Dreamworlds 3

Synopsis

Dreamworlds 3, the latest in Sut Jhally's critically acclaimed Dreamworlds series, takes a clarifying look at the warped world of music video. Ranging across hundreds of images and stories from scores of music videos, Jhally uncovers a dangerous industry preoccupation with reactionary ideals of femininity and masculinity, and shows how these ideals have glamorized a deeply sexist worldview in the face of the women's movement and the fight for women's rights. In the end, Dreamworlds 3 challenges young people to think seriously about how forms of entertainment that might seen innocuous and inconsequential can be implicated in serious real-world problems like gender violence, misogyny, homophobia, and racism.

Viewer discretion advised: Both full & abridged versions contain images of graphic and sexual violence. It is important that educators preview the film prior to screening it with their students.

Release Date:2007

Duration:54 min (Full Version), 37 min (Abridged Version)

ISBN:1-932869-12-3 (Full Version), 1-932869-17-4 (Abridged Version)

Subtitles:English

Trailers

Watch the trailer

Filmmaker Credits

Written, Narrated, and Edited by

Sut Jhally

Additional Editing

Andrew Killoy

Post-Production Supervisors

Jeremy Earp

Post-Production Supervisors

Andrew Killoy

Production Assistant

Jason Young

Production Assistance

John Seely

Filmmaker Biographies

Sut Jhally

Professor

Sut Jhally is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation. He is one of the world's leading scholars looking at the role played by advertising and popular culture in the processes of social control and identity construction. The author of numerous books and articles on media (including The Codes of Advertising and Enlightened Racism) he is also an award-winning teacher (a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts, where the student newspaper has also voted him "Best Professor"). In addition, he has been awarded the Distinguished Outreach Award, and was selected to deliver a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2007. He is best known as the producer and director of a number of films and videos (including Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video; Tough Guise: Media, Violence and the Crisis of Masculinity; and Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire) that deal with issues ranging from gender, sexuality and race to commercialism, violence and politics. Born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in graduate studies in Canada, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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Praise

"Young adults are exposed to a barrage of media, including music videos, and they should be encouraged to critically evaluate the messages implicit within the medium. If this is one of your goals in the classroom, Dreamworlds 3 can serve you admirably. When we showed it to our Psychology of Women class, the film resonated particularly with black women, some of who expressed a general frustration and ambivalence toward hip hop portrayals of women. Several young women, as well as men, stated that the film has helped them to better articulate their own reactions to music videos. The film does not demand that the audience adopt Jhally's conclusions, but instead asks that viewers begin to develop their own critical eyes."

Harmony B. Sullivan and Maureen C. McHugh
Sex Roles: A Journal of Research

"The role of media images in our everyday lives has never been more powerfully demonstrated."

Robin Rieske
President, Action Coalition for Media Education - Vermont

"There exists widespread cultural sensitivity to fairness and tolerance, any many significantly-noted eruptions of bigotry or misogyny seem to be met with the disclaimer that the issue might somehow open a cultural debate." Arguably, though, the debate never really occurs, and few serious outlets have investigated the cultural and pop-cultural causes and relationships of these issues and overall social consciousness. Of these few serious studies that offer useful, logical information while providing a forum for debate is Sut Jhally's Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video. A follow-up to Dreamworlds and Dreamworlds 2 (1991 and 1995, respectively), Dreamworlds 3 continues the investigation of the social constructs of music videos and how they draw from, reinforce, and shape cultural ideas and ideals about masculinity, femininity, and individualism... Dreamworlds 3 is an important and useful work. For its study of the interplay between the larger culture and music videos, it is highly recommended for collections that focus on pop-culture; for its investigation on the objectification of people, it is essential for women's or gender studies; for the deconstruction of narrative and film techniques, it is important in film and media studies; and for anyone at all invested in the debate regarding the media's influence on culture, it is highly recommended overall."

Educational Media Reviews Online

"Dreamworlds 3 is a powerful and sobering piece of filmmaking, taking a mundane and familiar subject and presenting in it to shocking effect. The calm background music and the soothing voice of the narrator only add to the tension of the film. All young people, raised today on a steady diet of media and music, should be made to watch and discuss the movie, and scholars of popular culture, of gender, and of violence must pay attention to it. Happily, there are excellent support materials available, including a complete transcript, a study guide, and a more comprehensive curriculum for Teaching Writing, Teaching Media which references the film. The film should also be watched in conjunction with Mean World Syndrome, another Media Education Foundation work, since music videos are an important contributor to the mean-world experience. Finally, Dreamworlds 3 is a great production, and I look forward to -- and also in a way dread -- Dreamworlds 4."

Jack David Eller
Anthropology Review Database

"Incisive"

Newsweek

"A scathing examination of pop video's use and abuse of women."

Los Angeles Times

"An invaluable teaching tool. Does a superb job of presenting difficult truths about our hypersexualized, hypermasculinized culture. Never has it been more important for us to confront those truths."

Robert Jensen
Professor of Journalism, University of Texas

"...Invites far-reaching reflection upon the mutually reinforcing relationship between the content of music videos and the popular culture they reflect and define... Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries."

Library Journal

"After watching Dreamworlds 3, students may continue to look at music videos, but they will never see them the same way again."

Michael Kimmel
Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook

"...An intelligent meditation on the severely limited and limiting images of women (and men) in the reigning music videos."

C.E. Emmer
Emporia State University