I recently used the trailer from Hannah Montana: The Movie to get my students thinking about the arguments made in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of the culture industries in “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” I have the students watch the clip and then break them into small groups where they answer questions about specific arguments made in the text and how they might apply to the Hannah Montana film. I use an excerpted portion of H&A’s chapter from The Film Studies Reader, edited by Joanne Hollows, Peter Hutchings, and Mark Jancovich. London : Arnold ; New York : Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, 2000 It was a useful clip for illustrating some of the main concepts in the article as well as highlighting some of its limitations. Below is a link to the clip and the set of small group questions.
Hannah Montana: The Movie, trailer
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