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: 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 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: gender, intersectionality, nationalism, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, war/military, employment discrimination, racism, representation, sexism, wwII, women's labor force participation, 21 to 60 mins Year: 1988 Length: 54:00; 1:56 Access: no online access; Vimeo preview Summary: This film was first broadcast as an episode of the television program "The American Experience" on Nov. 1, 1988. The film explores the large scale entrance of American women into the paid labor force during World War II in order to fill positions abandoned by American men fighting abroad. The film documents the experiences of women on the American home front during the war. These women talk about empowerment through greater earning power, but also through challenging dominant ideas about the division between masculinity and femininity. The empowerment thesis is challenged by the fact that once the war was over and the soldiers returned home, women were largely asked to leave their jobs and assume their prewar status as homemakers. The film would work well in a class on the sociology of gender, especially as a means of stimulating discussion about the theoretical notion of intersectionality. Gender, race, and nationalism vividly intersect throughout the film. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: emotion/desire, gender, intersectionality, media, race/ethnicity, representation, sexism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2007 Length: 1:00 Access: YouTube Summary: Featured in this clip is a public service announcement from the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's "Don't Believe the Type Campaign." The short clip warns young people to be careful of what they post online. This clip is a good example of how women, and young white women in particular, are represented as vulnerable in popular media. One could argue that the creators of this ad have intuited how to communicate this cautionary message with maximum effectiveness by positioning a young, white women as a vulnerable body. The clip is also promoting a complimentary message about the predatory lust and desire of heterosexual men. This clip might be useful for demonstrating gendered media representations. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: class, gender, intersectionality, marriage/family, race/ethnicity, representation, welfare, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 5:01 Access: YouTube Summary: This is Beyoncé’s music video for the song “Why Don’t You Love Me.” The video depicts Beyoncé as a “traditional” homemaker from the 1950s. While the video might be seen as just another sexist attempt to pair women with homemaking, a deeper analysis would pay attention to the way this misogynistic performance seems to be done tongue-in-cheek. The fact that the performance comes from a Black woman in a reasonably affluent suburb might be interpreted to suggest that media representations, which typically link Blacks to poverty, are being subverted in the clip. This clip works well with Sade’s video "Babyfather," (here) which similarly depicts an affluent black woman homemaker in 1950s America. Submitted By: Lester Andrist |
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