It’s election season! In the midst of a pandemic… Amidst a growing economic crisis… In the middle of widespread, long overdue, racial reckoning… More like election turducken!
Feeling stressed? Anxious? Exhausted? You’re not alone! We are, too. So we’re putting together a media playlist to get you (and us!) through next week’s election. We’ve organized the media into 3 (imperfect) categories: Films, Digital Resources, and Books & Music. But we would love to hear from you about what’s missing — what should we add? What’s getting you through this intense time? (Media, that is.)
We want to hear from you! Tell us here or via twitter or instagram, and we’ll add it to this playlist. We can get through this together…
Films
Election (1999)
When Tracy (Reese Witherspoon) runs for school president, Jim (Matthew Broderick) feels that she will be a poor influence on the student body and convinces Paul, a dim-witted but popular student athlete, to run against Tracy. When she becomes aware of Jim’s secret involvement in the race, a bitter feud is sparked.
All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020)
Filmmakers Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes examine the history of voter suppression and the activists who fight for the rights of U.S. citizens. The film interweaves personal experiences with activism and historical insight to expose a problem that has corrupted our country from the beginning. With the expertise of Stacey Abrams, the film offers an insider’s look into the barriers to voting.
This landmark documentary chronicles the 1960 Wisconsin primary between the two Democratic front runners vying for the presidential nomination — John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey. Featuring work by iconic documentary filmmakers Albert Maysles (who produced) and D.A. Pennebaker (who edited), the film captures Kennedy and Humphrey amid crowds and in more isolated settings using what was then a groundbreaking technique for documentaries: extensive hand-held camera work.
Bulworth (1998)
Jay Bulworth (Warren Beatty), a financially ruined senator, is now disillusioned with politics. The forlorn statesman orders a contract killing — the target himself — so his family will be able to collect a fortune from his insurance policy. Facing imminent death, a devil-may-care Bulworth speaks his mind in public, forsaking platitudes for honest but controversial observations. But when he falls in love with a hip young woman (Halle Berry), Bulworth urgently rethinks his impending murder.
Thirteenth (2016)
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans.
Digital Resources
A deck-building card game that sets media literacy education in the fictional sheep town of Green Meadows. Play it now, and fight misinformation on your down time!
Should the United States abolish the electoral college?
A module that explores the utility of the electoral college – via Thinkalong and Connecticut Public Television.
(Re)Search for Solutions (podcast)
Season 1 of the (Re)Search for Solutions podcast is a limited series focusing specifically on unexpected and creative ways that researchers are looking at solutions to the persistence of gun violence.
Books & Music
This is America (2018) – Childish Gambino
Americans (2018) – Janelle Monáe
Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab) (2017) – Mona Haydar
Long Way Down (2020)
The Rules. When his brother is shot and killed, Will knows he needs to follow them and get revenge. But can he? Jason Reynolds’s Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, and Coretta Scott King Honor–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel Long Way Down is now a gripping, galvanizing graphic novel, with haunting artwork by Danica Novgorodoff.
Vanishing Half (2020) – Brit Bennett
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
