Professor Aniko Bodroghkozy (University of Virginia)
The Selma Campaign constituted a significant 'media event' in 1965 with extensive television news coverage, photojournalism, and print media attention. Televised footage of the beating and gassing of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge ('Bloody Sunday') galvanized support for the voting rights cause and led directly to the swift passage of the Voting Rights Act. While this national media attention was crucial to the success of the campaign, U.S. mass media framed the Selma story in very particular kinds of ways, emphasizing certain things, distorting and ignoring others. Network television news and photojournalism, the two forms of media on which I will focus, had particular stories they wanted to tell about Selma. Fifty years later with the feature film Selma, Hollywood cinema, in the hands of African American female director Ava DeVernay, has another story to tell about the Selma campaign. The much celebrated, discussed, and debated film also emphasizes certain things, while distorting and ignoring others. It gives a very different rendering of the Selma campaign compared with what audiences saw fifty years ago on television series and in news magazines. What's significant about this new 'media event' of Selma? How has Selma been 'mediated' and why did it matter in 1965? Why and how does it matter in 2015?
University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD
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