Archive: Dec 2009

Hank M. sent us a link to this image that shows the proportion of news coverage in 55 outlets for various items throughout the year (click here for a larger image; to read more about the methodology and the news outlets, see Journalism.org):

Journalism.org puts out a weekly index as well, broken down by type of source (network TV, newspaper, etc.). Some of the results for Dec. 14-20 show some interesting differences. Here are the top-10 lists for newspaper and network TV, respectively:

The top three stories are the same, and clearly dominate both types of media outlets. TV sources seem to do more “human interest” or “entertainment” coverage of things like Tiger Woods’s scandal, the Goldman custody battle, and the missing climbers. (My mom and grandma were both distressed that I wasn’t aware of the missing woman in Utah or the Goldman custody case and said that I need to keep myself more informed of the world around me by taking the time to watch the news on TV so I’d know what’s going on in the world.)

Cable TV outlets had the same top 3 stories, but actually emphasized them even more than newspapers and network TV did, with health care getting nearly twice as much coverage as it did on the networks (radio had the same pattern):

Their database is archived and searchable, and it provides a rather fascinating view of what is considered newsworthy each week and how that depends on the type of outlet.

Also check out our posts on google searches for information about Afghanistan and Tiger Woods, the “dithering” meme,

In earlier posts, we’ve highlighted instances in which contradictions in U.S. culture become glaringly clear.  In one, suggestive advertising accompanies an article critiquing a video game in which the player rapes a woman.  In another, CNN asks whether Jon and Kate Gosselin are getting too much media coverage, and then tempts you to read more media coverage about Jon and Kate Gosselin.  In a third, neighbor billboards carry hilariously contradictory messages.

I found another example that left me shaking my head.  Via Racialicious, I found myself reading a Time magazine article reporting on recent research that shows that, even when black and whites are portrayed as equal on television, viewers come away with subconscious anti-black bias that actually translates into bias in real life.  The findings are pretty dismal.

Two paragraphs into the article, there was a promotional link… for television (see the bolded, red parenthetical sentence):

So, yeah, television is likely inculcating you with racist views; “the transmission of race bias appears to occur subconsciously, unbeknownst to the viewer”… but don’t let that stop you from enjoying awesome TV!

The second promotional link, halfway through the article, was just salt in the wound:

And, of course, they couldn’t let your thoughts linger on social justice issues when there are great TV series out there to see!

The final paragraphs:

Maybe they are hoping that we’ll watch the top 10 TV ads and episodes more critically?

These promotional inserts may very well be automatically generated, but the article is dated Dec. 17th, so clearly no one at Time has been alerted to, or cares about, the possibility that they may trivialize the message of the article, or even draw people away from it as early as two paragraphs in.  What Timewants is for you to waste as much time on their website as possible.  Apparently any ideological commitment to fighting racism is secondary at best.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Some have observed that advertisements featuring kids often present active boys and passive girls. This vintage ad is a great example of what that looks like:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Missives from Marx sent in a link to this animated time line documenting the diffusion of various political-economic systems (e.g., fascism, democracy, and feudalism) over world history.  It can be read as a story about the triumph of democracy, but it’s also illustrates how political-economic systems are not natural, but invented during particular historical eras, and diffuse or disappear as a consequence of war, geography, and other geopolitical factors.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In the book Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sports, Pat Griffin discusses the pressure on female athletes to constantly prove they, and their sport, are acceptably feminine, for fear of being labeled lesbians. Women who engaged in, and openly enjoyed, sports have often been viewed with suspicion or concern, ranging from beliefs that physical exertion might make them infertile to a fear that women’s sports teams serve as recruiting sites for lesbians. Some college coaches even try to get young women to play on their teams by hinting to their parents that other schools their daughter is considering are known for having a lot of lesbians and it might not be the “type of environment” where they want their sweet little girl to go.

Female athletes, and women’s sports teams, thus often feel a lot of pressure to prove their heterosexuality to quell homophobic fears and to make women’s sports appealing to a broad audience. One way to do so is to dissociate themselves from lesbians. Another is to emphasize the femininity of female athletes, signaling that they are, despite their athletic abilities, still physically attractive to, and interested in, men.

Texas A&M put out this promotional media guide, which features an image of the male coach surrounded by the team in sexy clothing:

While these types of materials have traditionally been for the media, they’re increasingly used as recruiting tools for players as well. Those who produce them argue that they’re just trying to put out something distinctive that will set them apart. And as Jayda Evans at the Seattle Times says, it’s not like men’s sports teams are never photographed off the court.

But as many researchers have pointed out, and as Evans herself discusses, female athletes are often photographed and discussed in ways that largely erase their athletic abilities. When men’s teams are dressed up for publicity materials, it’s usually for one or two images that are outnumbered by ones that highlight their sports participation. For female athletes, images that exclude any connection to sports often become nearly the entire story. And despite the fact that the creators often stress their interest in doing something unique and distinctive to set themselves apart, there is a very common set of elements in promotional materials for women’s sports: clothing, make-up, hair, and poses that sexualize the players and implicitly include a reassurance to parents, potential players, and fans that the women are pretty, charming, and feminine, regardless of what they do on the court or the field.That is, they are blending masculinity and femininity by being athletic and pretty, not giving up their femininity altogether.

Of course, part of an acceptable performance of femininity is showing that you want male attention, and that you actively try to make yourself appealing to men. So while these materials might do many other things, they also carry a particular message: these girls like to pretty themselves up, and that should reassure you that it’s not a team full of lesbians.

The effect of all this is that female athletes may feel pressured to keep their hair long, wear make-up even on the court, and emphasize any relationships they have with men or children to “prove” they are straight, and a lesbian who likes makeup and sexy clothing may face less suspicion and stigma than a straight woman who doesn’t.

Also see our posts on Serena Williams’s ESPN cover, Candace Parker “is pretty, which helps,” groundbreaking female sailor is also pretty, sexualizing female Olympic athletes, diets of champions, media portrayals of female athletes, and valuing dads in the WNBA.

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

You might have noticed that there are poor, rich, and middle class neighborhoods in just about every town.  Sociologists call this residential segregation.  Residential segregation is a problem, in part, because it can create a situation in which some neighborhoods have more social and other services than others.  Sociologists have found, for example, that richer neighborhoods tend to have more grocery stores, better sidewalks, and more fire protection.

So, when Jessica Sherwood, of Sociologists for Women in Society, sent us a map showing the density of playgrounds in New York City, I immediately thought to correlate it with average income.

Playground map (darker pink = more playgrounds):

Map of median household income (yellow = more income, blue = less):

UPDATE:  Awesomely, Reader Mark Root-Wiley overlaid the two maps and sent it along!  Here it is:

It looks to me that playground density is highest in the poorest neighborhoods.  A very unusual finding!

So, what factors do you think might account for the disproportionate number of playgrounds in low income areas?  Speculate away!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Leigh snapped this picture of a Toys ‘R Us catalog.  He noticed that, for both microscopes and telescopes, the version coded “girl” (i.e., the pink one) is the least powerful one (600x magnification vs. 900 or 1200x and 90x vs. 250 or 525x).  Coincidence?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Robin H., Tomi L., and Kate McL. asked us to talk about the new movie, Avatar.   Tomi thought the gender politics were great, with men and women as equals fighting and ruling side-by-side.  I think she’s right.  It’s a great example of a cultural product that makes little of gender difference.  (UPDATE: Though commenters are disagreeing on this point quite insightfully.)

With that said, I want to comment on the race politics in the movie (I do so indebted to Annalee Newitz and Eric Repphun; you might also be interested in Meloukhia’s comments from a disability studies perspective).

First, a summary (super spoiler alert):

Avatar is a moral re-evaluation of colonization. In the movie, humans go about killing and displacing the indigenous population of another planet, the Na’vi, in order to extract a valuable mineral.

The Na’vi are a fantastical version of indigenous populations encountered by Europeans during colonization. They wear features, bones, and skins; they have a deep spirituality and a ritual-filled life; they are accomplished and principled warriors; they hunt and fight with bows and arrows; and they have an intense connection to nature (the end of the black braided ponytail of the Na’vi contains mysterious filaments that plug into the flora and fauna, allowing a sort of mind meld with the animals and the planet). They are, in short, the stereotypical “noble savage.”

In the movie, humans use technology to transport their consciousnesses into home-grown native bodies.

A character, Jake Sully, and his avatar:

They use these bodies to infiltrate and befriend the Na’vi, all with the intention of furthering the goals of mineral extraction.  Through our hero, Sully, we discover the moral superiority of the Na’vi people.  His own exceptional nature is also revealed.

Sully being blessed by the Goddess, a sign that the Na’vi should accept him:

Later, the chief’s daughter falls in love with him.

The anthropological effort to convince the Na’vi to give up their land fails and so the humans decide to take the land by force, wantonly destroying their home and killing any Na’vi that get in the way. A handful of humans, led now by Sully, defect and join the Na’vi.  During the battle, both the chief and the rightful inheritor of the role die.  After they win the battle, Sully assumes the role of chief, with the highest ranking female at his side.

In the end, Sully abandons his (disabled) human body and the Goddess transfers his consciousness into his avatar body. He has, literally, “gone native.”

Now, to the commentary:

Avatar is a fantasy in which the history of colonization is rewritten, but it a fantasy specifically for white people living with a heavy dose of liberal guilt. And it is one that, ultimately, marginalizes indigenous peoples and affirms white supremacy.

If it were a fantasy for, say, the American Indian population in the U.S., the story might go a little differently. In that fantasy there would be no Sully character. It’s that simple.

The Sully character is white redemption embodied; he “…is liberal guilt made flesh.”  His character redeems the human race (i.e., people of European descent) by proving that at least some of us (guilty liberals) are good. Whites can identify with Sully instead of the humans who orchestrate the genocide and displacement.

But Sully is not only a superior human being, he is also a superior Na’vi. After being briefly ostracized for his participation in the land grab, he tames the most violent creature in the sky, thereby proving himself to be the highest quality warrior imaginable per the Na’vi mythology.  He gives them hope, works out their strategy, and is their most-valuable-weapon in the war. In the end, with all Na’vi contenders for leadership conveniently dead, he assumes the role of chief… and gets the-most-valuable-girl for good measure. Throngs of Na’vi bow to him.

As Annalee Newitz summarized in her excellent commentary:

This is a classic scenario you’ve seen in non-scifi epics from Dances With Wolves to The Last Samurai, where a white guy manages to get himself accepted into a closed society of people of color and eventually becomes its most awesome member.

I’m going to speculate that, if this were a fantasy written for a colonized population, the hero would come from their own ranks and, at the end of the movie, they would continue life on their land, with their culture intact, under Na’vi leadership, without a human in sight.

But that would be a movie that alienated the colonizer. And since history is written, and rewritten, by the victor, Avatar is what we get.

And it is a safe fantasy because the fight is over. During most of the encounter between Europeans and the indigenous populations in the Americas, stereotypes were cruel and dehumanizing. The “noble savage” stereotype that we are familiar with emerged only after the threat of American Indian resistance was long gone. We re-cast our enemy in romantic terms only after we won the war. How nice for us. It turns out our foe was a worthy one, making us look all the more impressive for being the victor. We can now pretend that we had deep respect for them all along.

Europeans can enjoy Avatar precisely because there is no risk to admitting that colonization was wrong. We can wallow in guilt about it and, still, the likelihood that power dynamics will be reconfigured in any meaningful way is just about zero.

(Images borrowed from here, here, and here.)

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.