{"id":62416,"date":"2014-04-21T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T14:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62416"},"modified":"2014-06-09T00:25:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T05:25:11","slug":"the-sinking-of-quicksand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/04\/21\/the-sinking-of-quicksand\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sinking of Quicksand"},"content":{"rendered":"

“For many of us, quicksand was once a real fear,” write the producers at Radio Lab<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It held a vise-grip on our imaginations, from childish sandbox games to grown-up anxieties about venturing into unknown lands. But these days, quicksand can’t even scare an 8-year-old.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interviewing a class of fourth graders, writer\u00a0Dan Engber discovered that most understood the concept, but didn’t find it particularly worrisome. \u00a0“I usually don’t think about it,” said one. \u00a0They were more afraid of things like aliens, zombies, ghosts, and dinosaurs. \u00a0But they understood that it was something that people used<\/em> to be afraid of:\u00a0“My dad told me that when he was little his friends always said ‘look out that could be quicksand!'”<\/p>\n

Engber became fascinated with what happened to quicksand. \u00a0He found a source of data — compiled by, of all things, quicksand sexual fetishists<\/a> — that included every movie scene that involved quicksand from the 1900s to the 2000s. \u00a0Comparing this number to the total number of movies produced allowed him to show that quicksand had a lifecourse. \u00a0It rose in the ’40s, skyrocketed in the ’60s, and then fell out of favor.<\/p>\n

\"1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Engber found a pattern in the data. \u00a0In quicksand’s early years, the movie scenes featured quicksand as a very serious threat. \u00a0But, after quicksand peaked, it became a \u00a0joke. \u00a0In the ’80s, quicksand even made it into My Little Pony and Perfect Strangers. \u00a0Later, in discussions about plot lines for Lost,\u00a0<\/em>the idea of quicksand was dismissed as ridiculous.<\/p>\n

I guess it’s fair to say that quicksand “jumped the shark.”<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

In sociology, we call this the social construction of social problems: the fact that our fears don’t perfectly correlate with the hazards we face<\/a>. \u00a0In this case, media is implicated. What is it making us fear today?<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“For many of us, quicksand was once a real fear,” write the producers at Radio Lab: It held a vise-grip on our imaginations, from childish sandbox games to grown-up anxieties about venturing into unknown lands. But these days, quicksand can’t even scare an 8-year-old. Interviewing a class of fourth graders, writer\u00a0Dan Engber discovered that most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[233,329,2123,253,129,343,293,23647],"class_list":["post-62416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-emotion","tag-environmentnature","tag-history","tag-media","tag-tvmovies","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-social-problems"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/113.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62416"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62851,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62416\/revisions\/62851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}