media

Months ago Ryan emailed us about a video game called Katawa Shouju (sometimes translated as Disabled Girls or Crippled Heart). From the website:

Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends—and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right.

A design sketch of the girls:

An article at GameSetWatch refers to the game having a “perverse and contemptible premise.”

Ryan says,

A lot of the discussion about this game seems to be about the disabilities of the girls and how disgusting it is. I don’t really share that opinion personally…I don’t really see what’s wrong with casting a girl with burn scars on her face as a love interest within a game. Or for that matter , what’s wrong with casting a girl with no legs or deformed arms as a love interest? I mean, it’s one thing to fetishize…but on the other hand it might be good for someone who has similar disabilities to feel like they can be desirable.

It’s an interesting point. I suspect there are things about the video game I would find disturbing, and if the girls are portrayed in a ridiculing way, that’s problematic. But some of the reactions to it seem to assume that having a person with a disability as a potential love interest is automatically ridiculing them. But why would that be? Why would it be more “contemptible” to portray these women as romantic/sexual interests any more than other women in similar games? Some of the objections to the game are based on the idea that you must be laughing at people with disabilities if you show them as sexy or romantically interesting. But that’s based on the idea that of course they can’t really be sexy, so it’s mean to portray them that way…which points out some interesting assumptions about people with disabilities and their romantic and sexual lives.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Reader Magnetic Crow says,

I think what bothers me about this is the premise of a “school for disabled kids only”, the fact that the girls are ‘othered’ from the get-go by this isolation, and the fact that this is probably being made to play to an exploitative fetish. Were it any other dating sim, and one of the girls available for dating just happened to have been born with no arms, or had lost her legs in a traffic accident, I would feel a lot more comfortable.

Other posts about video games: Evony’s boob ads, gender and race in RuneScape, Border Patrol game, Miss Bimbo and Sexy Beach 3, Rape Simulator, My Life, Medal of Honor’s all-White military, a game called Battle Raper that is exactly what it sounds like, blaming moms for video game addiction, sales of Grand Theft Auto, and “military entertainment.”

We also have a posts of a girl with a limp as an ugly friend, Goodyear ad featuring a sad kid in a wheelchair, nude calendar of Paralympic athletes, dolls with Down’s Syndrome, models with disabilities in a British Top Model show, representing people with disabilities, what is an “alt model”?, and amputee model Viktoria.

Michelle Braun allegedly runs a very large prostitution ring and may be making a deal with the authorities in which she reveals her clients.  The clip from KTLA news below reveals our bizarre, confused relationship with sexuality.  In the clip, reporters suggest that her celebrity clients are likely “shaking in their boots” and “sweating bullets,” have a sort of gleeful disapproval of the whole thing, and yet can’t stop making suggestive remarks: it’s a “juicy” story, Braun is “cozying up to feds,” has a “naughty list” that may be “exposed,” she’s going to tell “all of her dirty little secrets” (that one is used twice).  Of course, you could also just measure the hypocrisy by the on-site reporter’s self-satisfied laugh.

Most of the good stuff is in the first 40 seconds, the remainder is just embarrassingly bad reporting:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Elizabeth M. and Toban B. sent in a clip from the British TV show “That Mitchell and Webb Look” that has a humorous take on how advertisers target men and women:

Conor Clarke, at the Atlantic, offered up a graphic to call into question those who accuse Obama of being a socialist (Jonah Goldberg, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, Phyllis Schlafly, Richard Viguerie, and The Republican National Committee, for example):

According to the graphic, Obama has nationalized 0.21% of the corporate and business assets since taking office.

Clarke says:

Socialism, like farenheit, comes in degrees. Sure, a government that nationalizes GM is “more socialist” than one that does not, even if it doesn’t mean we’re living “under socialism.” But differences of degree shouldn’t obscure differences of kind, and as Tim Fernholz says, “it’s clear that putting the government in charge of private production is not the Obama administration’s guiding philosophy.”

He adds:

If it were, 99.79% of the American corporate assets that existed at the start of the Obama administration would not remain in private hands. The differences of degree are so small that they aren’t worth mentioning. And yet, somehow, they keep getting mentioned.

The fact that whether Obama is a socialist “keep[s] getting mentioned” is an example of agenda setting.   Those who control media content have the ability to set the agenda.  That is, they can tell us what to think about (though not necessarily what to think).   By constantly asking questions or making accusations about Obama’s socialist inclinations, high-profile individuals encourage us to engage with the idea… even if only to refute it (as Clarke does).  Obama’s supposed socialism is on the agenda, even though there is little rationale (as Clarke shows) for such a heightened degree of concern.

For more examples of agenda setting, see these posts on Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” and the New Yorker cover scandal.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

I know I’ve been negligent in my posting for a few days. I was grading and busy watching old Michael Jackson videos and performances on YouTube and feeling unexpectedly sad about everything his life represented, and also the realization that people I idolized as a kid are now in their 50s.

Anyway, Sarah N. sent in a link to a story at the Mail Online about how women’s perceived attractiveness plays a part in deciding which matches will be played on the main court at Wimbledon. The organizers of Wimbledon don’t try to hide the fact that the appearance of the competitors is taken into account when scheduling matches:

…the All England Club admitted that physical attractiveness is taken into consideration. Spokesman Johnny Perkins said: ‘Good looks are a factor.’

Some women who were scheduled to play on Center Court, the main area, and their world rankings:

World No. 45 (unseeded) Gisela Dulko

World No. 59 (unseeded) Maria Kirilenko

No. 28 seed Sorana Cirstea

Women who played on the other courts, with their rankings:

No. 5 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova

No. 2 seed Serena Williams:

Attractiveness doesn’t seem to play such a factor in scheduling the men’s matches:

In the men’s tournament, five-times winner Roger Federer and British hope Andy Murray invariably play on Centre.

The scheduling of women by perceived attractiveness may have something to do with attracting television viewers. A comment from a BBC television employee:

But obviously it’s advantageous to us if there are good-looking women players on Centre Court…Our preference would always be a Brit or a babe as this always delivers high viewing figures.

Of course, it’s nothing new that female athletes are judged on their appearances as well as their athletic abilities. Female athletes have often felt pressure to meet conventional standards of beauty. This isn’t just about looks; it’s also about doing heterosexual femininity. Female athletes have long been suspected of being lesbians, particularly if they did not seem to actively seek male sexual approval. In fact, WNBA players have been encouraged to wear make-up and jewelry, have their hair long, and bring up their boyfriends, husbands, and/or children to prove their heterosexuality. Thus, in the end women’s appearances, and willingness to play up their gender in an approved way, often trumps their athletic accomplishments in a way that male athletes don’t usually face.

Other posts about female athletes and attractiveness are here, here, here, here (watch the second video), here, and here.

From ABC News, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen … is taking fire for its comic relief: a pair of slang-spewing, illiterate Chevy hatchbacks named Skids and Mudflap… the robot duo is being labeled a racist caricature.” According to Yahoo News, “They’re forced to acknowledge that they can’t read. One has a gold tooth.”

I haven’t seen the movie, so it’s difficult to comment directly, but I wonder if this another example of the dehumanizing racial stereotypes. Michael Bay, the director, largely dismisses the concerns. “Listen, you’re going to have your naysayers on anything,” he said. “It’s like is everything going to be melba toast? It takes all forms and shapes and sizes.”

Miguel of El Forastero told us about an interactive map at the New York Times that presents data on murders in New York City from 2003 to today, broken down in various ways. The data come from NYPD reports, and of course there are definitely issues with taking police reports as a measure of actual crime, but my understanding is that while police reports on things like theft and rape are a poor measure of how often those crimes actually occur, they’re considered much more accurate regarding murder. In each map below, I include all murders from 2003 to 2009, but you can select particular years as well.

As many of us would suspect, the majority of murders occur at night (though the site didn’t specify exactly what hours are defined as “night” and “day”):

The racial breakdown of both victims and perpetrators are extremely similar:

The next two maps show that murder is an overwhelmingly male activity. When I discuss crime with my students, they usually assume most perpetrators are male, but because their ideas of assult and murder often relate to domestic violence or rape, they are always very surprised to find out that most victims of murder are also male. As we see, women are more likely to be victims than they are to be perpetrators, but still, the vast majority of murder victims are men:

Murder is also linked to age, with 18 to 34 year olds being most likely to be murdered or to murder someone else:

I found the accompaning article in the NYT rather interesting as an example of overemphasizing the likelihood of murder. Here are the first two paragraphs:

A young boxer was shot dead outside a Bronx bodega at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday last August. Weeks later, a 59-year-old woman was beaten to death on a Saturday night on the side of a Queens highway. On the last Sunday in September, violence exploded as five men were killed in a spate of shootings and stabbings between midnight and 6 a.m.

Seven homicides in New York City. None connected in any way but this: They happened during the summer months, when the temperatures rise, people hit the streets, and New York becomes a more lethal place.

A few paragraphs down:

Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across the decades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific.

Only in paragraph 6 do we get this information:

Of course, the dominant and most important trend involving murder in New York has been the enormous decline in killings over the last 15 years, to levels not seen since the early 1960s.

From reading the first several paragraphs, the impression is that NYC is awash in a “spate” of murders, making it a “lethal” place full of “deadly brutality.” Only in one small section do they acknowledge that, in fact, murders are down significantly. Now, of course, that doesn’t take away from the horror of the murders that do occur, but it feels like a bit of fear-mongering. This is a common trend in the mass media–newscasts often give a lot of coverage to crimes, particularly murders and assaults, for instance–and it gives the public the idea that crime is common (and increasing) and the world is a dangerous place.

The emphasis on how dangerous summer is also seemed a bit disproportionate. As the first map above illustrates, yes, a higher percentage of murders occur June through September, but given the language of the article, you’d expect a much bigger difference between those months and other times of year.

Thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for sending this speech by Joss Whedon (responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer) at an Equality Now event. His comments begin at 2:00 (after an introduction by Meryl Streep):

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.