In Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq, John Dower discusses how the U.S. responded to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Militarily, it pushed the U.S. into officially entering World War II, but Dower is just as interested in cultural responses, particularly efforts to stigmatize all U.S. residents of Japanese descent as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

A prime example of this is the film December 7th, created by John Ford, legendary director of classics such as Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath. The first version of the film was 82 minutes long. In it, an idealistic figure representing the U.S. talks with “C,” a figure meant to represent his conscience. Uncle Sam naively believes the racial and ethnic diversity of Hawaii isn’t a problem, but C helps him see that the large Japanese American population is a threat, even when they appear to be loyal, patriotic, assimilated Americans. Japanese-language telephone books and newspapers are ominously shown as evidence of their lack of true American-ness. Start at about 8:40:

The message is unequivocal: Japanese Americans are untrustworthy, and any actions or behaviors that seems to indicate that a Japanese American is loyal to the U.S. provides potential evidence of just how deceitful they are — they cover their treachery with an appearance of patriotism. At around 18:25, Uncle Sam tries to defend freedom of religion, but C patiently explains the problem with this view. C says he’s not saying all Japanese Americans are disloyal, but that he’s “just presenting the facts,” and can’t be responsible for separating the loyal from the disloyal.

Ford cut the film down to 34 minutes before releasing it. This shortened version of December 7th won the 1943 Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject:

The attack scene from December 7th is often assumed to be actual documentary footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Dower points out that it was almost entirely staged by Ford, since there was almost no existing film of the surprise attack available.

Dower also discusses the animated Disney film Victory through Air Power. The film was based on the book Victory through Air Power, by Alexander Seversky. Seversky’s book justifies bombing non-combatant targets as a way to demoralize the enemy and disrupt supply lines and communication. Civilians would no longer be seen as inherently off-limits for military operations. The film served as propaganda for this view, which increasingly took hold in the U.S. military, eventually justifying dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You can find the entire film on Youtube, but the most relevant segment is at the end; the widespread bombing of (noticeably resident-free) Japanese cities is presented as key to a glorious victory by the U.S.:

These films served to justify military strategies (internment camps and bombing non-military targets) that could have faced stiff resistance by drawing on popular fears in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. In both cases, they widened the circle of legitimate potential targets of war-related government actions to not just Japanese soldiers and government officials but to the entire civilian population of Japan, as well as anyone with Japanese ancestry living in the U.S.

For a little dose of vintage sexism, I present to you an old Van Heusen ad, sent in by Leticia (via 22 Words):

I am still trying to figure out what a “man-talking” tie is, exactly, but I am more than happy to cede the “power-packed patterns” on those ties to the world of men.

Recently I posted about the loss of genetic diversity in industrial agriculture, partially due to increasing concentration at every link in food commodity chains, from the farm to the grocery store. This image from the Centre for Research on Globalization, sent in by Rick T. of the University of Western Ontario, illustrates the process of concentration at the farm level. In the U.S., the total number of farms has fallen from an all-time high of over 6.3 million to just over 2.2 million. Meanwhile, the average size per farm nearly tripled between 1900 and 2007, from 147 to 418 acres.

A 2010 USDA report provides detailed information about the structure of U.S. agriculture. For instance, overall, average farm household income is higher than the U.S. average, though I’d rather see the median income to reduce the impact of outliers on the calculation. But as the bottom line shows, farm households are highly dependent on non-farm income for their survival. Overall, farm income accounts for less than 20% of the total income of farming families:

And as we saw recently with the mortgage interest deduction program, the benefits of farm subsidies are unevenly distribution. Small-scale family farms (defined as operator-owned farms with less than $250,000 in sales — which does not mean $250,000 in profit, of course) make up 88.3% of all farms in the U.S., while large-scale family farms (operator-owned farms with sales over $250,000) are 9.3%:

While small-scale family farmers receive the majority of land-retirement payments — that is, subsidies in return for taking land out of agricultural production — large-scale family farms are the major beneficiaries of commodity payments such as price supports that subsidize the cost of production:

Of course, that doesn’t mean that small-scale producers don’t benefit from farm subsidy programs, but as with the mortgage interest tax deduction, they are set up to reward size — the more you have, the more you get. Whether farm subsidies are essential to preserving small family farms or actually hurt them by artificially supporting capital-intensive large-scale production is a topic of much debate within agricultural circles.

In Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, Rob Walker discusses one of the central dilemmas facing marketers: they are trying to get large numbers of people to buy the same thing, while convincing them that doing so in no way makes them conformists. How do you “keep it real” (a phrase repeated ad nauseam by the marketers Walker interviewed) and appear authentic and non-conformist while trying to get as many people as possible to buy the same product?

One solution is to frame buying your product not as a boring act of conformity, but instead as a way of expressing your own unique personal identity. Buying a product you’ve seen advertised doesn’t detract from your authenticity, it enhances it — even if you’re buying a mass-produced product that thousands or even millions of other people purchased identical copies of.

Bec G. sent in this an ad from Jeanswest Australia that illustrates this, asserting that their jeans are “as unique as you”:

Of course, as Bec pointed out, the models they chose to represent how unique Jeanswest customers are are all pretty uniformly thin, even the pregnant woman.

Sarah F. sent in another example. The Australian website for the sandwich chain Subway asks customers whether their preferred sandwich is unique:

I filled out the quiz, creating the only thing I ever get if I eat at Subway: a standard veggie sandwich, no tomatoes. I was then asked to give this amazing item its very own name, to be saved for posterity on the Subway website (if they approve the name): “You’ve just created a Sub that is a reflection of you, so let’s give it a name. Feel free to be creative, after all this is YOUR creation!”

Then it was time for the big reveal. The webpage reinforced the message that designing my very own personalized sandwich from their relatively limited stock list of ingredients is an important expression of my inner being:

I was so nervous! What if my sandwich wasn’t special? Was the honey oat bread too mainstream a choice? Oh, why didn’t I go with the chipotle sauce?!

But it all turned out ok!

In Australia, at least, I now know that my Subway sandwich choice separates me from the masses. What a relief!

Megan H. and Ami R. sent in contrasting examples of using gender to market fuel-efficient cars. Megan saw this ad (one in a series that plays on the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” Apple ads) advocating electric cars over gasoline-powered ones. In this ad, femininity is associated with environmental responsibility. The most stereotypically masculine man in the ad — the blue-collar worker in a hard hat and filthy clothes — represents the harmful oil industry. Beneficial, good wind energy, on the other hand, is personified by a pretty woman in a filmy dress. Her beauty renders the bad guys speechless:

Dodge, on the other hand, wants to distance its claims to fuel efficiency from any association with femininity. Ami found this ad for the new Dodge Charger in the magazine for Go! Chapel Hill, an organization that advocates less car use:

So here, fuel efficiency with is also associated with femininity, but in the negative sense of emasculation. The Charger is the one exception to the other fuel efficient cars out there. You can get better gas mileage and still protect your manly reputation.

For other examples of gender representations of the environment or environmental movement, see our previous posts on femininity and benign nature, using PETA tactics to oppose the BP oil spill, nature in vintage men’s magazines, and even girls can drive electric cars!

Last week I went to see the last Harry Potter movie. I was a bit startled that the pre-movie commercials included this ad (thanks to Melissa H.-J., Tom Megginson, and carlafrantastic for the link!):

I was startled both because I hadn’t expected a Summer’s Eve ad at a Harry Potter showing (the 14-year-old boy I had taken with me seemed to desperately wish he could disapparate on out of there) and by the idea that the most powerful thing in the entire world is women’s vaginas — or, as Melissa points out, men’s desperate desire to get access to them through violence toward one another, with women passively waiting around to see who wins so they know who to have sex with.

And as Tom (who blogs at Work that Matters) says, if someone is going to show their vagina “a little love,” perhaps they would best do so by avoiding irritating, unnecessary products that can actually exacerbate problems like yeast infections.

Summer’s Eve also released several more “Hail to the V” ads (all posted at Gawker), sent in by Leila R., Jamie D., Joel T., YetAnotherGirl, Maeghan D., and Finette. The ads inform women that they need to carry wipes for their genitals with them at all times, because you need to clean yourself down there multiple times a day to avoid being gross; Summer’s Eve helpfully created ads targeting different ethnic groups to be sure everyone understands how important this issue is:

Here’s the African-American version:
[Video removed]
This Latina version:
[Video removed]
And the White version:
[Video removed]
Vertical smile? Are they serious with this? And as Finette says, “They’ve managed to combine ‘less than fresh down there’ vagina-shaming [omg, what subtle hints has your vagina been trying to get your attention with?!] with ethnic stereotypes! Awesome!”

UPDATE: After a lot of criticism, Summer’s Eve has pulled the ads and seems to have gotten them removed from YouTube, so none of the videos we initially posted are available any more. However, Laura S. found a clip from TYT Network discussing the ad campaign, so you can get an idea of what they were like. Thanks, Laura!

In his classic 1973 overview of U.S. agribusiness and its effects on the food we eat, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times, Jim Hightower discusses how the search for market efficiencies had changed the tomatoes Americans could buy in their local supermarkets. Tomatoes posed a number of problems for modern industrial agriculture; in particular, they tended to get bruised or smashed when harvested by machine and transported long distances. To facilitate mechanical harvest and shipping, varieties were developed that were harder and tougher — often at the expense of other qualities, such as taste. This same process has occurred with many crops. For instance, I can buy huge, bright red strawberries year-round in the U.S. these days, as long as I don’t mind that they have only a hint of the rich taste of the strawberries my grandma used to grow.

As a result of concentration in agribusiness (including grocery chains) and selection of varieties that can withstand the mechanical harvesting and long-distance shipping required by the industrial food system, we see fewer and fewer varieties of crops on the shelf. Despite the efforts of heritage seed banks and heirloom variety enthusiasts, many have disappeared altogether; others are dangerously close to doing so. It’s an enormous loss of genetic diversity, of varieties that were developed over many years based on flavor, resistance to pests, ability to withstand drought, frosts, or other environmental stresses, and so on.

Dolores R. let us know that National Geographic posted an image based on a 1983 study by the Rural Advancement Foundation International that illustrates the loss of this genetic diversity. RAFI looked at a typical commercial seed catalog from 1903 — that is, a catalog of seeds targeting farmers producing for the market. They found a large number of varieties available.

But then they looked at the seed collection at the National Seed Storage Laboratory (now the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation). This government entity is in charge of collecting and storing seeds to preserve genetic diversity among crops and livestock. The bottom half of this image shows how many of the varieties in the 1903 catalog were in the lab’s collection as of 1983:

Of course, the NCGRP isn’t the only organization storing seeds; many private groups, such as Seed Savers Exchange, preserve heirloom varieties. And many varieties have been introduced, such as the Round-Up Ready crops developed by Monsanto to be compatible with Round-Up weed killer. The NCGRP has also added greatly to its collection over time. Nonetheless, many varieties have simply disappeared, reducing the genetic diversity available in our current agricultural system and increasing the risks should a virulent pest or disease attack the dominant varieties of crops and livestock. For more on this, see the full National Geographic article.

Last week I posted the results of a survey that found that many beneficiaries of government programs don’t recognize themselves as participating in a federal program at all. For instance, 60% of respondents who have written off their mortgage interest on their taxes didn’t see that as a government benefit or themselves as program beneficiaries. Basically, programs and policies that are disproportionately used by the middle- and upper-classes are taken for granted. I wrote,

…allowing you to write off mortgage interest (but not rent), or charitable donations, or the money you put aside for a child’s education, are all forms of government programs, ones that benefit some more than others. But the “submerged” nature of these policies hides the degree to which the middle and upper classes use and benefit from federal programs.

Brian McCabe, over at FiveThirtyEight, recently wrote a post about who benefits from the mortgage interest tax deduction program, which remains enormously popular among the general public. McCabe says,

Commentators often talk about the mortgage interest deduction as a prized middle-class benefit that enables households to achieve the American dream of homeownership. But despite their strong support for the deduction, middle-class Americans are not the primary beneficiaries of this federal tax subsidy.

If you aren’t familiar with the program, basically when you’re doing your taxes, you are allowed to reduce your taxable income by subtracting the amount you paid in mortgage interest that year. Home ownership isn’t treated equally — the tax deduction is worth more as the price of the home, and thus the amount of interest paid, goes up. McCabe points out that in 2009, this program meant that the federal government took in about $80 billion less than it would have otherwise, making it one of the most expensive tax policies and the single most expensive deduction offered to homeowners (much more than deductions for putting in energy-efficient windows, etc.).

But this expensive program is disproportionately used by relatively wealthy individuals. For instance, about a quarter of taxpayers making $40,000 – 50,000 a year claim the deduction, while over 75% of those making above $100,000 a year do:

The differences in usage is partly because the wealthy are more likely to own* homes. In addition, those with lower incomes generally buy cheaper houses and often find that they reduce their taxable income so little by writing off the mortgage interest that they’re better off taking the standard tax deduction than to itemize.

Because wealthier individuals are more likely to use the program at all, and when they do, generally have more mortgage interest to deduct, the benefits of the program go disproportionately to those with higher incomes. This image shows the proportion of all tax filers that fall into each income category, and the proportion of the total tax deduction benefit that goes to each category:

This is similar to what we see with farm subsidies: while small- and mid-sized farms benefit, the money spent on the program disproportionately goes to the largest farms.  The mortgage interest deduction program is discussed as a method for helping the middle-class achieve the American Dream of homeownership. And certainly it does make home ownership more attractive to many middle- and lower-income individuals. But it overwhelmingly benefits upper-income home buyers, at a significant loss of tax income for the federal government.

* On a side note, I find it odd that we say someone “owns” their home when they owe a mortgage on it. The second I signed a mortgage last year, I entered the much-praised category of the home-owning citizen. Yet as my mortgage-hating farm family has made me very aware, I’m not even close to truly owning my home at this point; I’m more of a special category of rent-to-own resident whose landlord is the bank or mortgage company.