We used Symbolic Convergence Theory to analyze 2,000 political cartoons on the investigation, impeachment, and trial of the president. The cartoonists' vision incorporates components from Starr's and Clinton's visions: "Our public figures (Clinton, Starr, Congress, the news media) are engaged in a tawdry burlesque drama. "The number of levels in a rhetorical vision depends on the vision's complexity. We show that multiple, independent, rhetors can create a rhetorical vision. These messages, highly visual and generally critical, freely use metaphor and allusions, allowing multiple interpretations and rendering the fantasy themes in these dramas accessible to readers with widely divergent attitudes. Despite their fictionality, these messages concern important issues and make moral judgments on these public figures.

This essay examines hone the narrative structure of the Fox primetime television hit Ally McBeal opens the text to a feminist reading. Despite critics' charges to the contrary, I argue that producer/ screenwriter David E. Kelley's teleplays construct a preferred feminine spectator position that appropriates dominant male gazes in three ways: the feminine setting of the law firm, the refusal of women characters to yield to the male gaze, and the `comic spectacle of maleness. "Ally McBeal's preferred feminine spectatorship stance is articulated through comic strategies in which gender ideals are questioned through mockery, thus opening a safe space for viewers to reject dominant patriarchal meanings and to experience a feminist epistemology.

This study looks at Spike Lee's Malcolm X as an important text in understanding Afrocentric perspectives that challenge the ideological stereotypes of mainstream Hollywood film. Malcolm X intervenes between Lee, the filmmaker, and the powerful media industry and is emblematic of the larger discussion of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic views in media culture. This film is not only an interesting case study but a significant part of an ongoing cultural discourse that is as relevant now as when Malcolm X lived. The relevance of this essay lies in its contribution to the discussion of media perspectives with a focus on furthering media literacy. It aids the viewer in understanding the social discourse surrounding a mediated racist ideology and the ongoing cultural work of social equality in the United States. This research finds that in the continuing struggle over media representation, Lee's film is an instrument of media politics, controversy, and commercialization.