![]() Tags: class, gender, intersectionality, marriage/family, media, race/ethnicity, representation, welfare, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 4:10 Access: YouTube Summary: This is Sade’s music video for the song “Babyfather.” The video depicts Sade in what many Americans identify as the traditional homemaker role from the 1950s. On the one hand, this video can certainly be criticized as yet another sexist attempt to pair women with homemaking. On the other hand, the video's protagonist is a Black woman in a role the media almost exclusively reserves for white women. The video further challenges stereotypes by featuring this Black woman in a reasonably affluent suburb, thereby derailing easy and problematic associations of Blacks and poverty. The clip might be useful for jump starting a discussion about how the characters of visual media are so often narrowly written with a set of attributes, which are closely tied to the character's race and gender. Perhaps it's true that the re-creation of these raced and gendered archetypes are aligned with audience expectations, but one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the media was instrumental in creating those expectations in the first place. Because so few stories about Americans during the 1950s ever prominently feature Blacks as residents of the growing suburbs, this music video can be analyzed as an example of subversive media, and on that score, it works well with Beyoncé’s video "Why Don't You Love Me," (here) which similarly depicts an affluent Black woman homemaker in 1950s America. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
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![]() Tags: gender, nationalism, violence, war/military, masculinity, rape, war rape, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2007 Length: 3:01 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip features testimony from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War's Winter Soldier Hearing. The clip was taken from "Vietnam: American Holocaust." (See the whole 81 minute feature at LinuxBeach.org). The testimony offered in this clip from soldiers of the Vietnam War is useful for promoting discussion about men perpetrating sexual violence against women during times of war. I frame the clip, not as a psychological phenomenon, but as a sociological one, where women are raped because they signify the nation. Testimonies in the clip recount instances of American soldiers raping Vietnamese women, and in this way the clip counters the nationalist myth that American soldiers have not raped women during times of war. A related clip on The Sociological Cinema (here) comes out of the ongoing conflict in Libya and features footage of a Libyan woman, who was forcibly removed from a Tripoli hotel after she attempted to report her rape by soldiers. Submitted By: Lester Andrist ![]() Tags: children/youth, discourse/language, emotion/desire, foucault, gender, lgbtq, marriage/family, religion, sex/sexuality, social construction, discipline, heteronormative, femininity, masculinity, norms, socialization, purity ball, virginity pledge, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 1:23 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip describes and visually portrays an example of a purity ball, a formal ritual/party in which girls take a purity pledge (a.k.a. "virginity pledge") in front of their family and friends and, most prominently, they make this pledge to their fathers. I use this clip when introducing Foucault to my students, and I ask them how Foucault might make sense of purity balls and virginity pledges as a social and cultural phenomenon. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Tags: consumption/consumerism, marketing/brands, media, multiculturalism, race/ethnicity, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 0:31 Access: YouTube Summary: Although this commercial exhibits multicultural marketing strategies (like this Sprite ad), casting a racially/ethnically ambiguous spokesperson, what's most intriguing about the ad is that the marketers actually name the marketing strategies employed throughout the commercial. I find this clip is useful to use with students who critique sociology for "reading too much into" a particularly situation. Also noteworthy is the product name; marketed as having "you" in mind, this new Kotex product is called "U by Kotex." But we might also point to the (not so) subliminal messaging: "you buy Kotex." Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Tags: children/youth, class, education, inequality, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, rural/urban, schools, suburban, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2007 Length: 6:47 Access: YouTube Summary: An eye-opening experiment highlighting the inequalities between city and suburban schools. Students from both schools switch places for the day. Segment from The Oprah Show. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Tags: art/music, bodies, commodification, gender, inequality, intersectionality, media, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, social mvmts/social change/resistance, hip hop, masculinity, poetry, popular culture, sexism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2002 Length: 3:16 Access: YouTube Summary: Spoken word artist, Sarah Jones, performs at Def Poetry Jam. Remixing Gil Scott Heron's famous piece, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Jones asserts "your revolution will not happen between these thighs," drawing attention to the assertions around power and privilege that are made in hip hop lyrics at the expense of women. Jones points to what the "real" revolutionary potential of hip hop might entail. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Tags: biology, bodies, children/youth, gender, lgbtq, marriage/family, sex/sexuality, social construction, sex reassignment surgery, socialization, subtitles/CC, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2001 Length: 24:00 Access: no online access Summary: This lighthearted and poignant documentary profiles three sisters, ages 6, 9 and 11, struggling to understand why and how their Uncle Bill is becoming a woman. These girls love their Uncle Bill, but will they feel the same way when he becomes their new Aunt Barbara? With just weeks until Bill's first visit as Barbara, the sisters navigate the complex territories of anatomy, sexuality, personality, gender and fashion. Their reactions are funny, touching, and distinctly different. This film offers a fresh perspective on a complex situation from a family that insists there are no dumb questions (description from the film's website). Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Dave Zirin discusses controversy surrounding Caster Semenya Tags: biology, bodies, foucault, gender, intersectionality, lgbtq, media, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, social construction, sports, caster semenya, norms, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 3:44 Access: YouTube Summary: Interview and commentary with Dave Zirin, sports writer for "The Nation." Zirin discusses the case of South African runner, Caster Semenya, whose gender was called into question after her victory at the 2009 World Championships. This clip is useful for talking about the social construction of sex and gender, and the pervasive discomfort around - indeed "disciplining" of - bodies that do not neatly "fit" into clear sex and gender categories. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Tags: art/music, gender, media, inequality, sex/sexuality, social mvmts/social change/resistance, feminism, lady gaga, popular culture, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 2:44 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip, Lady Gaga explicitly articulates feminist sensibilities, most notably critiquing the sexual double standard that exists for men and women. Yet, when asked by the interviewer whether she is a feminist, Lady Gaga responds, "I'm not a feminist. I hail men. I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars, and muscle cars." Here we see the ways in which feminism is misunderstood and how celebrities (and people in general) distance themselves from claiming feminist identities, even when they agree with feminist ideals and are disadvantaged by patriarchal structures. This clip is useful for initiating a discussion with students about the meaning of feminism and questions around why people might disassociate themselves with feminism. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp ![]() Isaiah Mustafa Tags: bodies, emotion/desire, gender, marketing/brands, media, social construction, hypermasculine, ideal beauty, sexism, hegemonic masculinity, manliness, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 0:33 Access: YouTube Summary: The caption below this YouTube ad reads "We're not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it." In the span of about 30 seconds, the Old Spice model triumphs as a hypermasculine male. He has the body, the sexy voice, the self-confidence, the money, and the romance. Although the commercial appears to be poking fun at hypermasculinity, it is important to note that the commercial works because consumers broadly share a set of relatively narrow ideas about masculinity. In particular, the clip is useful for introducing R. W. Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity, which draws attention to the way masculinity is constructed in relation to other subordinated masculinities and in relation to women. For Connell, the concept is "a social ascendancy achieved in a play of social forces that extends beyond contests of brute power into the organization of private life and cultural processes." In other words, Isaiah Mustafa embodies a masculinity in the ad that is hegemonic because it is favored and promoted throughout major social institutions, and among other places, it can be readily found mass media content. A point of discussion is whether the ad uses satire to challenge this hegemonic form of masculinity, or does it only succeed in reinforcing it? Note that the clip can also be analyzed for playing a role in the construction of feminine desire. While the audience is laughing about this tongue-in-cheek form of masculinity, they are likely taking it as a given that all women want this kind of man and the diamonds he holds. Submitted By: Lester Andrist |
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