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Germany! I’ll be in Munich for the month of September!  If there are any Sociological Images fans in the area, I’d love to have a cocktail hour!  Email me at socimages@thesocietypages.org and we’ll set it up.

Our New Look:  We’d like to thank Jon Smajda, our IT and all-around tech fix-it guy, for the great redesign of the site. As you may have noticed, it’s now easier to search for posts, comments are threaded, and the page looks less cluttered overall. Jon, your work is greatly appreciated!

Better Searchage! We updated some of our tags to make it easier to search for posts. There were two major changes:

(1) While we still have a generic “race/ethnicity” tag, we also created tags for the major racial/ethnic groups recognized in the U.S.  You can now search for “race/ethnicity: Asians/Pacific Islanders” and so on. In some cases we struggled with how to define groups or which labels to use. We settled on terms that are generally recognizable and that were short enough to fit in our tags box.  Most posts that are labeled with the “race/ethnicity” tag are now also assigned to at least one specific racial/ethnic tag.

(2) Previously we had individual countries listed alphabetically in the tags list. We decided it would be better to have them all listed as “nation: [specific country]” so they show up together as a group rather than scattered throughout the tags list. So, for instance, Egypt is now listed as “nation: Egypt.”

Changes to Comment Moderation Policy: We have always taken a hands-off approach to reader comments so as to not stifle discussion.  First, while we try to read every comment, we prefer to focus on putting up new content and we found that readers did a pretty good job of responding to each other.  Second, we often found even hateful and mean-spirited comments useful for illustrating some of the points we were trying to make, particularly how groups who fear loss of privilege will lash out and attempt to invalidate any critiques of their social position.  Finally, we have pretty thick skins and don’t really get too worked up about people insulting us.

However, as we posted about earlier in the month, we had an incident in which readers of an anti-feminist website left extremely hateful and threatening comments targeting a specific reader, including posting personal information (such as location) and encouraging physical violence against her and her dog. As a result we rethought our attitude toward comments. We’re not adopting a formal policy, but we decided some moderation is necessary. In general, comments that are hateful or threatening toward other commenters, or that are mean-spirited toward particular social groups (i.e., “I hate Black people”) and do not in any way contribute to a discussion of the issue will be deleted. We will undoubtedly miss some comments or not notice them immediately. We certainly won’t delete comments just because they disagree with us or are rather snarky, and we of course can’t protect readers from any comment they might find unpleasant or offensive–the comments section would have to be shut down completely. Basically, our policy toward comments is: Don’t be an ass, and if you are, we’ll delete your comments when we have time.

We also decided not to provide direct links to racist or misogynistic sites. We’ll provide the web address in posts about such sites so readers know where images came from but won’t have a link; this prevents their administrators from tracking back to our site and posting a barrage of threatening or overtly offensive comments.

We know these changes in how we handle comments won’t please everyone, or maybe anyone–some will want us to moderate more and others would prefer that we don’t moderate at all. But it seemed like the best compromise for preserving the ability for readers to discuss–and criticize–posts while not allowing some commenters to intimidate other readers to the point that they fear commenting.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: AUGUSTS

In light of the recent scandal over Caster Semenya’s sex, we thought we’d resurrect a post from August 2008 about the sexualization of female Olympic athletes.

And, to mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we’d love for you to visit our post from August 2007 about racist interpretations of survival strategies in the aftermath of the storm.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW!)

You might have noticed that when we revamped the website (thanks Jon!), our names appeared in the right-hand column alongside neutral avatars which, as we’ve discussed many times, are actually male avatars (there is some delicious irony here).  It turns out that WordPress not only has the male as default, but there is no female option at all.  You can, however, choose to be a monster.  We eventually went with no avatar at all.  We documented the saga, including all of the options offered by WordPress, in our post on default avatars. Scroll down. [Gwen notes: I kinda want to be the monster.]

Sex

Sea Monkeys!  We added new ads for sea monkeys to our post on heteronormativity and a new collection we’re starting on ads that use sex to sell the most unlikely things.

Speaking of, remember our post full of ads that place the product or tagline in front of a woman’s crotch?  We thought so.  We added an ad for London Fog, sent in by Dmitriy T. M.

Oh geez. We added more examples to our ejaculation imagery ad. We’re sorry, but there was no getting around it. The new material includes images from a campaign for The IceCreamists and an ad for a water gun called the Oozinator (you’ve got to see it).

We also added another image to our recent post on using women’s bodies to symbolize HIV infection.

Race

We found a rodent control ad comparing the Chinese to rats and added it to our long list of anti-Chinese propaganda circa 1900.  We also added an image of lemon ice cream marketed with a caricatured Asian image to a prior post about Italian candies in a blackface-reminiscent wrapper.

Jason K. sent us another example of Obama depicted as a pre-modern and/or savage African, this time a poster showing Obama as a “witch doctor,” so we added it to our post of him presented as a Barbarian and a cannibal.

To our post discussing how people of color are often included in ads as symbols of flavor, color, or spice, we added a comparison of two McDonald’s french fry containers sent in by Joshua B.

Kids

Emily M. sent us another laxative ad in which a small child finally gets the loving mother she deserves because of the wonderful powers of laxatives, which we added to our earlier post on the topic.

You can also check out the vintage ad for Lane Bryant girls’ clothing that we added to our post on fashion for “chubby” girls.

Gender

We added more gendered products–masculinized ear plugs, ahem, “ear screws,” feminized tape “Just for girls!” and boys’ and girls’ sandwich bags–to our post on pointlessly gendered products.

Relatedly, both Danielle F. and Sara S.-P. sent us a link to the new Playstation Portable for omg! girlz!  We added it to our post on girlified games (like the Ouija Board).

Moving on to creepily gendered products, we added a photo of the storefront of Sweet Taters Cafe, sent in by Dmitiry T.M., featuring a “hot” potato, if you get my drift, to our post on sexualized food.

Evony has released more cleavage-fixated ads so we updated our post on the evolution, and increasing boob-centricness, of their recent ad campaign.

Kyle M. alerted us to the advertising campaign for the sci-fi show Surrogates. We added it to our post looking at how gender intersects with (real and fictional) robotics.

Ronni S. found a “Thank God you’re a man commercial” in which a woman becomes hysterical and men drink beer.  We added it to our post featuring ads that suggest that being a woman sucks.

And also in overtly sexist, we found another commercial that portrays women as batshit insane, this time for shoes.  It’s delightful.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Oh, man. As if we needed another reminder as to why cartoon art is a medium that can be used for evil as easily as good, comes now the next installment in a series of racist National Review covers trafficking in Asian stereotypical imagery.

You’ll remember, of course, that back in March 1997, the National Review released the infamous “Manchurian Candidates” cover seen here (which, due to the fact that the Internet was just a tot when that slice of tripe hit the newsstands, I was only able to find in embedded in a journal article written by Darrell Hamamoto, w00t!).

manchucan

Asian Americans understandably reacted with stunned rage at the depiction of then-President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, and Vice-President Al Gore in stereotypical Chinese garb, their features warped into exaggerated Asian caricatures (slanted eyes, buck teeth).

The National Review was unrepentant in the face of charges that the cartoon was offensive and inflammatory, responding, in part, that:

Caricatures and cartoons …require exaggerated features and, where a social type is portrayed, a recognizable stereotype. Thus, a cartoonist who wants to depict an Englishman will show him wearing a monocle and bowler hat, a Frenchman in beret and striped jersey, a Russian in fur hat, dancing the gopak, etc.

The first point can’t entirely be disputed: The cartoon medium often uses simplified, exaggerated features for emphasis, for satirical purpose and for ease in depicting broad emotion.

But it’s one thing to exaggerate features — Obama’s protruding ears invariably become giant jug-handles when he’s rendered, for instance. The Mike Ramirez cartoon below actually essentializes Obama’s appearance down to his ears — and still manages to make its point clear.

ramirez

It’s another to incorporate racialized features that weren’t there to begin with: For instance, consider these images — a caricature of Obama from an “Obama Waffles” package, as gleefully sold during the right-wing ” Values Voters Summit,” and a close-up of Obama’s official portrait from his days as Senator from Illinois.

obama

Apart from being overtly racist, the caricature on the box doesn’t remotely resemble Obama — with its pop-eyed expression, darkened skin, enormous, toothy grin and thick lips, it looks a lot more like…well, the picture below can speak for itself, I guess.

blackface

Going back to the National Review “Manchurian Candidates” cover now, what you see is that there’s more going on in the images of the Clintons and Gore than the typical flamboyant exaggeration used in cartooning. In addition to Bill’s bulbous nose and Gore’s pursed, almost sneering lips (both typical of their respective caricatures), you see…hmm…narrowed eyes… oversized, bucked teeth… a Fu Manchu moustache– hey, just about every racist synecdoche in the anti-Asian propaganda library! (At least the stuff that belongs above the waist.)

propag

Just to be clear here: It’s one thing if they were simply drawn in Chinese clothing or doing quaint folkdances, as suggested by the National Review in its disgenuous response. That would arguably be in-bounds satirically (regardless of whether you find the political point being made to be fair or accurate).

But layering yellowface-propaganda memes into the picture transforms the caricature from an act of humor into an act of war. The images to the right are examples of what I’m talking about.

Even if you’re insensitive enough to racial propriety to want to give white people Asian features in order to prove a political point, that simply isn’t what Asian people look like, and never has been. The squinty, buck-toothed Asian person with bright yellow skin and eyes angled at ten minutes to two does not exist in nature. However much you soften it, those false features are in fact weapons of mass destruction, artifacts of an era where it was used to dehumanize the enemy enough so they could be killed without compunction.

rob

For that reason, there’s no acceptable way they should be invoked in a casual popular context, any more than minstrel stereotypes or anti-semitic “Elders of Zion” caricatures have a place in everyday culture. Discouragingly, they remain persistent in media today — from entertainment (see left: Rob Schneider in 2007’s “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry“) to news and commentary. Well, actually not most news and commentary — it’s really only the profoundly racist right-wing organs that still blithely fart out the yellowface imagery. Like, for instance…the National Review.

nrcoversoto

This cover to the right is the current issue of the magazine, on stands now. As you can see, it depicts Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as the Buddha. Despite the fact that Sotomayor is Catholic and a Latina woman. While the historical Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, was Hindu (before the whole Bodhi tree thing), and an Asian man.

The caption, “The Wise Latina,” frankly offers no real f*cking explanation for the image. I suppose it’s because the Buddha was wise, although you could just as easily have depicted Sotomayor as King Solomon if you’re looking for a legendary figure of wisdom; maybe it’s because to the raving radical Right, Buddha is seen as a proto-hippie and probably a pansy too, while King Solomon, that guy threatened to cut babies in half — not very pro-life, but not “empathetic” either. Badass!

But seriously: If they wanted a figure of wisdom and empathy, why not caricature Sotomayor as someone who’s of the right gender and a coreligionist, at least: Mother Teresa? That would have preserved the necessary level of corrosive offensiveness, right? Too close to home?

mote

Whatever. As it is, the cover is just stupid and meaningless, as well as offensive — to women, to Latinas, to Buddhists of all backgrounds (note: The National Review guys are of the same ilk that went ballistic when Rolling Stone depicted Kanye as Jesus)…

kw1

…and yes, to Asians. But it bears mentioning that it registers as EPIC FAIL even in the offending Asians category.

Because, unlike their “Manchurian Candidates” cover, where at least they picked the correct racist stereotypes to parade, the “Wise Latina” cover puts the hideously slanted eyes and bucked teeth of East Asian yellowface stereotype onto an image inspired by a Northern Indian man of Brahmin descent.

In fact…. you can see the original image of Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha that the artist used as a reference (it’s actually quite a popular icon). Notice any differences?

buddha_18331

As usual, National Review has been quick with a completely absurd and totally disingenuous retort to the appalled reactions they’ve been getting from, you know, everyone. From editor-in-chief Rich Lowry:

I take it the theory is that we don’t think Latinas can be wise so we had to make her look somewhat Asian. Or something like that. What these people don’t understand is the entire concept of caricature (or of a joke). Caricature always involves exaggerating someone’s distinctive features, which is all that our artist Roman Genn did with Sotomayor. Oh, well. Keep it humorless, guys, keep it humorless.

No, Rich, the theory is that you took a Latina woman and turned her into a North Indian man with horribly racist East Asian-stereotypical features because you guys are clueless morons. And actually, that’s kind of funny, in that Lowry and the National Review don’t quite get that the joke, ultimately, is on them.

NEW! Kate M. pointed out an image similar to the one of Sotomayor as the “wise Latina.”  This one is of Newt Gingrich as a “guru” and ran in the liberal magazine Mother Jones:

Newt-Guru

Is this more or less offensive than the Sotomayor example cover? The thing that I think distinguishes the two is that Gingrich’s features are not exaggerated into a warped stereotype of Asian features, possible the most offensive element of the Sotomayor caricature.

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Jeff Yang is the editor-in-chief at Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Blog and the Asian Pop columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. You can follow him on Twitter and friend him on Facebook.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Birdseed sent in this photo he took at a grocery store in Stockholm (which he posted at his blog as well):

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The product is a new beverage, Fanta World Pineapple: Inspired by Jamaica. The two guys in the photo were hired to promote it at the little tiki-style counter. Johan says,

A couple of things leap out at me straight away:

* The continued (post-)colonial association of Jamaica with its plantation produce. The “inspiration” seems limited to the fact that pineapples are grown there for the consumption of the global North. (Canned goods like pineapples still have the charming moniker “kolonialvaror” (colonial merchandise) in Swedish retail jargon.)

* The ridiculous (verging on blackface) stereotypical representation of “Jamaicans” that the kids are suppsed to portray. It seems to have been done with extreme sloppiness – for instance, the Polynesian lava lava (a type of sarong) that they wear has absolutely nothing to do with Jamaica at all, but rather acts to represent an identity-less generalised tropics, dehumanised exotica.

The music was, of course, bad reggae.

I think Johan hits on an important issue here–how often the cultures of non-Westernized countries are mixed together into an undifferentiated image of exoticness–for instance, “tribal” fashion and “traditional” handicrafts often supposedly represent “Africa,” which is a meaningless category given the enormous diversity of cultures, languages, clothing styles, artistic motifs, and so on. But if you put some geometric designs and maybe an elephant on some cloth, it evokes “Africa.”

it’s also interesting that a certain hat shape and dreads have become such easily-identifiable shorthand symbols of Jamaica, and that Fanta is commodifying the idea of Jamaica to sell a product that has no reason to be more “inspired” by Jamaica than anywhere else pineapple is grown–Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, etc. etc. etc.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Yesterday Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President.  In the cartoon below, syndicated cartoonist Gordon Campbell compares Powell to Benedicte Arnold, a general in the American Revolutionary War who defected to the British Empire.  So, Powell’s endorsement makes him a traitor.   Comments after the image.

As Rob Tornoe discusses at Politicker, this feeds into the idea that Obama isn’t a real American and, accordingly, neither is Powell.  That this is about skin color is revealed by the fact that he put Arnold in blackface. and uses the term “Race Patriot.”  The implication is, Powell is endorsing Obama because he’s black and that’s treason (i.e, anti-white and therefore anti-American).

It also speaks to white privilege and a phenomenon I’ve seen elsewhere during this election.  It is white privilege to be able to vote for Obama without your endorsement being attributed to the color of your skin.

(Found via Jezebel.)

A couple of weeks ago I posted about American Indian sports mascots. An interesting comparison to spark discussion, and an example students often bring up, is the University of Notre Dame’s mascot. The name of the Notre Dame athletic teams is the Fighting Irish, and the official mascot is the leprechaun (image found at Wikipedia):

Each year a student is chosen to be the leprechaun. Here is an image (found here) of the Notre Dame leprechaun performing at a game:

According to the Notre Dame website, the leprechaun did not become the official mascot until 1965; before that, the university was represented by Irish terrier dogs.

You might compare this to the Chief Illini logo, as well as the University of Illinois student performing as Chief Illini, both in the original mascots post. It brings up some interesting issues for discussion. Is there any difference between the the Fighting Irish and the Fighting Illini (or the Fighting Sioux, the Redskins, etc.)? Does the existence of the Fighting Irish invalidate opposition to American Indian mascots? Opponents to Indian mascots often argue that they objectify American Indians in a way that would not be allowed if used against African Americans or Asians–that this modern form of blackface is acceptable only when used to mimic Native American groups or cultural traditions. Those who support American Indian mascots often use the Fighting Irish to try to invalidate that criticism–to argue that Whites are also used as mascots and don’t seem to mind (to my knowledge, there is no movement against the Notre Dame mascot based on the idea that it is offensive to the Irish), and thus that critics of American Indian mascots are over-sensitive whiners.

Opponents of American Indian mascots respond that, first, this is one example, compared to the many, many American Indian mascots found throughout the U.S., and second, whereas Americans of Irish descent face no systematic ethnicity-based discrimination in the U.S. today (and haven’t for several decades), Native Americans still do. In addition, they argue that many American Indian groups openly oppose Indian mascots, and that their voices deserve to be heard; presumably, if Irish-Americans began to protest the Fighting Irish mascot, the same logic would hold and, indeed, those opposing American Indian mascots would oppose the Fighting Irish as well.

This might be useful not just for a discussion of sports mascots, but more generally for a discussion of the idea of equivalency in discrimination. I see this a lot with students–if, for instance, we’re discussing sexual harassment and they can point to an example when a man was sexually harassed by a woman, then they argue that men are affected just like women, and thus it has nothing to do with gender inequality or power. I suspect those who bring up Notre Dame in an effort to invalidate arguments against Indian mascots are doing the same thing–if a White ethnic mascot exists, then charges that Indian mascots are racist can be dismissed. It’s a false form of equalizing because it ignores the lop-sidedness of the “equality” (the tiny number of non-Indian racialized mascots compared to the number of Indian ones) and the role of systemic inequality (that American Indians are underrepresented at colleges and universities and face racial discrimination in a way that Irish-Americans do not). And it also serves to discount opponents’ voices by saying that if any social group wouldn’t be opposed to a particular type of portrayal or treatment, then no one else has any right to be offended by it, either, regardless of their different histories, treatment, or social positions.

In order to reduce redundancy and not overload your inboxes, we’re now occasionally adding to previous posts instead of creating new ones. But never fear, once a month we’ll let you know where we’ve added content so that you won’t miss a thing! Here’s this month’s enriched posts:

Molly M. sent us a link to a feel ‘er up mousepad. We added it to our post on products shaped like female bodies (scroll down to the bottom). Thanks Molly!

We added another ad capitalizing on the fetishization of black women’s behinds.

We added a new image, found over at Copyranter, to our post on subliminal and not-so-subliminal sex in the media.

We also stole from Copyranter a 1968 American Airlines ad encouraging travellers to think of the stewardess as their mother (their sexy mother, of course). We added the incestuous ad to our post (here) featuring a 1965 American Airlines that suggests that the travellers are constantly kidnapping and marrying their stewardesses.

We added another example of a company trivializing women’s power to sell product. This time it’s Special K urging women to claim “Victory” over their fat bodies.

To our post about Bugs Bunny in Blackface, we added an advertisement from a 1942 cartoon called “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.”

Finally, we added a Hillary Clinton toilet brush to our Hillary Clinton nutcracker.

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The centaur scene in Disney’s highly acclaimed cartoon Fantasia (1940) clearly communicates gendered expectations for men and women, but there are also racial politics. First, note that, in the film as released, all of the centaurs end up in color-matched heterosexual pairs.  Second, most people do not know that the original centaur scene included a pickaninny slave to the centaur females and exotic, brown-skinned zebra-girl servants.

Here’s a link to the whole thing (embedding disabled, but it works as of Feb. ’11).

A clear still in black and white:

Fuzzy color stills from the youtube clip:


Don’t miss our post showing bugs bunny in blackface, too.