Class Dismissed

Class Dismissed is a documentary that shows all the different class structures in media, and how they are portrayed. This documentary was put together in a way so that an average person will understand the point, and you don’t have to be well versed in the ways of analyzing media to get it. The simplicity started with the opening scene that was in black and white. I think this was done for two reasons. The first is simply because when television was first invented everything was black and white, and the second was just to keep everything simple from the start. Every time the documentary would display words, they would put them in big letters, and leave them on the screen for a while, so that you had a long time to read it, and wouldn’t miss the word. Along with this, any time they would put a number or a statistic on the screen, they would put it in plain letters, and leave it on the screen for a long time, often with someone talking over it. Many times a person would be talking about a specific example in a television show or a movie, and they would cut to the clip right after, giving the viewer a chance to understand what they are talking about. My only complaint with the movie was some of the editing. I noticed one time after showing a pie graph, Robin D. G. Kelley was talking and he started with “and this explains…” witch makes me ask what he was saying before this. This brings to ask myself if I trust the director or not, because if I do, then what he says is valid, but if I don’t, then maybe the editing was done to make it seem like he was talking about the graph, but in fact he might have been talking about something completely different.