Paper Tiger Television

This dynamic and captivating documentary-style production pieces together the unofficial story behind the Riot of ’88 and reveals the ugly side of forced gentrification in New York City. The production traces the transformation of Tompkins Square Park from being a tent city for homeless people and bastion of free expression for artists, bohemians, rebels and crazies, to becoming a central battleground in the fiercely contested class war over the Lower East Side; to a riot scene complete with burning trash cans and unwarranted police violence; to an empty, fenced-in wasteland; and finally, to the safe and sterile environment it is today. The production features passionate interviews with people who made their home in Tompkins Square Park in the 80’s and those that defended their right to do so, as well as guerilla footage from the riots, rallies and protests that occurred in and around the park.

Film critic Armond White analyzes the film reviews of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”.

At the end of his second term, Ronald Reagan finally addressed the issue of AIDS. Or did he? Certainly not without the homophobia, insensitivity and blatant lack of knowledge which plagues the whole of government around such issues. “Transformer AIDS” looks at the governmental response to AIDS at this crucial point in history, when activism forced the issue onto the public agenda. A sarcastically funny, yet poignant critique engineered spearheaded by critic Bob Kinney.

Watch eagle-eye video and performance artist Martha Rosler tackle the case of surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead as represented by the main-stream media. This tape uncovers the class and gender bias of the media coverage and the courts. X-tra inventive graphics and kooky dress-up illustrate Rosler's insightful analysis of the court battle, waged within the tricky issue of contemporary reproductive control in America. Fun for the whole family!!!

Peter Wollen gives a critical analysis of "People" and "Scientific American." Wollen is a British filmmaker and theorist.

Noam Chomsky, the extremely influential dissident, linguist, and media critic behind such works as Manufacturing Consent and What We Say Goes. In this Paper Tiger classic he deconstructs several New York Times articles by historians Bernard Wertzman and Thomas Friedman in order to examine the foreign policy of the United States in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Chomsky examines how these articles skew the facts through “suppression” or “framing” in order to recreate history to meet the needs of current U.S. foreign policy.

M.I.T linguist, social critic, and influential author and radical thinker, Noam Chomsky discusses U.S. foreign policy towards Central America through deconstruction of an article published in the New York Times discussing the Nicaraguan conflict of the mid-1980s. By examining this article alongside the reality of the conflict, Chomsky illustrates two propagandistic strategies which the New York Times, a publication which for all practical purposed writes history, utilizes in order to support the ethical flaws of U.S. foreign policy towards Central America.

Pearl Bowser (born 1931) is an author, television director, film director, producer, and film archivist. At the time of the program, she was the director of Chamba Educational Film Services. She is the author of a book on the first ten years of the career of Oscar Micheaux and is credited for having helped rediscover some of Oscar Micheaux's rare surviving films. She is the founder of African Diaspora Images, a collection of visual and oral histories that documents the history of African-American filmmaking.

This live show features the energetic analysis of television network news by Brian Winston. Winston looks at the news as a unique institution, governed by its own conventions and constraints.

Historian, political philosopher, environmentalist, and anarchist Murray Bookchin demonstrates how Time magazine obliterates time in this 1982 episode of Paper Tiger Television. Time is soothing. The events in Time look nothing like the events experienced by those at them. The news in Time happens elsewhere, happens to others. Time is reliable. It comes each week, and with it, past, present, and future merge to the point of disappearance. Like television, Time lulls readers into complacency because the news is given an even, consistent tone. All issues are treated the same, with the same bland distance. Time makes a reality so unreal, so colorless. The news in Time comes written and photographed in a comforting tone that treats events as inconsequential and thus encourages a notion of not just a false sense of security, but a sense that our actions are without consequence.

This video takes an analytical and humorous stab at the plethora of “pro-feminist” advertising that followed the emergence of the “new woman” and the increasing presence of women in the workforce during the 1990s. Conventional television genres are appropriated to show how the language and sentiments of feminism have been exploited by the advertising of an industry which cares little for the rights of its own female workers.

This video takes an analytical and humorous stab at the plethora of “pro-feminist” advertising that followed the emergence of the “new woman” and the increasing presence of women in the workforce during the 1990s. Conventional television genres are appropriated to show how the language and sentiments of feminism have been exploited by the advertising of an industry which cares little for the rights of its own female workers.