Media noted and received.

THE SPECTACLE OF ACCUMULATION: ESSAYS IN CULTURE, MEDIA, AND POLITICS

by sut jhally. peter lang publishing/300 pp./$32.95 (sb)

The compilation of Sut Jhally's essays in The Spectacle of Accumulation offer insight into a wide range of issues that plague the interactions between media, culture, and politics. Focusing on issues concerning how the media influences gender stereotypes, race relations, political culture, advertising, and sports, Jhally offers critical insight that is unattainable from mainstream media culture, primarily because privatized media promotes a self-serving "consciousness industry." Although many of Jhally's works precede 9/11 and the YouTube revolution, they still hold legitimate observations and discussions of the images we as a nation are subjected to daily via television, radio, and the Internet.

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The overall focus of Jhally's collection is to demonstrate the notion that even though the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it only prevents the government from exercising control over the press; there is no lawful guarantee of a free, unbiased press. In this modern era, the media is controlled by large conglomerates with a self interest in promoting consumerism. In several essays Jhally points out that MTV is a television network with solely advertisement-based programming. Even networks airing a smattering of 30-second advertisements alongside shows--the sitcoms, dramas, news programs, etc. are written and designed to encourage mass consumerism. Jhally demonstrates in one poignant essay, written in 1989 and still relevant today, that even news programs themselves are controlled by large companies with vested political interests.

Jhally's collection is instrumental in understanding how deeply the media and those who control it form the consciousness of the public--while undermining free choice democracy. Seemingly innocuous music videos on MTV, through repeated graphic images, desensitize teenagers to sexual violence against women. News programs are framed, not by a worst-case scenario, malevolent government or a best-case scenario, free press corps, but by profit-hungry executives, bending information to sell more products. The critiques Jhally presents are important for all to acknowledge because a free, unbiased press is one of the most important tools a democracy has.

KATELYN HOLLOWAY

MEDIUM COOL: MUSIC VIDEOS FROM SOUNDIES TO CELLPHONES

edited by roger beebe and jason middleton, duke university press/351 pp./2007 (sb)

Given that MTV has long since switched its programming emphasis to reality television, it might seem like the age of the music video is nearing an end. But as this collection of wide-ranging critical essays proves, music videos are alive and well and vital to current culture; they continue to appear on cable stations and, more crucially, on the Internet and portable electronic devices. If anything, music videos appear to be a genre particularly suited for these new forms of media.

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Given the hardiness of the music video form, this collection contextualizes them in several dimensions. Essay topics include the historical roots of the music video genre, with analyses of the largely forgotten jukebox videos of the mid-twentieth century and of Elvis performances on early television. The collection also examines how videos incorporate aspects of historical art movements such as dadaism and surrealism. Looking beyond the United States, contributors outline developments in music video construction and consumption in Canada, Finland, and Papua New Guinea.

Perhaps most intriguing is how this collection illustrates the possibilities for music videos to enlarge our understanding of the potential for the construction of meaning via their particular forms of narrative. Looking at the work of directors Spike Jonze and Hype Williams, as well as at cultural phenomena such as the at-home pairing of The Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, Medium Cool helps us see how the music video, by pairing song and visual, opens up new perspectives on postmodern criticism.

J. O'NEILL is a graduate student at SUNY Brockport, studying education and literary theory.

American Cinema of the 1960s: Themes and Variations, edited by Barry Keith Grant. Rutgers University Press/275 pp./$24.95 (sb).

American Photobooth, by Nakki Goranin, foreward by David Haberstitch. W.W. Norton & Company/224 pp./$29.95 (sb).

The Americans, photographs by Robert Frank, introduction by Jack Kerouac. Steidl/National Gallery of Art/180 pp./$39.95 (hb).

Andre Kertesz: The Polaroids, photographs by Andre Kertesz, introduction by Robert Gurbo. W.W. Norton & Company/128 pp./$35.00 (hb).

The Art Museum from Boullee to Bilbao, by Andrew McClellan. University of California Press/351 pp./$29.95 (sb).

Brooklyn Storefronts, by Paul Lacy. W.W. Norton & Company/160 pp./$17.95 (sb).

Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor, by Scott MacDonald. University of California Press/461 pp./$29.95 (sb).

Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema, by Abe Mark Nornes. University of Minnesota Press/285 pp./$22.50 (sb).

Cinema and Facism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943, by Steven Ricci. University of California Press/234 pp./$24.95 (sb).

Cinematic Identity: Anatomy of a Problem Film, by Cindy Patton. University of Minnesota Press/190 pp./$19.50 (sb).

Circuits of Culture: Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes, by Jeff D. Himpele. University of Minnesota Press/246 pp./$25.00 (sb).

Crosses: Portraits of Clergy Abuse, by Carmine Galasso. Trolley Books/200 pp./$45.00 (hb).

Crossing the Water: A Photographic Path to the Afro-Cuban Spirit World, by Claire Garoutte and Anneke Wambaugh. Duke University Press/258 pp./$24.95 (sb).

Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet, by Lisa Nakamura. University of Minnesota Press/248 pp./$19.50 (sb).

Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, by Patricia Aufderheide. Oxford University Press/164 pp./$9.95 (sb).

Down to the River: Portraits of Iowa Musicians, photographs by Sandra Louise Dyas. University of Iowa Press/84 pp./$29.95 (hb).

Eduard Spelterini: Photographs of a Pioneer Balloonist, by Alex Capus and Hubertus von Amelunxen. University of Chicago Press/148 pp./$85.00 (hb).

Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, by David Hume Kennerly. University of Texas Press/232 pp./$49.95 (hb).

Fischli and Weiss: The Way Things Go, by Jeremy Millar. MIT Press/109 pp./$16.00 (sb).

Holding Out and Hanging On: Surviving Hurricane Katrina, by Thomas Neff. University of Missouri Press/100 pp./$29.95 (hb).

Hollywood's American Tragedies: Dreiser, Eisenstein, Sternberg, Stevens, by Mandy Merck. Berg Publishers/171 pp./$29.95 (sb).

The Hyena & Other Men, photographs by Pieter Hugo. Prestel Publishing/$49.95 (hb).

Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature, by Mary Roberts. Duke University Press/195 pp./$23.95 (sb).

Landscapes, by Mary Randlett. University of Washington Press/118 pp./$29.95 (hb).

LoveSong: The Erotic Photographs of Arnold Skolnick, Quantuck Lane Press/128 pp./$100 (hb).

Made with FontFont: Type for Independent Minds, by Erik Spiekermann, edited by Jan Middendorp. Mark Batty Publisher/351 pp./$65.00 (hb).

Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age, by Kathleen Sweeney. Peter Lang Publishing/324 pp./$32.95 (sb).

Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s, by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Continuum/230 pp./$21.95 (sb).

Maria Callas: Images of a Legend, by Attila Csampai. Prestel Publishing/263 pp./$49.95 (hb).

Michael Wesely: Still Lives 2001-2007, by Franz-W. Kaiser, Prestel Publishing/96 pp./49.95 (hb).

Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories, edited by Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmerman. University of California Press/333 pp./$24.95 (sb).

New Mexico's Crypto-Jews: Image and Memory, photographs by Cary Herz, essays by Ori Z. Soltes and Mona Hernandez. University of New Mexico Press/154 pp./$39.95 (hb).

Nicosia This Week: an unofficial guide to the biennial that never was, edited by Louise Dossing, Susanne Stetzer, and Layla Tweedie-Cullen. Veenman Publishers/192 pp./price unavailable (sb).

Now Is Then, by Marvin Heiferman. Princeton Architectural Press/192 pp./$29.95 (hb).

Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, by Leo Steinberg. University of Chicago Press/436 pp./$35.00 (sb).

Pedestrian Photographs, by Larry Merrill. University of Rochester Press/60 pp./$29.95 (sb).

Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism, by Kent Jones. Wesleyan University Press/232 pp./$27.95 (sb).

Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. MIT Press/710 pp./$50.00 (hb).

Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts, by Caroline Levine. Blackwell Publishing/252 pp./$29.95 (sb).

Quota Quickies: The Birth of the British 'B' Film, by Steve Chibnall. University of California Press/314 pp./$27.95 (sb).

Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York, by Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom. The New Press/268 pp./$35.00 (hb).

Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now, by Marina Wallace, Martin Kemp, and Joanne Bernstein. Merrell Publishers/255 pp./$49.95 (hb).

She's Got a Gun, by Nancy Floyd. Temple University Press/248 pp./$26.95 (sb).

Shelter, by Lucky S. Michaels. Trolley Books/190 pp./$60.00 (hb).