Update: The confusion in the comments brought to my attention that I embedded the wrong commercial. See! I’m not crazy! Just incompetent.
Enjoy the corrected post:
At least that’s the message I’m taking from this Utah Tourism advertisement featuring anthropomorphized snowflakes (found here):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78RZ-UgIMrM[/youtube]
Blanca M. sent in this clip by Penn and Teller, in which a woman gets people at a World Fest rally (which appears to be an environmental event of some sort) to sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide…commonly known as water:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw[/youtube]
You might use it in a discussion of social psychology and the way that people tend to go along with what they see other people doing and to do what they are asked or instructed to do without asking many questions (that is, if someone asks you to sign a petition, very often you will, whether or not you really know what it’s about). You could also use it to talk about perceptions of environmental risk, and how bad we are at evaluating it: if something has a chemical-sounding name, we tend to assume it’s bad (but if it sounds “natural,” we think it must be safe).
I think it would be a good clip for talking about political participation and the limitations of passive forms of participation such as these: the require very little of people, so while they might be quick to sign, they’re unlikely to know much about the issue or to follow up. My guess is that politicians keep this in mind, too. Burk M. was a Senate campaign consultant for a while and says that though written petitions are generally taken seriously by elected officials (particularly if signed by constituents and delivered personally in the presence of a media outlet), email petitions are completely ignored (I knew it!) because there’s no real concern that the people who signed it will ever check back in to see what happened (assuming they’re real people to start with). Government agencies, such as the EPA, may not show as much concern for even printed petitions, since they are not made up of elected officials who fear their constituents might be watching what they do. Thus, these forms of minimal-involvement political participation may make people feel like they’re doing something about an issue, when in fact there is little impact (particularly in the case of email petitions).
Thanks, Blanca!
Michael T. sent in an observation about the Yes on Proposition 8 website, which (successfully) aimed at amending the California constitution to disallow gay marriage. Along the top of the screen, the four different images below accompanied the slogan “Restoring Marriage & Protecting California Children.” These marriages, Michael surmises, must be the ones that need protecting. In addition to reproducing heteronormativity and childbearing, notice that the images are self-consciously diverse, but represent all marriages as within race.
Thanks Michael!
Recently I saw this wood sign for sale in a catalog (available here, if you really want one):
Looking around online I found this t-shirt here, which combines the “My Indian name is” element with a twist on “kicks like a girl”:
I have seen things like this before, and they always irritate me (and I blame the movie “Dances with Wolves” for the whole “Indian names always follow the pattern ‘Present-Tense Singular Verb + With + Noun'” idea). There’s an element of othering here–the idea that American Indian names are funny or weird. Part of what I think is considered funny is that the names are presumably tied to actual activities or things (for example, Mankiller or Redbird). Of course, many European surnames originated the same way (for instance, “Smith” was a surname often used to indicate the person was a blacksmith, silversmith, etc.), but they now hold the status of “normal” surnames that are unremarkable (although Smith has become somewhat remarkable as a symbol of White non-ethnic normality, such that it is often used in movies and TV shows as an alias by spies and others wishing to avoid attention).
That website led me to this one, where there were lots of “Native American” t-shirts. As far as I can tell, it’s not a Native-owned company, it’s just a bunch of shirts with Native people or themes on them. Some, like these, associate American Indians with animals:
Whereas the t-shirts with men on them tend to show them in battle or hunting, those with women generally have romanticized, sometimes vaguely sexualized images. I noticed several have a common element: the upturned face, often with closed eyes, as well as stereotypically “Caucasian” features, except with darker skin and hair. This one is called “Purity”:
You might use these in a discussion of representations of Native Americans, particularly how they continue to be worn as symbols by other groups. The things associated with American Indians–wildlife (particularly wolves), nature, and the warrior tradition–tend to romanticize their connection to the natural environment and even portray them as part of nature themselves, able to communicate with the other “wild things.”
It’s a weird double bind: on the one hand, presumably American Indians are more “noble” than other groups–surely they wouldn’t have driven wolves, bald eagles, and bison to the verge of extinction, given their close connection to nature. But at the same time, they are depicted as relics of the past, brave fighters from the glory days. American Indians who drive cars and wear t-shirts and blue jeans (and have last names like Smith and Thomas) don’t have a place in our romanticized images of Native groups.
NEW! D. Cho sent in three more t-shirts that draw on Native American icons or images. Here is Spirit Happy Fox:
Chief Many Feathers:
How the West Was Fun:
Between 1864 and 1923, there were 14 forced county-wide expulsions of African Americans (alongside many town expulsions). The figure below shows the percentage of African Americans living in Vermillion County, Indiana in the years before and after an expulsion.
Click here for an interactive website with information about these expulsions made by the Austin American Statesman newspaper. See also our post about “Sundown Towns,” which kept Blacks out by making it illegal for them to be there after sundown.
Anneliese W. sent us this Australian ad campaign for Noble Rise bread. The claim is that other breads are “bland” and that Noble Rise bread is not. To make the claim, the advertisements use Black people to signify spice and flavor. Anneliese writes:
…what really struck me about this campaign is the use of coloured bodies to represent excitement, flavour and coolness. The slogan for the campaign is something like “take a stand against bland” – bland being ‘normal’ and everyday, and in some ads the obvious unspoken is that blandness is white. Framing blackness as the opposite of ‘bland’ is just another example of the ‘other-ing’ of black bodies, and re-enforcing the idea that white western culture is ‘bland’ or non-existent.
[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=aXfxKJnR54Q[/youtube]
[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=xpO3eF7wrC8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=cwIOM3BzjOM[/youtube]
[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=h3SSPQgm2jA[/youtube]
I offer several more examples of this phenonemon here.
Click to enlarge:
I think it’s interesting that the National Federation of State High School Associations defines cheerleading as a sport.
(Image by Chris Uggen. Data from the National Federation of State High School Associations.)
The other day I noticed this sticker on a van:
I took a picture of it, just to remind me to look it up, but I didn’t know if it was meant as a joke (a satirical version of gay pride stickers) or what. But it turns out there’s an organization called Straight Pride. The website says they are not homophobic and do not hate gays. This t-shirt leads me to suspect that though they may not “hate” them, they’re not too keen on them, either:
This t-shirt implies that heterosexuality is patriotic:
People are encouraged to send in photos of themselves wearing Straight Pride products. So far the gallery only has a few photos, all of men. The photos are very small, so it’s hard to see a lot of detail, but this one seems to link heterosexuality to a certain type of masculinity; they appear to be holding paintball guns:
I thought they might be useful for a discussion of homophobia and attitudes toward homosexuality, particularly the element of “we don’t hate gays, we just support being straight.” There’s a notion of false equivalency here: that “straight pride” is just the same as “gay pride” (similar to what some individuals in “White power” organizations say–they aren’t anti-Black, they’re just proud of being White!). You might discuss this idea of equivalency: given the privileges and benefits that are made available only to straight couples (including, in most states, the right to marry, and as of Tuesday in Arkansas, the right to foster or adopt children), is “straight pride” really the same as “gay pride”? Is it possible to advocate heterosexuality without being homophobic? What is the motivation for advocating it, if it’s not a sense of unease with homosexuality? The gay pride movement aimed to reduce the stigmatization of gays and lesbians, as well as increase access to the rights and benefits straight couples have. What, exactly, is the goal of a straight pride movement, if not to keep gays and lesbians from getting those rights?
