Tags: capitalism, class, community, inequality, race/ethnicity, rural/urban, gentrification, housing, neighborhood succession, racism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1991 Length: 4:18 Access: YouTube Summary: Gentrification radically transformed my neighborhood. Growing up in and around east Austin, I have experienced first-hand the changes that can occur within an area over a mere decade. As a child, I visited family members throughout east Austin. All of us are Latino, and everybody not only knew everyone else, but also where they lived. Now as the city rapidly grows, many in my family are being forced by rising property taxes to sell their homes. These homes are primarily being bought up by young, affluent, white real-estate developers, who are scrapping such dwellings and doing complete renovations in order to attract young, affluent, white occupants. This scene from the film Boyz N the Hood (1991) can be used to teach students about gentrification: "the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents." In this clip, Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne) takes his son, Trey, and a friend to a nearby neighborhood where a billboard has just been put up offering to buy-up homes. Furious explains the specifics of how the property values in a neighborhood are brought down, while the land is bought out and sold for big profit. He also notes that this could be prevented if residents maintained solidarity by retaining black ownership. Placing gentrification into a larger historical context, this clip from the Broadway play Clybourne Park features a mix of humorous scenes that collectively illustrate salient attitudes and behaviors accompanying neighborhood succession over time: residential areas that were once white and middle-class in composition transformed through white flight into those with predominately black working-class and poor populations, and then ultimately with gentrification, back into white upscale neighborhoods. See also this recent piece featuring Spike Lee, arguing that gentrification reveals government racism in the provision of far better public facilities and services to an area once it is gentrified. (Note: A version of this post originally appeared on SoUnequal.) Submitted By: Rene Gonzalez
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Tags: art/music, media, politics/election/voting, big business, censorship, ideology, political inequality, power, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2012 Length: 6:58 Access: YouTube Summary: This scene from the HBO series The Newsroom effectively captures how people in high-ranking institutional positions may exercise their incredibly great power. The clip illustrates how raw power serving vested interests can affect what is communicated to the masses as news. In this case, the owner of the media corporation (Leona played by Jane Fonda) is demanding that news division president, Charlie (Sam Waterston), straighten out the lead anchor, Will (played by Jeff Daniels), because of Will's efforts to report how big business has taken over the Tea Party. She specifically threatens to fire Will if he continues to follow the story. Art often imitates life, and notice that Leona references the Koch brothers in her tirade, and indeed they were targets of Will in this episode and another during 2012 (see this Wall Street Journal piece for criticism of the show's "Koch-kicking," and this AFL-CIO story for an opposite take). Also see how life imitates art as evident in this Salon.com article detailing the Koch brothers' efforts to censor public television programming. (Plans to produce a full-length documentary, Citizen Corp, which in part critically examined their political activities, were scrapped after the brothers threatened to withhold major funding from PBS. Nevertheless, the filmmakers were still able to raise enough money to complete the film, and then distribute it as Citizen Koch through theaters.) (Note: A version of this post originally appeared on SoUnequal.) Submitted By: Rene Gonzalez Tags: class, culture, inequality, cultural trope, popular culture, prestige, social exclusion, social status, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1986 Length: 2:12 Access: YouTube Summary: The movie Pretty in Pink (1986) centers on a budding romance between Andie and Blane. Andie is from the “wrong side of the tracks,” and lives with her father, a down-and-out kind of guy whom she continually urges to get a decent job. However, she is a refreshing, free-spirit counterpoint to Blane, a “richie” who drives a fancy car, throws cool parties, dates the popular girls, and lives in a big house with a well-manicured lawn. Her social status is obviously inferior to his, making this intimate teen encounter one that is complicated by not only social inequality, but by social exclusion and rejection, as well. At school, Blane takes a shine to Andie. But given that both are expected to hang out with their own kind, they soon encounter resistance from friends and associates. In this scene, Andie confronts Blane on his denying to others that they are a dating couple. Andie knows he is embarrassed to be seen with her, but she nevertheless confronts him openly in the hallway during the school day. Although the scene suggests that all is over for the couple, they soon rekindle their romance when they later cross paths at the prom. Interestingly, the book upon which the movie is based had Andie winding up at the prom with a selfless, working-class boy who had loved Andie all along. However, according to the movie's Wikipedia entry, the ending for the movie was changed to reflect test-audience preference for Andie with Blane, underlining the cultural ideal that "true love conquers all." Love thwarted by prestige differences resonates strongly as a trope in contemporary popular culture as is evident in movies such as Pretty Woman, and in one of my favorites, The Notebook, wherein the rich guy/poor gal is reversed as Noah, a simple country boy, falls hard for heiress, Allie. Showing the above clip from Pretty in Pink, or one from The Notebook (e.g., this scene) would work well as a discussion-starter in any course that addresses the social context of intimate relationships. To read another post on The Sociological Cinema that explores cultural tropes in movies, click here. (Note: A version of this post originally appeared on SoUnequal.) Submitted By: Jackie Davila Tags: class, crime/law/deviance, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, colorblind racism, mass incarceration, prison industrial complex, war on drugs, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2013 Length: 8:23 Access: YouTube Summary: Legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s (2010) book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness has received critical acclaim and has quickly become a core text in many sociology classrooms. This short video highlights the main arguments advanced in the book, and features the insights and opinions of various key thinkers, scholars, and activists. As summarized on the book’s website, “The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement. Since its publication in 2010, the book has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year; been dubbed the ‘secular bible of a new social movement’ by numerous commentators, including Cornel West; and has led to consciousness-raising efforts in universities, churches, community centers, re-entry centers, and prisons nationwide. The New Jim Crow tells a truth our nation has been reluctant to face. As the United States celebrates its ‘triumph over race’ with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights—including the right to vote; the right to serve on juries; and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. Today, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet as civil-rights-lawyer-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander demonstrates, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways in which it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once labeled a felon, even for a minor drug crime, the old forms of discrimination are suddenly legal again. In her words, ‘we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.’ Alexander shows that, by targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community—and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.” Alexander elaborates upon these ideas in more detail in her 2012 convocation speech at Carleton College, which can be found here. A trailer for the book can be found here. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: art/music, community, discourse/language, intersectionality, lgbtq, multiculturalism, race/ethnicity, categories, labels, spoken word poetry, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2007 Length: 3:32 Access: YouTube Summary: I had to watch Stayceyann Chin’s video several times before her message began resonating within me. She critiques the notion that we must side with one group over another, arguing that we need to have a sense of understanding about each other that transcends differences. She does a phenomenal job in challenging the common claim that "if you are not for us, you are against us.” She well articulates that we miss the beauty of our being by living in fear of ridicule, and when "people get scared enough, they pick a team" that may satisfy others, but not themselves. Our need to box-in and stereotype what we cannot understand or agree with only limits our ability to see each other as common creatures. Child star Raven Symone makes a similar point in her adamant denial about the personal relevance of labels. Oprah warns her during the interview that she will get push-back for doing this, and she indeed did receive significant adverse publicity in claiming the she is neither lesbian nor black/African-American. Such reactions to a pronouncement from a person who seems before her time, from a generation that believes they are ahead of their time, indicate how uncomfortable people are when group labels are deemed irrelevant for establishing personal identity. It also suggests associated questions, including: What is wrong about failing to identify as either black/African-American or lesbian? Does it betray those who are otherwise like her, but who do see themselves as belonging to such categories? Moreover, are we truly free to be individuals, even in a society held to promote the value of individual autonomy? (Note: A version of this post originally appeared on SoUnequal.) Submitted By: Ayanna Allen Tags: community, discourse/language, inequality, social mvmts/social change/resistance, ally, oppression, privilege, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2014 Length: 3:31 Access: YouTube Summary: In her article “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change,” Rev. Andrea Ayvazian defines an ally as “a member of a dominant group in our society who works to dismantle any form of oppression from which she or he receives the benefit.” In other words, an ally is someone who receives the benefits of systematic inequality but fights to eradicate those inequalities anyway. According to Ayvazian, allies can interrupt the cycle of oppression by using their voice to advocate for people who would otherwise be ignored or not listened to by the dominant group. This is why allies are important: they can evoke change in the places that oppressed groups are unable to reach. Such places include those where oppressed groups have been structurally marginalized, or places where oppressed voices simply go unheard. Ayvazian points to some of the difficulties involved in being an ally, and highlights how the role of an ally is often misunderstood. In this video, Franchesca “Chescaleigh” Ramsey proposes the following analogy to help viewers understand the role of an ally: “Imagine your friend is building a house, and they ask you to help. But you’ve never built a house before. So it’d probably be a good idea for you to put on some protective gear and listen to the person in charge, otherwise someone is going to get seriously hurt. It’s the exact same idea when it comes to being an ally…We need your help building this house, but you probably should listen, so you know what to do first.” Chescaleigh goes on to outline five tips for being a good ally, which include (1) understand your privilege, (2) listen and do your homework on the issues that are important to the communities you want to support, (3) speak up but not over the voices of the community members you want to support (and don’t take credit for things they’re already saying), (4) realize you’ll make mistakes and apologize when you do, and (5) remember that ally is a verb. Mia McKenzie, editor-in-chief of the activism blog Black Girl Dangerous, also suggests thinking of the term “ally” as a verb rather than label. McKenzie writes: “Ally cannot be a label that someone stamps onto you—or, god forbid, that you stamp on to yourself—so you can then go around claiming it as some kind of identity. It’s not an identity. It’s a practice. It’s an active thing that must be done over and over and over again, in the largest and smallest ways, every day.” Additional efforts to critical examine the term and role of an ally can be found here and here. Viewers can draw upon these various resources when thinking about the concept of an ally and privileged people’s roles in movements for social equality and change. For a recent and applied example of how to be an ally, read Spectra’s article, “Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People Over Ferguson.” Submitted By: Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall, Blythe Baird, and Valerie Chepp Tags: durkheim, emotion/desire, methodology/statistics, organizations/occupations/work, science/technology, theory, adam smith, agency, artificial social network, centrality, collective identity theory, emergence, georg simmel, human capital, methodological holism, methodological individualism, natural social network, nicholas christakis, obesity, social capital, social network analysis, structure, suicide, transitivity, subtitles/CC, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2011 Length: 56:35 Access: YouTube Summary: In this nice introductory lecture to the discipline of sociology, physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis explodes the popular myth that people are masters of their own destiny. As the YouTube blurb states, "If you think you're in complete control of your destiny or even your own actions, you're wrong. Every choice you make, every behavior you exhibit, and even every desire you have finds its roots in the social universe." 1. This insight is an expression of a fundamental tension explored in the discipline—that between the power of individual agents (i.e., agency) and the power of supra-individual forces (i.e., structure), such as the neighborhood in which one lives or one's location within a social network. 2. The second big idea Christakis explores in his lecture is emergence, or that society is something more than simply the sum of its individuals and that collective phenomena are not mere aggregations of individual phenomenon. To illustrate the concept of emergence, Christakis embarks on a discussion of social networks and other central concepts to the discipline, such as social capital. He then concludes his lecture by pointing out that while many scientific disciplines have broken up phenomenon into smaller and smaller bits, and are now engaged in an effort to put the pieces back together in order to discern how their assembly gives rise to new, emergent properties, this pattern of disassembly and reassembly has always been a central feature of sociological work. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: gender, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, activism, feminism, first wave feminism, fourth wave feminism, Internet, motherhood, second wave feminism, third wave feminism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2014 Length: 5:02 Access: YouTube Summary: In this video, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes it upon himself to discuss the matters of feminism. Gordon-Levitt was first asked on The Ellen Show if he considers himself a feminist, to which he replied, “I absolutely would.” Soon after, journalist Marlow Stern asked Gordon-Levitt what being a feminist meant to him, to which he replied, “it means that your gender does not have to define who you are, that you can be whatever you want to be, whoever you want to be, regardless of your gender.” Gordon-Levitt’s response garnered a lot of public attention, which sparked his interest in the meaning of feminism to different groups of people. Gordon-Levitt explains how his mother, who he describes as a “second wave” feminist activist, initially exposed him to feminism. He contrasts second wave feminism from the 1960s and 70s to the feminist activity that took place during the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the early 20th century, commonly referred to as “first wave” feminism. In this video, Gordon-Levitt spends a good amount of time contemplating the issue of feminism being “for or against” motherhood. Ultimately he argues that women should be able to choose freely to be a stay-at-home mom or a working mother without being judged. Gordon-Levitt ends the video by asking his audience to share their opinions on what “feminism” means to them, and to submit their videos to his online HitRecord project. This video is useful for teaching about periods of feminist activity and for contemplating what feminism means in the current era. While Gordon-Levitt references the wave model that is commonly used to characterize American feminism, viewers can be encouraged to think about the limitations of this model. For example, in her article “Third Wave Black Feminism?,” Kimberly Springer (2002) critiques the feminist wave model, pointing out that it is largely organized around white women’s feminist activity, and lacks recognition of significant eras of feminist activity carried out by women of color. Viewers can also think about whether Gordon-Levitt’s online video project might constitute an example of what some have called “fourth-wave feminism.” In a recent article, Ealasaid Munro (2013) draws attention to the role of the Internet in contemporary feminist activity, showing how the Internet has become an important outlet for the public to easily channel their opinions and confront issues concerning feminism. Viewers can reflect on whether Gordon-Levitt’s video project is an example of this potential fourth-wave feminism idea, given that he voiced his opinions about feminism using online channels, and he invited his viewers to publicly share and debate their thoughts via the Internet. Submitted By: Kuchee Vue and Valerie Chepp Tags: children/youth, community, crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, government/the state, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, theory, violence, frantz fanon, angela davis, black power, the black panther party, civil rights, 06 to 10 mins Year: 1972 Length: 8:44 Access: YouTube Summary: National protests erupted in the wake of two separate instances of grand juries failing to indict police officers for killing unarmed black men. News networks have featured a parade of senior legal analysts and representatives of the law enforcement community, all jockeying to shape what will become the official perspective, but whatever the content of their remarks, it seems virtually every guest concludes with their own version of the same platitude. They either tell viewers that "violence is never an acceptable form of protest," or that "violence has never been an effective form of protest." These assertions frame the discussions about protests and work to delegitimize those who engage in violent protests as simply troublemakers, and because their protests are "pointless," they are also deemed irrational. • The question of whether it is ever right to protest with violence is a moral one, but the question of whether violence has ever effected social change is empirical. The fact is that while it may be comforting to believe violence is never effective, it is just not true. For instance, the success of the American Revolution depended on violence. Nearly two hundred years later, violence played another pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement, for it was the violence associated with the likes of Malcolm X that made Martin Luther King, Jr.'s demands seem both moderate and reasonable. The post-colonial social theorist Frantz Fanon argued that organized violence was a centrally important tactic of resistance, not only for overcoming the material conditions of oppression, but also for nurturing a revolutionary consciousness among the oppressed. • The above video is an excerpt from the documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 and features an interview with activist and scholar Angela Davis, who at the time of the interview was facing charges of murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy. In the interview, Davis' is asked whether she thinks liberation can be achieved by confrontation and violence. Instead of pointing to instances in history where violence has been effective, Davis draws attention to another curious feature of the American discourse about violence: protestors are often asked about their use of violence, as if to suggest they are the instigators of violent tactics. When Black communities are regularly defending themselves against organized, systematic, and state-sanctioned violence, how is it possible those same communities are the ones fielding rhetorical questions about whether violence is appropriate? Why isn't there a similar urgency to pose this question to police commissioners, or to state and national politicians? • The average number of annual arrest-related deaths between 2003 and 2009 was about four times higher for blacks than whites, Looking at teens aged 15 to 19, who were shot and killed by police, the racial gap appears to be even greater. Between 2010 and 2012, police shot and killed about 21 times more Black youth than white youth. The racial disparity in police violence points to the fact that Black outrage is justified, as Black communities really are being targeting. Commentators on the growing protests against police brutality in Ferguson, New York City, and other cities in the U.S. would do well to use their platform to hold public officials and police accountable for their use of violence. If they want to continue asking protestors about their violence, perhaps they should also ask public servants about their use of violence and why it appears to be applied in such a discriminatory manner (Note that The Sociological Cinema has also explored the role of violence for promoting social change here.). Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: culture, discourse/language, emotion/desire, gender, knowledge, media, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, theory, violence, bell hooks, beyoncé, black feminist thought, cult of true womanhood, feminism, jezebel, patrica hill collins, politics of respectability, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2014 Length: 11:15 Access: YouTube Summary: This video features YouTube vloggers Shawna and Tieraney candidly sharing their thoughts on sex and romance as queer, black women in the U.S. While they touch on a number of issues, the video works particularly well for drawing attention to the topic of sexual respectibility among women, or what sociologist Patricia Hill Collins refers to as the cult of true womanhood, which is a white supremacist, patriarchal ideal womanhood that emphasizes moral purity, modesty, innocence, submissiveness, and domesticity as virtues. As Tieraney puts it, "I want to give a shout out to white supremacy for really fucking with my sexual liberation, in specifically the ways that black women are projected in the media." In its deployment of representations of what constitutes a respectable Black woman, Shawna and Tieraney understand the media to be an agent that wields control over their lives and has even interfered with their abilities to make their sexual desires known. It is in this context that the two begin discussing bell hooks' recent critique of Beyoncé's new sexually assertive persona, particularly as she performs it in the music video for "Partition." Although Beyoncé has more closely conformed to the dictates of respectability in the past, for hooks, the lyrics and imagery of Beyoncé's new persona effectively collude with the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in constructing herself as "a slave." Not one to mince words, hooks further contends that she sees Beyoncé as a kind of "terrorist, especially in terms of her impact on young girls." But if one uses the language suggested by Patricia Hill Collins, isn't Beyoncé's recent turn toward openly expressing her own sexual desires through her music simply a rejection of the cult of true womanhood? Maybe, but Collins would likely argue that while Beyoncé may feel she is liberating herself from the shackles of respectability, the truth is she has merely traded one set of shackles for another. The image of the Jezebel, the whore, or sexually aggressive Black woman is another controlling image that originated under slavery and makes regular appearences in contemporary pop culture. As Collins argues in her book, Black Feminist Thought, "the purpose of the Jezebel was to relegate all women to the category of sexually aggressive women, thus providing a powerful rationale for the widespread sexual assaults by white men typically reported by Black slave women." Given that the Jezebel and the ideals associated with the cult of true womanhood exist as two oppositional categories and both of which wield control over the lives of Black women, Shawna and Tieraney's video raises some important questions about the nature of oppression and liberation. When Beyoncé and other Black women celebrities (e.g., Nicki Minaj) construct themselves as sexually assertive, are they engaging in an act of liberation, or are they simply unwitting participants in the reassertion of the Jezebel stereotype, thereby contributing to the racist and sexist idea of Black women as sexual objects? Submitted By: Lester Andrist |
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