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- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
- Moving Image Archive This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download
Browse Films
- Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture (streaming, Kanopy) In this highly anticipated update of the influential and widely acclaimed Tough Guise, pioneering anti-violence educator and cultural theorist Jackson Katz argues that the ongoing epidemic of men's violence in America is rooted in our inability as a society to move beyond outmoded ideals of manhood. In a sweeping analysis that cuts across racial, ethnic, and class lines, Katz examines mass shootings, day-to-day gun violence, violence against women, bullying, gay-bashing, and American militarism against the backdrop of a culture that has normalized violent and regressive forms of masculinity in the face of challenges to traditional male power and authority.
- The Pornography of Everyday Life (streaming, Ethnographic Video Online) This trenchant and provocative documentary essay will generate thought, analysis, and discussion in a wide variety of courses in women's and gender studies, psychology, sociology, and popular culture. It incorporates more than 200 powerful images from advertising, ancient myth, contemporary art, and popular culture to demonstrate how pornography (defined as the sexualized domination, degradation, and objectification of women and girls and social groups who are put in the demeaned feminine role) is in reality a prevalent mainstream worldview.
- Frontline: The Merchants of Cool (dvd) Frontline journeys into the world of the marketers of popular culture to teenagers. They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the 'next big thing' that will snare the attention of their prey, a market segment worth an estimated 300 billion dollars a year. They are the merchants of cool: the creators and sellers of popular culture, who have made teens the hottest consumer demographic in America.
- Militainment, Inc.: Militarism and Pop Culture (streaming, Kanopy) MILITAINMENT, INC. offers a fascinating, disturbing, and timely glimpse into the militarization of American popular culture, examining how U.S. news coverage has come to resemble Hollywood film, video games, and "reality television" in its glamorization of war.
- The Codes of Gender: Identity and Performance in Pop Culture (streaming, Kanopy) Communication scholar Sut Jhally applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape in this provocative new film about gender as a ritualized cultural performance. Uncovering a remarkable pattern of gender-specific poses, Jhally explores Goffman's central claim that the way the body is displayed in advertising communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.
- Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity (streaming, Kanopy) 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 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.
- Imagining Indians (streaming, Academic Video Online) Employing a keen sense of humor to reveal a Native American perspective on the misrepresentation of Native Americans in feature films, this unconventional film plows headlong into the theme of the commodification and appropriation of Native American arts and material culture.
- Joystick warriors : video games, violence & the culture of militarism (streaming, Kanopy) Drawing on the insights of media scholars, military analysts, combat veterans, and gamers themselves, the film trains its sights on the wildly popular genre of first-person shooter games, exploring how the immersive experience they offer links up with the larger stories we tell ourselves as a culture about violence, militarism, guns, and manhood.
- Game Over: Gender, Race & Violence in Video Games (streaming, Kanopy) Video and computer games represent a $6 billion a year industry. One out of every ten households in American owns a Sony Playstation. Children who own video game equipment play an average of ten hours per week. And yet, despite capturing the attention of millions of children worldwide, video games remain one of the least scrutinized cultural industries.
- Game Over (streaming, Academic Video Online) In recent years, video games have become the world’s largest cultural industry.
- Generation M: Misogyny in Media and Culture (streaming, Kanopy) This film tracks the destructive dynamics of misogyny across a broad and disturbing range of media phenomena: from the hyper-sexualization of commercial products aimed at girls, to the explosion of gender violence in video games aimed at boys; from the near-hysterical sexist rants of hip-hop artists and talk radio shock jocks, to the continually harsh, patronizing caricature of feminism found in virtually every area of American pop culture.
- Guyland: Where Boys Become Men (streaming, Kanopy) In this powerful new film based on his bestselling book, sociologist Michael Kimmel maps the troubling social world where boys become men -- a new stage of development he calls "Guyland." Arguing that the traditional adult signposts and cultural signals that once helped boys navigate their way to manhood are no longer clear, Kimmel provides an astonishing glimpse into a world where more and more young men are trying desperately to prove their masculinity to other young men -- with frequently disastrous consequences for young women and other young men
- The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men (streaming, Kanopy) Filmmaker Thomas Keith takes aim at the forces in male culture that condition boys and men to dehumanize and disrespect women. Keith breaks down a range of contemporary media forms that are saturated with sexism -- movies and music videos that glamorize misogyny; pornography that trades in the brutalization of women; comedy routines that make fun of sexual assault; and a slate of men's magazines and cable TV shows whose sole purpose is to revel in reactionary myths of American manhood. The message he uncovers in virtually every corner of our entertainment culture is clear: It's not only normal -- but cool -- for boys and men to control and humiliate women. By showing how there's nothing natural or inevitable about this mentality, and by setting it against the terrible reality of men's violence against women in the real world, The Bro Code challenges young people to step up and fight back against the idea that being a real man means disrespecting women.
- White Scripts And Black Supermen: Black Masculinities In Comic Books (streaming, Academic Video Online) A valuable and colorful examination of 40 years of changing representations of Black masculinity in a significant area of popular culture - comic books. This genre's reach and impact extended into other forms of cultural production such as movies and animated TV series.
- The souls of Black girls the image of women of color in the media (streaming, Academic Video Online) Filmmaker Daphne Valerius's award-winning documentary The Souls of Black Girls explores how media images of beauty undercut the self-esteem of African-American women. Valerius surveys the dominant white, light-skinned, and thin ideals of beauty that circulate in the culture, from fashion magazines to film and music video, and talks with African-American girls and women about how these images affect the way they see themselves. The film also features powerful commentary from rapper and activist Chuck D, actresses Regina King and Jada Pinkett Smith, PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill, cultural critic Michaela Angela Davis, and others.
- Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video (streaming) Dreamworlds 3 examines the stories contemporary music videos tell about girls and women, and encourages viewers to consider how these narratives shape individual and cultural attitudes about sexuality. Illustrated with hundreds of up-to-date images, Dreamworlds 3 offers a unique and powerful tool for understanding both the continuing influence of music videos and how pop culture more generally filters the identities of young men and women through a dangerously narrow set of myths about sexuality and gender. In doing so, it inspires viewers to reflect critically on images that they might otherwise take for granted.
For more films on the Media, browse the Media Education Foundation collection in Kanopy
Featured Podcasts
- The Social Breakdown: Soc311 - Intro to Popular Culture" “It’s all about popular” We’re getting light-hearted in these crazy times and introducing you to the sociology of pop culture! In this episode, we use Dr. David Grazian’s work to explore what popular culture is and how it’s different from high culture. Then we make sense of culture’s role in globalization, and show how pop cultural products– like sitcoms, Taylor Swift songs, and anime– can act as forms of soft power.
- The Social Breakdown: Zen and the White Male Savior in Film We’re building off of last week’s episode on pop culture today with a deep dive into film analysis with a special guest, Prof. Brian Brutlag from The Sociologist’s Dojo! Brian talks with us about two seemingly unconnected concepts– Zen Buddhism and the White Male Savior Complex– and how they’re now being used together in film narratives.
- The Social Breakdown: SOC 307 – The Social Construction of Rock n’ Roll We’ve got a special guest episode featuring Dr. Matthew Smith-Lahrman for you this week! Matt is a rock ‘n roll guru and professor at Dixie State University, and he joins us to talk about the sociology of rock music. Tune in to learn about how rock music has evolved, its role in the social construction of reality, and his favorite band, The Meat Puppets
