Contact Information: To schedule non-college lectures or trainings, please send initial inquiries via e-mail message to [email protected] or [email protected].
While the social construction of femininity has been widely examined, the dominant role of masculinity has until recently remained largely invisible. Tough Guise is the first educational video geared toward college and high school students to systematically examine the relationship between pop-cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S. at the dawn of the 21st century. In this innovative and wide-ranging analysis, Jackson Katz argues that widespread violence in American society, including the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and elsewhere, needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis in masculinity. This exciting new media literacy tool-- utilizing racially diverse subject matter and examples-- will enlighten and provoke students (both males and females) to evaluate their own participation in the culture of contemporary masculinity.Tough Guise was named one of the Top Ten Young Adult Videos for 2000 by the American Library Association. It has become a staple in college communication, sociology, gender studies, psychology, criminology and linguistics courses, as well as numerous high school courses. It is regularly used by educators in the battered women's and rape crisis movements, and counselors in the batterer intervention field. It has been seen by over 3 million people. Wrestling with Manhood is the first educational program to pay attention to the enormous popularity of professional wrestling among male youth, addressing its relationship to real-life violence and probing the social values that sustain it as a powerful cultural force. Richly illustrating their analysis with numerous examples, Sut Jhally and Jackson Katz – the award-winning creators of the videos Dreamworlds and Tough Guise, respectively – offer a new way to think about the enduring problems of men’s violence against women and bullying in our schools. Drawing the connection between professional wrestling and the construction of contemporary masculinity, they show how so-called “entertainment†is related to homophobia, sexual assault and relationship violence. They further argue that to not engage with wrestling in a serious manner allows cynical promoters of violence and sexism an uncontested role in the process by which boys become “men.†Designed to engage the wrestling fan as well as the cultural analyst, Wrestling with Manhood will provoke spirited debate about some of our most serious social problems. In its portrayal in popular culture, alcohol offers a release from inhibitions and a path to happiness, wealth, maturity, creativity, athletic success, independence, and sexual freedom. In reality, the abuse of alcohol diminishes and destroys those very qualities and is linked to 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 sexual assaults among students each year. Using numerous examples from Hollywood movies, MTV Spring Break, sitcoms, and advertising, as well as interviews with college students, award-winning media critics Jean Kilbourne (Killing Us Softly 3, Slim Hopes) and Jackson Katz (Tough Guise) discuss the way that alcohol abuse has been normalized in the lives of millions of young people. Spin the Bottle is the first educational program to step beyond an analysis of “binge drinking†to focus on techniques that alcohol marketers use to link the product to the fragile gender identities of young men and women. It also offers young people concrete strategies to counter the ubiquitous presence of alcohol propaganda and, in so doing, inspires them to take back control of their own lives from the influence of cynical manipulators.