really monstrous. plus obv this is a super vulnerable community. i dont like the implication here that it's somehow worse cuz u might be private-paying $5k a month

ill have 2 ask colleagues if emeritus has a bad rep i dont think they really do business in the east or maybe not much. lot of it is, right, just lack of training, corporate bottom-line culture. those are legit and suck. ppl w/ real health probs should not be in assisted living and prob the states need to have regs that specify this & force the corps (& fines) to get ppl 2 nursing facilities; get the continuum of care model going and you can make it strongly in emertus's bottom line interest to idk have working partnerships w/ skilled nurs homes

Nine minute into this assisted-living documentary and already I want to put the Emeritus CEO in a body cast.

their promos for it all look like ads for horror movies
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7333/9413507091_f45f9e2ca7.jpg

this is waaay scarier than another phony exorcism
try exorcising potentially lethal bedsores; you will not get very far

I finally managed to watch the assisted living episode. Some thoughts --

1) not as bad as I had imagined. I learned a lot about regulation and feel good for having learned it. Thanks Frontline.
2) I can't even imagine what those employees went through in order to earn their paychecks. That was sad.
3) The Boice story was heartbreaking, but the son was so eloquent and calm and rational that I wound up feeling impressed at their ability to become the public face of this crisis.
4) The elder care attorney with the blonde hair who looked like a cross between Gwen Stefani and Elizabeth Warren was an absolute delight. She was so smart and pretty and determined and firm. She was awesome.

In sum, not as terrifying as I had feared, mainly because it dealt with Emeritus specifically. On the other hand, fuck that company for real. Their "lock the back door" (or whatever it was) policy turned my stomach.

Yeah I felt like focusing on Emeritus made it a lot easier to grapple with, and I didn't come away thinking that Assisted Care as a whole was bad, just that one definitely needs to know what your elderly family member is capable of + what the assisted care facility can feasibly provide, vs skilled nursing etc.

I really loved the Texas lady who had done all the research into Assited Care, the one who looked kinda like Ina Garten.

And that Emeritus CEO really turned my stomach. Especially when speaking about the Boice case, and the woman who climbed out the window, basically saying "well we take all the necessary precautions but these dementia patients...you just don't know what they're going to do" *shrug*

fuck. you.

btw the emeritus Emerald Hills facility is about 30 minutes outside Sacramento. When they started showing the case on Frontline I remembered some of it because the lawsuit was covered in the local papers.

i have been hungry for a new one, but there haven't been any on lately

here is an update from robin "kind hearted woman" charboneau
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/biographies/kind-hearted-woman/an-update-from-the-kind-hearted-woman/

it also reminded me to find the part of the movie where she talks about giving her speech and preparing for it because i NEED to show that to my students.

The one about Egypt (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/egypt-in-crisis/) is really really good! Unless you followed the Egyptian revolution very closely, you probably missed at least some of the stuff in here. I know I did. Special shout out for the sizzlin hot law student in the tent who was dubious about the Brotherhood and the handsome musician who talked about his whole body being electrocuted. It's pretty raw, but really beautifully shot. There are lots of talking heads*, but also lots of other footage like being right up in it while the military disturbs a protest. There's a lot of interesting stuff about Copts/Coptic Christians too, if ancient peoples interest you. Recommended!

*I secretly love talking heads because I can really stare at people's faces while they're talking.

"Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown" is scaaaaaaaary

Ohhhhhhh as a treat for finishing a bunch of reading for skool I'm gonna watch a Frontline! Don't know which one yet. Last one was the assisted living expose.

Those doc's are a goldmine, I don't think I'll be watching much else for a while. I feel a long dark weekend filled with statistics and depressing facts coming up.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ has helped me though sleepless nights too.

I feel a long dark weekend filled with statistics and depressing facts coming up.
the ones that feature translators are particularly satisfying because you hear people saying really depressing things in an emotionless flat way. it has its own special charm.

NEW ONE TONIGHT
about football and concussions

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/league-of-denial/

The National Football League, a multibillion-dollar commercial juggernaut, presides over America’s indisputable national pastime. But the NFL is under assault: thousands of former players have claimed the league tried to cover up how football inflicted long-term brain injuries on many players. What did the NFL know, and when did it know it? In a special two-hour investigation, FRONTLINE reveals the hidden story of the NFL and brain injuries.

Sounds gooooooooooood

Oh! I want to see that one.

ESPN was supposed to cooperate with the production of this, but backed out for fear of making the NFL angry. ESPN = the worst.

OK I have made it 7 min into this thing and Mike Webster's feet and legs and the Nigerian medical examiner saying he looked "worn out" -- too much! Frontline really bringing the sad in this one.

omg, one min later they get to the part about how he used to superglue his teeth back in and i just...
yikes

frontline really knows how to frontload a doc about concussions!

this is really good

ESPN backing out of this made them look so awful. especially when the NFL then settles the class action a few weeks later for three-quarters of a BILLION.

I admit to wanting to watch this because I have ~opinions~ about how pro (and college, omg college) sports treats people as disposable (plus the dynamic of white owners/coaches commodifying people of color) so this is really just going to reinforce an opinion I already hold, but I'm really excited about it.

Interesting about ESPN. A couple of their 30 for 30 documentaries touched on some of this stuff and were really good. There was one about who pro sports players go broke that didn't put the brutal treatment of athletes' bodies at the center but certainly made the point that getting tackled all the time is not a physically sustainable way to make a living.

Relevant and horrible: http://neilski.typepad.com/wwwlanetechfancom_blog/2013/10/drew-williams-of-lane-tech-in-critical-condition.html

I watched this. Very powerful stuff. At one point toward the end, it was noted that, of the 46 brains of ex-NFL players that have so far been examined after death, 45 of them showed signs of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a degenerative disease caused by repeated blows to the head. 45 of 46. That's just grim.

there are a couple choice voice over moments

"and goodell offered doctor mckee something she needed even more than money.........brains"

that's awesome. also reminds me -- their audiocasts are way behind iirc
still haven't finished watching this one...sometimes i like to drag them out so i get to enjoy them on more than one occasion instead of sitting down and watching the whole thing at once.

the nigerian ME was such a character... he somehow brought some levity to the doc

frontline really knows how to frontload a doc about concussions!

― Untt (La Lechera), Tuesday, October 8, 2013 7:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol <3

Not growing up steeped in the NFL helped the Nigerian medical examiner see Webster's situation in a different light, that's for sure. It was totally true that all of this coming to light pivots on that point. I love when that happens. Like if this ooooone little thing hadn't happened, none of this other stuff would have ever happened and we wouldn't know about xyz horrible thing that happened.

xxp yes he should have his own show

the nigerian doctor and the two heads of the BU brain bank should be in the NFL hall of fame imo

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/the-frontline-interview-dr-bennet-omalu/#seg8

"I thought the football industry would be happy with our discovery"

his highlight reel -- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/the-frontline-interview-dr-bennet-omalu/

man, their website ruuuuuules for teachers

Lord yes. When I taught that ridic law enforcement class I would have been lost without that website.

Haven't had time to watch this yet. Do they mention dementia pugilistica?

first described in 1928 by a forensic pathologist, Dr. Harrison Stanford Martland, who was the chief medical examiner of Essex County in Newark, New Jersey in a Journal of the American Medical Association article, in which he noted the tremors, slowed movement, confusion, and speech problems typical of the condition.[14] In 1973, a group led by J. A. Corsellis[15] described the typical neuropathological findings of DP after post-mortem examinations of the brains of 15 former boxers.[15]

it's always amazed me how the NFL treats concussions as somehow different from being KO'd in a boxing match.

They did mention Dementia Pugilistica, most hilariously in the clip where the NFL's head doctor (I forget if it was the Rheumatologist, Dr. Pellman, or the neurologist Dr. Casson, both of whom just came off like horrible shills) said that to his knowledge, dementia was only associated with boxers and some steeplechasers, and never in football players.

Suicide Tourist

It was Casson, Dr.

Suicide Tourist was good.

I can't remember what else I've watched and now Netflix doesn't show your entire streaming history :(((((((

I cried so hard watching Suicide Tourist.

The NFL's response to this reminded me of the debate over climate change. Deny it exists, say it's being studied further, and keep kicking the can down the road.

It reminded me of the tobacco industry.

NOTE: I haven't watched this yet, but will soon, so I don't know what it covers and what it doesn't. This Mike Florio piece, though, sort of makes it seem like Frontline only told half the story and there's plenty of blame for the NFLPA to share.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/10/09/league-of-denial-fails-to-tell-the-whole-story-on-concussions/

I kept thinking about how my mother said back in the 70's that Byron 'Whizzer' White must have sustained a few too many head injuries playing football and wondering how many football players have known all along how much of a gamble with their health their taking.

This Mike Florio piece, though, sort of makes it seem like Frontline only told half the story and there's plenty of blame for the NFLPA to share.

interesting piece but he's a little too harsh on Frontline imo, it doesn't really change the substance of the documentary that they just said "the NFL is to blame" instead of "the NFL is to blame and also the players." they probably should have put some of that in but it's not like it renders the whole thing not credible.

If the NFL players' association assisted the league in denying it, while being fully aware of the extent and seriousness of the problem, then obviously those responsible for it ought to be exposed, too. This Frontline documentary seemed more interested in presenting indisputable proof that this problem is real and widespread, and that denying it or evading it is an extremely dangerous and untenable position. The words and actions of the NFL spoke for themselves.

the Leigh Steinberg anecdote about Aikman was unsettling

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3741/10216630604_207e424a6d_c.jpg

cool professional sports league

NOT recommended for hypochondriacs! I bet it has a lot of cool looking bacteria photography though.

Has the age of antibiotics come to an end? From a young girl thrust onto life support in Arizona to an uncontrollable outbreak at one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, FRONTLINE investigates the alarming rise of a deadly type of bacteria that our modern antibiotics can’t stop.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/

That one goes in the "Can't watch; too much anxiety" column. I'm not even a hypochondriac! Just an end-of-the-world-ophobe.

Yeah, this one prob will qualify for horror movie status.

(I can't wait!)

these tic tac bacteria are pure evil

https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/y4/r/-PAXP-deijE.gif

I have a feeling tonight's broadcast will not be for the faint of heart or those with a anxious constitution.

ok just fyi -- this is legit horrifying

Yeah, this one prob will qualify for horror movie status.

― sweat pea (La Lechera), Monday, October 21, 2013 7:34 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(I can't wait!)

― sweat pea (La Lechera), Monday, October 21, 2013 7:35 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

delighted lols

]http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3743/10433619613_83859992d7.jpg
so pretty
til you realize they are ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT SUPERBUGS

Just been made aware of these series of documentaries. I watched the "ghosts of rwanda" doc for class and its amazing (and harrowing obv). eager to watch the NFL one.

Superbug episode last night was scary as shit, thanks in part to scary production choices.

yea this 1 was p great/horrifying

today i introduced the project where my sts have to watch a frontline doc/write about it and, as predicted, at least one person went to the website for the flea medicine.

: )

Oh dear.

Hey I finally watched the NFL concussion episode. Really, really good. Poor Dr. Omalu.

Also LOLed cynically at the BU neurologist talking about how there was a lot of sexism in the air when she was facing down the Dudes of the NFL, then cut to NFL dude being like, "There's no sexism. If she had a problem, it was because she wasn't taking the right tone when she told us the information." LOLbarf

...

That lady was amazing and I loved her voice.

Update on superbugs -- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/do-hospital-workers-really-wash-their-hands/

The findings aren't really as amusing as stuff like this

So two years ago, the hospital expanded its campaign, creating posters featuring physician and nursing leadership from each unit declaring that they supported good hand hygiene.

The aim was partly a guilt-trip, “to just kinda put people in a tight spot,” Elliott said. For example, he said, “The chief of a certain unit was known for not washing his hands.” So they splashed his picture on a poster declaring his support for the policy to encourage him, and everyone in his unit, to wash their hands. “That person started washing his hands,” he said.

Ugh a doctor who doesn't wash his hands? Gross. What a jerk.

Seriously. But if my mom's malpractice suit taught me anything it's that Don Henley levels of assholery flourish in the profession.

^^Well, yeah.

Haha

lolll

#takeiteasy

today i found a student trying to access flatline dot org :-/

also there is a new one coming up -- keywords include murder investigation, law enforcement, domestic violence
some of the details in it kinda freaked me out for reasons i would prefer not to go into here

On the night she broke up with her police officer boyfriend, 24-year-old Michelle O’Connell was found dead from a gunshot in the mouth. Next to her was her boyfriend’s semi-automatic service pistol.

The local sheriff’s investigation concluded it was a suicide—but was it?

In A Death in St. Augustine, premiering Tuesday, November 26 at 10 p.m. (check local PBS listings), FRONTLINE and The New York Times investigate the death of this young, single mother in Florida — and how effectively police handle cases involving their own officers, especially when there are allegations of domestic violence.

^this was really good. it's basically hi-brow murder porn as opposed to the investigation discovery bargain basement take on tru crime reportage(which is still amazing dont get me wrong). i wont talk abt specifics yet in case ppl still havent watched it

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/two-gunshots/

^^ read it through with video clips

Best true crime deconstruction I've read since the David Grann piece about the arson that wasn't.

new one tonight about insider trading
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/to-catch-a-trader/

Interview with Frontline's correspondent

PBS has an appleTV app now that's changing my life

well, next week's episode is probably going to be really good:

In Secret State of North Korea, FRONTLINE shines a light on the hidden world of the North Korean people, drawing on undercover footage from inside the country as well as interviews with defectors—including a former top official—who are working to try to chisel away at the regime’s influence.

I wonder if they interviewed Djong Yun?!

the older one on the battle over teaching evolution vs. creationism in... I think... Pennsylvania, was truly great. I always forget to watch these when they are first on, but catch up with them later and am rarely disappointed. they tend to be really bracing; they shake me up. can't say that about much--or perhaps any other--TV.

I finally watched the Death in St Augustine episode - sad/great stuff

The one about insider trading/SAC was good but kind of light on the major revelations.

I could only take about half of the North Korea one that premiered last night. I think I have to let it sink in a little before I watch the rest. It has been with me awake and asleep since I saw it. The courage it took to get that footage is just totally beyond my grasp.

lol/sob

PRESS RELEASE: FRONTLINE PRESENTS “GENERATION LIKE”

Tuesday, February 18, 2014, at 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings)
www.facebook.com/frontline | Twitter: @frontlinepbs #GenLike
Instagram: @frontlinepbs #GenLike
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/generation-like/

Whether they’re getting retweeted by members of One Direction, or liking the Hunger Games Facebook page for a chance to be included in the movie’s credits, today’s teens are directly interacting with pop culture — celebrities, movies, music, and, increasingly, brands — in ways never before possible.

Tweet pictures of yourself at a Lady Gaga concert, and maybe she’ll call you from the stage — a moment sponsored by the cell phone company Virgin Mobile.

Send Beyonce your selfie, and maybe it’ll be included in the Pepsi-sponsored intro to her Super Bowl halftime show.

Do kids think they’re being used to promote these brands? Do they care? Or in a new teenage reality where being Internet famous seems to be just a click or a post away, does the perceived chance to be the next big star make it all worth it?

In Generation Like, an eye-opening follow-up to FRONTLINE’s 2001 documentary The Merchants of Cool, author Douglas Rushkoff returns to the world of youth culture to explore how the perennial teen quest for identity and connection has migrated to social media — and how big brands are increasingly co-opting young consumers’ digital presences.

“Today’s teens don’t need to be chased down by corporations,” Rushkoff says. “They’re putting themselves online for anyone to see. They tell the world what they think is cool—starting with their own online profiles. Likes, follows, retweets, and favorites are the social currency of this generation.”

And they’re a very real currency for marketers: instead of selling the product to the teenage audience, the idea is to get the teenage audience to sell the product to itself — and for corporations to collect big data in the process.

“Companies know how to take that data, and turn it into money,” one marketer tells FRONTLINE. “The people who are handing over the data — because they’re hitting, ‘I like this’ or ‘I like that,’ or they’re telling all their friends, ‘Will you please come like me? — they have no idea what the value of that is.”

From the agency that’s leveraging the Twitter followers of celebrities like Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries) to make lucrative product endorsement deals, to the “grassroots” social media campaign behind the Hollywood blockbuster The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Generation Like explores how companies are increasingly enlisting kids as willing foot soldiers in their marketing machines.

In the social media age, does the division between marketing and authenticity still exist? What’s the hidden alchemy that brands are using to capture Generation Like? And who are the people behind the curtain making it all happen?

Generation Like is a powerful examination of the evolving and complicated relationship between young consumers and the companies that are increasingly working to target them – and their fans, friends, and followers.

And who are the people behind the curtain making it all happen?
i can't wait to see the human donut holes who do this.

human donut holes lol

And who are the people behind the curtain making it all happen?

http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles/gallery/public/images/27186.jpg

Oh man I still think abt bits from merchants of cool. The Mook and the Midriff.

A new two-parter

Witnessing Syria’s War Through the Eyes Of Its Children
February 11, 2014, 10:40 am ET by Jason M. Breslow

The findings of a recent United Nations report cataloging the toll of Syria’s civil war on children are stark. Nearly three years into the fighting, more than 10,000 children have been killed, 3 million have been displaced from their homes, and another 1.1 million now live as refugees.

The details are chilling: The U.N. found that government forces have used children as human shields, shot at children with snipers and detained children as young as 11 for their alleged association with the opposition. In detention, children have been held in the same cells as adults, sexually violated and in some instances tortured:

Ill treatment and acts tantamount to torture reportedly included beatings with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons; electric shocks, including to the genitals; the ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence, including rape or threats of rape; mock executions; cigarette burns; sleep deprivation; solitary confinement; and exposure to the torture of relatives.

Abuses have not been limited to the regime. The report found that armed opposition groups have “engaged in the summary execution of children,” recruited children for combat, and taken children hostage in exchange for ransom or the release of prisoners. And the extremist jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “has set up Islamic schools in which children are reportedly indoctrinated to fight for ‘jihad,’” according to the report.

Amid such turmoil, the notion of a normal childhood has all but disappeared for the young bystanders of war featured in tonight’s FRONTLINE investigation, Children of Aleppo. In the film, FRONTLINE returns to Syria’s biggest city for an intimate look at life during wartime through the eyes of children.

One of the characters profiled in the film is Farah, an eight year old who says her favorite activity is helping her father, a rebel commander, build bombs. It’s dangerous work, and Farah knows it. In the following excerpt from Children of Aleppo, she describes the day her father was nearly killed while making a bomb with a fellow fighter.

Generation Like is totally bananas

Did anyone else watch it? I feel the need to double-down on my already rabid distaste for having things sold to me at every turn, but it also verified that this is definitely a generational thing. I think I took "I don't want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything" super duper seriously when I was 14 and never let go. No so for kids today, that's for sure! I didn't feel old so much as I felt right. Seeing the guy who handles celebrity social media made me sick, he was gross. And that poor Hunger Games girl. I had a student who was like that for Reba McEntire, of all people. Anyway, I recommend this one for a lighter Frontline.

Also I had no idea who Tyler Oakley was before seeing this. Oh and the little girl with braces broke my heart.

There are only 2 ilx posts about Tyler Oakley (one of them is mine) and they both say "I have no idea who this guy is."

I can't stop thinking about this tbh. The whole notion that i should aggressively advertise every aspect of my preferences, opinions, activities, face/body, etc and cultivate a group of people who pay attention to me is so antithetical to the way I've thought for my entire life that it's not exactly surprising that I'm so horrified. Still, maybe this just means that I'm overly modest and old fashioned at best and paranoid about my privacy at worst. Either way, the worldview shown in this doc is powerfully repellent to me atm.

kids who like ian somerhalder like junk food and makeup, whod of thunk it

I'm sad I missed that one!! Is it going to show again?

You can prob watch it online -- all their movies stream on the website, at least most of em do.

the worst part of this was def this kid -https://twitter.com/Babyscummy

the rest - eh

You can want Frontline online, and you have been able to for a long time now! I used to watch it a lot around the time of the Second Iraq War. Here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/

The whole notion that i should aggressively advertise every aspect of my preferences, opinions, activities, face/body, etc and cultivate a group of people who pay attention to me is so antithetical to the way I've thought for my entire life that it's not exactly surprising that I'm so horrified.

OK Cupid makes me really conflicted for this reason, since it necessitates some degree of capitulation to this way of thinking, and encourages you to consider others this way too. Going to watch this as soon as I get the time!

er, watch, as well as want.

A few things that stood out to me about Generation Like
-every time you 'like' something, you're making somebody money.
-the notion that this generation has no idea that they are doing the advertising for companies, that companies plan this in such as way that kids never see that it wasn't their idea. I guess this isn't anything new, but it seems different to me.
-no one understood what selling out could mean.

I loved the sellout thing. I feel like the only period in human history when children (not adults) were invested in the idea of selling out was the 90s. Even in the 90s there were plenty of kids willing to commodify their tastes. The narrative of Little Scumbag neglects to mention that he is part of a tradition of skateboard video clowns. Tyler Oakley could have been on the Mickey Mouse Club. Was it really better when children were being used ... the old fashioned way?

Watching this now (thanks, Roku!) and realizing this generation of kids is pretty much incomprehensible to me.

The girl with braces and the baby scumbag parts were definitely the creepiest for me. Way to celebrate the sexualization of children, Internet.

I dunno...they seem comprehensible to me? Kids want attention and lack the wisdom to choose self-restraint. That's always been the case.

Yeah nothing was shocking to me, just showed me how little involved I am with the internet. I guess it surprises me that people actually become famous by way of youtube, because I've never taken it seriously, I don't think I've ever watched a viral video. I hardly ever use youtube for anything other than occasional music videos. Same with Facebook, which is mostly photos of my daughter. Which is what concerns me about how things are progressing. This will be the world my daughter will grow up involved in, where ads aren't even thought of as ads. I mostly hate ads, companies trying to sell me stuff. I would pay for cable if it had no commercials. I would even pay a lot more for internet service with no ads, that would be a perfect world for me.

that repulsion with advertising/being sold something is the most lingering part of the feeling in the air where/when i grew up. my mom told me in 7th gr that people wear brand names on the outside of their clothing because they're insecure and i have pretty much believed that my entire life. to see brands and brand loyalty (and even personal branding, if i'm going there) become so dominant -- it's just repellent to me, i have no other way to describe my reaction to it.

nah sometimes the shirts look good!

Bumper stickers bother me, particularly the "My child made 17th place at Bumblebee Elementary School" ilk. But I accept certain kinds of commercialization as inevitable, and it's impossible to draw a line. Clothes with brand names on the outside are repellent but Polo or Dior insignias aren't? If he can wear it well, I tend to give him a pass.

polo and dior are repellant tbf

jacob you can install adblocker on almost any web browser, its simple, fast, and free

Ha, I don't use adblocker because I get a perverse thrill out of seeing who advertisers think I am and how absurdly wrong they are.

i can understand that instinct but i get an even bigger thrill out of watching youtube videos whenever i want without waiting 5 seconds to click the "skip" button

that's a really good point
i would like to get rid of that
maybe i don't need that particular annoying pleasure in my life anymore -- it's not like they'll ever get it right anyway

i am the same way with terrible people who mysteriously became my facebook friends! i wont ever hide/de-friend them no matter how terrible their posting is

oh yeah, facebook is the best place for investment-free people watching.

Yeesh that Mini Jackass kid is the monster that this whole "like" economy creates. But at the same time, that kind of sponsorship has been the central goal of skaters/snowboarders/surfers hell, just athletes since the beginning. Plus corporations have been sponsoring (and thus controlling) content since corporations and content first existed so I don't really see this as some kind of new horrible thing (just the same old horrible thing).

Except for the part where huge multi-million dollar corporations are exploiting teens for free labor. That is grosser than gross. Hopefully people will realize eventually that they can't pay off student loans with "sparks" (whatever they are) and things will shift again.

I think the biggest emotion this doc made me feel is relief that I don't give a shit about creating an identity or branding myself and also that I deleted my Facebook page when I did.

I also assume that there is an anti-branding/marketing/liking counter culture out there, plus while there was some ethnic diversity among the kids profiled, it definitely focused on a limited socioeconomic sample. I guess I see this more as a look at the way a certain segment of kids operate as opposed to the way things are universally.

Tyler Oakley looks like somebody I know and it's driving me nuts because I can't figure out who it is.

i couldn't help thinking how the hunger games girl is gonna feel watching this footage of herself in 5-10 years

i really hope rushkoff does another one of these in 2026.

She may not be devoted to The Hunger Games anymore, but that kind of impulse doesn't go away easily. She'll be wrapped up in something else by 2026.

that repulsion with advertising/being sold something is the most lingering part of the feeling in the air where/when i grew up. my mom told me in 7th gr that people wear brand names on the outside of their clothing because they're insecure and i have pretty much believed that my entire life.

I got this line too! Heavily. It's revealing, though, that it convicts obvious, visible advertising, but doesn't address that all choices are products of environment and input. Like, if advertising is bad, and "selling out" is bad, and being swayed by social forces is bad (made to desire products or brands or even desiring of popularity/approval at all), then the ultimate good is "neutrality" or some kind of purity of personal development, as if such a thing is even possible.

When I was in the 4th grade I convinced my grandparents to take me to Lufkin where there was a skate shop to buy clothes and a board. When we were driving back my grandpa said, "you know with all of those t shirts you got you're gonna be a walking advertisement for those companies." I didn't fully get what he was saying, but I felt self conscious. It did soured my excitement at finally having cool skate clothes. I don't think I was aware of it at the time, but most of the things my grandpa lectured me about was preparing me for becoming punk rock and anti-corporate.

lol with skate brands, I was like, fuck u, I'll happily advertise for Vision in contrast to my Guess-obsessed classmates.

grandpa otm.

Advertising gives an identity to people who otherwise would have to go without.

I think choosing who to advertise for is a valid choice. Hopefully our choices aren't and will never be ONLY various corporate giants, I mean every time you wear a BAND T-SHIRT you're "advertising"! It's not a better or worse method of identification than any other.

wearing band tshirts is kind of embarrassing though
i still do it on occasion, but the only tshirt with an ad on it that i feel really good about is the shirt for my friend's record store because i love to tell people to go there.

I think about 80% of my clothing is band t-shirts. Always found it to be a fun conversation-starter (or stopper, like the stoner kid who shouted at me on the street, "Hey, Bob Marley sucks!" while I was wearing my Marvin Gaye t-shirt).

xp I thought you would say that. :D

I think choosing who to advertise for is a valid choice. Hopefully our choices aren't and will never be ONLY various corporate giants, I mean every time you wear a BAND T-SHIRT you're "advertising"! It's not a better or worse method of identification than any other.

Glad you brought this up - I was about to ask whether/how much daylight people see between wearing a Nike shirt, a FUBU shirt, a Lacoste shirt and a Black Flag shirt.

Of the t-shirts I still wear, about half of them are things I got from participating in charity events - bike rides, blood drives, etc. - and therefore advertising orgs whose values I actually share. The other half are Star Wars because I am a giant fucking nerd.

If I were given a choice of not displaying corporate logos on my clothing or anything else I own, I would definitely take it. The practice of putting logos prominently on merchandise is so universal now that I do not have that choice. It has become compulsory. However, I have been known to remove or efface logos.

this isn't really all about logos and tshirts though -- brand advertising is only part of it. there's another part of the message that says that you don't exist (or exist *enough*) unless other people recognize you and appreciate you publicly, so you have to put everything out there front and center (your opinions, your preferences, your 'likes', every aspect of your identity, and even your physical self) so people can see it and applaud for you. the idea that i should be advertising myself at all, much less that aggressively (to what end?), is another part of i find off-putting.

tbh I have zero visible logos on my clothing I'm wearing and am kind of annoyed by the one subtle stitched logo on my jacket

there's another part of the message that says that you don't exist (or exist *enough*) unless other people recognize you and appreciate you publicly, so you have to put everything out there front and center (your opinions, your preferences, your 'likes', every aspect of your identity, and even your physical self) so people can see it and applaud for you.

Yes. This relentless need for public validation is difficult to watch. So is the need to announce what it is about you that makes you "you." Show don't tell, kids. Show don't tell.

I think the need for approval is an integral part of human nature but this is a new way of garnering that approval that is pretty interesting to think about.

Xp yeah, I agree with that. (I half-jokingly said something on Twitter a couple of weeks ago about "History will mark the moment we stopped talking about people and started talking about 'personal brands' as where it all went wrong.")

In other news, SECRETS OF THE VATICAN was extremely grim.

That sounds like a good one.

The kids putting together the facegroup profile for their friend had a slumber party makeover feel to it that was kind of heartwarming in an uncanny way.

If I were given a choice of not displaying corporate logos on my clothing or anything else I own, I would definitely take it. The practice of putting logos prominently on merchandise is so universal now that I do not have that choice. It has become compulsory. However, I have been known to remove or efface logos.

― Aimless, Tuesday, February 25, 2014 2:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

shoes are the worst! I have not bought a new pair of athletic shoes (broadly defined) in years and years because they all feature huge motherfucking logos on them.

In high school/college, I used to buy black sneakers and blot out any logos/lettering with a magic marker.I was a cool kid.Actually I think I cut the swoosh out a pair of nikes in 9th grade!?

i saw a cool kid at the art institute on sunday who had a giant DSLR slung over his shoulder and out of habit i looked at the space directly above the lens where it always says CANON or NIKON and he had covered it up with a small strip of black duct tape lol

My television has a little piece of electrical tape because the frame is completely charcoal-colored except for the SAMSUNG right before the screen

I bought my first pair of Nike shoes for the first time since middle school a month ago because they were the best fit for my workout needs, though.

<3 u my people
i have done my part most recently by thumbing my nose at all breakfast cereals (esp the ones that advertise weight loss and chocolate to women) and making my own damn cereal 100% shame free and delicious. but tbh, i have always been this way too*! i appreciate that there are kids out there who don't think i'm old/paranoid/crazy.

*today i am wearing a sweater i got at a thrift store in 1990, the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. i have had this old sweater forever! why would i want to buy a new one? get off my lawn!

my MIL bought me a coach handbag, it's not really my style anyway but even if it was i'm too embarrassed to use it in public bc of the stupid label on it.

another ilxor once sent me (out of the blue! for no charge!) a vintage leather coach bag which only says "coach" on the strap IIRC and it's scarcely visible. one of the nicest things anyone has done for me!

I bought a new (used) Honda Element this year and the first thing I did was remove all the chrome nameplates and ornaments front and back.

You should just build your own car.

You should just build knit your own car.

Our 94 Honda Civic is so old the chrome logo H on the front of the hood fell off when the fasteners rusted through.

I do brew my own gas. And the whole interior is hemp.

good plan snatching up an Element now, what with them being discontinued

Lots of trackers on the Frontline page

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bhsy9gBCYAAuFXF.png

what does that mean

i have no idea what that means either

I'm no expert, but I'm fairly sure that means services built into the code that provide information about the visitor. For example, crazy egg provides analytics (like google analytics).

In other words you're supposed to view the image and be dumbstruck by the hypocrisy of frontline for putting out a show that criticized companies that collect and share information about unsuspecting internet people for profit, when in fact they are ALSO collecting and sharing information from the viewers of the program!11!!!

ah, i get it now. but that sounds like the paranoid feedback loop sort of thinking that gets people disproportionately riled up .

<i>If I were given a choice of not displaying corporate logos on my clothing or anything else I own, I would definitely take it. The practice of putting logos prominently on merchandise is so universal now that I do not have that choice. It has become compulsory. However, I have been known to remove or efface logos.</i>

You're like Cayce Pollard from Pattern Recognition!

*today i am wearing a sweater i got at a thrift store in 1990, the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. i have had this old sweater forever! why would i want to buy a new one? get off my lawn!

― we slowly invented brains (La Lechera), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:47 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^This! Yay! <3

Advertising gives an identity to people who otherwise would have to go without. be creative.

watched "generation like" with my class this morning
they didn't know what to make of tyler oakley but they all agreed that hunger games girl was wasting her time and middle school braces girl was making some bad decisions

xp I've compared LL to Cayce Pollard before, although I don't think I could remember her name at the time.

Pollard's name, not La Lechera's.

did i have to google that name? yes i did.

hunger games girl is definitely wasting her time but i can at least get where she's coming from. whereas tyler oakley is just terrifying to me. i hate youtube celebrities.

I have the exact opposite reaction to those two. Hunger Games Girl makes me feel like an old person confused and scared by kids today because I can't even see the appeal of grinding out unpaid labor to promote a book/movie franchise that is doing just fine without her. Tyler, though, he's making something of himself (albeit in a confusing and scary and kind of gross way).

That said I probably would have done the same as Hunger Games Girl for Def Leppard c. 1983 so thank god this shit didn't exist when I was making all of my incomprehensible tween decisions.

I definitely felt bad for hunger games girl. it seems like she'll almost certainly look back on her obsession (and appearance in the doc) with embarrassment in a few years, but she'll be fine. tyler oakley, ugh

yakking about nothing on youtube seems like the most obvious and intense form of attention neediness i can think of (aside from physically throwing oneself at people), and i am 100% sure i was taught that doing things because you need attention is uniformly a bad idea in the short run and the long run.

also i wanted to note that the guy who runs theaudience looks a lot like mookieproof

the most embarrassing spray of fandom i ever engaged in was when i wrote a letter to spin about their profile of bob stinson. i was old enough to know better but i couldn't control myself! that article really made me sad.

That said I probably would have done the same as Hunger Games Girl for Def Leppard c. 1983 so thank god this shit didn't exist when I was making all of my incomprehensible tween decisions.

exactly, i can totally see myself being like that when i was 15 but the internet wasn't developed enough, luckily

like idk, I'm into plenty of shit that ultimately boils down to people being narcissistic consumerist attention-seeking jackasses, but there's something about the idea of someone turning a camera on themselves and going "Hi everyone!" and acting like they're the viewer's best bud that is just immensely, unconscionably wrong to me. Hunger Games girl is just a nerdy teen fanatic, and I can identify with that, and I get the sense that she'll be ok even after the world moves on & her totem gets ripped away from her.

xposts

I spent my teenage years gushing about the Smashing Pumpkins and Peter Murphy on ILX, and it's plenty embarrassing in retrospect, but my soul is still intact, I think

I mean, if I had to spend time with either of them, it would be Hunger Games Girl all the way. She seems totally charming and sincere. I just have trouble identifying with her motivations whereas Tyler Oakley's are transparent as hell and make perfect sense in our capitalist society - he's riding the brand identity train to moneytown.

HI GUYS! It's just ME, LA LECHERA, yr VIRTUAL BFF here to tell you all about COOL STUFF I LIKE

can you even imagine!?

i don't even like to start threads about stuff i like, but this thread is an exception bc it's educational

also ken middleham thread because the poor guy didn't even have a wikipedia entry in english
that was a public service

TO's got charisma and I think he's probably pretty smart or at least very savvy in the right way at the right time. Basically I admire his ability to play the game, even as I find the game itself pretty scuzzy. Contrarily, it seems like HGG is getting played hard in that a giant media megacorp is exploiting her enthusiasm as a nerdy teen fanatic and using her as slave labor to promote a movie that is already wildly popular. So watching the documentary, her segments made me cringe while with TO, I was like, yeah, this dude is in control of this situation.

"slave labor" is inappropriate terminology there. "Unpaid labor" I should have said.

i don't know what it says about me, but i like HGG because she makes me cringe in sympathy, and i hate TO because he makes me cringe because of his transparent lusting for fame and power

haha tbf my being an underpaid yet enthusiastic lackey for a giant media megacorp probably has something to do with my feelings here

Karl Malone otm

http://i.imgur.com/DRwAdx0.jpg

"i hate TO because he makes me cringe because of his transparent lusting for fame and power"

where did you get that hi-res picture of me?!

Spent my pre-internet teenage years on BBSes, and I was into Doom WADs and level packs. Making a new level in Doom may have been free promotion, but at least there is some level of personal creativity there.

Free labor promoting corporate IPs these days does seem like a scary new thing to me, but then again maybe it's just Old Media cherry picking extra shit to go along with their regular advertising shit and it's nothing really all that new. People have had fansites since the beginning of the internet, the only difference is now if someone photoshops The Hunger Games into a still from Seinfeld, instead of being seen by the 10 other people that have sites in the same webring, it's splashed all over AV Club, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

my particular life circumstances have led me to fear attention more than crave it tbh, so basically i was horrified by everything. mostly i'm sad because it works. what they're doing WORKS. ugh humanity.

The scary thing will be once Comcast has beat the internet into submission and people aren't just doing IP juxtaposition for free but PAYING FOR THE PRIVILEGE. No doubt Old Media have this business model in their sites.

HI GUYS! It's just ME, LA LECHERA, yr VIRTUAL BFF here to tell you all about COOL STUFF I LIKE

can you even imagine!?

― we slowly invented brains (La Lechera), Thursday, March 6, 2014 2:34 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

please subscribe me to your newsletter

jeez, that secrets of the vatican ep was just unbearably sad. for some reason i was not expecting 2/3 of the episode to be horrendous child abuse stuff, of course this seems obvious now in hindsight

yeah it was absolutely horrifying.

back to teens: this was an interesting side note to the doc, from an interview with alissa quart

It’s I think a side effect of living in such a data-rich and socially networked universe, where narcissism is not a condition; it’s a strategy, … strategy toward betterment, toward improvement, creating community, which sounds ironic, like how can narcissism help us create community? But it’s sort of like the person with the most aggressive data stream wins, who posts the most, who likes the most, who’s most present and ubiquitous.

I think cool used to be identified with scarcity, the jazz singer who turns his back to the audience. Now cool has become omnipresent. So there’s been a real shift in what cool is. That’s one thing that we’re talking about underneath our conversation about teenagers.

Let’s talk more about that, because that’s a fascinating shift. …

… I think cool originates with the jazz culture in the ’40s. There was probably cool before that, but that’s when people started talking about cool — Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and a bunch of other early, cool jazz folk.

Then it sort of got absorbed as the height of adolescent style, so an example of that would be James Dean. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause is cool.

But one of the things with all these people that we’re describing from an earlier period of cool is that they resisted; they withheld. They were emotive without being emotional. They gave off like a cold light, right? And they were not giving that much.

Now I think coolness is about giving everything. It’s like you have to be constantly selling yourself, showing yourself and marketing yourself and using technology and using multiple platforms, because you might even seem sort of half mad. Instead of turning your back to the audience or wearing sunglasses at night, you’re taking off those sunglasses and you’re smiling into the camera, and it’s like there’s a real shift. …

The currency now is one of constant approval and a constant hum of self-assertion rather than standing back and hoping people come to you. It’s a real change.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/media/generation-like/alissa-quart-from-gen-x-to-z-teens-and-the-new-cool/

this doesn't seem like a new development-- Type A people connecting broadly have usually been more popular. Debbie Gibson was more popular at my middle school than any "cool" late 80s artist. The word "cool" is probably being stretched beyond meaning here.

THAT is so interesting, that excerpt. I was either attending or watching a discussion recently in which someone noted that a crucial element of cool is that it rejects what is widely available, that it requires being a have-not of whatever the going currency is...that "cool" comes from resistance. In that framing, you almost need a different word for the approval seeking kind of popularity, it's like the anti-cool?

I'm glad you posted that, I'd almost forgotten that chance comment and now it's becoming a new net to catch other thoughts.

agree, we need a new word for what these super in-your-face people are, a word like "trending"
because i guess cool isn't in anymore, but cool should remain cool

i think part of the problem is that we are trying to apply old concept words to new concepts, like spaceship or whatever -- there's a word for it but i can't remember, retroformation or something? i dunno.
not that this whole thing is particularly important, of course. it's worth noting that this stupid frontline about likes has generated more conversation than any other one
on one hand, this disappoints me
but whatever, people will talk about what they want to talk about unless someone gets super in their face about it, and clearly i am not the man for that job
so here we are :-/

yeah i think president keyes is right that this isn't really a new development, just new technologies enabling old phenomena. "cool" has had multiple meanings for a long time—it can def used to refer to both the "popular" kids and to the "outsider" subcultural kids. i think the difference between those two uses is more philosophical than generational. there's always been teenagers who desire fame and attention even in the limited high school sense, kids who want to show off and be gossiped about.

Cool can be used to describe the popular "popular" kids and the popular "outsider" kids.

I think cool used to be identified with scarcity, the jazz singer who turns his back to the audience.

this sentence pisses me off! Miles Davis faced the band so he could conduct them, not to be "cool" or "scarce"

and he wasn't a singer

this is perhaps off-topic but i also feel like pointing out that ppl who post selfies on tumblr or vlog or w/e aren't necessarily narcissistic or fame-seeking, plenty of ppl do these things as a way to seek out community or like-minded others and i think this is especially important for young ppl who are marginalized in some way. i did this w/ personal blogging and later livejournal when i was a kid

if you read the rest of the interview with alissa quart, she addresses that (the empowerment "piece" as it is so called) in abundant detail
that thing about miles is total bs though, you're right crut

also i think i'm sick of talking about this tbh! i don't even care anymore
i just want to go on with livin my life and stop talking about talking about talking about everything

i just remembered that i once got approached by a marketing person from a major hollywood studio with an offer of exclusive clips of a highly anticipated film by an acclaimed director in exchange for doing some posts on my tumblr in the week before its broad release

when i wrote the guy back and asked how much money he was offering he was like "oh no this would just be for fun/exclusive clips"

i decided not to do it because it would have broken one of my rules (watching the entire film before posting something from it, not to mention: fuck you pay me) but the whole thing was just such a weird experience

Has anyone watched Rape In the Fields? I watched this last night in tears. I've never heard the term 'Mass Rape' before but it was chilly to hear those two words used together.
No criminal charges have yet been brought against anyone.
No criminal charges have yet been brought against anyone.
No criminal charges have yet been brought against anyone.
No criminal charges have yet been brought against anyone.

I started it, but couldn't handle it tbh. The women reminded me too much of my students, and their stories were too sad. I'm glad it was made though, and I'm glad people are watching it. Disappointing, but not terribly surprising that no charges have been brought against anyone.

did we talk about the lee harvey oswald one

i don't think so -- i listened to the podcast one night while i was falling asleep, so i remember exactly nothing about it

hey, just in time for WORLD TUBERCULOSIS DAY tomorrow!

In 2012, an estimated 8.6 million people developed TB and 1.3 million died from the disease, according to the most recent figures from the World Health Organization. The WHO estimates that about 530,000 children develop TB every year, but the study’s authors used a different methodology to arrive at their total.

The current epicenter of the pandemic is Swaziland, home to highest rate of TB infection in the world. In tomorrow night’s FRONTLINE investigation, TB Silent Killer, filmmaker Jezza Neumann travels there for an unforgettable portrait of lives forever changed by the disease.

Coming in April -- (4/22 and 4/29) -- two docs about the US obsession with incarceration. One about solitary, the other about the PIC, I'm guessing. I hope CCA is fully eviscerated.

I finally started watching the one about TB and I don't even know what to say about it -- the brother and sister they show in the first 5 min segment instantly ripped my heart out and stomped on it. The brother's English was interesting too.
Why are so many people still dying of TB in 2014? I guess I'll have to watch the rest, ha.

I didn't finish it but was wondering the same thing. I thought it was a different strain?

There's a drug-resistant strain, but it seems like it could be contained/treated earlier or something?!

new one on solitary confinement. hell on earth:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/locked-up-in-america/the-disturbing-sounds-of-solitary-confinement/

Now only that, but there are two docs (this week and next week) focusing on the corrections obsession in this country -- i'm assuming at least one of them will talk about CCA?

wow, that preview is harrowing enough.

oh god, I don't think I can watch that. Horrifying.

That's why I feel like I have to watch it. If people can survive solitary, I can survive watching this documentary.

i'm somewhat ashamed to admit i'm at least as interested in the NOVA special about dog cognition that my local PBS affiliate has programmed right after the one about solitary confinement.

i don't even want to watch the frontline tonight but i guess i will

jk it's on at 10. past my bedtime.

oof.

man this is genuinely hard to watch

specifically but not exclusively the blood mop segment

yeah, that was horrifying.

my wife sat down and watched it with me. about 10 times during the broadcast she said, "oh my god, why am i watching this?"

adam's deterioration was really sad
i just want him to get his GED

after some time to think about it, it seems to me that this was pretty front-loaded with shocking footage (the kicking/shouting/howling/blood). there was some of that later, but not quite as much and by that time it was clear why the prisoners were going to such great lengths to get into the psych ward. there's a phone there! i was also not fond of the dramatic music -- the footage is dramatic enough and adding music was gratuitous imo.
and there was also nothing about the community they were from -- i guess i would have liked another hour at least of this movie.

my favorite details were the signs the prisoners put on their tiny windows.

the one next week seems to focus on corrections in a much broader context

oh! and the elaborate way they would send stuff from one cell to another was memorable.
i also enjoyed the many scenes of them grooming their facial hair -- how interesting that they're allowed that one dignity of having facial hair groomed to their liking.

i ended up watching it. i agree it needed another hour. i felt it was hard to watch and at the same time i was thinking, it's maine, it has to be so much worse in other states. that's not the first show i've seen highlighting maine prisons. i guess they're ok with being on tv.

I have watched first half of Tb ep, don't know if i

Can watch the rest. All of the stories are so hard, but that little girl...

Just watched The Suicide Plan. Wondering if I could ever swing being an Exit Guide.

i did not like the doc on solitary confinement all that much. i don't think i learned a lot, except the specific sorts of self-harm prisoners will endure in order to gain either access to the psych ward or some kind of momentary symbolic victory over their oppressors. the doc lacked a broader perspective, or maybe it just wanted the audience to fill in the blanks.

i kept thinking of foucault's discipline and punish. esp. when suicide attempts were shown to be punishable acts that result in being sent back to solitary for even longer that result in more suicide attempts that result in--

and all this despite the guards, other inmates, warden etc. who claim (i think sincerely) that they understand the prisoners' plight and are working to make the system more humane. shows how decent people can perpetuate a system of brutal repression.

i kept wanting the film to hit these kind of points, even obliquely. but it seemed so devoted to the spectacle, which no doubt needs to be seen, but doesn't really make an argument in itself.

i mostly agree, esp about the guards and their sincere effort to make life better for the inmates but it was pretty disappointing as a portrait of solitary confinement as an institutional mainstay. if it had been generally more wiseman-like i'd have accepted that generalization but it wasn't (in style, i mean). it's called "solitary nation" and it was one hour about one prison -- that's kinda lame imo.

however, the supplemental material they have on the frontline website about the background of solitary confinement was really educational and interesting. this specifically http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/locked-up-in-america/lock-it-down-how-solitary-started-in-the-u-s/

also i'd like to know if adam ever got his GED

i mostly agree, esp about the guards and their sincere effort to make life better for the inmates but it was pretty disappointing as a portrait of solitary confinement as an institutional mainstay. if it had been generally more wiseman-like i'd have accepted that generalization but it wasn't (in style, i mean). it's called "solitary nation" and it was one hour about one prison -- that's kinda lame imo.

yeah, i entirely agree. that the movie inspired thoughts doesn't necessarily mean i thought it was well-made or did a good job of explaining the larger context of the phenomenon of solitary confinement. also IIRC didn't even mention supermax prisons.

has anyone watched PRISON STATE?
there is a faint undercurrent that rubs me the wrong way but i think it might be the music. it makes me feel like i'm being emotionally manipulated, and i hate that. especially with a topic like this one.

i LOVE christel's mom though. she is such an excellent straight talker and reminds me of my students. i haven't watched the whole thing yet though. speaking of students, they're writing their frontline papers right now. i'm pretty proud of them.

There are a ton of "documentaries" on Netflix streaming that are just propaganda films disguised as documentaries (Morgan Spurlock has a lot to answer for) but they seem to be wildly popular. I wonder if the use of manipulative music in a Frontline doc is an attempt to ride that trend. It's gross, though, and they shouldn't do it.

yeah that is a seriously unfortunate trend
i don't like docs like that even when i agree with what they're saying

Yeah, ditto. They feel greasy.

they are greasy!

I started Prison State, but lost interest. Given its length, it felt like there was way more they could do with the topic. The personal interest side of the story has merit, but I would've preferred more focus on the big picture.

agree
i think we are encountering more films like these two (small picture vs big picture) because, i'm guessing, frontline acquires films the same way that other doc series do? by purchasing broadcasting rights from movies that have already been made? i'm guessing that the films covering the big picture are much more expensive to make (requiring travel, etc) and these films can be done on a much smaller budget. therefore there are more of these films to choose from, and the other ones just aren't getting made like they used to, at least not without larger institutional support. just a thought.

(other PBS doc series like independent lens, for example)

Frontline draws from a roster of producers who pitch them stories...my understanding is that the show commissions original work.

ah, did not know that! interesting.

That's just anecdotal...I have a friend who did one last year and is just beginning work on another. Maybe they do buy finished stuff occasionally, but I would think that because of the show's distinctive pacing and narration they'd need entirely new edits.

Big picture is so important, especially with docs about the prison industrial complex. Individual stories bring it home, but there are connections (connections maaaaaannnn) that need to be explored/highlighted to really convey the depth and breadth of the problem.

yeah i was disappointed in the two incarceration-themed ones so far
disappointed in that they were lost opportunities

most episodes are original commissioned work but not all, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interrupters

also i like stirring music in my docs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i haven't watched frontline in a while but this is good news http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/pressroom/press-release-frontline-wins-major-funding-to-expand-investigative-reporting/

Largest gift from an individual in FRONTLINE’s history and two-year Ford Foundation grant will support the series’ digital transformation

In a media environment where original broadcast journalism is under siege, PBS’ flagship investigative series FRONTLINE – produced by WGBH in Boston – is the recipient of two new major grants to expand its original investigative reporting.

Longtime WGBH supporters Jon and Jo Ann Hagler have made the single largest gift by an individual to FRONTLINE in its 30-year history: $5 million, with the majority going towards a new endowment for continuing journalism. In addition, the Ford Foundation is making a two-year, $800,000 grant towards a new cross-platform Enterprise Journalism Group within FRONTLINE that will deepen the series’ in-house investigative bench.

In to recommend Merchants of Cool, apologies if it has been discussed (hard to determine on phone).

I enjoyed United States of Secrets. Learned a lot tbh as I hadn't really studied the whole affair.

i couldn't make it through the one about losing iraq

too dry or too bleak?

a little of both
it was a huuuuuuuuge bummer to go back to the bush years and seeing their stupid faces again

i still remember vividly how I felt the day they invaded. Incredulous. up to the last minute I was convinced it was all gonna be brinksmanship and they wouldn't really do it. because it was so blisteringly obvious it was the worst fucking idea in history.

yeah it's the combo of realizing how much time has passed on a global and personal level and realizing how little anything has improved. huuuuuuuuuge bummer.
seeing the accumulated damage was a bit much for me
it's important to know/show but man

yeah i never was and never will be a 911 conspiracy adherent but i don't need to be to feel the dizzying horror of the neocons. still a little stunned tbh that a coven of radicals used a legit atrocity as their chance to hijack the nation, ruin the economy and a sizeable portion of the world, & c & c. fuck those guys forever in hell.

it was a huuuuuuuuge bummer to go back to the bush years and seeing their stupid faces again

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Tuesday, August 5, 2014 7:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jeff had added a lot of documentaries about the Bush years to our Netflix queue and I can't watch any of them. It may never not be too soon for me, really.

Otm

yeah it's a major anxiety trigger for me! i didn't realize it, but it is.

I was impressed with how they let Obama have it too, thought that needed to happen.

Sometimes I get bugged by the Frontline thing of emphasizing personalities over real information and context, but it worked ok here. I would have loved an overview of the history of the region, the players, the alliances, but that's probably another documentary.

this is kinda cute/sad but not surprising (esp about daniela)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/media/generation-like/what-did-generation-like-think-of-generation-like/

FRONTLINE: if the ebola doc doesn't give you nightmares, maybe the human trafficking/unspeakable atrocities one will!

Tonight on FRONTLINE: One hour. Two timely documentaries.

First, in Ebola Outbreak, FRONTLINE travels to Sierra Leone for an intimate, on-the-ground look at why the outbreak has spiraled out of control -- and the devastating impact it's having on families and health care workers.

Then, in Hunting Boko Haram, FRONTLINE uncovers video footage of atrocities allegedly by Nigerian security forces in the fight against Boko Haram -- the Islamist militant group that kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls in April, and is now seizing territory in northeast Nigeria.

I swear sometimes I think the Frontline producers have a magical viewmaster they can use to look deep into my brain and suss out my greatest fears and then make compelling, hard-hitting TV documentaries about them.

The image they chose for the ebola one is burned on my brain but I couldn't find a linkable version. It's v arty.

How quickly do they put them up to stream on the website? I'd watch these tonight if allowed to!

Either same day or next day, I think?

ok i have watched them both
the one about ebola was educational and sad
the one about boko haram was terrifying and very graphic with bodies and violence

the one that was on a few weeks ago about the small town crime was really interesting. i like the small focus ones as much as the wider focus ones.

this is the grossest headline i've seen in a while
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/trouble-with-antibiotics/can-e-coli-in-supermarket-meat-cause-utis/

let me clarify -- there is apparently a relationship between "supermarket meat", e coli, and infections in your urinary tract

U got yr chocolate in my peanut butter :(

New Rise Of ISIS episode is excellent and ultimately depressing timeline of the current shitstorm.

agree
it was really illuminating about how isis came to be but also featured actual people being/appearing to be shot dead so please know that there is major violence in there

this time of year frequently makes me want to wallow in horror and misery
for those times, i've got frontline

this liberia/firestone thing i just started it and it's already so o_O

yea it was so intense

also harbel = harbl in my mind

mine too :)

Ok I finally watched the one about Firestone and the Taylor regime and it completely freaked me out -- it's testament to the self-absorption of teenagers that I could be in high school in Akron in the early 90s, be a politically aware young person, and not know this was happening. I do remember hearing the word Liberia a lot, and I remember seeing some video footage/photos of men with guns packed into military-looking vehicles, but that's about it. Also I really think they could stand to put more trigger warnings before this one -- there were executions and children whose hands had been severed, among other atrocities. Honestly I don't know how I watched this considering all the other shit going on in the world right now, but I did.

Can't say I recommend it exactly, but I'm glad I saw it.

when I was watching it and they said Akron I was like "dang I've never heard of this stuff before but clearly LL will have been on this for decades"

Lol. Good job firestone keeping this shit tamped down I guess!

NB I got really freaked out by this episode and have not finished yet

"trigger warnings" for what? i mean what would it trigger?

other than just, you know, horror

Panic attacks? PTSD?

The one about the rise of the NRA is essential viewing. Interesting portrait of propaganda too, for anyone who teaches persuasion.

yea this nra ep is p well done

pretty sure i'm not going to be able to watch this but new one on tonight

FRONTLINE follows renowned New Yorker writer and Boston surgeon Atul Gawande as he explores the relationships doctors have with patients who are nearing the end of life. In conjunction with Gawande's new book, Being Mortal, the film investigates the practice of caring for the dying, and shows how doctors -- himself included -- are often remarkably untrained, ill-suited and uncomfortable talking about chronic illness and death with their patients.

Watched the NRA one over the weekend. Maybe I expect too much from Frontline, but I thought it was soft by their standards.

there's a pile of old Frontlines on Netflix Canada now, Canadian Frontline-watchers with Netflix.

Not yet watched but clearly of mega interest to me 'cuz I'm a hospice social worker. If I were in charge there would be real-life dying process (not at all like fake TV dying process) on the tube all the time.

Because I mean we are all going to see this not to mention we are all going to do this so I mean c'mon.

"Being Mortal" is v. good, imo. Also much recommended by hospice ppl with way more expertise than I :)

I'm all for realistic talk about dying but sometimes once the topic is on my mind, it stays at the party way too long. Like watching this movie is a long commitment to thinking about the topic and I don't know if I can brush that off tbh!

oof. yeah, i don't know if i couldn't handle this either, unless i have like a week to spare where i just mope around getting nothing done.

frederick wiseman has a six- or seven-hour documentary called "near death" about a hospice. can't bring myself to watch that one, either.

holy shit the Putin episode

not sure what i was expecting but damn

that NRA episode was good.

i watched 10 min of the one about dying and then proceeded to freak out for at least an hour
it wasn't so much the stuff about death that scared me, it just totally pressed some of my other freakout buttons and i started crying :(

i would like to warn anyone prone to intrusive thoughts about death to consider avoiding it tbh
(i'm ok now but watching it was not worth the trouble it caused for me)

i fully recognize it might not be as intense for everyone

who's getting psyched for THE TRUTH ABOUT CHICKEN?

Nooo it is like the only decent protein source left to me

i know i'm not happy about it either
frontline is getting a little out of control with the fear-based programming
i like it when they balance macro fear with more micro stories about the misery of human existence
the horror is a little unbalanced atm no?

i guess i just want more david sutherland programming
he has a lot more movies than i realized! http://davidsutherland.com/films

the chicken-industry footage i've seen in the past is the only bleeding-heart stuff ever to actually give me nightmares

i like it when they balance macro fear with more micro stories about the misery of human existence

this makes me want frosted mini-wheats

<3 David Sutherland

2 things --
a. the one about ebola was really good. I had no idea about the children and the tree full of bats.
b. tonight: CHICKEN http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/trouble-with-chicken/

this week, the making of the CIA's Hollywood propaganda film

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/secrets-politics-and-torture/watch-how-the-cia-helped-make-zero-dark-thirty/

ooh!! that sounds good.

Totally

oh hey yes

i watched a little bit of it last night and decided to save the rest for later
i'm saving chicken for possibly never

Chicken truth is a truth we cannot afford to hear

My dad called at the end of last week, horrified by that chicken documentary.

I actually found the chicken documentary less horrifying than I expected! Salmonella is a bitch but relative risk analysis = a million other things will get you before it does. The chicken lobby is a fright, tho.

the meat industry is horrifying

looked at preview online of upcoming "rape on the night shift" and just kind of said to myself, holy shit, noooo

the one on growing up trans was v good

Agree. It was interesting to see how the emotional vocabulary of the kids featured in the movie is soooo much more rich than when I was growing up. Even the boys who suggested to Alex that he burp more and ignore girls. It was really good!

i think they deliberately chose, not only kids who were especially articulate, but -- perhaps more cynically -- kids who were unusually attractive in/as their 'new' gender.

it was very powerful and raised some very difficult questions. the psychologists (psychiatrists?) were very supportive and sensitive and yet i couldn't help but detect a kind of cheerleading that, seen from a different perspective, might seem troubling.

i think the key point in the documentary was the dad (?) who said that they were making the best choices in the absence of a lot of solid answers (answers that science may one day provide).

interesting that the doc essentially offered two endings, one notably ambivalent and the other brightly optimistic

the perspective of the somewhat older dude who admitted its really tough to gauge/appreciate irreversible changes as a young-er person was interesting, like that juxtoposed w the eagerness these kids have to take hormones is def kinda unsettling

xxp yea the clinician cheerleading too

the perspective of the somewhat older dude who admitted its really tough to gauge/appreciate irreversible changes as a young-er person was interesting, like that juxtoposed w the eagerness these kids have to take hormones is def kinda unsettling

― johnny crunch, Sunday, July 5, 2015 4:16 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, and you have to contrast this perspective with the fact (?) that undergoing these hormonal treatments in adolescence can make the transition easier than undergoing them in adulthood.

what's interesting to me is the seeming consensus among psychologists that gender dysphoria is a "thing"--that is, some kind of irreducible, discrete, empirically observable phenomenon that can't be reversed or placated. which it might be, but the psychiatric profession has a history of deciding such things when they turn out to be, at least, much more complex.

there's also the issue--which wasn't really broached in the documentary--about the relationship between gender and sex. is it just that people who have a sexual dysphoria inevitably express it in terms of the dominant cultural signifiers of that gender?

the mix of culture and biology here is so fraught....

that is, is it possible to desire to be another sex w/o assuming the dominant cultural characteristics of the gender generally associated with that sex? or does the desire to change one's sex (via hormones, surgery, etc.) follow from the desire to achieve those characteristics?

i'm not a hardcore cultural constructionist though and i'm comfortable with the idea that some of the cultural manisfestation of gender are a more or less natural, or rather evolutionary, extension of sex. but that assumption definitely flies in the face of some of the more radical implications of the queering of gender that a lot of activists have been invested in for a long time.

If you're interested in the topic, Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree has a chapter about transgender kids (and their parents). The book is indispensable as an empathy-generating force. It's really great.

heeeeey http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/immigration-2/rape-in-the-fields/female-farm-workers-awarded-17-million-in-florida-abuse-case/

Exxon that climate change was real in 1977. Hope this expanded into a full hour-long episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppfpFZ92JAY

Inside Assad's Syria is on in just a few

RIP Robin Poor Bear/Kind Hearted Woman
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/robin-poor-bear-1977-2015/

Oh wow, so sad.

i know, i can't stop thinking about it
if you haven't checked out David Sutherland's other documentaries, they are all great. i've wondered and worried for years about the kids in Country Boys
i hope Robin is at peace

Oh nooooo :(

Shit.... :( :(

I'm trying to watch "Separate But Unequal" about the resegregation of public schools, and I know I should be able to at least listen to this as I fold laundry but I just want to punch every one of these white men in the fucking face.

you should occasionally glance at the screen so you know what they look like -- that way if you see them irl you can punch them in the face :)

Did anyone watch the one about Netanyahu?

this supplement one was good & like theyre doing a gambling/fantasy sprts ep

its cool they have the entire transcript - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/supplements-and-safety/transcript/

I haven't seen a Frontline episode in a few years. I eat chicken seemingly every day so I will not be watching that, lol. Netflix used to have many episodes, but I've seen them all. Are they shown anywhere else, like Hulu Plus or something?

The Frontline website has them all, or at least almost 200.

They also post transcripts for virtually all of them there too. It helps my students take notes while they watch.

I just watched a couple on MRSA-type infections in hospitals while doing repetitive work at work, but found them to be kind of thin... could not bring myself to watch the ISIS ones though, despite strong interest in the subject. Too grim. Which is silly of me, since, you know, Frontline.

Frontline also podcasts the audio of their episodes with the descriptive subliminals. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/podcasts/

ok i'm watching the one about supplements and the first lady they interview (Purity First) is so -- i don't even know. when she was asked about her husband's medical background, she said "he was a chemist in college and then he went to chiropractic school" which, let's be honest, does not suggest a promising future in chemistry. i look forward to the hucksterism/snake oil on display in this episode!!

also -- the podcasts are the most terrifying, no question, and audio ISIS might be insomnia material

"I've got these incredible bleeding scales on my head and I can't go to work"
--Purity First customer

wowowowowowow
i thought this one might be boring but no

there is a free PBS iOS/appleTV app that has at least the most recent season, maybe more

the one about supplements was so good
perfect for a lesson about snake oil or a casual hour of lol/wut?!

Ha, didn't even think to check if they had a website, thanks.

Two things --
1) Frontline is going bananas with the microcephaly photos/stories about the zika virus
2) I recently wondered if somewhere there is a porn parody called Frontloin but I am not googling for it from work or ever

Zika is total Frontline bait though, there's no way they wouldn't go all in on it!

frontloin would +/- = 'gunt' i guess?

Also I have a Pavlovian pizza-craving response to Frontline, even today.

not googling "gunt" either!

waiting for ZIKA ON ICE

I had my co-worker google frontloin; results 0% salacious. I asked him to do it because his search history is already guaranteed to get him fired if anyone happens to look at it. Mine will just show that my interests, while work-appropriate, are worryingly obsessive.

hahaha
good move

seriously the one about supplements is unintentionally hilarious, really recommend for lighter fare

I am absolutely going to watch that this afternoon while taping receipts!

the one about fantasy gambling was good from what i saw of it (only watched half) not a heavy topic, but somewhat interesting insight into what happens among groups of friends that i will likely (hopefully) never be a part of. the reporter was fun to watch too. trip to curaçao, don't mind if i do…

also saw the one about heroin. very thorough and focused, informative. depressing.

received an email from frontline today with subj head: In Case You Missed It: Heroin, Pot, Zika, and South Sudan and i loled :-/

lol thanks frontline

I have never seen this tech before, but it is incredible:

https://www.facebook.com/frontline/videos?fref=photo

Basically allows a totally immersive view of the sites described in the doc in real time. Like, the Chernobyl one, as they narrate you view through your camera and can totally look around, down, up, etc. Really quite amazing, and the first of this stuff that feels game changing to me.

wow, that's cool! my students are working on their frontline final papers again. one of them has a pretty severe speech impediment and he struggles to talk in class, but he could not contain himself about the kids and the bats in the doc about ebola. he uses a lot of gesturing to communicate and he re-enacted the whole bat story when we were brainstorming earlier this week. it was pretty great.

maybe i'll show them the chernobyl site if the computers can handle it...

I think you're actually supposed to watch on your phone/device! We were watching in the kitchen this morning, walking around, turning around, etc. It was fascinating

Oh ok that's perfect bc most of them have phones even though our school computers are crappy.

The one about flood insurance really digs into the disgusting profit margins of government-backed insurance companies thanks to relentless questioning from reporter Laura Sullivan. I also found it amusing how lovingly the camera followed her in the b-roll (?). She's always wearing fabulous boots.

The one about the birth of ISIS was also really good.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjZERszWYAECR-f.jpg

flood insurance one was good. laura sullivan is one of the people on npr i like. awesome voice. i feel like a frequent poster on npr threads to talk about npr people i hate so i have to say something positive.

Liked the Flood Insurance one quite a bit. I've always liked Laura Sullivan on NPR - A+ side-eye she gives the national flood insurance program director when he admits that he's never looked at insurance company profit structure.

In spite of feeling pretty mentally/emotionally strong atm, I don't think I can handle BEING MORTAL
Did anyone watch it?

will there be trigger warnings before a flurry of images of college-age donald trump flood the airwaves? watch and see!
http://apps.frontline.org/clinton-trump-keys-to-their-characters/#home

you posting that link is a microaggression, prepare for my followers to mob you

jk i will hella watch that! Can't tell what the air date is...?

looks like tuesday 9/27
i'll start to prep my fallout shelter

this picture is so disgusting
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsgA_7MXYAEoDtC.jpg:large

Anyone watching the episode on tonight, Trump & Clinton?

I watched it after it aired a few weeks ago, found it illuminating & clear.

Divided States Of America is worth all four hours to watch. You never see the car rushing towards the cliff when it's slow motion and you're in it.

i watched it over the weekend. it was good but jeez talk about staring into the abyss

Yeah Divided States was like watching a highlight reel of everything shitty that has happened since 2008, like condensed poisoned soup. Still worth it to be reminded in detail how we got here.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1tFDsL_mwBY/maxresdefault.jpg

The first hour is practically political Guns Of August. You know what's going to happen and each time there's an inevitable escalation I'm shouting "ugh no! don't do it!" when it eventually turns to shit. I can't help but notice just how invisible and/or ineffective the Democratic party (as establishment, brand, political force, or whatever you want to define it) is - there's four hours and barely a peep from them.

Great episode, would totally use it in that alternative universe where I'm a sociology professor and teaching a class on demographic failure.

Yeah Divided States was like watching a highlight reel of everything shitty that has happened since 2008, like condensed poisoned soup. Still worth it to be reminded in detail how we got here.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera),

otm. i just finished the first 2 hours. it is very good so far. it's the frontline standard of quality that we've all come to expect.

i was kind of surprised that i already knew most of the details. i suppose the obama presidency was the first one that i followed very closely from beginning to end. i didn't really become politically conscious until the invasion of iraq, and even then i spent most of the rest of the gwb years burblin' around in the haze of early 20s amoeba goo. but i remember the events covered in the divided states of america quite vividly.

i had sort of forgotten about ben nelson, though. god what a fucking asshole

i had forgotten about henry paulson
the luxury of forgetting is a luxury we no longer have now that there is a rabid moneybeast, a Puritan, and a Nazi in the WH :(

really looking forward to watching divided states. can't believe i've never noticed this thread before, incredible title

"Divided States" was excellent. Anyone watch "Trump's Road To the White House"? Recap of the dire and destructive methods Trump employed to become President.

i couldnt do it

I watched half and stopped. Maybe someday but not yet.

yeah i was hyped for divided states but the opener was all the palin business and i had to can it

Hearing her voice again is a chore of the highest magnitude.

not exactly frontline, but American Experience is doing a few documentaries about right-wing extremism: Oklahoma City this week and Ruby Ridge next

i was just coming here to post - domestic terror ahoy, folks

just finished oklahoma city
the rescue testimonials & survivor stories are heartbreaking, crawling through all of that unstable wreckage must have been such a nightmare
it's still today shocking to see the scale of damage

& fkn McVeigh chaps me so much

on the one hand I don't hate that he was executed bcz jfc

but on the other hand that that smug pos says o yes i was the mastermind & goes out in a blaze of lethally injected glory makes me insane
that sic semper tyrannus shirt has always pissed me off too

ugh sorry

i have been avoiding watching the new one about the guy who eats fish every day and then reports on it.
has anyone seen it? the premise does not seem quite up to frontline standards :-/

yeah i gave that one a wide berth too

Haha fishing, berth, iswydt

unintentional i swear

We're going to have to dock you for that one.

don't they do a lot of episodes about farming though? this seems like the same wheelhouse. or are you just saying they're not given to telling... fish stories?

it seems more like a morgan spurlock pitch than a Frontline story imo

I was saying it seems kind of boring as research topics go. I'm sure it's better than I think it is and the conceit is just a trick to "lure the viewer"
If this were an article, I would not read it.

clickbaity kinda

That's what I meant by lure the viewer. I would not click on this if it weren't Frontline and I feel like it's gotta be better than I think it is. I was hoping someone had watched it/would vouch for it being more than as described above

I will watch it and report back, I love the ocean

This one looks pretty good, Second Chance Kids (about juvenile offenders who receive life sentences)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/second-chance-kids/

Also thank you f. hazel for your service

OK, I have watched the Fish Every Day episode. It is not essential viewing. The focus is more on the state of aquaculture and various fishing methods than the "eat fish for a year" schtick that just kinda frames the narrative a little. It's actually pretty funny how he expects it to maybe improve his health and then they show him talking to various doctors and they're clearly like "WTF? why would you think this would do anything except expose you to too much mercury? there is no real research to back up these mad health claims why didn't you Google a little before eating nothing but fish for a year". But I liked it because it was only a little melancholy and not relentlessly grim like some Frontlines can be.

"Poverty, Politics & Profit" out May 9th.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/poverty-politics-and-profit/

the one about affordable housing is a Frontline classic of investigative journalism
classic Laura Sullivan worship from the camera too
i liked when they went to Costa Rica and talked with Dax
vouchers are bs

also -- housing developer greed story in the USA serving as metaphor for state of the USA in general :(

ALSO i am officially psyched about the upcoming one on MILITIAS/the Bundy situation
the FBI posed as a documentary film crew and got inside scoop!!

definitely feel i can skip "i ate fish every day" now that they are back to their usual programming

whoa was the militia one yesterday? says 5/16 on website. i think i know what i'm watching tonight. did you see the american experience episodes about ruby ridge and timothy mcveigh (two shows, overlapping content)

I just saw a teaser for the militia one that promised insider FBI footage. Have not seen those other eps!!

they're both on netflix

ruby ridge & mcveigh eps were really good

Considering donning a hazmat suit for tonight's BANNON'S WAR

Militia one ("American Patriot") was pretty good, definitely recommend if you are interested in the topic

ALSO the one about affordable housing is a nice complement to this piece about Kushnerville https://www.propublica.org/article/the-beleaguered-tenants-of-kushnerville

i was a bit disappointed in the militia one, more for the lack of historical context etc but overall it was p good

There's a "for mature viewers only" content warning before Bannon's War
Lol/sob

watched the soon-to-be-on-Frontline film 'Abacus' last night; interesting portrait of a family and the incompetence of the feds

http://www.abacusmovie.com/

That sounds cool! looking forward to seeing it.

I'm done with Bannon's War and ready to suggest it as essential viewing for people who are like "how did this happem?!"
It explains (rather soberly, imo) how this happened

oops that is supposed to say *happen

Ben Shapiro is nauseating in this, describing his decision to quit as a result of breitbart's turn away from "journalist integrity"when they began attacking trump's opponents during the primary.

Pffffft

Everything about the whole doc made me want to puke. But it was very clear and explained a lot.

sorry to put a typo in quotes! "journalistic integrity", of course.

You were busy puking it's ok!

*pukey thumbs up*

An American Patriot was top-shelf journalism.

Life on Parole is so depressing :(

I did enjoy Jessica's success but her road was so rough. I loved watching the teacher telling her her grades :)

It seems like it has been a while since there was a new one, or at least since I looked for one. I watched all of four minutes of War on the EPA before I had to pause. Has anyone else seen it? Looks like it came out 10/11.

that's new isn't it? Maybe they just revamped an old episode with fifteen minutes on pruitt at the end?

idk -- i haven't seen it. it's kind of a relief to watch some good old Frontline. looks like it aired 9/28?

The EPA episode just came up on the Frontline podcast today.

Aside, the Frontline Dispatch podcast on the Oklahoma earthquakes is worth a listen

i think this is totally new -- they start into Pruitt about 12 min in
what a horror show! i guess they all are but man this is really awful

i need to catch up on the podcast. i wanted to hear the one about child marriage.

what better time than now to revisit Frontine's excellent docs about sexual assault & harassment at work https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/rape-on-the-night-shift/ and https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/rape-in-the-fields/