Films/Videos for Teaching School of Communication Topics

The role of advertising in 20th-century American politics.

Explores the characteristics that define a desirable audience, the history of audience ratings, and the ways in which audiences are assessed.

How should a school handle bad news? The London Academy in Edgeware faced a crisis when a pupil was killed outside its gates. Principal Phil Hearne talks about the lessons from his experience of the media.

This program investigates consumer reactions against the idealized images of beauty promoted by TV, movies, and glossy magazines, while exploring the complex relationship between corporate strategy and feminine self-esteem.

Is McDonald’s a brand on the verge of collapse, or can it be revitalized? This program strives to find out, as experts cite fat- and sugar-laden foods, cannibalistic over-franchising, menu stagnation, and competition with Subway as factors in the giant’s decline.

Documentary concerning the marketing of drugs by pharmaceutical companies by creating a disease and then supplying the medications that can cure it.

DVD 10638

DVD 4438. Four programs describing the psycho/social issues affecting 20th century consumerism against the backdrop of the development of Freudian psychology.

This program looks at a society inundated with visual images.

DVD 5904. Explores how Kuwaiti government over a 6-month period used public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, to wage an unprecedented media campaign entitled "Citizens of a free-Kuwait" to argue the case for war.

This video exposes common advertising strategies like urgency, unproven claims, celebrity endorsement, and emotional appeal that are used to sidestep the inner skeptic and go straight for the wallet. Viewable/printable educational resources are available online.

DVD 3700. Two documentary filmmakers set out to explore the psychological and manipulative powers of consumerism by creating an ad campaign for a super store that didn’t exist.

DVD 10490. Using the case of the woman who sued McDonald's after sustaining burns from spilled coffee, this film analyzes and discusses so called "frivolous law suits" and the impact of tort reform on the United States judicial system.

DVD 7400. Available for Streaming.
Bill Moyers examines the public-relations campaign designed by Ivy Lee in 1914 to improve the image of John D. Rockefeller. He also talks with Edward Bernays—the man who helped immortalize Thomas Edison and actually coined the term “public relations”—about the science of “the engineering of consent.”

DVD 7159

DVD 5879. Streaming Available.

DVD 2193. The consultants’ marketing strategies shape the relationship between leaders and their people. Witness the astounding look at one group’s campaign to elect the President of Bolivia and its earth-shattering outcome.

DVD 1037. This edition of Frontline examines the "persuasion industries": advertising and public relations.

This program addresses the manipulative power of photography by illustrating how commercial advertising has created an obsession with youth and physical perfection and can exploit viewers’ fascinations with celebrity, sexuality, and violence.

DVD 6400. A sly parody of a fast food advertising campaign with narration of the production notes for a TV spot.

DVD 5891-5894

DVD 955

DVD 3250. Feature film about the life of a Big Tobacco spin doctor.

DVD 5869
Streaming video also available

DVD 1307

This program relates the concept of assault by a carefully managed fire to the art of utilizing the media. With Craigslist founder Jim Buckmaster, who says that when talking to the press, he speaks in a style that will result in the fewest number of misquotes, and Tony Visconti, Jan Carlzon, Katie Ford, Philip Kotler, Larry Flynt, and Michael Dukakis.

DVD 1013

DVD 733. A film of pranks played on the media by two culture-jamming political activists who pose as corporate executives to draw attention to their causes.

DVD 7178.
Streaming video also available.