I missed Monday Tally last week, but hopefully some interesting articles this week will make up for that.
Fat-E: The new Pixar movie goes out of its way to equate obesity with environmental collapse
by Daniel Engber at Slate.com — I haven’t seen Wall-E yet, so I don’t know how accurate this critique is. Basically, Engber criticizes the movie for what he sees as an incorrect connection between American disregard for the environment and growing obesity problems; instead of science, he argues the connection between the two issues is mostly related to politics. The reason I like this article is because it isn’t afraid to point out that many of the kids movies coming out today have pretty blatant political messages behind them, and even if you agree it’s important to help kids become more media literate. I had a big problem with Happy Feet because of this, and I’ll be a little disappointed with Wall-E if it ends up being more of the same.
Literature meets activism: Barbara Ehrenriech
by Carolyn Kellogg at JacketCopy — Barbara Ehrenriech, author of Nickel and Dimed, spoke at Skylight Books in Los Angeles about her upcoming book This Land is Their Land. This blog post talks about the event, both what Ehrenriech said and some of the other speakers during the presentation. I think this post is interesting because it raises questions about the connection between literature and activism, and how people may be inspired to help after reading. Short, but kind of cool.
Cracking the Local Market: It’s a Great Time to be a Journalist
by Chris Jennewein from SensibleTalk.com — Sensible Talk is a blog that does a lot of media and journalism criticism and analysis. This article discusses the changes to traditional media, mostly paper media moving online and becoming digitial, This article made me more confident about my journalism aspirations because even if traditional media is changing, people will still need journalists to collect and distribute the information, just in news ways.
