Representing the Rural: Space, Place, and Identity in Films about the Land Book

This book wouldn't really illuminate anything new for people who have been watching TV and movies critically all along, but it is useful for those who haven't. My problem with it ( why three stars instead of more) is I feel like Parenti wrote it much the way I would have--angrily, with many generalizations. I don't pride myself on my analytical, dispassionate writing skills.
I'll quote some of what he says on the last few pages, which can sum up the book as a whole:

"The media rely mostly on violent, shallow, contrived, formularistic plots and characters. The viewing public is bombarded with banalities, trivialities, imbecilities--but also with sociopolitical orthodoxies. Themes that raise questions about the existing arrangements of wealth and power are, with rare exception, kept out of sight and sound. The broader systemic causes of social problems must not be dwelled upon, although the symptoms may be bemoaned--but not too much. The injustices and inequities of the modern capitalist social order at home and in the Third World are glossed over or ignored entirely. In the fictional world of film and television, adversities are caused by happenstance or by ill-willed individuals rather than by economic and social forces. Problems are solved by individual efforts within the system rather than collective effort against it.
Above all, the existing class structure and prevailing distribution of economic wealth are either ignored or accepted as the best of all possible social arrangements. The media rarely attack the established institutions of wealth and power. The economic class structure must not be challenged in its fundaments."

I do appreciate his drawing attention to the fact that most of what gets accomplished in the film and television narratives is done so by individual rather than group effort, which is the opposite of how real life works. I don't think I've ever consciously noticed this myself, but it's an important point. It's also vital to question and challenge why things are the way they are, instead of accepting that they must be this way.

At the very end, Parenti lists some things that the public can do to take back control of our airwaves. My favorite is:

"We need to exercise the limited consumer sovereignty available to us by voting with our pocketbooks and refusing to attend slick, superficial, Hollywood movies. Also we need to stop sacrificing large portions of our lives to the unsatisfying but addictive television set. We need to rediscover, or discover for the first time, the gratifying nourishments of reading and of engagement in community activities with other humans. There is much talk today about people taking control of their own lives. One way to start is by dropping out of the mass-media culture as much as possible and reclaiming our own brains and sensibilities."

I agree.