One of the things that continually stuns me about the U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan is how little the average American is expected to sacrifice. Yes, many Americans are losing loved ones in this war. Other than those immeasurable sacrifices, however, most Americans are not asked to change a thing about their lives.
In contrast, during World War II, Americans were asked to make significant sacrifices, changing their daily lives and consumption patterns. Carpooling, for example, to save gas and rubber and staying off the phones.
Vintage Ads posted another great example of government propaganda encouraging the average person to change their lives for the war effort. In this case, the propaganda is British and they implore citizens not to waste food:
U.S. propaganda and advertising similarly encouraged citizens (i.e., women) to save food and stretch their rations (both from 1943):
Abby Kinchy, Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Richard M., and Alana B., who blogs at Pecan Pie, sent us a link to a post by Maya at Feministing about an anti-domestic violence PSA from South Africa. The group that created the ad, People Opposing Women Abuse, set up an experiment of sorts. A man first played drums loudly in his townhouse, quickly leading to multiple complaints by neighbors about the noise and a written warning. On a different night, the group loudly played a tape of what sounded like a violent dispute between a man and a woman. The reaction? Watch:
Aside from the obviously horrifying implications about domestic violence, I think it’s an interesting illustration of what people feel comfortable intervening or complaining about. As Maya points out in the original post, we all like to think we would immediately be at the door or on the phone with police, but many of us have, at one point or another, encountered a situation where we didn’t know whether to intervene or not:
…I once sat in a subway station in Manhattan late at night and watched a man try to get a sobbing, drunk woman to leave with him. I hesitated, not sure what to do. A few minutes later the police arrived; someone had acted, but it wasn’t me. Just last week, I saw a man aggressively slap a woman’s butt as she walked past in my neighborhood. I looked the other way, and she didn’t say anything either. I ignore sexual harassment—directed at me or others—pretty much every day.
I suspect what is going on here is a mixture of factors: that we put violence between partners into a different, less serious category than, say, a fist-fight between strangers at a bar, an unwillingness to intervene in what many think of as a private family matter, and fear about our own safety if we get involved or call authorities, among others.
For a thorough discussion of the so-called “bystander effect,” and the complex reasons people may not report behavior they find inappropriate, check out this article (free of charge) from the Journal of the International Ombudsmen Association.
Both Linda Jay and a colleague of mine, Dr. Caroline Heldman, drew my attention to the new Minnie Mouse-themed line at Forever 21. The line is a collaboration between Disney and the fashion outlet and the mouse has been re-modeled, so to speak.
What must one do to Minnie to make her an acceptable fashion icon? Starve her down to a stick figure, apparently.
Annie Leonard tackles e-waste (what happens after we’re done with our computers, cell phones, etc) in the latest 7-minute edition in her Story of Stuff series (see also her first story of stuff and her analysis of bottled water and cap and trade).
Brian McCabe put up a post at Five Thirty Eight about changes in public attitudes toward letting gays and lesbians serve in the U.S. military, using data from ABC/Washington Post polls that asked whether gays and lesbians should be able to serve and whether they should be allowed to serve while openly disclosing their sexual orientation.
The red line below indicates those who said gays and lesbians who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve. The blue line indicates responses for those who agreed that gays and lesbians should be able to serve if they didn’t disclose their sexual orientation — a position that basically aligns with the military’s current Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.
When DADT was passed in 1993, less than half of those surveyed thought gays and lesbians should be able to openly serve, though over 60% supported allowing them to serve as long as they didn’t disclose their sexual orientation. But notice the dramatic changes in the last 17 years:
Support among the general public for allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, without any restrictions, has increased greatly. In 2008, 75% of respondents supported such a policy. Also notice the gap between the two options has narrowed. In the 1990s, a significant portion of the population was comfortable with gays and lesbians in the military only under a DADT-type situation, where anyone who wasn’t straight had to keep quiet about it. Today the overwhelming majority of respondents support a non-restrictive policy, and the additional support gained by adding the possibility of requiring gays and lesbians to hide their sexual orientation isn’t nearly as large as it used to be.
Whether Congress will repeal DADT is still unclear. But the trend among the general public is pretty clear, from this and other polls: Americans no longer need the reassurance of a policy that promises to restrict gays’ and lesbians’ sexuality in order to support their military service.
Advertisers have mystified chocolate, portraying it as an intoxicant possessing the power to comfort, reward and satisfy women’s sexual desires. In doing so, these ads instruct the viewer to frame and interpret their own chocolate cravings in ways that overcome any resistance to consuming it.
To begin, consider this commercial for Dove:
Consider, also, this ad for Ferrero Rocher:
In particular, advertisers portray chocolate as satisfying female sexual desires. Such advertisements lead female viewers to understand their own desire for chocolate as a natural expression of their sexy femininity. The association of chocolate with luxury and the upper classes renders this sexuality socially acceptable. The symbolic sex is not that of the “crude lower class,” but the refined upper-class.
Text:
NOW IT CAN last longer THAN YOU CAN resist.
UNWRAP. INDULGE. REPEAT.
The misconception that chocolate is an aphrodisiac is exploited by these advertisements. The idea that chocolate contains chemicals that are similar to the mild-altering components found in ecstasy and marijuana, and evoke a feeling similar to falling in love, is now widespread. In actuality, studies have found that the amounts of these mood-enhancing chemicals are at such a low level that it is unlikely they lead to the euphoria that some feel when they consume chocolate. The findings of what could be called “chocolate propaganda research,” then, are negligible. Yet, marketing continues to perpetuate chocolate’s association with love and sex and its implied special relevance to women.
The association is so ubiquitous that it was mocked in an Axe commercial. Screenshot:
So why the insistence on indulgence?
Chocolate marketing must overcome the chief factor inhibiting women’s consumption: the fact that consumption of a fat, sweet food is inherently taboo for women, who are supposed to watch their weight. As a result, advertisers have replaced this food taboo with a sexual one. They have turned chocolate into a sexual, self-indulgent, private experience that invokes a taboo similar to that of masturbation. The intent is to equip her with an automatic inner-response to overcome her moment of self-restraint: the belief that chocolate consumption represents and enhances her femininity via satisfying her sexually, but tastefully, of course. Advertisers, then, overcome viewer resistance by shaping how they interpret and frame their own desires.
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Jamal Fahim graduated from Occidental College in 2010 with a major in Sociology and a minor in Film and Media Studies. He was a member and captain of the Occidental Men’s Tennis team. After he graduated, Jamal moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles with the intention of working in the film industry as a producer. His interests include film, music, digital design, anime, Japanese culture, improvising, acting, and of course, chocolate!
When companies advertise their products in largely segregated markets, they can tell different, even opposing stories to different groups of people with confidence that the messages will reach their intended audience, and not the unintended one. In an earlier post, for example, we showed how Basil Hayden Bourbon, Miller Lite, and Crown Royal were advertised differently in separated markets.
I was reminded of this phenomenon when DPK, as well as Sean M. of Santa Fe College, submitted this ad for Coca Cola in China. The ad ran during the 2008 Olympics. In fact, the Coca Cola company has partnered with the Olympics for over 80 years, so the fact that they advertised there isn’t surprising; they spent $75 million dollars advertising in China that year.
The slogan, “Red Around the World,” clearly references the color of Coca Cola marketing, but it is also the color China uses to represent itself, as well as the color associated with communism. Meanwhile, the visual of the ad invokes communist propaganda. Coca Cola appears to be solidly on China’s side in this ad, even leading the charge towards a Chinese communist take-over of the world (if I may be a bit dramatic).
This is in stark contrast to the long-standing effort by Coca Cola to market itself as a distinctly American drink.
I am supposing here that the ability to target their marketing to the Chinese (even during the Olympics?) offered Coca Cola some protection from a backlash against the company from both the left and the right (based on the argument that Coca Cola is pro-China/pro-communism/anti-human rights).
We mentioned earlier this month that sociologists Michael Kimmel and Abby Kinchy are nominating us for the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. The award is given to sociologists who have made “a significant impact on the manner in which sociology is taught at a regional, state, national, or international level.” Kimmel and Kinchy are seeking short anecdotes or testimonials from sociologists who have found Sociological Images to be useful in the classroom. We are so pleased at the response so far, and want to make one final, humble solicitation for such anecdotes. They can be emailed to Abby Kinchy (kincha@rpi.edu) or added right here in the comments.
Thank you all again for making our blog so very rewarding for us both.
We are super excited to report that the Ms. magazine blog has begun partially syndicating our work. If you’re a reader of their blog, you may have seen us pop up there already.
Sociological Images encourages people to exercise and develop their sociological imaginations with discussions of compelling visuals that span the breadth of sociological inquiry. Read more…
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