The Media Education Foundations Captive Audience details the growing

presence of consumer culture in public education school systems. By

exploiting underfunded schools, advertisers are able to target children where
they are most vulnerable; and not just by getting their logo visible, but also
by dictating the content of the curriculum itself.
The producers effectively explain how public schools have become hunting
grounds for commercial targeting, and how our participation in local politics
is perpetuating the limited funding available for schools to escape the grasp
of advertisers. By providing facts on the plateauing of educational funding
which began in the Reagan era, and pre-empting counter arguments that
push for structural reform over increased spending, the film concretely
demonstrates that educators are being backed into a corner by advertisers
through the limited resources made available to them. Essentially, the
responsibility of the objectification of our nations children as consumers
rests on the shoulders of all participatory citizens. Furthermore, the film
covers the breadth or advertisement materials in schools- such as Channel 1,
vending machines, educational materials- and comprehensively explores the
unique dangers associated with each different type of media. I thought the
explanation on how Channel 1 structures its content, particularly with its out
of context, vapid news content, was a crucial topic given the abundance of
popular entertainment media outlets presenting themselves as serious
ventures in journalism.
The diversity of the subjects interviewed provided a welcomed assortment of
perspectives on the issue of advertisements in schools, but none were as
telling as when the interviewers spoke with students. In the American
Psychological Institutions article, Protecting Children from Advertising,
they describe how children ages 8 and younger lack the cognitive ability to
recognize advertisers persuasive intent (1); one of the high school students
spoke about how this may be applicable even to older children. She
described how information received in school is taken as an absolute truth,
that students shouldnt have to concern themselves with analyzing whether
or not what they are being taught is true. The corporate exploitation of this
trust is troubling, but the repercussions outside of the classroom are even
more damning; if students are overwhelmed with advertisements inside
educational institutions, why would they question the same advertisements
when operating independently?
The film is most effective when we see examples of some of the
reprehensible advertisements being seen by children without the presence of
their parents. In one ad for Shell, two students drive through the countryside
and talk about how overblown concerns about carbon emissions are because
of the great opportunities gasoline affords consumers. This is reminiscent of
Naomi Kleins This Changes Everything, when she said [corporations] have
consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses to climate change that are

the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the largest

greenhouse gas emitters on the planet (199). Klein writes about how even
adults have difficulty determining if the actions of socially responsible big
business are ethical, but placing these informational videos in classrooms
will crush the instinct of the next generation to question if the content set
forth from PR campaigns is indeed factual.
There were a few problems I had with the film; for one, the creators seem to
try to alleviate all blame from school administrators concerning the
penetration of advertisers into schools. Early in the film they mention how
educational materials from advertisers are distributed directly to teachers in
order to circumvent any formalized evaluation process on the validity of the
content from the school district. This suggests a complete ignorance on
behalf of the school board that the materials are present, which is quite a
broad assumption. In addition, some of the examples felt incited by moral
panic. For example, the objectionable nature of Shells distribution of
environmental stewardship videos is undeniable; but should the Scholastic
Book Clubs inclusion of Pokmon books be treated as a similar offense?
Based on the argument of the film, shouldnt the Scholastic Book Club itself
be the problem, not its inclusion of pop culture-based books?
While Captive Audience does a good job describing how one could use local
governments to combat advertiser presence in the schools, it doesnt provide
a viable alternative solution for the teachers who are reliant on the
educational materials advertisers provide. For example, there is an
opportunity, particularly with older students, to use advertising materials to
flex analytical abilities and practice media literacy. As Sut Jhalley and James
Twitchells On Advertising suggests, advertising is an articulation about
culture- and, as the aforementioned demonstrated, a fruitful conversation
can be had about what exactly that says about us. This would enable the
educators to obtain the materials they need from corporate sponsors, while
encouraging students to constantly remain critically engaged with the media
they consume.
Overall, Captive Audience is successful in that it calls attention to an
ethically troubling practice that is systemically becoming normalized.
Regardless of ones political inclinations, it is irrefutable that embedding the
questionable values of advertisements into the institution of education is
counter-intuitive for the betterment of society. Captive Audience not only
provides comprehensive detail on the corporatization of schools, but also
encourages ways one can get involved to protecting their community.
Works Cited
Captive Audience. Dir. Sut Jhalley. Media Education Foundation, 2003. DVD.

Dittman, Melissa. "Protecting Children from Advertising." American

Psychological Association. American Psychological Association, June
2004. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.
Jhalley, Sut, and James Twitchell. "On Advertising." SutJhalley.com. N.p., n.d.
Web. 22 Nov. 2015.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2015. Print.