124264 KO Critical Media Analysis (2023W)

In this class we will thoroughly analyse Ava DuVernay’s ”When They See Us” (2019), developed for Netflix, in order to explore the many ways media, power and visibility are entangled. Changing the conversation from „The Central Park 5“ to the „Exonerated 5“, the Netflix limited series powerfully retells the story of the 1989 New York Central Park ‘jogger case’ from the perspective of the 5 black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully incarcerated for a rape they never committed.
We will address how the series calls out biased media coverage, harmful stereotypes and institutional racism through storytelling and its careful representations of the intersections of race, class, and gender back in the 1980s, as much as we will consider the media landscape today. More generally, we will interrogate the reputation of Netflix as a global streaming provider championing inclusion and diversity and how the educational and activist motivations driving a series like ‘When They See Us” do or do not complicate ideas linked to streaming like binge-watching, comfort TV and a profit-driven entertainment industry.
The series is a rich example for analysis, because it artistically employs televisual, cinematic and social media practices to foreground black experiences, to connect history and the present, and to force us to reflect on our own privileges.
Students will be equipped with a number of analytical skills to train critical media literacy in terms of tools for ‚close reading’ the series, but also in gaining a better understanding and conceptual repertoire of how to approach the wider cultural and (anti)racist context and politics of the series informed by cultural studies, media studies and critical race theory.
Students are required to have access to Netflix and watch the series at their own pace.
Trigger warning: the series has been described hard to watch, especially for people traumatized by police violence and institutional racism