Department of Communication

Thursday, March 8, 2007 • 4:00 pm

Goodell • Bernie Dallas RoomUMass Amherst CampusHandicap access availableDirections & Parking

Free Admission

Sut Jhally, professor of communication, will give the fourth of five Distinguished Faculty Lectures.In his talk titled “The Factory in the Living Room: How Television Exploits its Audience,” Jhally will discuss how media critics tend to focus on how powerful messages in movies, programs and advertising affect the public. He contends, however, they miss something else. Jhally will explore the issue from a different angle: how the profit-driven commercial media organize themselves like the rest of industrial capitalism – to extract value from their workforce. When people sit in their homes watching commercial media, he says, their time is organized and sold in the same way that the activities of factory workers are controlled and organized. But in the living-room factory, there are no child labor laws.

Jhally is a well-known national commentator on the role of media in politics and culture who has appeared in such publications at The Nation, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Observer (London), The Toronto Sun and The Christian Science Monitor.He joined the university in 1985 and is a professor of communication. In 1991 he founded the Media Education Foundation, based in Northampton, Mass., and is its executive director. Jhally is the producer, writer and editor of the videos, Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire; Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land (2004); U.S. News Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) and Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering (2002). Jhally has also published several books, including The Spectacle of Accumulation: Essays in Media, Culture & Politics; Enlightened Racism (2005) and The Cosby Show, Audiences and the Myth of the American Dream (1992).

Jhally earned a bachelor’s degree in history/sociology and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of York in England in 1977 and 1978, respectively; a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Victoria in Canada in 1980 and a doctorate in communication from Simon Fraser University in Canada in 1984.

The final lecture in the series features Melinda A. Novak, professor of psychology, who will speak on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 4 p.m. in the Massachusetts Room of the Mullins Center.A reception follows each talk. Faculty members in the series receive a Chancellor’s Medal following their lectures. The Chancellor’s Medal is the highest honor bestowed on individuals for exemplary and extraordinary service to the campus. The lecture series is sponsored by the offices of the chancellor and the provost.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception follows the talk.

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, a documentary directed by Professor Sut Jhally (communication), will be shown at the Dubai Film Festival in the United Arab Emirates the week of December 11. The 50-minute film is based on Arab-American film authority Jack Shaheen’s book of the same title, examines film portrayals of Arabs, and includes numerous clips and commentary from films of past decades to the present.

Reel Bad Arabs was produced with the support of the Northampton-based Media Education Foundation, headed by Jhally. It was shown on campus (free and open to the public) in early December, sponsored by the Asian Arts & Culture Program of the Fine Arts Center and the Department of Communication.

A member of the faculty since 1985, Jhally founded the Media Education Foundation in 1991. The Foundation produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.

Jhally is one of the world’s leading experts on advertising and media studies. He is also a renowned public speaker and teacher. More than 2 million students in the last decade have seen his controversial and award-winning film “Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video” (over which MTV threatened to sue him).

The Los Angeles Times called it “a scathing examination of pop video’s use and abuse of women.” Jhally has won UMass Amherst’s coveted “Distinguished Teacher Award” where the student newspaper has also voted him “Best Professor.”

Jhally has shown his films and lectured at many colleges and universities nationally and internationally. He was named one of New Woman magazine’s “People of the Year” in 1992. His other film and video credits include “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire”; “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land”; “U.S. News Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”; “Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering.” Books include “The Codes of Advertising” and “Enlightened Racism.”