Community Cinema: 'American Denial,' Feb. 12 

Thursday, Feb. 12, 7-9:30 p.m. Rasmuson Hall, Room 106

Community Cinema is an regular event in which UAA departments show groundbreaking films. The next community cinema will feature "American Denial."

Follow the story of foreign researcher and Nobel Laureate Gunnar Myrdal, whose study An American Dilemma (1944) provided a provocative inquiry into the disagreement between stated beliefs as a society and what is perpetuated and allowed in the name of those beliefs. His inquiry into the United States' racial psyche becomes a lens for modern inquiry into how denial, cognitive dissonance and unrecognized, unconscious attitudes continue to dominate racial dynamics in American life. The film's unusual narrative sheds a unique light on the unconscious political and moral world of modern Americans. Archival footage, newsreels, nightly news reports and rare southern home movies from the 1930s and 1940s thread through the story, as well as psychological testing into racial attitudes from research footage, websites and YouTube films.

Hear from experts-historians, psychologists, sociologists and Myrdal's daughters-all filmed directly to camera. Witnesses work to exhume unconscious feelings Americans have about themselves and others-fascinated by the Myrdal question, and by how much true thinking and feeling unfolds in social contexts in an unconscious mode. What are the implications for individual responsibility and social justice in democracies like America's?

(Save the date: The next Community Cinema, happening March 5, 7-9:30 p.m., in the UAA Planetarium and Visualization Theater, will feature "Makers: Women in Space.")

February Archive