Riley and Huey of the Boondocks discuss "no homo"
Tags: discourse/language, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, black satire, fag discourse, homophobia, masculinity, satire, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 0:42; 1:46 Access: YouTube (clip 1; clip 2) Summary: These short clips from the animated series The Boondocks stand as examples of Black satire exploring the topic of homophobia in American society. In the first clip Riley explains to his granddad the importance of not sounding gay and how to successfully guard against being misidentified as such. He warns his granddad, "Pause...You said something gay, so you got to say 'no homo' or else you a homo." The second clip features a conversation between Riley and Huey about whether Riley's friend, Gangstalicious, is gay, which is clearly a prospect that Riley has trouble even considering. For Riley anyway, the message is clear that being gay, being mistaken as gay, or associating with someone who is gay is something to be avoided at all costs. Make no mistake, The Boondocks deploys a complex brand of satire, and unlike other pronouncements of "no homo" in popular culture (for example, in hip hop music videos), the show invites the audience to criticize Riley's extreme aversion to all things gay. The clips would work well with a short monologue from Jay Smooth of the Ill Doctrine (here), in which he recounts the historical emergence and popularity of the phrase "no homo." Finally, I think it is also important to identify the emergence of "no homo" as a part of what C.J. Pascoe calls a "fag discourse," which calls attention to the way the term is deployed as a means of ostentatiously asserting one's masculinity as much as it is about denying a sexual preference. I would like to thank Aleia Clark for suggesting this clip. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
1 Comment
Zach Wahls testifies before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee
_Tags: inequality, lgbtq, marriage/family, prejudice/discrimination, sex/sexuality, social construction, law, parenting, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 3:01 Access: YouTube Summary: What is a family? This is the fundamental question posed by Zach Wahls' testimony given here. This testimony was given to the Iowa House Judiciary Committee about House Joint Resolution 6, which proposed amending the Iowa Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. In his testimony, Wahls argues "the sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other, to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones; it comes from the love that binds us." He notes that in discussions about gay marriage, the question often comes up about whether or not gay parents can successfully raise a child. Citing several of his own impressive accomplishments, he argues that clearly is not an issue. Instead, the issue around gay marriage is discrimination. Wahls states you are "voting for the first time in the history of our state to codify discrimination into our constitution"; "you are telling Iowans that some among you are second class citizens who do not have the right to marry the person you love." Viewers themselves can be encouraged to consider what defines family? How does the state define family, and how do these definitions have consequences for existing families? What does it mean to view family as an institution within a sociological perspective? Viewers may also consider the broader history of discrimination encoded in laws, from race and ethnicity, to gender and sexuality. This can also be put in the broader national context of the fight for marriage equality, as demonstrated in this clip, which shows a conservative defending marriage equality from common conservative critiques. Submitted By: Paul Dean _Tags: emotion/desire, gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, audre lorde, homoeroticism, manhood, masculinity, othering, performativity, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2007 Length: 2:29 Access: YouTube Summary: In her article “Performing Gender Identity” (in Language and Gender: A Reader), Cameron argues that men are under constant pressure to constitute themselves as masculine. This pressure, at times, quickly turns into outright anxiety and terror, especially when it becomes more and more difficult to stabilize heterosexual masculinity in the absence of an object that can safely be identified as the target of desire proper. I use this nonthreatening clip from “Scrubs” to introduce students to the idea that the line between homosociality and homoerotics is very thin, blurred, and quite arbitrary. The ever-presence of the possibility of a homoerotic relationality between men, who, in this instance, cannot find an other through whom they can safely express their desire for each other, exposes the absurdity of manhood as not only a performance that is always already lost, but also as a performance of loss and as a mode of subjecthood which actively forbids itself an unpredictable and undefined range of intersubjective experiences. When hegemonic heterosexual masculinity attempts to “face the facts about me and you, a love unspecified,” as J.D. says, the homoerotic components of the intersubjective experience (where Audre Lorde finds the “chaos of our strongest feelings” —“The Uses of the Erotic”) are instantly alienated and turned into fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Their song is performative: it is a painful and quasi-conscious play that creates and sustains the kind of masculinity they assume and expect to already have, by constructing, bit by bit, the contours of intolerable desire, gaze, and touch... In Cameron's article, this gesture (of separating and dichotomizing homosociality and homoerotics) turns out to be potentially violent. There, in order to desperately preclude the possibility of homoerotic desire exposing itself, men produce an absent other, where they displace their own desires, project their own fears and terror, regulate their own anxieties, and externalize the unpredictable and subversive elements of intersubjectivity. This mythical monstrous absent other, constructed through a cooperative effort of sustained conversation about it, and alienated and terrorized as “the anti-thesis of man,” then serves as the basis of a kind of masculinity that was expected to already be safely present. Submitted By: Mehmet Atif Ergun Tags: art/music, commodification, consumption/consumerism, discourse/language, gender, intersectionality, lgbtq, media, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, violence, femininity, homophobia, masculinity, media literacy, popular culture, sexism, sexual objectification, stereotypes, subtitles/CC, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2007 Length: 55:31 Access: YouTube (trailer here) Summary: Using his own relationship with hip-hop as a guiding light, filmmaker Byron Hurt presents "HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a riveting documentary that tackles issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture. Sparking dialogue on hip-hop and its declarations on gender, HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes provides thoughtful insight from intelligent, divergent voices including rap artists, industry executives, rap fans and social critics from inside and outside the hip-hop generation. The film includes interviews with famous rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D and Jadakiss and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons; along with commentary from Michael Eric Dyson, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Kevin Powell and Sarah Jones and interviews with young women at Spelman College, a historically black school and one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions. The film also explores such pressing issues as women and violence in rap music, representations of manhood in hip-hop culture, what today’s rap lyrics reveal to their listeners and homoeroticism in hip-hop. A “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “hip-hop head,” HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes discloses the complex intersection of culture, commerce and gender through on-the-street interviews with aspiring rappers and fans at hip-hop events throughout the country." (Excerpt from the film's website on PBS IndependentLens.) Click here for excellent classroom materials and teaching resources, including a discussion guide, video modules, education guide, issue briefs, and more. Additional information also available at www.bhurt.com. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: discourse/language, lgbtq, media, sex/sexuality, homophobia, heterosexism, media literacy, remix, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2011 Length: 50:13 Access: YouTube Summary: This video is a montage of every homophobic joke included in the sitcom Friends. While it is not necessary to watch the entire clip in class, it provides an excellent example of how deeply embedded homophobia is within the show, an arguably popular media in general. The creator of the clip (in an interview available here) says,"the whole point of this project is to show the very extent to which homophobia pervades the show, and how it changes over the years." This video is useful in classroom discussions of homophobia, heterosexism, and the media as example of the level to which LGBT people are subject to discrimination and stereotypes within popular culture. It is also an excellent example of how those stereotypes evolve over time. Submitted By: Anya Galli Tags: disability, gender, historical sociology, lgbtq, media, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, war/military, ableism, collective memory, homophobia, media literacy, propaganda, public memory, racism, remix, representation, revisionism, transgender, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 5:32 Access: YouTube Summary: (Trigger warning: this clip depicts violence and includes explicit language) One of the criticisms sociology instructors occasionally field from students is the accusation that we are over thinking a particular issue or reading too deeply into some phenomenon. Similarly, when we draw attention to, say, the racist subtext of a fictional film, one common response is that the film is mere fantasy, the audience knows this, and therefore, there is no harm done. In this remix of the film 300, Craig Saddlemire and Ryan Conrad powerfully illustrate the way morally corrupt characters and those with deep flaws unfailingly match a type. These "bad guys" are often characters with disabilities. They are typically played by Black and Brown actors, and in many instances, the characters are gay, transgender, and/or effeminate men. As is true of 300, the hero's story is one typically told from the perspective of a powerful white man. By exposing these stereotypes and the way they are drawn upon to create the familiar characters that populate Hollywood films, the remix reminds us that movies can reinforce a worldview which values people differently based on race, sexuality, disability, and gender. At the two-minute mark, the remixers introduce the additional argument that "300 follows in a long tradition of US military propaganda," and to visually make this point, the remixers splice together scenes from Frank Capra's famous WWII propaganda films, which sought to answer the question of "Why we fight." Capra's answer was to save democracy, but instructors could provocatively ask students to consider the influence of propaganda and its depiction (demonization?) of the enemy. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: gender, inequality, lgbtq, marriage/family, prejudice/discrimination, sex/sexuality, social construction, coming out, gender identity, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2011 Length: 60:00 Access: no online access (trailer here) Summary: “What’s different about our show is that it really celebrates what it means to be LGBT in the United States,” says Andrew Goldberg, the film’s producer and director. This film is a collection of unique and inspiring personal narratives told through the lens of the country's most prominent LGBT figures and pioneers, as well as many average, yet extraordinary, citizens from the gay community. Some examples include the story of a transexual who formerly self-identified as a lesbian; experiences with homophobia; discussion of the criminalization of homosexuality; the use of symbols within the LGBT community to communicate their sexual orientation; the term "gaydar"; and experiences of being closeted. The stories cross lines of gender, race, class, and age to tell stories of love and the experiences of people in the LGBT community. It can be used to spark discussions of gender identity; the social construction of sex and gender; the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality, and social problems related to the LGBT community. Furthermore, the film weaves the stories of many people together, lending itself to the selection of brief segments on individual stories to accommodate shorter clips in the classroom. Submitted By: Paul Dean Verbotene Liebe Tags: gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, violence, gender socialization, heteronormativity, masculinity, representation, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 4:02 Access: YouTube Summary: This four-minute remix is composed of scenes cut from the Dutch film, De Vierde Man, the British television drama, Hollyoaks: In the City, the German soap opera, Verbotene Liebe, and at least four other sources. Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" plays in the background. The clip features scene after scene of gay men expressing love, affection, and genuine vulnerability. The fact that this queer affection lasts more than a scene and is not reduced to a token moment in an otherwise heteronormative media world will strike many as unusual. If one focuses on gender exclusively, it is also striking to see such nurturing and emotionally vulnerable depictions of men in cinema in such a sustained way. I would argue that representations of men as essentially violent so thoroughly saturate the media landscape that it becomes quite rare to find spaces which depict men as caregivers, attentive lovers, and nurturers. Jean Kilbourne makes a similar point in her documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, arguing that the media socialize through their capacity to divide up human qualities based on gender. Stoicism, confidence, compassion, and the capacity to nurture—to name just a few—become either feminine or masculine, and men are encouraged by the media to repress their so-called feminine qualities. Using the clip, students can be asked to consider how men are socialized differently than women, and in particular, how violence gets attached to masculinity. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: biology, bodies, children/youth, gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, clitorectomy, intersex, intersexuality, medical sociology, transgender, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2000 Length: 12:50 Access: YouTube; www.isna.org Summary: The promotional synopsis for this film notes that, "Clitorectomy and other forms of sexually mutilating genital surgery are a reality here and now for children born with a clitoris that doctors or parents think is 'too big.' In this short documentary, Kristi Bruce and Howard Devore, both born intersex, talk eloquently and straightforwardly about their experience of a medical model based upon shame, secrecy, and forced 'normalization. Physician Jorge Daaboul joins their call for an end to secrecy and mutilating genital surgery on intersex children." This film is incredibly informative and concise and would be a nice way of beginning a discussion about intersex identities. The clip might also serve as a means of beginning a discussion about how the rigid gender binary in the United States and elsewhere leads to physically and emotionally harmful institutionalized practices which affect a sizable population. Note that two other clips on The Sociological Cinema (here and here) explore the topic of intersexuality as it pertains to South African runner, Caster Semenya, and the media attention she received after her "true" sex was called into question in 2009. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
Jay Smooth discusses "no homo"
Tags: discourse/language, gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, fag discourse, homophobia, hip hop, Identity politics, masculinity, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 2:58 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip Jay Smooth of the Ill Doctrine remarks on the emergence and popularity of the phrase "no homo" in hip hop music. Smooth first notes how the term "no homo" was popularized by Cam'ron of New York's Dipset Crew, he critiques the term, then discusses whether it can even be used ironically as a critique of homophobia. The clip would work as a nice follow-up to C.J. Pascoe's Dude, You're a Fag, which argues that through a "fag discourse" boys effectively police the boundaries of masculinity. Students can be asked to consider how "no homo" might be a part of this discourse. Note that this clip works well in tandem with a second short clip from Brian Safi of "That's Gay," which similarly draws attention to the emergence and use of the phrase "no homo." Submitted By: Jessica Holden Sherwood |
Tags
All
.
Got any videos?
Are you finding useful videos for your classes? Do you have good videos you use in your own classes? Please consider submitting your videos here and helping us build our database!
|