Preface to Instructors xiii


1. INTRODUCTION: Reading and Writing the Texts of the Information Age 2
Image: Mass Media Violence 2


2. OURSELVES AND OTHERS 14
Image: The United Colors of Benetton Ad Campaign 14
Introduction 15
Readings:
SUSAN BENESCH: Normal Life Too Often Isn't Part of the News 17
"People in Medellin are angry at foreign journalists for giving people the feel-
ing that their city is a wasteland scattered with corpses, instead of a vibrant
place with schools, churches and movie theaters."
Reading Reflections 19
REKHA BASU: Views from a Third World Journalist 19
"I think the press also bears some responsibility for the fact that Americans
tend to know less about other countries and cultures than people in other
countries know about us here."
Reading Reflections 23
DENNIS OVERBYE: Fear in a Handful of Numbers 24
"To dump toxic waste in a swamp ... is like trying to repress a bad thought
or like hitting your wife every night and assuming that because she doesn't
fight back you can abuse her with impunity-30 years later she sets your bed
on fire."
Reading Reflections 27
MICHAEL DORRIS: Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and Other Cultural
Metaphors 28
"What do the 300 federally recognized tribes, with their various complicated
treaties governing land rights and protections, their crippling unemployment,
infant mortality and teen-age suicide rates, their manifold health problems
have in common with jolly (or menacing) cartoon caricatures, wistful braves
or raven-tressed Mazola girls?"
Reading Reflections 30
GEORGE LAKOFF: Metaphor and War 30
"Metaphors can kill, and sometimes the first victim is truth."
Reading Reflections 38



TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: The Clan of One-Breasted Women 38
"I belong to a Clan of One-Breasted Women. My mother, my grandmothers, and six
aunts have all had mastectomies. Seven are dead."
Reading Reflections 45
JANE COLLINS AND CATHERINE LUTZ: Becoming America's Lens on the World:
National Geographic in the Twentieth Century 46
"National Geographic, like the great natural history museums, took images of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America from their historical contexts and arranged them in ways
that addressed contemporary Western preoccupations. The systems of classification
or explanation that were chosen provided an illusion of adequate representation,
and an opportunity for certain institutions of mass culture to construct stories about
otherness."
Reading Reflections 58
"Ourselves and Others" Activities 59
Reading Reactions 59
Classroom Reactions 59
Media Connections 60
Community Interactions 60

3. FAMILY MATTERS 62
Image: Realities Ad for Liz Claiborne 62
Introduction 63
Readings:
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: Remarks at the Opening of Session I at the Family
and Media Conference in Nashville, Tennessee 66
"We know that most children live in families where, whether they have one parent or
two parents in the home, whoever their parents are in the home are also working. We
know that we do less for child care and for supervised care for children as a society
than any other advanced country in the world."
Reading Reflections 70
KATHA POLLITT: September Thong 70
"Can anything good come of Sexgate? Less respect for the presidency would be
nice."
Reading Reflections 73
SERENA: Just Different, That's All 73
"I asked my mom what a lesbian was, and she said it was like, instead of a man and
woman being together, it was two women that were in love. Then I knew what a les-
bian was."
Reading Reflections 75




JOSH OZERSKY: TV's Anti-families: Married... with Malaise 76
"By pretending to realism, TV only extends its own hegemony, in which every stan-
dard of comparison points back to another sham."
Reading Reflections 84
RICHARD PIROZZI: My Father's Keeper 84
"Caring for my father for the next three years would be an experience that had mo-
ments of... great sadness."
Reading Reflections 87
MELINDA MACHADO: Uniting Generations 88
"When the Vela family reunion brought relatives from almost every state and six
countries together, even Elvis showed up."
Reading Reflections 89
"Family Matters" Activities 90
Reading Reactions 90
Classroom Reactions 90
Media Connections 90
Community Interactions 91


APPEARANCES VERSUS REALITIES 92
Image: Diet Center Ad: Former Fatty Gets New Look 92
Introduction 93
Readings:
LOIS GOULD: X: A Fabulous Child's Story 96
"Once upon a time, a baby named X was born. This baby was named X so that nobody
could tell whether it was a boy or a girl."
Reading Reflections 104
MARGE PIERCY: Barbie Doll 104
"This girlchild was born as usual / and presented dolls that did pee-pee / and minia-
ture GE stoves and irons / and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy."
Reading Reflections 105
BELL HOOKS: Straightening Our Hair 106
"I had been told all my life that I was one of the 'lucky' ones because I had been born
with 'good' hair-hair that was fine, almost straight-not good enough, but still
good."
Reading Reflections 112



GAIL DINES: King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the
Demonization of Black Masculinity" 113
"From the box-office success of The Birth of a Nation in 1915 to the national obses-
sion with O. J. Simpson, the image of the Black man as the spoiler of White woman-
hood has been a staple of media representation in this country."
Reading Reflections 124
ALISA VALDES: Looking Good, Feeling Scared 124
"Body-image problems and obsessive-compulsive eating and exercise disorders have
been well-documented among women. But the same issues have also long plagued
segments of the gay male community."
Reading Reflections 131
KATHARINE GREIDER: The Shape of Things to Come 132
"Like the toys advertised in the comic books you read as a kid, the Wonderbra fascinates
partly because of the sheer implausibility of its purportedly miraculous properties."
Reading Reflections 136
ALEX WITCHEL: A Model Figure at Size 14 136
"Most women would kill to have Emme's face, with her great bones and wide eyes,
recently on a billboard display in Times Square for Liz Claibore's plus-size line,
Elisabeth. Just as many would kill to have her confidence."
Reading Reflections 139
DIANE BARTHEL: A Gentleman and a Consumer 140
"Real Guys use 'skin supplies' and 'shaving resources.' They adopt a 'survival strat-
egy' to fight balding... for effective 'bodycare.'"
Reading Reflections 149
"Appearances versus Realities" Activities 150
Reading Reactions 150
Classroom Reactions 150
Media Connections 150
Community Interactions 151

5. MEDIA MORALS 152
Image: Net Nanny 152
Introduction 153
Readings:
ALLAN BLOOM: Music 156
"But rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire-not love, not
eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored."
Reading Reflections 167



PUBLIC ENEMY: Whole Lotta Love Coin On in the Middle of Hell 168
"Fiend without a face / Still got love for em / But some aint got love / For the rest
of us."
Reading Reflections 169
JILL NELSON: The Rap on Tupac 170
"His life, music and death reflected the lives of many young black men who grew up
poor, fatherless, jobless and, most devastating of all, hopeless, in ghettos customized
for their containment."
Reading Reflections 172
JOHN DAVIDSON: Menace to Society 173
"Poverty, the easy accessibility of guns, domestic abuse, social instability and the like
may all contribute more than the media do to the level of violence."
Reading Reflections 177
ELLEN WARTELLA: Electronic Childhood 178
"As parents, teachers and television producers observe our children in this electronic
world, we are both awed by their agility with media that sometimes intimidate us,
and fearful of the ways those new media are changing the nature of children's lives
and the society in which they grow up."
Reading Reflections 185
RICK MARIN: The Rude Tube 186
"Saying the show ['South Park'] corrupts young minds is selling short the show and
the young minds."
Reading Reflections 190
THOMAS GOETZ: Cyberstalker, Qu'est-ce-que c'est? 191
"The scenario being constructed here is easy to see: the cyberstalker, who knows the
technology better than his victim, uses it to lure her into his home, where he can act
out the wicked fantasies he's devised in the hours spent online."
Reading Reflections 193
CYNTHIA L. HALLEN: Censorship and Sensitivity: Understanding Community
Standards 194
"Some people think that educators, authors, and artists should have the right to speak
openly about anything, yet they object when vulnerable people speak openly about
words or works that are harmful to them. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression
need to include the rights of sensitive people to complain about vulgarity, violence, and
violation."
Reading Reflections 197
"Media Morals" Activities 197
Reading Reactions 197
Classroom Reactions 198



Media Connections 198
Community Interactions 199

6. LITERACIES AND LEARNING 200
Image: Thach Bui, "PC and Pixel" 200
Introduction 201
Readings:
E. D. HIRSCH, JR.: Cultural Literacy 203
"During the period 1970-1985, the amount of shared knowledge that we have been
able to take for granted in communicating with our fellow citizens has also been
declining. More and more of our young people don't know things we used to assume
they knew."
Reading Reflections 210
DAVID BIANCULLI: Teleliteracy Pretest 210
"Are you teleliterate? You Bet Your Life-and if you just thought of Groucho Marx's
quiz show of the same name, you've proven my point."
Reading Reflections 220
RODNEY D. SMITH: The Case for Multiculturalism 220
"Before adding this book [The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros] to the cur-
riculum, my colleagues and I had to overcome criticism against multiculturalism
from parents, school board members, and fellow teachers.... If I had any doubts about
the importance of multiculturalism in my classroom, Consuella eliminated them."
Reading Reflections 222
JAY DAVID BOLTER: The Network Culture 223
"Our culture is itself a vast writing space, a complex of symbolic structures. Just as
we write our minds, we can say that we write the culture in which we live."
Reading Reflections 230
SEYMOUR PAPERT: Obsolete Skill Set: The 3 Rs 231
"But reading will no longer be the unique primary access road to knowledge and
learning, and it should therefore no longer be the dominant consideration in the
design of School."
Reading Reflections 235
EILEEN SIMPSON: Dyslexia 235
"It is only a slight exaggeration to say that those who learned to read without diffi-
culty can best understand the labor reading is for a dyslexic by turning a page of text
upside down and trying to decipher it."
Reading Reflections 239
MARSHA KING: Dropout Aces GED Test, Now Dreams of College 239
"And why do kids drop out of high school and end up on the street? For a million dif-



ferent reasons, she says. One of the biggest: 'Life around you gets way too crazy to be
able to be just a teenager.' "
Reading Reflections 241
ROGER VON OECH: To Err Is Wrong 242
"Most people consider success and failure as opposites, but they are actually both
products of the same process."
Reading Reflections 248
EUDORA WELTY: Learning to Listen 248
"Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a
line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it
silently to me."
Reading Reflections 253
"Literacies and Learning" Activities 253
Reading Reactions 253
Classroom Reactions 254
Media Connections 254
Community Interactions 255


7. VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES/VIRTUAL SELVES 256
Image: Peter Steiner, The New Yorker Cartoon, "On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're
a Dog" 256
Introduction 257
Readings:
JOHN PERRY BARLOW: Is There a There in Cyberspace? 260
"Given that it has been built so far almost entirely by people with engineering
degrees, it is not so surprising that cyberspace has the kind of overdesigned quality
that leaves out all kinds of elements nature would have provided invisibly."
Reading Reflections 266
REGINALD STUART: High-Tech Redlining: Are African-Americans Being Frozen Out of
the New Communications Network? 266
"Just as many blacks today still bear the scars of the interstate highway that many
times plowed right through the heart of their communities a generation ago, African-
Americans today are threatened by the so-called information superhighway."
Reading Reflections 268
KARA SWISHER: There's No Place Like a Home Page 269
"Like barkers at the doors of carnival tents, content creators must find ways to distin-
guish themselves from the great mass and get Web travelers to come and sample their
wares."



Reading Reflections 274
JUDY ANDERSON "YDUJ": Not for the Faint of Heart: Contemplations on
Usenet 274
"Usenet, while it can be nasty, acerbic, uncaring and unsympathetic, is a truly nondis-
criminatory society. It judges you only through your postings, not by what you look
like, your marital status, whether you have a disability, or any of the other things that
are traditionally used for discrimination."
Reading Reflections 284
LINDSY VAN GELDER: The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover 285
"I personally applaud those souls on CB who, when asked 'R u m or f?' [Are you male
or female?], simply answer 'yes.'
Reading Reflections 298
JULIAN DIBBELL, A Rape in Cyberspace 299
"This isn't quite my story yet. It's the story, for now, of an elusive congeries of flesh
and bytes named Mr. Bungle, and of the ghostly sexual violence he committed in the
halls of LambdaMOO, and most importantly of the ways his violence and his victims
challenged the thousand and more residents of that surreal, magic-infested mansion to
become, finally, the community so many of them already believed they were."
Reading Reflections 315
"Virtual Communities/Virtual Selves" Activities 316
Reading Reactions 316
Classroom Reactions 316
Media Connections 317
Community Interactions 317
Index of Authors and Titles 319