It’s long been said that perception becomes reality, and for much of our nation’s history, mass media has not been kind to minorities — in particular, the African-American community. From Birth of a Nation (where the Ku Klux Klan were portrayed as crusading heroes) to the bumbling, shiftless TV characters of Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit, early film and television did much to portray black America as an underclass deserving of pity and ridicule. But images were also used as weapons to advance the cause of civil rights, as evidenced by the power of photos of the horrifically-beaten Emmit Till to news coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in D.C.

We’ll be talking about landmark TV shows and films that have inspired discussions on race — from All in the Family to The Cosby Show to Spike Lee’s Bamboozled — as well as look at how race has been used in the political arena.

My guest is Maurice Berger, senior research scholar at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and senior fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of The New School. He’s also the author and curator of the new book and exhibit titled For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. You can access the online portion of the exhibit here, while the actual project is currently stationed at the International Center of Photography in New York City.

To listen, head to CHIRP’s Split Reel page.

How has Generation X been defined in film over the past few decades, from the landmark John Hughes films of the ’80s through the “slacker” movies of the ’90s and beyond? What distinct qualities do Gen X films possess which differentiate them from those of previous (and later) generations? We’ll be discussing everything from Pretty in Pink to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. My guest is Christina Lee, lecturer at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia, and the author of the recent book Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema.

To listen, head to CHIRP’s (Chicago Independent Radio Project) website here.

Sorry for the long absence — but things are ready to kick into high gear with Split Reel!

A) I’ll soon be posting an interview I recorded in June with Australia’s Christina Lee, author of Screening Generation X;

B) I’ve also lined up a show with Maurice Berger — professor, author, and curator of the exhibit “For All the World To See,” on visual culture within the civil rights struggle. The exhibit is currently stationed at the International Center of Photography in New York City. (More on this after the jump.)

C) I was recently interviewed by Aharona Ament of CHIRP — you can read my e-mail responses to her insightful questions here.

So, about that exhibit…

Most of you know that I’m fascinated by culture, media, and politics… but I’m also intrigued by the subject of race. As a Colombian/Irish kid growing up in a majority African-American school system, I never thought much about race during my formative years. (With a couple of notable exceptions… such as winning a Black History Month essay competition one year, and getting selected for a “Minorities in Engineering” program during another — an experience which should’ve been a Red Flag that perhaps a career in science was not to be my destiny.) I had friends of all different nationalities, and thought it rather odd when kids from outside my town would look at me funny when I told them where I lived.

Then I got to college, and there I saw segregation — self-segregation — for the first time. Black students sat together in the lunchroom. As did Asian students. And white students. People of various backgrounds didn’t seem to mingle much at all, and the interaction that did take place appeared rather stilted. (It was also something of a culture shock for yours truly, since, to be honest, I’d never been around large numbers of white folks before.)

Most of my classmates had hailed from populations that were quite homogenous, and while it seems obvious now, it hadn’t really dawned on me that folks of different ethnicities would often have vastly different cultural tastes. Ever take a look at historical Nielsen TV ratings by race? Seinfeld was nowhere on black America’s radar in the ’90s, and neither was The Simpsons. Musicially, the differences among college students were even more pronounced, and outside of your occassional white rap fan (like my friend Chris, who mainly kept this sort of thing to himself, having not wanted to be identified with the other Caucasian hip-hop listeners he’d encountered in high school), you might as well have been looking at the Balkans.

Where am I going with this? Well, for large chunks of white America, how they’ve felt and what they’ve thought about African-Americans have stemmed primarily from the mass media they’ve ingested over the years. If you don’t encounter a particular group of people on an everyday basis, you’re going to take your cues from what you witness on television and in film. Chuck Klosterman has a great essay in his latest book, Killing the Dinosaur, where he asks readers to imagine various scenarios, such as “Eskimos in an Alaskan village.” I don’t know any Eskimos, and chances are you don’t either, but you’re still able to conjure up an image, right? How are you able to do this? Because of mass media. You’re drawing upon what you’ve seen on a screen.

So on top of the fact that African-Americans in this country had to deal with the legacy of slavery and segregation, but they also had to combat a Hollywood that, for decades, depicted the black community as a population of servants, loafers… or worse. Sometimes much worse. (see: Birth of a Nation) If your knowledge of the black community began and ended with the weekly Amos n’ Andy programs that were aired on your radio or television, you probably weren’t going to have an incredibly enlightened attitude regarding minorities or civil rights issues.

Images matter. And that’s the crux of Maurice Berger’s current exhibit, “For All the World To See,” which examines visual imagery within the civil rights struggle. You can access the online portion here, and Berger has also published an accompanying book as well. I’ll be speaking with him next week, so look for the podcast soon afterwards.

[By the way, it's ironic -- and painful to many -- that while white America has grown at least a bit more sensitive about its depictions of minorities in recent years, various negative stereotypes are now being perpetuated by members of the African-American community... through everything from gangster rap to the comic stylings of one Tyler Perry. Here's an interview with Spike Lee where he equates Perry's caricatures to the bumbling, shuffling personas of Mantan Moreland and Sleep n' Eat. And here's a dated but insightful look at the depictions of blacks on television throughout the years: part 1 and part 2.]

My new show on cinema, Split Reel, has debuted — for now, you can listen at CHIRP (Chicago Independent Radio Project), but you’ll also be able to access archives here as well as subscribe to the podcast. For access to the show, head here.

What were the “flash points” which signified the “War on Terror” was having a concrete impact on popular culture? If the Hollywood norm over the past decade has been to showcase films that highlight the failures of American policy rather than champion it… then how does this fit within the framework of rah-rah patriotism that erupted in the wake of 9/11? And what sort of impact will the new strain of anti-government movements have in the wake of the Obama White House administration? My inaugural guests? Andrew Schopp and Matthew B. Hill, co-editors of the recent book The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond.

How has the cinematic genre of romantic comedy been reflective of the evolution of the courtship process over the years? What do these sorts of movies say about the institution of marriage? And how have they depicted changing gender roles within relationships? We’ll examine a host of iconic romantic comedy films over the past few decades, from Annie Hall to When Harry Met Sally, to more recent films that feature male protagonists, such as Swingers and High Fidelity. My guest is Stacey Abbott, senior lecturer in film and television studies at Roehampton University in London, and the co-editor of the recent book Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. [Originally broadcast on WLUW's Under Surveillance in September 2009.]

The AMC drama Mad Men will begin its third season within the coming week, and so it’s a pertinent time to turn our sights on this critically-acclaimed series. Mad Men focuses on the Sterling Cooper advertising agency, set against the backdrop of 1960s America, and creator Matt Weiner uses the show as a vehicle for social commentary on evolving social mores, gender roles, and the illusions of both personal identity and domestic relationships. Returning as my guest is freelance writer and pop-culture critic Leonard Pierce, who has written about film and television for numerous national publications, and also is a regular contributor to The Onion’s A/V club. (Information on Leonard’s projects can be found here.) WARNING: Numerous spoilers within! So if you haven’t yet seen the first two seasons of this show, be sure to watch before listening… [Originally broadcast on WLUW's Under Surveillance in August 2009.]

Summer has long been synonymous with action blockbusters as far as Hollywood is concerned, for better (Predator) and for worse (the new Michael Bay Transformers film). What cinema genres gave birth to the American action film? How have action movies evolved based on the changing social and political climates of each era? And what sorts of characteristics are hallmarks of standout action films?

From The Road Warrior to Cobra, we’ll tackle it all — my guest is Eric Lichtenfeld, a film scholar who has contributed commentary tracks to landmark action films such as Predator and Die Hard, lectured at Loyola Marymount University, and is the author of the recent book Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie. [Originally broadcast on WLUW's Under Surveillance in July 2009.]

How have horror films been reflective of the times in which they’ve been made? What sorts of differences do we find between American and foreign perspectives on horror? How has the depiction of religion in horror evolved over the years? My guest is Kendall Phillips, a professor of communication and rhetorical studies at Syracuse University, and the author of Projected Fears, which examines 10 landmark horror films (from Pyscho and The Exorcist to Silence of the Lambs and Scream) and why they resonated with filmgoers during their respective eras. [Originally broadcast on WLUW's Under Surveillance in June 2009.]