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Issue 36

E D I T O R I A L L Y

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Film on media Lecture focuses on faith in US portrayal of women shown Taylor McElroy Staff Writer On Tuesday, “Miss Representation” was displayed in Hodges Auditorium. This documentary combined stories from teenage girls, as well as interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics, like Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi and Katie Couric. The film asked the question: Can girls grow up to be emotionally healthy in today’s society? The film revealed some disturbing facts, such as that selfconscious girls tend to have lower grade-point-averages and are less likely to run for office or vote. It was the film’s goal to expose how mainstream media portrayals of women and girls contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. “I think they did a good job of presenting a side of media we never get to see,” Katie McDuffee, freshman in biology, said. “It was really eye-opening.” One of the first major points made was that in much of advertising the goal is to make people feel anxious and insecure. In today’s media you will never see an image of a woman that has not been digitally altered. This probably alludes to why women spend more money on beauty products than on education. The next big point discussed how early in their lives girls face deep gender bias. The opposition, however, is usually from the women themselves. According to the film, this all seems to stem from the notion that women are all natural enemies of each other and therefore tend not to support each other in elections. It almost makes it not surprising that women have not proposed changes in Congress since 1979. Without women in politics, America lacks fundamental legitimacy that comes from the inside perspective of women’s

opinions. “I thought it was a very powerful documentary that shed a lot of light on our culture,” Brittany Bailey, freshman in food science and technology, said. “It displayed how much we feed into the ‘ideal woman’ and how we do not even question it.” The film then shifted gears to point out how much the movie industry has changed. In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s women in film had so much more depth. They were complex characters. They could be femme fatales and still be housewives or even killers. Today, less than a quarter of protagonists in movies are women. Even here, one does not get the message of women who do not use their sexuality as a means of empowerment. Instead the audience sees a stereotypical mean boss who sacrifices her personal life to be at the top. She also has a super hero persona that seems empowered, but through her skintight clothing, she is still very much objectified by the male viewer. This is not surprising, as women make up only 16 percent of writers, directors and producers. In the real world, however, media target women who attempt to take on leadership roles as more emotional and make women having power seem like a negative thing. In closing, the film featured clips pointing out how the media tend to diminish women’s accomplishments by focusing more on their appearance than on the quality of what they are saying. Focusing more on the professionals among women, it featured a clip of a nutcracker made out of an action figure of Hillary Clinton. The goal of the film was to inform and inspire change, sending a message of hope that if women could grow and support each other professionally, politically and socially, the world would see dramatic changes.

• Photo courtesy of Greg Martin

Jeff Sharlet, author of “Sweet Heaven When I Die,” spoke at the second annual David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture on Tuesday. Sharlet, who is also a contributing editor to Rolling Stone Magazine as well as professor at Dartmouth University, discussed with students the current state of religion and politics in the world.

R.J. Vogt Staff Writer “I’m going to start off with a song, but don’t worry, I’m not going to sing it: you are,” Jeff Sharlet, author of “Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between” and contributing editor to Rolling Stone, said. Sharlet, who spoke at the second annual David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture on Tuesday night, had three different sets of lyrics passed out among the audience. On one, the Buddhist invocation “OM BEN ZAR SA TO MA YA” was typed. Another included the chorus to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” and the third sheet read “There is power, power, wonder working power in the blood of the Lamb,” lyrics from a popular Christian worship song. After convincing a few volunteers to sing each song solo, Sharlet invited everyone to sing at the same time. “People want to know what unites us when we talk about religion,” Sharlet said. “What brings us together, what is the harmony, what is the common denominator? I’ve never heard that song — I’ve heard something better. I’ve heard the chorus of cacophony.” Indeed, the confused babble that the crowd produced was certainly not harmonious, eliciting laughter. “I want to contrast this idea of the Cacophony Choir with the world of American religion and politics,” Sharlet said. Over the next 45 minutes, the Dartmouth professor did just that. Sharing stories from his books, Sharlet focused on the current landscape of the nation, one that tries to “hide the weirdness” and “find common ground” instead of allowing individual opinions to be heard. One such story centered on David Bahati, a member of the Ugandan parliament who introduced the AntiHomosexuality Bill in 2009. His bill essentially places a death penalty on homosexuality, and punishes those who fail to turn in a homosexual to the authorities. Bahati is supported by an American fundamentalist Christian group known as “The Family,” one with significant political power in Washington. Sharlet met with Bahati, traveling to Uganda and actually eating brunch with Bahati at his home.

“When someone has genocide in mind and invites you over for lunch, go,” Sharlet said. “At the lunch, Bahati invoked harmony, asking, ‘Jeff, can’t we agree to disagree?’ I’ve never been so ashamed, as a journalist, to be in that circle of civility,” Sharlet said. “People talk about common ground — common ground? Plantations were common ground, with slave and master standing next to each other. I prefer the cacophony, the voices together.” This message fit in well with the life of David L. Dungan, in whose memory the Department of Religious Studies sponsored the event. “Dungan was very provocative,” Rosalind Hackett, head of the department, said. “He liked to challenge people to think, and was always boldly embracing certain topics that affected the students. “He was also active in sharing his scholarship with the Knoxville community. Even though he was internationally recognized, he always got involved in the local area, making time to visit Sunday school classes and such.” Dungan taught at UT for 35 years, retiring in 2002 at the age of 66. He is probably most well known for his “A History of the Synoptic Problem: the Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels,” published in 1999. After Sharlet had finished elaborating on some of the findings from his own books, he closed with a quote. “‘I like the noise of democracy,’ James Buchanan once said. That to me is the sound of belief in America, of religion in America, of politics in America,” Sharlet said. This quote raised the curiosity of David Howell, a world religions teacher at Pellissippi. Thankfully, he had an opportunity to inquire during the post-lecture question-andanswer session. “In 1856, that cacophony (which Buchanan liked) resulted in a bloody Civil War,” Howell said. “What is your point in defending such cacophony now?” Sharlet paused, glanced at the book in his hand, and moved away from the podium for a moment. “On one side, you have that Civil War,” Sharlet said. “On the other side of the world, claiming to look for common ground. We are the country in between.”

Storm rages through Midwest; kills four The Associated Press

Tara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon

Jeremiah Welch, sophomore in music education, plays the cello during a performance at the Mahogany Soul Cafe on Tuesday. The event, which is held every fourth Tuesday of the month, serves as an open-mic night for performers of a wide variety of skills, from spoken word poetry to musical compositions.

BRANSON, Mo. — A powerful storm system that produced multiple reports of tornadoes lashed the Midwest early Wednesday, roughing up the country music resort city of Branson and laying waste to a small town in Kansas. At least four people were killed in Illinois and Missouri. An apparent twister rolled through Branson just before 1 a.m. and seemed to hopscotch up the city’s main roadway, ripping roofs off hotels and damaging some of the city’s famed music theaters dangerously close to the start of the heavy tourism season. More than 30 people were reported hurt, mostly with cuts and bruises. “If it was a week later, it’d be a different story,” said Bill Tirone, assistant general manager for the 530-room Hiltons of Branson and the Branson Convention Center, where windows were shattered and some rooms had furniture sucked away by high winds. Hotel workers were able to get all guests to safety as the storm raged. John Moore, owner of the damaged Cakesn-Creams ‘50s Diner, said the tornado seemed to target the city’s main strip, moving down the entertainment district, right through the convention center, across a lake and into a housing division. He said the tornado

appeared to “jump side to side.” “The theater next to me kind of exploded. It went everywhere. The hotels on the two sides of me lost their roofs. Power lines are down. Windows are blown out,” Moore said. “There’s major, major destruction. There has to be millions dollars of damage all down the strip.” At least three people were killed in the southern Illinois city of Harrisburg after a storm swept through shortly before dawn. In Missouri, one person was killed in a trailer park in the town of Buffalo, and at least three people were critically injured in the small eastern Kansas town of Harveyville. The tornadoes were spawned by a powerful storm system that blew down from the Rockies on Tuesday and was headed across the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys toward the Mid-Atlantic region. Corey Mead, lead forecaster at the U.S. Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said a broad cold front was slamming into warm, humid air over much of the eastern half of the nation. From Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, at least 16 tornado sightings were reported from Nebraska and Kansas across southern Missouri to Illinois and Kentucky, according to the storm center, an arm of the National Weather Service. See STORM on Page 3


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