Tags: gender, inequality, marketing/brands, organizations/occupations/work, commercial, double-standard, gender bias, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 1:02 Access: YouTube Summary: As the creators of this ad note, "Does gender bias still exist? If the answer is no, then why is it that women who take charge tend to be called bossy, whereas men who do the same are just doing their jobs as bosses? Or why is it that when mothers are passionate about their career, they tend to be seen as selfish, while working dads are dedicated? It is also quite startling that a recent study said 70% of men feel that women need to downplay their personality in order to be accepted." With a focus on the workplace, this video critiques the double-standard between men and women. It juxtaposes labels applied differently to men and women, noting that men are considered "persuasive" while women are "pushy"; men are "dedicated" while women are "selfish." The ad was created by Pantene, and ends with this message: "Don't let labels hold you back" and "be strong and shine." Like this Dove ad that critiques media's depiction of feminine beauty, the message promotes awareness of gender issues and develops positive images of women. At the same time, viewers should be critical of other advertising by both Pantene and Dove, which reinforces stereotypical imagery of women and ideal beauty. Thank you to Michael Miller for suggesting this clip. Submitted By: Paul Dean
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Tags: prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, internalized racism, respectability politics, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2013 Length: 6:35; 4:43 Access: YouTube (clip 1; clip 2) Summary: In the wake of the Trayvon Martin case, media debates about crime and problems in African American communities were especially prominent. In the first clip, CNN anchor Don Lemon responds to these discussions with his own ideas about how young Black men can improve their communities and raise their social standing. He suggestions include: “pull up your pants,” stop using the “N word,” “respect where you live” by not littering, “finish school,” and “just because you can have a baby, it doesn’t mean you should.” In the second clip, blogger Jay Smooth responds to Don Lemon’s comments, breaking them down as part of a “politics of respectability.” According to Smooth, Lemon’s comments serve to implicitly blame young Black men for their problems, helping more privileged members of the Black community ameliorate the shame they feel as a result of internalized racism. These clips are useful for class discussions about race, internalized racism, and how racism persists in the context of colorblindness. They are particularly useful for introducing the concept of respectability politics. In the words of Tamara Winfrey Harris, “respectability politics work to counter negative views of blackness by aggressively adopting the manners and morality that the dominant culture deems ‘respectable.’ The approach emerged in reaction to white racism that labeled blackness as ‘other’—degenerate and substandard—with roots in an assimilationist narrative that prevailed in the late-19th-century United States.” Questions for classroom discussion might include: What are other examples of respectability politics that students have observed in communities of color? How does respectability politics function in other minority groups such as immigrant communities, the LGBT community, and people with physical or mental disabilities? What are the consequences of respectability politics (social, political, institutional etc...)? Submitted By: Anya M. Galli Tags: art/music, bodies, consumption/consumerism, culture, disability, discourse/language, inequality, knowledge, disability porn, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 4:29 Access: YouTube Summary: In this four minute video from the Swiss company Pro Infirmis, five people with visible disabilities arrive at an artist's studio. After introductions, the artist begins measuring the dimensions of each person's body. His team then begins sawing into a collection of store mannequins, and once dismembered, the mannequins are reconstructed so they more closely resemble the body designs of the artist's new models. After some polish, the new mannequins are unveiled and eventually displayed in stores along one of Zurich's main streets, just in time for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The project's title is a rhetorical question and a command, "Because Who Is Perfect? Get Closer." Indeed, no one is perfectly able-bodied. Whether visible or invisible, on some level it is true that all bodies can be said to have "malfunctions," but the deeper reason no one is perfect is because the idea of what constitutes perfection is itself elusive. Yet, most people go about their daily lives seduced by the illusion that distinguishing "able-bodied" people from "disabled" people is as straightforward as distinguishing apples from oranges. For instance, there is a Thor fandom that celebrates Chris Hemsworth's shirtless body as the epitome of perfection. Mall shoppers too routinely evaluate clothing for themselves and others by first seeing it draped over what is supposed to be a mold of a perfect body. Capitalist institutions, from the Hollywood film industry to clothing retailers, routinely place the able-bodied ideal on a pedestal, implicitly exalting a particular type of body as the standard by which all bodies must be evaluated, and it is on this point that the Pro Infirmis video is both refreshing and subversive, for it takes what are assumed to be imperfect bodies and places them in a space typically reserved for perfect bodies. These new mannequins of unfamiliar proportions stop passersby in their tracks and encourage them to reconsider the types of bodies that belong in storefronts, but while the video captures a useful disruption in the usual discourse on bodies, in my view it fails to truly provoke onlookers to reassess their casual assumptions about bodies as either working or broken, and as either worthy or unworthy of representation. No, the video leaves this binary cultural logic unscathed. For instance, one finds in the video that "able-bodied" mannequins are the clean slate from which "disabled" mannequins are born. There is a manufacturing montage that puts to rest any radical doubts as to whether these two species of mannequin have anything in common. Finally, when displayed in the Zurich storefronts, the altered mannequins remain almost hermetically sealed from the original mannequins, which have been scuttled away for the event. To truly "get closer," as the video commands us to do, I think it is important to collapse this casual, Manichean distinction between the able-bodied and the disabled. A truly radical video might instead show the old mannequins displayed alongside the new ones, and the displays would be left in place long after the International Day of Persons with Disabilities was over. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: discourse/language, gender, knowledge, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, gender ambiguity, gender neutral pronouns, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1991 Length: 5:55 Access: Yahoo Screen Summary: What is it, exactly, about gender ambiguity that is presumed to be so funny? Referencing the now classic Saturday Night Live sketch comedy "It's Pat," I pose this question to students when teaching about the deeply embedded ways that gender structures our society. Not to be conflated with genital ambiguity (which focuses on sex characteristics), gender ambiguity refers to a type of gender presentation in which a person's gender (e.g., man or woman) is unclear. In this clip (season 17, episode 3), coworkers throw the androgynous fictional character Pat O'Neil Riley (played by Julia Sweeney) a surprise birthday party. As with all segments in the series, people's interactions with Pat center around trying to decipher Pat's gender; overwhelmingly, Pat's indeterminate gender is framed to be a source of deep confusion for others, to the point where the social interaction is compromised, thus resulting in a presumably comedic scenario. Throughout the skit, co-workers search for clues that might give insight into Pat's gender, as they are unsure how to behave around Pat without this knowledge. For example, a male co-worker doesn't know whether putting his arm around Pat's shoulders is an appropriate form of consoling. Similarly, in this clip (as well as others in the series), Pat's acquaintances ask questions that might reveal the gender of Pat's romantic affection, assuming that the romantic partner would be of the "opposite" gender (this assumption illustrates the concept of heteronormativity). The fact that something so simple as not knowing one's gender can compromise entire social interactions, and that we have culturally defined this as "funny," illustrates how profoundly this social construction organizes society. Specifically, viewers can see the demand that language imposes on knowing one's gender, as co-workers don't know whether to use terms like mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, or fellow, and they struggle to substitute gender neutral terms like child, sibling, and person. While the skit's theme song aims to "humorously" represent the limitations of language, it resorts to the offensive notion that individuals with an ambiguous gender are an "it" or a "that." In addition to illustrating the limits of language, this clip is useful for introducing students to the utility and importance of gender neutral pronouns in our lexicon, such as ze, hir, and xem. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: methodology/statistics, race/ethnicity, color-blindness, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 4:30 Access: YouTube Summary: This experimental study reveals how people avoid mentioning race and how other people perceive this avoidance. Using the board game Guess Who? as a model, Dr. Michael Norton set up pairs of volunteers each with an array of faces (see image). One participant selects a face, and their partner has to ask yes-or-no questions about the person to see how quickly they can guess who the person is. While half of the faces in the study were white and half were black (thus making a question about race very pertinent), people often avoided asking about race. In fact, only 57% of people used the word "black" or "African-American" during the game when playing with white partners; only 21% did so when playing with a black partner. Norton theorizes that whites avoided using the racial terms to avoid appearing like they cared about race or were racist. A paradoxical finding is that, when a participant did not ask about race, their partner perceived them to be more biased. Norton also found an effect of age. Children aged 7-8 were more likely to ask about race, but children aged 9-10 asked about race much less; in other words, they had already been socialized to be color-blind (i.e. an ideology that believes race to no longer be important in shaping social outcomes and which encourages people to ignore race and racial difference). When dots were introduced to the game, "players did not hesitate to ask about black dots, suggesting that the effect shown in previous games was about race, not color." In other words, it is the social dynamics surrounding race that influenced if participants referenced color in the game. As an Associate Professor of Business Administration, Norton is interested in how this applies to the workplace; he notes that "like players in the game, workers try to avoid talking about race" and therefore it "ends up impeding communication" (this finding would interest organizational and industrial sociologists as well). From a macro sociological perspective, there are further implications related to power and inequality. As Bonilla-Silva (2013) argues in Racism Without Racists, by ignoring racial difference--or by being colorblind--we help perpetuate and reinforce the system of white privilege. These micro-interactions ultimately help shape macro structures and inequalities. The study is also a great illustration of experimental methods used in sociology. Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: gender, inequality, media, double bind, feminism, rape culture, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 3:39 Access: YouTube Summary: This video from The Representation Project summarizes media images of women in 2013. The video begins by highlighting that "there was a lot to celebrate this year for women in the media," pointing to media images of women in political leadership roles (Malala Yousafzai), heroine leads (Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games), scientists (Sandra Bullock in Gravity), female-centric casts (Orange Is The New Black), and ESPN's coverage of women's sports. The video then recognizes that media images "aren’t changing fast enough," spotlighting much more problematic and sexist portrayals of women, including: women who were hypersexualized in advertisements, music, television, and film; women criticizing other women’s appearances; sole attention on women’s physical appearances as opposed to intelligence; and stereotypes of women being hysterical and overly-emotional. This video can be shown when teaching about gender oppression, and it can specifically help students grasp teachings on: (1) rape culture and how the media normalizes and desensitizes audiences to rape through, for example, comedic discussions and scenes of such violence toward women; and (2) feminism’s double bind, as the clip captures media scenes where women are told, for example, that it is nearly impossible for them to be both attractive and intelligent, or successful at home and work. Instructors can ask students: (1) Based on the video, what can we celebrate about gender equity in media representation? Can you think of other examples not mentioned in the video? (2) What media images of women can we critique? (3) Using an intersectional analysis, are women of color portrayed differently than white women in these examples? If so, how? The video would pair well with Ariel Levy’s (2005) Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, which also addresses changing representations of women in the media, including how women internalize misogyny by, for example, objectifying each other and themselves. Submitted By: Maegan Zielinksi and Beverly M. Pratt Tags: emotion/desire, gender, emotion management, masculinity, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2000 Length: 5:53 Access: YouTube Summary: We often think of emotions as psychological or biological, or as seemingly natural and innate responses to stimuli that makes us happy, sad, afraid, angry, etc. Yet, sociologists know most of our emotions are managed, or that we tend to ensure our feelings are felt (or at the very least expressed) in socially acceptable ways or in socially appropriate contexts. The management of emotions is especially apparent with gender as men and women are socialized to adhere to different, almost completely oppositional sets of feeling rules. Men are conditioned, and socially expected to suppress emotion (with the exception of anger); less rigid norms for females means women are freer to express relatively more, and more intense emotions than men. Usually, this gendered emotion work is so embedded in the social fabric we seldom notice how effective these rules are in dictating what we feel, how we feel it, how long we feel it, etc. However, in this short clip from the movie Bedazzled, a character played by Brendan Fraser makes a deal with the devil to become the world’s most emotionally sensitive man—and in doing so ends up being unable to manage his emotions effectively, thus revealing just how important emotional management and feeling rules are in our daily lives. Submitted By: Jason T. Eastman Tags: crime/law/deviance, foucault, government/the state, science/technology, theory, war/military, drones, panopticon, surveillance, unmanned aerial vehicles, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 4:41 Access: New York Times Summary: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are the "future of aviation." The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates the use of drones and currently limits the commercial use of drones in the US, is likely to loosen this restriction by 2015 and private industry is positioning itself for a commercial boom in drones. And while the US government has mostly used drones for surveillance and combat in the war on terror, the government has weighed the use of drones for surveilling its own citizens. As noted by the NYT, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said this year: “This fast-emerging technology is cheap and could pose a significant threat to the privacy and civil liberties of millions of Americans. It is another example of a fast-changing policy area on which we need to focus to make sure that modern technology is not used to erode Americans’ right to privacy.” From a Foucauldian perspective, the possibility of widespread drone surveillance could be the new Panopticon. In particular, inexpensive drones (<$1000) allow for continuous video footage, facilitating the proliferation of micro-power as individuals, corporations, and government observe others throughout all of society. Furthermore, it is likely to spread throughout a variety of institutions, enabling the use of drone surveillance in search-and-rescue missions, agricultural surveillance, and countless other personal and commercial applications. While Foucault offered the metaphor of surveillance technologies as swarming throughout society, drones offer a very literal extension of this expanding technology. Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: discourse/language, immigration/citizenship, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, war/military, comedy, beauty standards, colonialism, eduardo bonilla-silva, imperialism, institutional discrimination, new racism, slave trade, slavery, white privilege, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 2:49 Access: YouTube Summary: In this short clip, comedian Aamer Rahman explains that a lot of white people don't like his comedy. Rahman is an Australian stand-up comedian, best known as one half of comedy duo Fear of a Brown Planet, and much of his material is a not-so-thinly-veiled critique of white supremacy. Here, Rahman notes that he is often accused by whites of engaging in "reverse racism," a charge which leads him to openly ruminate about what it would take for a person of color to do something racist against a white person. He explains that his sardonic jabs at white society would be racist if he traveled back in time, convinced leaders in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America to invade and colonize Western Europe, and begin exporting their natural resources. These new colonizers would then set up a trans-Asian slave trade where white laborers become one of the resources exported to giant rice plantations in China. The experience of being colonized would ruin Europe over the course of several centuries so that whites would want to leave Western Europe and settle in the homelands of the black and brown colonizers. In their new countries, whites would be forced to navigate social institutions that privilege people of color. Rahman concludes that if after hundreds of years of such colonization and institutional racism, he got on stage to crack jokes at white people's expense, then he would be guilty of "reverse racism". All laughing aside, the joke is actually an incisive, sociologically-informed analysis of racism. Rahman correctly describes racism as something more than just an instance of one person discriminating or being cruel to another person (TSC remarks on how comedians are uniquely positioned to level social critiques here). "Instances" of racism are so named because they are the products of a system of power--a system that derives its strength from a colonial history and a system that is encoded deeply within the workings of modern social institutions. To accurately label a practice as racist, one must take into account the historical and social context within which the practice occurred. Thus there can be no such thing as "reverse racism"; there is only racism, and in a context where people of color lack institutional power, they simply cannot be racist. The sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has recently noted that the growth in charges of reverse racism by whites is in fact evidence of the emergence of a "new racism", which seeks to operate in a more covert manner and attempts to confound understandings of racism by decontextualizing the way race works in and through contemporary institutions. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: methodology/statistics, psychology/social psychology, asch conformity experiments, breaching experiments, harold garfinkel, norms, solomon asch, 00 to 05 mins Length: 2:31 Year: 1962 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip from a 1962 episode of Candid Camera is based on a series of social psychological experiments called the Asch conformity experiments. Originally directed by Solomon Asch in the 1950s, these experiments were designed to examine how individuals conform to group dynamics. In this episode, unsuspecting subjects enter into an elevator where Candid Camera actors are all facing backwards, and we watch as a hidden camera captures the non-actor individuals slowly turning around to conform with the group. Sociologist Harold Garfinkel used a similar method to explore various dimensions of social rules and sanctions. Specifically, he used breaching experiments as a method to demonstrate the presence of social norms, arguing that we can test the existence of social norms and expectations by violating them. This clip would be useful for introducing Garfinkel's famous breaching experiments, and would pair well with assignments that require students to conduct their very own breaching experiment, such as this assignment on The Sociological Cinema. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp |
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