Bea Kilat FMS 592: Documentary Film Spring, 2011 Documentary Treatment Inspired by the volatile contemporary attitude

e in American politics, Dirty Word is an investigation into the power of words, ranging from public and private elementary schools to city government offices. Framed by the January 2011 Arizona shootings, Dirty Word looks at how we communicate with one another and how we can make that communication more positive. DIRTY WORD We live in a complex ecosystem of influences and motivations Jon Stewart, at the Rally to Restore Sanity (Washington DC, 2011) Twitter, a real-time information network, was founded in 2006 by Biz Stone and others. From his personal website, Stone shares that his vision in creating Twitter was to have a place where there was an open exchange of info. He now calls it a triumph of humanity through technology (from BizStone.com) Currently there are 175,000,000 users on Twitter (statistics from www.Twitter.com). Facebook, was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saveringiving people the power to share and make the world more open (from The Facebook about page). Facebook has become a central mode of communication in American popular culture, especially among teens. The story of its founding has been the subject of books and a 2011 Oscar nominated film. Another example of Facebooks cultural relevancy is addition of the word defriend to the 2010 Oxford English Dictionary. This word was popularized by Facebook usersof which there are more than 500,000,000. In 2009, screenager was added into the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning: a person in their teens who has an aptitude for computers and the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are two of the easiest ways for individual voices to be heard. Because of the size of these networks, these voices have the potential to reach millions of other people, which shapes the landscape of our culture. With this in mind,

Bea Kilat FMS 592: Documentary Film Spring, 2011 Documentary Treatment the documentary will investigate another example of social medias possible influence. On January 8, 2011, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, was shot by a deranged gunman at a meet-and-greet outside a Tucson supermarket (information found on http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/a rizona_shooting_2011/index.html?scp=1spot&sq=arizona%20shooting&st=cse). The gunman killed six people and wounded thirteen. Giffords represented the 8th District of Arizona, a district that former-Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin, had put in her crosshairs on a regional map that highlighted traditionally conservative areas that had voted for the health care reform bill in early 2010 (information found on Sarah Palins personal Facebook and Twitter account). This map was posted on her Facebook and was linked to on her Twitter account (address of posted status: http://twitter.com/#!/SarahPalinUSA/statuses/10935057232). Common sense conservatives and lovers of America: Dont Retreat, Instead RELOAD! Pls see my Facebook page Palin tweeted in March of 2010. Sarah Palin has nearly 3,000,000 fans on Facebook and nearly 500,000 followers on Twitter. After the January shootings, the volatility of American political rhetoric and how it affected Americans as listeners was thrust into the spotlight. Which begged the question: how much does what we hear influence how we act? What is the extent of the power of words? To attempt to answer this question, the documentary will ask eight people (two elementary school, high school and college students, as well as two politicians) to define three words: family, gender and marriage. From there, the participants will explain how they spend their time, where they get their news and what is considered news to them. Every participant will be asked about their relationship

Bea Kilat FMS 592: Documentary Film Spring, 2011 Documentary Treatment with their computer and their awareness and use of social networking sites. Every participant will be asked what they think is not okay to sayonline and in daily life. The film ends with Jon Stewart, a fixture of old-school media: television. Stewart attracted over 1.3 million viewers and ranked the highest amongst late night hosts for men between the ages of eighteen and 49 (according to Nielsen ratings). After the Arizona shootings, Stewart held a rally in Washington DC that attracted an estimated 215,000 people (information from NY Daily News). The argument the documentary attempts to share with its viewers is that sensible discussion comes from careful thought hopefully, as evidenced by the range of answers from the not so educated to the informed politicians.