Tags: crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, inequality, intersectionality, knowledge, lgbtq, marriage/family, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, social mvmts/social change/resistance, theory, civil unions, collective action frames, marriage equality, same-sex marriage, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 4:24
Access: YouTube

Summary: In Part I we explored the concept of a collective action frame in the context of the vote on North Carolina's Amendment One, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Reverend Dr. William J. Barber argues in this clip that the amendment passed because the wrong frame dominated the public understanding of the issue. In Part II we want to further interrogate Barber's own frame, which posits that the amendment writes discrimination into the state constitution. We think Barber’s argument draws on key insights from intersectionality theory in sociology. In short, this theory draws attention to the relationships among multiple dimensions of social inequality (e.g., race, sexuality, gender, etc.) and insists that the formation of any subject happens at the intersections of these dimensions. Similarly, systems of domination, such as racism and heterosexism, work through this invisible, intersectional scaffolding. Echoing an insight from Kimberlé Crenshaw's path breaking article on the theory, the failure of antiracism to interrogate heterosexism means that antiracist activists are doomed to reproduce the subordination of racial minorities in the LGBTQ community. Indeed, this is what might very well have happened in North Carolina. In the lead up to the vote on Amendment One, it is now clear that there was a coordinated strategy from a political group calling itself the National Organization for Marriage. The group aimed to drive a wedge between members of LGBTQ and Black communities (here and here). Recently unsealed memos from the group state clearly that “The strategic goal of the project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks” and another memo noted the group's aspirations to make the exclusion of gay people from marriage “a key badge of Latino identity.” Barber's frame, then, grasps the way racial and sexual identities were strategically pitted against each other in the vote on Amendment One, but his frame also grasps that violations of equal protection under the law for members of the LGBTQ community in this instance, leaves the door open for violations against racial minorities in the next. As illustrated in this moving speech, intersectionality theory, not only describes how political power relies on manipulating social constructed racial and sexual identities, but also how political resistance must take these constructs into account when formulating effective collective action frames.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, goffman, government/the state, inequality, knowledge, lgbtq, prejudice/discrimination, social mvmts/social change/resistance, theory, civil unions, collective action frames, marriage equality, same-sex marriage, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 4:24
Access: YouTube

Summary: In previous posts on The Sociological Cinema, we have explored Erving Goffman's concept of framing (here, here, and here). To recap, the concept has been useful for scholars of social movements, who have rebranded the term collective action framing. The concept denotes the active and processual sense-making and signification of phenomena done by social actors. In other words, the realization that a conflict with police is evidence of a repressive state and that the passage of a new law is an effort to codify division and discrimination are socially "made" interpretations or meanings. They are the social achievements sociologists refer to as frames. The success then of passing a new law or amending an old one often hinges on how the proposed change is framed for the public and how influential that particular frame is in shaping the terms of the debate. The above clip is a speech from Reverend Dr. William J. Barber. who rebukes the media for using the "wrong" frame to report on the recent amendment to North Carolina's state constitution, which passed on May 8, 2012 and defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The amendment also bans any other type of "domestic legal union," such as civil unions and domestic partnerships. Barber asserts that the media frequently polled the public asking, "How do you feel about same-sex marriage?" but a better question—a better frame—would have been whether a majority should be able to decide on the rights of a minority, or should discrimination should be written into the constitution? Here Barber is clearly attempting to key the struggle against Amendment One to the protests of the Civil Rights Era, and he even mentions the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by name. In Part II, we'll move beyond framing and explore how this video can be used to illustrate insights from intersectionality theory, a theory that offers promise in overcoming the divisions of identity politics.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

_Tags: consumption/consumerism, discourse/language, gender, inequality, knowledge, marketing/brands, media, social construction, feminism, glass ceiling, glass escalator, media literacy, representation, role specialization, sexism, stereotypes, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 0:31
Access: YouTube

Summary:  We all work in an economy marked by occupational sex segregation. That is, men and women typically work in different occupations. American Men, for instance, are overrepresented as auto mechanics and airline pilots, while American women are overrepresented as preschool teachers and nurses. But why is occupational sex segregation a problem? When I bring this issue up in class, my students often counter rather quickly that segregation is merely the result of a gendered role specialization and doesn't inherently denote inequality. However, the fact is that men segregate into higher paid professions than women. Also, while women often report experiencing a glass ceiling, which refers to an invisible barrier to promotion, men who take positions in fields dominated by women report just the opposite. They face a glass escalator, or pressure to move up in their chosen professions (Williams 1992). In short, occupational sex segregation is a bad deal for women. It is less about role specialization and more about men retaining power and resources for the benefit of men. But why is occupational sex segregation so recalcitrant? Check out the commercial above from Best Buy, which aired during Super Bowl 46, and note the natural affinity it depicts between men (read, male logic) and technological innovation. In rapid succession, the viewer encounters distinguished, white men holding their high tech inventions. "I created text messaging," says SMS innovator, Neil Papworth. Only at the end of the thirty-second spot do women appear, and they are Best Buy's relatively low status sales representatives. Elsewhere on this site (here), I have argued that the symbolic domain of high tech is almost the exclusive provenance of men, and while men are overrepresented in ads that pitch items like smart phones and iPads, women are overrepresented in ads that pitch “domestic” technologies, or those that pertain to, say, cooking and other household chores (see here, here, and here). Insofar as the Best Buy ad succeeds, the approximately 100 million people who tune into the Super Bowl, will be persuaded that Best Buy is good place to buy a smart phone, but they are also left with an impression of the world they inhabit. "Why does occupational sex segregation persist?" my students ask. An important part of the answer is that advertisements reinforce the fiction of immutable differences between men and women, and by extension, they suggest that men and women naturally gravitate toward different occupations. The Best Buy commercial can be a useful reminder that advertising is a medium that excels at constructing the reality it claims to merely reflect. What is "natural" is itself a social construction.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

_Tags: bodies, consumption/consumerism, gender, health/medicine, knowledge, political economy, biopolitics, feminism, medicalization, menarche, menstruation, menses, patriarchy, stigma, taboo, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2007
Length: 3:57
Access: YouTube

Summary: In this scene from the movie Superbad, Seth finds himself dancing close to a woman at a party and winds up with her menstrual blood on his pant leg. A group of boys at the party spot the blood and deduce the source, and thus begins one of the film's signature gags: an awkward adolescent deals with what is supposed to be an awkward adolescent moment. In addition to Seth's panicked yet futile attempts to stave off humiliation are his efforts to work through the disgust of this unambiguous contamination. "Someone period-ed on my fucking leg!" he cries while gagging. Feminists have long been critical of this all-too-common fear of menstrual contamination and point to its roots in patriarchy. It is an instance of re-imagining the natural human experience of menstruation as a pathology, which can only be experienced with a measure of shame and dread. But more than men simply pathologizing a distinctly feminine experience, the pervasive fear of menstruation also fuels a multibillion dollar industry, which produces and markets hundreds of products designed to manage and even suppress menstruation (e.g., Lybrel and Seasonique). In an interview (here) about her recent book, New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation, sociologist Chris Bobel nicely articulates the connection between menstrual anxiety and corporate profit: "The prohibition against talking about menstruation—shh…that’s dirty; that’s gross; pretend it’s not going on; just clean it up—breeds a climate where corporations, like femcare companies and pharmaceutical companies, like the makers of Lybrel and Seasonique, can develop and market products of questionable safety. They can conveniently exploit women’s body shame and self-hatred. And we see this, by the way, when it comes to birthing, breastfeeding, birth control and health care in general. The medical industrial complex depends on our ignorance and discomfort with our bodies." The clip would work nicely with Bobel's book and as a means of opening a discussion about biopolitics, and specifically, the intensity with which women's bodies are scrutinized and managed by both the state and economy.

I would like to thank Aimee Koon for suggesting this clip.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: capitalism, class, inequality, intersectionality, knowledge, marx/marxism, alienation, working poor, 61+ mins
Year: 2009
Length: 70:00
Access: Netflix (trailer here)

Summary: This film follows custodial staff at several U.S. colleges/universities, documenting the workers' daily lives on and off campus. The documentarians interview each person, attempting to understand their personal biographies, their daily experiences as a custodian, and their philosophies on life, love, religion, etc. This film can be used instructively in the following ways: 1) in a lecture on class, inequality, the working poor, or Marx's concept of alienation, 2) as a tool to highlight the experiences of people extremely close in proximity to students, as custodial staff are often ignored by undergraduates and other members of college/university campuses; this is also a great time to introduce campus-led initiatives such as the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, 3) as a tool to understand intersectionality, and how the intersecting identities of the custodial staff result in certain material inequalities, and 4) in class discussions about the social construction of knowledge, as the custodial staff offer epistemological perspectives rooted in unique social locations and life histories; the juxtaposition between the knowledge articulated by the custodial staff and the knowledge-producing institutions in which they work, as well as the quotes by well-known philosophers interwoven between segments, offers a very fruitful site for analysis.

Submitted By: Beverly M. Pratt

Tags: discourse/language, inequality, knowledge, media, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, genocide, media literacy, racism, representation, stereotypes, 61+ mins
Year: 2009
Length: 88:00
Access: Netflix; YouTube (trailer; clip 1; clip 2; clip 3)

Summary: Reel Injun explores the role Hollywood cinema has played in shaping the image of First Nations People. Starting with the silent film era, director Neil Diamond argues that "the Indian" first appeared in cinema as noble and dignified, but by the 1930s, classic westerns like, They Died with their Boots on, catalyzed the emergence of negative stereotypes. The Indian was newly imagined as treacherous, and Hollywood narratives began featuring white settler protagonists in their stagecoaches fending off attacks from the Indian hordes. Just as Indian characters in film became increasingly based on this one dimensional stereotype, native people were also losing the ability to play Indian roles. Instead, productions cast white actors, like Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, and Elvis Presley in Indian roles and even sprayed them with a toning agent to help them look the part. By the 1960s, films like Little Big Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and later, Dances with Wolves, introduced more complicated depictions of native people; however, dominant narratives still tracked the imperiled white heroes in their proverbial stagecoaches (see also our clip "Avatar Remix and Representations of the Other"). Not until the renaissance in native cinema did films like Once we Were Warriors and Smoke Signals portray native people as fully realized human beings and protagonists in their own right. In the documentary's conclusion, Lakota activist and poet, John Trudell, suggests that there has been a sustained effort to vanquish native people through war and violence and to erase or subsume their history. Attention to how native people have been represented in film suggests too that Hollywood has played a vital role in this genocidal project through its representations of the Indian in film. These persistent depictions of the Indian as treacherous, barbaric, and peripheral have worked to strip native people of their humanity. And those who lack humanity are easier to vanquish.

Note that this documentary film would work nicely with another clip on The Sociological Cinema (here) that explores issues surrounding the representation and First Nations People in cinema and takes up the question, "Who has the right to represent whom?"

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: emotion/desire, knowledge, psychology/social psychology,, theory, cognitive sociology,  cultural sociology, eviatar  zerubavel, morality, stanley cohen, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 9:01
Access: New York Times

Summary: "These allegations are false. I… didn't… do those things," says Jerry Sandusky in this interview with New York Times's reporter Jo Becker. Within just the last several weeks, sexual molestation allegations have been issued against former Penn State assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, and former Syracuse associate head basketball coach, Bernie Fine. Both men adamantly deny the charges. Former Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain, has also been entangled in a high profile case of denial, asserting that he never engaged in sexual misconduct with four women (two have come out publicly), or had a 13 year affair with another woman. While all these men are innocent until otherwise proven guilty under the American justice system, the spectacle of it all offers a nice window through which to explore the sociology of denial. While studies of denial have traditionally been housed in the discipline of psychology, some scholars have sought to integrate sociological insights into the study of this enduring human phenomenon. Sociologists such as Stanley Cohen (States of Denial) and Eviatar Zerubavel (The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life) offer an analysis of denial that explores how sociological factors such as human interaction, cultural meaning-making processes, and hierarchical power structures contribute to instances of denial in society. Students can be encouraged to apply these sociological insights to the current spectacles taking place, as well as reflect on the social consequences of denial and silences around wrongdoings. To see another clip from The Sociological Cinema that explores a human phenomenon typically conceived as individualistic and purely psychological from a sociological perspective, click here.

Submitted By: Valerie Chepp

Tags:  education, government/the state, historical sociology, knowledge, nationalism, political economy, war/military, activism, empire, howard zinn, imperialism, sociological imagination, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2008
Length: 8:35
Access: YouTube

Summary: This video portrays Howard Zinn's essay "Empire or Humanity?: What the classroom didn’t teach me about the American empire" as narrated by the actor Viggo Mortensen (original essay and teaching materials posted here). It traces Zinn's own development of his sociological imagination, his miseducation in public schools, and his critique of US foreign policy. This video is good for introducing the concept of the sociological imagination, the connecting of private troubles to public issues (CW Mills), and thinking critically about issues of power, empire, and imperialism. It may be useful during an introductory lecture in lower level sociology classes (particularly Intro to Sociology, Social Problems, or Contemporary Theory). It can be used as an ice-breaker for beginning to talk about the sociological imagination as a way of seeing by looking for patterns, thinking critically, and connecting one's "private troubles" to "public issues."

Submitted By: Dave Paul Strohecker (@dpsFTW)

Tags: biology, health/medicine, inequality, knowledge, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, science/technology, social construction, theory, fallacy of reification, racial formation, racial project, scientific racism, slave hypothesis, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 2:36
Access: YouTube

Summary: When discussing racial inequality in my introductory sociology course I make it a point to cover Omi and Winant's notion of a racial formation as resulting from historically situated racial projects wherein "racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed" (p. 55-56). These projects take multiple forms but in at least one version, there is an attempt to collapse race—a socially constructed concept—into biology. Such projects are similar insofar as they suggest that the socially constructed distinctiveness between people of different racial categories roughly approximates a meaningful biological distinctiveness. Scientists have been centrally involved in this effort to "find" a biological basis for race. Thus in the middle of the 19th century Dr. Samuel Morton attempted to establish that on average cranial capacities of different races were measurably different. While the cranium is no longer scrutinized in this way, the search for a biological, and therefore "natural," basis for race continues. In 1988 Dr. Clarence Grim put forth what is now known as the "slave hypothesis," which is the idea that the enslaved people who survived the Middle Passage were more likely to be carriers of a gene that allowed them to retain salt. Grim argued that this ability to retain salt, while necessary for surviving the harsh conditions on slave ships, is now proving to be the leading cause for higher rates of hypertension among African Americans. This theory has been soundly refuted but apparently still remains in many hypertension textbooks, and in 2007, the medical celebrity, Dr. Oz, promoted the idea to an audience of about 8 million people on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The clip above is from January of this year and is yet another instance of him promoting the theory. Coupled with the recent introduction of BiDil as an FDA approved treatment of heart failure for African Americans, sociologists have taken note of this slipperiest of slides down the slope of "deploying racial categories as if they were immutable in nature and society" (see Troy Duster's article in Science). The clip offers an excellent opportunity for students to discuss the persistence of this racial project, the involvement of science in this project, and how these ideological articulations might serve to provide a justification for continued inequality.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist