Arturo R. Garcia, at Racialicious, posted this graphic illustrating how the cast of Heroes has become increasingly white over its four seasons:
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Nora R. sent us a link to an article at Band of Thebes about how promotional materials for the movie “A Single Man,” staring Colin Firth, have been altered to imply that the central relationship in the movie is heterosexual, and to eliminate references to the fact that Colin Firth’s character also has male lovers. A poster for the movie:
The first trailer:
The second trailer, which emphasizes heterosexual desire:
From the post at Band of Thebes (quote is originally from another article, but you have to sit through a 30-second ad to get to it; there’s a link at the Band of Thebes post if you want to see it):
Peter Knegt reports:
“The new trailer essentially is altered to suggest the core of the film is the relationship between Colin Firth and Julianne Moore’s characters, even removing from the end of the trailer the names of both Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult (who play Firth’s love interests). Moreover, in the first trailer, we see Firth’s character kiss both Goode and Moore, in the second we just get Moore. There’s also a sequence of shots in the first trailer which crosscuts Firth, who plays a professor in the film, staring into the eyes of both a female student and a male student. In the second, as you might guess, we only get the female (in a telling twist, instead of cutting to the male eyes, the trailer cuts to a quote from Entertainment Weekly saying ‘[Firth’s] performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race’).”
Of course, studios often manipulate what a movie appears to be about to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. If you saw some of the previews for “Twilight” that were shown before movies that targeted men, you’d think the movie was a lot more violent and action-heavy than it actually was (I presume to the dismay of some of the viewers who went to see it thinking they were seeing a vampire action movie).
But it’s interesting that a movie in which the main male character’s relationships with other men is a central element is advertised with that main plot point obscured.
Cate M. emailed us about the promo for the movie “The Killer Inside Me,” saying,
The level of violence is at NSFW levels and quite possibly one of the most ‘trigger warning’ vids I’ve ever seen used to promote a non-horror film.
We get a lot of submissions about sexualized violence toward women, so I thought, “well, ok, we’ll see.” And then I watched it, and at 1:15 in had to pause because I was already horrified. Here’s the whole 5:42 promo. It’s Not At All Safe for Work, and you won’t want to watch it if scenes of sexualized brutality toward women would be a trigger for you. And also, I guess, Spoiler Alert, if that’s your main concern.
UPDATE: The promo keeps being taken down; here’s a link that works for now, but I don’t know for how long.
Clearly, Casey Affleck’s character is a sadistic asshole (the cigar on the guy’s hand), but in the promo, at least, the graphic, sexualized violence is reserved for women…who also appear to like it, at least for a while. Jessica Alba gives in to him, and apparently starts a relationship with him, after he pulls her pants down and whips her. Perhaps that’s because she’s a prostitute; of course she’d like a dominant man who plays rough, right?
The thing is, you could make this movie and tell the same story without actually showing all the violence in such a graphic way. Movies imply things all the time. It’s a choice to show this type of violence toward women as a form of entertainment…and to show the women liking it.
See our posts on increases in violence toward women on primetime TV, sexualized violence on TV crime procedurals, and the movie “DeadGirl.”
Parents Television Council just released their new data comparing the incidence of violence against women and girls by CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX during prime time sweeps in 2004 and 2009 (report here). They found a 120% increase in depictions of violence against women and girls amidst a steady rate of overall frequency of violence.
They write:
Cumulatively, across all study periods and all networks, the most frequent type of violence was beating (29%), followed by credible threats of violence (18%), shooting (11%), rape (8%), stabbing (6%), and torture (2%). Violence against women resulted in death 19% of the time.
Violence towards women or the graphic consequences of violence tends overwhelmingly to be depicted (92%) rather than implied (5%) or described (3%).
So those’re the numbers, how about some examples of the normalization of violence against women: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, and forty-three.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Jeff Brunner put together this analysis of the evolution of the Disney princess. What do you think? Progress?
Sent in by Fiona A.
UPDATE: Commenter Jackie sent in this version for the Disney princes:
NEW (Mar. ’10)! Kristyn G. sent in this entertaining Disney Princess spoof on Cosmo (by Dan O’Brien and Matt Barrs):
For most posts on Disney princesses, look here, here, here, here, and here. Two other great posts include this rejection letter (“we don’t hire women”) and this post on the original inclusion of black slaves in Fantasia.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
As a fan of both sci fi and pre-WWII pop culture, I naturally have a lot of affection for Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. There’s much to be enjoyed about the original comic strip (which basically invented the style that led to the creation of super-hero comics), the 1936 serial starring Buster Crabbe, and even the 1980 movie, which I’ve mentioned before. The 1970’s softcore porn version, Flesh Gordon, is also a lot of fun. Although the various incarnations get pretty complicated, the basic story is of a regular guy from Earth who ends up on a bizarre alien planet, where he inadvertently becomes a hero in the struggle against Emperor Ming, the tyrant who has been keeping the whole planet under his thumb. With the recent rebirth of big budget sci fi and comic book adaptations, the time almost seems perfect for a new Flash Gordon movie. It’s never quite been done cinematic justice, and the basic story would hold up well to a modern interpretation.
Unfortunately, there’s one rather big problem: Emperor Ming. As the name implies, Flash’s nemesis is an unreconstructed “yellow peril” Asian stereotype. Despite being an alien, he’s undeniably portrayed as the worst sort of racist view of a Chinese ruler. He’s a vindictive, inscrutable tyrant with an affection for ornate finery and a lecherous eye for (white) Earth women. In the original comic he has bright yellow skin, long fingernails, a high-collared robe, and a Fu Manchu goatee.
Unsurprisingly, the serial was faithful to this version, casting a white actor named Charles Middleton and putting him in the same kind of “yellowface” make-up that was common in those days for portrayals of Asian characters. Of course, the actual skin tone was irrelevant in a monochromatic film.
Concerns about racism never even entered anyone’s mind until the 1980 film. By that time, it was necessary to be at least a little racially sensitive (but not too much). The answer was to leave Ming basically unchanged, while pretending there was never anything Asian about him. Swedish actor Max von Sydow was given a look that was immediately recognizable as the classic Ming, but with just enough of the Asian elements replaced with a more futuristic, “alien” look for plausible deniability.
The animated versions of Ming, in both the Filmation’s Flash Gordon series and the later Defenders of the Earth, took this idea a step further. Ming was given green skin, as if to say, “See, this guy’s clearly an alien! How could you accuse him of representing an Earthly race?”
Even with these attempts at a more extraterrestrial appearance, however, anyone who’s at all familiar with longstanding racist depictions of Asian men can recognize Ming as an embodiment of that unfortunate tradition. Meanwhile, more sympathetic characters who are clearly of the same race as Ming, such as his traitorous daughter Aurra and her lover Prince Barin, were unambiguously white. They did have yellow skin in the original comics, but even then they were less recognizable Asian than Ming. Later portrayals, even the cartoons in which Ming is green, show them as totally caucasian. The message seems to be that the more evil you are, the more alien you are, and alien in this case looks a lot like Chinese.
Naturally, when the Sci Fi Channel decided to adapt Flash Gordon for TV in 2007, they were eager to avoid anything that could be perceived as racism. Their answer to the Ming problem was to completely remake the character, removing every bit of his previous look to create a very white sort of fascist dictator.
There was a lot wrong with this adaptation (it was unwatchably boring, for one), but one of the complaints against it was that Ming was lackluster and missing everything that had made him a memorable villain. Regardless of his origins, we expect certain things from Ming: a bald head, facial hair, an ornate robe. Exoticism. So what is to be done? There can be no Flash Gordon without Ming the Merciless, but it’s possible that Ming is a character too wrapped up in racism to ever escape.
In my idle moments I’ve given some thought to how Hollywood could pull off a successful Flash Gordon revamp, and the only idea I have for Ming is this: don’t run away from his faux-Chinese heritage; push it in the other direction. Cast a Chinese actor as Ming, and make Aurra, Barin, and the rest of their people equally Chinese. Eliminate Earth entirely, setting the story in the future and making Flash’s planet one that was colonized by the United States, while Ming’s planet was colonized by China. You don’t need exposition for this- just imply it with production design. For Ming’s costumes, create a futuristic variation on what Chinese emperors actually wore, rather than just an American’s simplistic idea of the look. Do away with Ming’s predatory behavior toward Flash’s girlfriend. It’s a creepy and dated element regardless of his race. Finally, sweep away the blond=good/dark=bad undertone of the original by making Flash Gordon black. After all, it would make a great role for Will Smith, a charismatic action hero who’s been hurting for a sci fi property that’s actually worth watching.
As for the role of Ming himself, there are plenty of aging action stars who could pull it off. Given the inevitable campiness of the project, Jackie Chan might work. I’d suggest Chow Yun Fat, except that it could be hard to distinguish his version of Ming from the character he played in the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
But would this be enough to redeem the character and the franchise? Maybe privileged white fans like me need to accept that some characters and stories have too much bigotry in their history to ever be redeemed. After all, nobody is trying to create an acceptable new version of Uncle Remus (although I say this with hesitation, because it seems possible that someone in a locked room at Disney might right now be doing that very thing). If there is to be no more Flash Gordon, I’ll accept that, but I do wish someone could find a way to solve the problem of Emperor Ming.
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Dustin Collins is pursuing an MA at the Ohio University School of Film. When he has time between classes and screenings, he blogs about film, pop culture, and Betty Boop at okaywithme.
If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.
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.
Larry Harnisch, of the Daily Mirror, who spends a lot of time at his job going through the L.A. Times‘ archives, found this story from 1969:
Of course, most airlines had strict requirements for flight attendants’ physical appearance, including weight limits and guidelines for hair and makeup. But Renwick argued that her hair was much shorter than many White flight attendants’ hair. Many in the African American community felt she was being punished not for the length of her hair, but for wearing it in a natural style instead of straightening it. United eventually paid her $5,000, “endors[ed] the Afro hairstyle,” and offered her her job back, and offer she did not accept.
Also check out our recent post on Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair.
In a completely unrelated post, I found this advertisement for the movie Staircase on Larry’s blog:
Text:
What makes a man live with another man? What makes them claw at each other…humiliate each other…yet never leave each other?
Under the title “Staircase” it says “the story of a marriage made in hell.” Larry says, “Rex Harrison and Richard Burton play two hairdressers who live together…”
Larry’s post also includes a review from September 26, 1969, that contains the following memorable phrases (the image is too small to read if I post it here, so click over to Larry’s post to see it):
…a pair of querulous old queans [sic]
They are bitchiness itself…
…two failed half-men…
…the boys’ ghastly mothers…
…what, with the deepest of ironies, is called the gay world.
That’s something else, eh?
Kate McL. sent us a link to this comic commenting on Hollywood casting and race.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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.
