Say Happy Birthday to MTV by Screening Dreamworlds 3!

 

MTV turned 40 a couple days ago, and the media has been full of nostalgic tributes. For an alternative take on the iconic cable network — and how ideas about gender, sex, and race have been constructed in music videos — be sure to revisit our bestselling film Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video.

Also be sure to check out this interview with MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally about how his clash with MTV back in 1991 inspired him to produce the original Dreamworlds and create MEF.

Dreamworlds 3 is available via streaming and on DVDClick here to see if your university subscribes to the Kanopy streaming platform, and contact us if you’d like to host a virtual public screening.

Praise for Dreamworlds 3 

 

“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

 

“The role of media images in our everyday lives has never been more powerfully demonstrated.”
— Robin Rieske | President, Action Coalition for Media Education of Vermont

 

“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

 

“Highly recommended. Essential for anyone at all invested in the debate regarding the media’s influence on culture.”
— Educational Media Reviews Online

 

“A powerful and sobering piece of filmmaking, taking a mundane and familiar subject and presenting it to shocking effect. 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.”
— Jack David Eller | Anthropology Review Database

 

“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 whom 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

 

“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

 

“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

 

“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

 

“Incisive.”
 Newsweek

 

“A scathing examination of pop video’s use and abuse of women.”
— Los Angeles Times