art/literature

Lorë P. sent in examples of two stamp sets. She writes:

They are clear plastic you peel and put on blocks in order to stamp images… They are both made by a company called Sassafras Lass and are being sold at Joann Fabrics. One of the stamp sets is called “Girl Talk” and the other is “Boy Talk.”

“Girl Talk”

“Boy Talk”

Lorë did such a wonderful job describing these, I will leave it to her:

One of the first things that struck me was that both of these is that they have stamps that mention dad — “daddy’s girl” and “like father like son” but only the female one mentions mom (I guess it would be considered too emasculating to have “mommy’s boy?”)

Another interesting part of these stamps is that the “Girl talk” emphasizes the sweetness of girls – their giggles, their silliness, their angelic qualities (not to mention princess..). On the other hand, the male version has more objects – trucks, rockets, robots and “strong” traits – being brave and embracing adventure (and what does “all boy” mean anyway?).

The one overlap that I can see is the word “Laughter” – which on the girls segment is in very frilly cursive handwriting and on the male version written in an old cowboy font. This also points to the difference in fonts, where the male versions are more square and has no cursive. The girl version is almost all cursive, except for some very curly printing.

While I am not particularly shocked at finding this kind of stamps available to scrapbookers and cardmakers – I always wonder why we have to make the lines of difference so distinct… Of course these stamps are probably not being used by children, but by adults making things about or for children… of course, these stamps are couched in (from my experience) a predominately female dominated (although pretty conservative) hobby.

Thanks Lorë!

See also this post on gendered Disneyland T-shirts.

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.

Found via Digg. Though I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the letter (found here), it is rather interesting.

Text:

Miss Mary T. Ford
Searcy,
Arkansas

Dear Miss Ford,

Your letter of recent date has been received in the Inking and Painting Department for reply.

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.

The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to the directions.

In order to apply for a position as “Inker” or “Painter” it is necessary that one appear at the Studio, bringing samples of pen and ink and water color work. It would not be advisable to come to Hollywood with the above specifically in view, as there are really very few openings in comparison with the number of girls who apply.

Yours very truly,

WALT DISNEY PRODUCTIONS, LTD.

Last year, Fender Guitars unveiled the new Joe Strummer Signature Series ™, a pre-stressed replica of Strummer’s beloved guitar: a 1966 Fender Telecaster, which he played in the 101ers, the Clash, and with the Mescaleros from 1975 until his death in 2005. Here’s Strummer with his guitar:

Here are some screenshots of the replica from the website:

Some of the items available for customization:

A customized version:

Let’s just pause for a moment and appreciate the irony of that one. (For those of you with little knowledge of the Clash, let’s just say that they were pretty much the exact opposite of this guitar, ideologically speaking.)

According to Fender’s write-up, this guitar is cool because “All his life, [Strummer] vigorously championed individuality, self-expression and change-tenets often reflected in the constantly altered look of his favorite instrument – his Telecaster” and this guitar was built “to celebrate Strummer’s fierce sense of individuality.” Buy the thing and you can champion individuality and self-expression just like Joe! Well. . .just like Joe and the 1,499 other folks who buy the limited edition with the stickers.

But perhaps a more interesting question is this: does any of this affect what you can actually do with it? The kinds of songs you could write with it? The kinds of shows you could play? It probably wouldn’t, or at least no more so than any other Telecaster would by virtue of its technical specifications. But put it in the context of a room full of other musicians, who tend to hold strong ideas about the art/commerce relationship, and you may find yourself the proud owner of a Fender Stigma-caster, depending on the room and the musicians.

On the other hand, Strummer – an artist whose work often wrangled around the intersection of art and commerce  – was by many accounts a complex person who disdained orthodoxy in all its forms. He might have been tickled pink by the tensions and artistic possibilities inherent in such a symbolically loaded guitar. The Clash did, after all, write songs about their recording contracts. (Also, the surviving Strummers have to eat and how they manage their husband’s/father’s estate is no business of mine.)

What else can we unpack from this guitar? Pretty much the history of modernity. You start with “the guitar” – an instrument traditionally produced by artisans called luthiers. But this particular style of guitar – the Fender Telecaster – is the first commercially successful mass-produced solidbody electric guitar. (Henry Ford:Driving::Leo Fender:Rocking.) Introduced in 1950 as the Esquire,* renamed after slight design changes and then a lawsuit re: the name Broadcaster being property of Gretsch Instruments, assembled on a factory line from mass-produced interchangeable parts, sold in stores and catalogs, heard most often via media and broadcast for most music consumers, the 1966 Fender Telecaster is truly a Modern guitar.

But this particular model of the genus Telecaster is Late Modernity to its elusive core:  a simulacrum of a particular instrument that trades on symbols of authenticity. With its “road worn” look, its namesake’s reputation and artistic output, and the genre of music it evokes, it’s a composite replica of the idea of the guitar wielded by a working musician known to most of us as mass-mediated collective representation. It’s also worth remembering that the idea of “Joe Strummer” is itself an elusive symbol, one of a number of names and personas adopted by John Graham Mellor over the course of his lifetime, that has now taken on a life of its own.

Sure, there are more properly postmodern guitars out there, but they all belong to Sonic Youth.

* Technically speaking, the Esquire and the Broadcaster/Telecaster are different guitars – the former has one pickup and the latter two, and there are some refinements to the design – basically, the Telecaster is the “finished” product. But to the average eye – and especially so when they debuted, given their shared differences from 99% of the other guitars out there at the time –  they’re pretty much the same guitar. [Editor’s note: Potts can really geek out sometimes, as evidenced in this footnote.]

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Brady Potts is an entirely awesome sociologist specializing in soc of culture, co-editor of the book The Civic Life of American Religion, and the person we can always count on to geek out about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the Drive-By Truckers.

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

For other examples of the commodification of sub- (counter?) cultures, see here and here.

Breguet watches are extremely expensive luxury products; I found them for sale online starting at $11,000 and going up to $235,060 (on sale–$51,000 off!). I saw this ad for them in The New Yorker (where else?) and thought it was interesting how the company evokes a certain class sensibility by highlighting a flattering reference to Breguet written by an Important Literary Figure (Pushkin):

It’s also kind of interesting that the company clearly did not think their image would be damaged by the statement that the watch was worn by a “dandy,” a term often used to imply a man is overly feminine (though how negative the term is varies; recently, some hip hop stars like Andre 3000 of Outcast have adopted the term “dandy” and used it in a positive sense to indicate a man who is stylish and well-dressed, but without the negative implications of being effete).

I went to the Breguet website and read a bit about the watches. Each one has a “secret signature” and an individual number to guard against forgery. One section of the website is dedicated to “celebrated patrons”:

The House of Breguet was privileged to create timepieces for the diplomatic, scientific, military and financial elite. Among its clients, Queen Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte, Talleyrand, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Caroline Murat, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, Queen Victoria, Sir Winston Churchill and Arthur Rubinstein who put their confidence in the taste and artistry of Breguet.

There is also a section on “Breguet in Literature”:

The number of references to Breguet watches in French and foreign literature is an indication of the remarkable reputation enjoyed by both the firm and its founder. Breguet is now so deeply rooted in European culture that the name is virtually a sine qua non of any depiction of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie or, quite simply, a life of luxury and elegance. Stendhal, Mérimée, Pushkin, Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Thackeray and Victor Hugo are only some of the writers who have made reference to Breguet in their works…

The ad might be useful for a discussion of social class and the way “class” is often used not just to indicate a level of income, but as a personal characteristic: you “have class” or are “classy” if you like the particular things, speak and dress a certain way, etc. Here we see a connection between wealth, an appreciation for (French and foreign!) literature, an affinity for aristocratic figures who recognized “taste and artistry,” and a particular (extremely expensive) product that connects you to those ideas and symbolizes “luxury and elegance.” By wearing a Breguet watch, you’re associating yourself with all those indicators of classiness and status…in addition to screaming, “I’m rich enough to wear a quarter of a million dollars on my wrist,” of course.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how certain characteristics–like intelligence, artistic talent, and athleticism–are often understood to be inborn, innate, or natural.  If intelligence, for example, is believed to be inborn, the idea that people can nurture their intelligence and get smarter can get lost.  In which case, it might seem to be a fool’s errand to work to become better at things in which we don’t believe we are naturally gifted.  What potential could we collectively tap if we believed, instead, that the intelligence, artistic talent, and athleticism in each of us could be grown through effort?

I was reminded of these thoughts by this Nike commercial called “Fate” (found here).  Comments after the video:

This commercial posits that LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu were born to play football.  Such a narrative erases all of the incredibly hard physical and mental work that Polamalu and Tomlinson no doubt put in over their lives, at the same time that it discourages anyone who does not believe that “fate” has been so kind from trying to develop their own athletic ability.

Thorsten S. alerted us to a calendar illustrated with black-and-white nude photographs of Germans who have competed in the Paralympic Games. On the Web site of the photographers, Huenecken & Inselmann [link NSFW!], subjects include people in wheelchairs and people who use lower-limb prostheses.

Compare these portrayals of persons with disabilities to the portrayal of fetish model Viktoria, who was a Bizarre mag cover girl, apparently in part because she has a below-the-knee amputation. Do these calendar photos highlight the German athletes’ disabilities in the same way that the shoot of Viktoria fetishizes her disability? Alternatively, check out our earlier post about Disaboom, a community site whose ads for its dating service feature muscular and attractive people with disabilities. Do these calendar photos challenge the mainstream stereotype that people with disabilities can’t be sexy or strong?

By the way, how do gender expectations and stereotypes play out in these photos? If you go to the gallery linked early in this entry, you can see a man holding a gun in a position that clearly makes it analogous to his penis. You can also see an especially objectified [decapitated = identity erased] woman on horseback, as well as a woman in a stereotypical beach bunny/pinup pose. The tendency of the calendar to revert to dull assumptions of how men and women should be posed and photographed complicates any radical agenda of celebrating the bodies of people with disabilities.

Pictures with artistic NSFW nudity below the cut.

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Speaking of the “angry black man” stereotype and the idea that being angry about racism is out-of-line (see point three after the block quote), a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. commissioned by the U.S. government was considered too angry looking by the U.S. Commission On Fine Arts (see news stories here and here). Its sculptor was required to make him seem less “confrontational” before it was allowed to be installed on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Via Gawker.

Marc sent in this image (found here):

According to this site, the photo was taken by Margaret Bourke-White; this site, where you can buy old issues of LIFE magazine, lists the photo in the index for the February 15, 1937, issue. Apparently the people standing in line were flood victims.

This is a great image for sparking discussion about “the American Way” and what that was meant to be (clearly white and presumably middle-class, from the mural), and the ways in which non-whites (and poor whites) are often invisible in depictions of what America is. And, of course, it could be a great image for a discussion of rhetoric and propaganda (for instance, murals proclaiming how wonderful the standard of living is even though the Great Depression was by no means over).

Thanks, Marc!