Back when we were Americans

When I was a kid you had American families on tv.  The Keatons, the Huxtables, the Winslows . . . we followed their day to day lives by watching the sitcoms these families lived on Family Ties, Family Matters, The Cosby Show – they were our next door neighbors and friends and for half-an hour once a week they visited us in our homes.  We knew the names of their kids, their interests, where they vacationed, what schools they attended and their annoying neighbors.  That was back when we were Americans.

Today we face an unfamiliar world on tv.  We no longer have the Keaton Family, the Huxtables or the Winslows next door or visit us once a week – today we know our media reality neighbors as – the black family, the hispanic family, the white family and they generally come into our homes only upon invitation and with a great deal of suspision, cultural gap.  We don’t know them nearly as well as we did Mrs. Huxtable or Steve Urkel and there values may or may not be ours.

These new families are in many ways so freaky that we segregate them away from us.  We don’t want to deal with them and why should we?  They may or may not be American – may or may not share our values.  And this begs the question of whether or not this will lead us back to a segregated society?  During the 1920′s we had a multicultural society – and they did not interact with one another except when necessary.  Each part of town – the Blacks, Whites, Hispanic and Chinese and more.

The simple fact is that White Americans will always be defined as Americans.  We are the founders of the country, we set it up.  We made a revolution, established the original Republic on the East Coast and Pioneered it to the West Coast through negoitation and conquest.  However other groups will not necessarily be defined as such.  The black family, the chinese family, ect . . . it would appear that a multi-cultural society and small racial/cultural cliques our underming a larger sense of American tribalism.  While there will always be racial difference due to the different histories of racial development in America – the real question is how will multi-culturalism especially in the media undermine the development of an integrated American tribal society?

 

 

 

 

 

Social Media, Race and Business

One of the biggest obstacles that businesses have faced when it comes to selling is geting their information out.  Race has played a major factor in the past.  Avoid that neighborhood or that store – its a black store, that’s a trashy korean store, don’t go to that kyke doctor or avoid that damn spic business.  Because stores have forever depended on geographic location and word of mouth race and ethnicity have played a major impact on the ability of stores too sell their merchandise.  In the South segregation resulted in Black stores selling to Black customerrs – wealthier Black stores were able to get by relocating to white neighborhoods and selling to white customers.

Businesses that did not give black customers the same treatment in the South or White Only were targeted by the Civil Rights Movement for boycott or demonstrations.  Other stores have been attacked and torched for their race – a bunch of black rioters drummed up racist attacks on jewish businesses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_riot

What is interesting is now businesses are selling so much online.  Buyers have no way too know the race eor ethnicity of the sellers.  If you have never been there you will have to rely on the website, facebook, twitter, yelp and social media.  It is almost like the movie A Gentlemen’s Agreement backwards.  It also prevents certain social groups from making racial attacks.  It will be interesting to see whether social media will decrease or continue this sort of racism in business.

While it is probable that a degree of racism will always exist in business the question becomes to what extent.  It is not true that riots can not be carried online.  Hacking, hate emails, flaming, ect .  .  . not to mention negative reviews.  Social media also will have an influence – don’t shop from that nigger store, buy only from black brothers, ect . . . social media in some ways may in fact make things worse because online cliques are more likely to form and as has been seen people are more likely to engage in all kinds of behavior online that they wouldn’t in real life.

Social media and web 2.0 are so new as are online sales that we are still dealing with the reality of it – however the question will be what impact this will have on traditional stereotypes and racial issues.  Will they decrease or will they increase and see a proliferation?

With Anonymouses political activities one wonders if other groups including the KKK and Black Panthers will turn to online attacks.

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving Civilized and Uncivilized and other matters

Happy Thanksgiving,

So Tuesday there was an 8 AM discussion about Egyptian riots that turned to a discussion about media portrayel of Barbarism and Civilization.  Yeah I know, way to early for me especially when I didn’t get to bed till 2, had a chiropractic appointment at 9:45 and long day filled with other activities that I needed to take care of later on so I figured I would talk about it here – I am getting school points for this blog after all.

Ok here’s the deal.  When judging media we are making a judgement about portrayels and ultimately about what is being portrayed.  Failure to make a judgement about the object of a portrayel undermines the entire purpose because media analysis depends on whether the media is accurate or not.  Subway commercials say they will make you thin – is this accurate?  Whether you say yes or no you are by default making a judgement about Subway they are slimming or not slimming.  Either way you are making a judgement.

So back to civilization and barbarism!  The question about judging the media portrayel of civilized versus un-civilizated boils down to are they accurate.

Some countries are some aren’t.  When critiqueing its important to start by establishing a criteria of what is civilized and what isn’t.  According to wikipedia article on Barbarism (Which includes sources in this article) the term un-civilized was developed in Ancient Greece to refeer to “anyone who was is Greek” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian) or for those who have seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding “there are those who are greek and everybody else who wishes they were”.  And also according to the wikipedia article it was first applied to the Persian empire.  On the article on Civilization wikipedia describes “ the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization)

So basically when judging you have to make a judgement.  When I took Fundamentals of Oral Communication I had to give an arguementative speech and our professor instructed us to pick a contraversial topic that would get alot of heated debate - something that would make people want to argue.  I decided to argue that the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “strategically justified and MORALLY NECESSARY!!!”  The way this worked I got up and made an arguement and the entire class was supposed to fight with me.  During this I pointed out as an arguement that Japan had propogandized its citizens demonizing Americans and encouraging them to commit suicide – my professor who decided that part of his job for making us good debaters was to argue back – and he pointed out that we also propogandized us.  I made the counter point however that there was a huge difference – Americans DID NOT commit war crimes – our portrayels of the Japanese as rapists, murderers, torture, ect . . . were entirely accurate.  The Japanese portrayels were lies deliberately manufactured to encourage mass suicide amongst the Japanese population and maintain support for the Japanese military government even after the Emperor announced his intention to surrender.

So when it comes down to judging media portrayels of civilization accuracy is important as is acknowledging that there are civilized, un-civilized and barbaric countries.  Not all countries are civilized and not all cultures are equal.  In judging this the most important factor I belive is whether or not it is institutionalized.  Is behavior that can be labelled barbaric legal, practiced, social norm and institutionalized?  While bad behavior can and does go on in all cultures and societies not all societies instutionalize it.  In India indentured servitude is common and practicied, it is socially acceptable.  India by human rights standards is barbaric and is on the top list of countries for human trafficking.  The United States is also on this top list of countries for human trafficking (or was when I last checked in 2007/2008) but we do not instutionalize it, furthermore we have enshrined in our constitution, criminal laws and social mores that human trafficking is evil.  Even if it is practicied it is not done with our approval or acceptance and we make efforts to stamp this out.

The media often does not reflect this distinction largely because it involves risk.  To call someone a barbarian involves risking being labelled oneself and conflict – having to take a stand.  Most people don’t like that and so they avoid it.  But it is important to call a spade a spade.  The delusional media reality of the 1930′s that portrayed Nazi Germany as just “different” not evil in the name of peace resulted in the Second World War and the holocaust.

Cheary thoughts I know this Thanksgiving – but reality is reality and not acknowledging the reality in the media can be dangerous.  Romanticism is ok for art media – but in news media is dangerous.

 

 

Lying about rape

Today in class we weatched a part of the film Orleanna – the final encounter where a college student Carol approaches her professor John and gives him a list of demands in exchange for dropping charges she has pressed against him before initiating a campaign of interpersonal psychological and verbal violence against him till he breaks and beats her up!!!  While the class disliked both characters – there was a general sense of feeling that she had it coming.

This brought up a question with another student about whether the film was feminist or not and I promised to find out.  According to a series of articles I found the film is based on a stage play that was adapted to a film by David Mamet and most articles take the persepctive it is an anti-feminist film http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-11-11/news/9411090649_1_oleanna-carol-incest-victim , http://tech.mit.edu/V114/N53/oleana.53a.html , http://articles.latimes.com/1992-08-23/magazine/tm-7341_1_david-mamet , so she wins that point of the debate.

But more to the point the entire thing brings up the question of lying about rape in the media.  In Orleanna a character claims her professor attempted to rape her yet before the end of the film and against the advice of the court officers she visits him – alone in his office (where he is unaware of the rape charges and she is unaware that he is unaware) and proceeds to make a series of demands including campus censorship of books she personally find undersirable in exchange for dropping the rape charge.  This brought incredulus from the students in the room – an woman who files a rape complaint proceeds to go into a private room alone with her alledged attacker and offers to bargain with him?

This however is not the only case where media has been used to promote this lies about rape.  In 2006 the media reported over and over and over again about a rape victim of a mens college lacross team who was gang raped while performing as a stripper at a private party.  The fact that the accused were white, in a southern state and the victim black was also trumpeted.  The only problem is that there was no victim.  The accuser whose identity the media shielded while blaring the accusseds names across time and space  and now virtual reality turned out to be a liar.  The prosecutor turned out to be corrupt – even charging a man as one of her three assailants who had an iron clad alliby of being with a taxi driver on the other side of town withdrawing money from an ATM with ATM records and eye witnesses proving that he could not have been at the alleged rape.

Currently the case of Jerry Sandusky is coming up – the allegations that he raped a 10 year old boy.  Only problem is that he has not been charged with rape.  While he faces 40 counts of behavior including lesser sexual assault, he has so far not been charged with even one count of rape.  This fact however is often obscurred in the media.

So whats the reason?  The old saying goes “if it bleeds it leads” but who is it leading for?

It would appear to be women.  In all of these cases a man’s innocence, justice, right to a fair trial was placed second.  People were asked about feelings and how they would feel if this was their relative – emotion not reason was triggered in all these news stories.  More to the point more women then men vote today – meaning lawmakers can seize on this and propose legislation that will win votes from female voters who are largely defined as single issue voters and already in the Penn State scandel lawmakers eager to capitalize off of the scandel have rushed to propose legislation when Jerry Sandusky has not even been indicted by a grand jury or had a pre-leminary hearing.  This hasn’t stopped vultures like these http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/westmoreland/s_767339.html from attempting to capatilize politically from this or topics shows like The View from http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/view-heated-jerry-sandusky-14956763 and ABC Good Morning America http://abcnews.go.com/US/penn-state-scandal-mother-sanduskys-adopted-son-speaks/story?id=14970402

What is interesting is this last one has the mother of Jerry Sandusky’s adopted son claiming that he was sexually abused despite Matt Sanduskys denial.  The use of term “victim 1″ rather than “accuser 1″ and refering to them as “boys” instead of the fact that they are men who are making allegations.  The characters in most of these cases are cast in familial terms to the viewers – your daughter off to college, a young black woman gang raped by three white boys, and now a mother accusing her sons adopted father of abuse over his repeated denials.

Over all the target audence seems to be mothers from a generation that already has a reputation for helicopter parents and exploit personal characteristics to drum up ratings.

All in all this is rather disturbing trend and is yet another showcase how the media deliberaetly takes a serious issue and uses it to pervert justice.

For more information on the Sandusky case I have a post on this blog http://kdudesmediawatch.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/jerry-sandusky-not-charged-with-rape/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where have all the lesbians gone?

                                                                                                                       (Thank-You Google Images)

A discussion in class about homosexuality in the media took a twist when the question of why the media when dealing with homosexuality covers gay men but not lesbian women.  Lesbian women are always the minority in portrayels of lesbianism in American media.  Even the show Queer As Folk focused on only one lesbian couple compared to “the boys of Liberty Avenue.”

I posed the theory that it may be because their is still some question as to whether lesbianism itself exists and I am sticking too it.  TV shows are marketed towards demographs – which are in turn self-identifying groups of people that form a collective sense of we.  For years the question of lesbianism has been an interesting one.  During the 1800′s England criminalized male homosexuality but not female. The lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness was censored in the 1920′s for promoting un-natural practices amongst women.  During the 1990′s lesbian Camille Paglia who authored Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickenson scandalized American society by suggesting women more so than others were by nature bisexual and were dominatly hetrosexual due to hormones and reproductive drives that make hetrosexuality necessary.  The Color Purple became famous for promoting love between two women later in life after both of them had a sexual relationship with the same man – only to have one of them return to her husband as a friend but not a lover.  Queer As Folk took an interesting take on this issue when one of the lesbian characters on there was constantly portrayed as having an un-requited love for Brian Kinney – a gay man who is also the father of her son and whom she had a brief sexual relationship with in college.  Matters were further complicated when the actress playing the character replied that to a question about her sexuality that “its all love to me.”  And most recently Meredith Baxter or as a generation of kids who watched tv in the 80′s and 90′s know her as “mom” shocked Americans when she announced that after three marriages to men and five kids that she was a lesbian who had a later in life “recognition”.  Even Ellen surprised an interviewer by revealing that she had had lots of boyfriends.

An article on CNN a few years ago suggested that womens sexuality was different from men and was more emotion based rather than lust based – women responded to romance wheres men responded to lust.  As such mens sexuality was more set then womens – and it was further suggested that lesbianism might be a stage of life for older women.

All of this said its pretty confusing.  The result is that lesbians – except for a militant minority within a minority – have yet to form a dominant social group.  If a woman can go from being a hetrosexual housewife to a lesbian lover – unlike gay men who are often set for life – it disrupts a sense of indentity and group formation which incidentally disrupts the creation of a niche market or target demograph.

If women don’t identify as lesbians or did once and don’t now or do know but won’t in the future having a stable niche market at one time is almost impossible – disrupting the potential for revenue from this market.  Therefore there is no need to create entertainment for a group whose loyalties are constantly shifting but more to the point it is next to impossible.

Gay men for better or for worse still seem to adopt traditional male values of tribalism wheres women are more likely to keep engaging in bipartisanship – with shifting loyalties.  Even if the perception is not the reality – the existence of this perception that lesbianism does not exist in the same way or for the same reasons that male homosexuality, especially one championed by lesbian writers themselves, influences those that create entertainment that lesbianism is not a stable market or source of revnue outside of the porn industry.

 

Sex and the City

Today in class we watched an episode of Sex and the City and compared it to an episode of I Love Lucy analyzing the media messages sent about women.  The general consensus was that in terms of competence, proffessionalism, ect . . . Sex and the City sent more positive images and media messages about women than I Love Lucy.  In the episode of I Love Lucy Lucy and Ethel attempt to get jobs only to fail miserably and end up being fired.  Their supervisor despite being a woman is very masculine and butch sending the message that power and authority is tied to masculinity – not a feminine occupation.  By contrast Sex and the City sent the message that women were capable of having their careers together – in fact this is a non-issue and taken for granted.

What’s interesting in this analysis is that it undermines itself on account of the fact that the reality does not match up to the message sent.  In Sex and the City the women that portray these characters are nothing like them.  They are actresses that chose a profession that if successful would allow them to appear glamerous, reward and promote them based on their sexual performance and that does not require any of the education, work or proffessionalism required of say a lawyer or accountant.

On the other hand I Love Lucy was a show about a ditzy redhead who cared about her appearence, was constantly in trouble with her finances, and had no employeable skills.  By contrast Lucille Ball was the exact opposite having a long career in films and radio before begining her television career.  Additionally Lucille Ball was the co-owner and Vice-President of Desilu studios while I Love Lucy was being produced and had been the driving force to ensure that her real life husband Desi Arnaz be cast in the role of her on screen husband over the objections of CBS.  Later Lucille Ball would continue to play the same character while ascending to sole owner and President of Desilu – at the time the largest and most powerful television company in America.

Interestingly enough the Sex and the City characters bear a closer resemblance to a similar character that Katherine Hepburn played in Woman of the Year – a proffesional woman who seems to have it all but has trouble in her love life.

In terms of media messages it is interesting to me that the messages sent in the 1990′s are similar to the ones sent in the 1940′s yet in the 1950′s that different media messages were sent.  Also interesting is how the realitys sharply deviate from their messages.

 

Racist attacks on Eric Rubio

I was surfing the web and came across this post on the TusconCitizen.com http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-hispanic-republicans/2011/10/23/marco-rubio-will-you-show-them-your-papers-please/ about Senator Marko Rubio’s position on illegal immigration.  The article was generated by a DeeDee Garcia a member of something call the National Tequila Party Movement.  In the article Garcia describes her disgust for Senator Rubio due to his opposition to the Dream Act and granting “amnesty” and attacking Rubio for opposing amnesty when his family immigrated from Cuba.

In the article the blogger uses a variety of techniques to grab attention.  She starts by focusing in attention on her attending an event in Washington D.C. sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and visiting Senator Rubio’s office at the Capitol.  She then features an unpleasant photo of Rubio looking down with his mouth tightly closed.  She then proceeds to try and cast Rubio’s family background into doubt by claiming that his parents legal status here was questionable at the time of their immigration and his birth.  Garcia also uses some snark and strongly biased language to try and make her point such as this phrase “The generous “Cuban Adjustment Act” of November 2, 1966, seems to have given Senator Rubio’s family a shot at the American dream. It seems that Senator Rubio’s parents after 10 years of a questionable immigration status – or as visa overstays – were able to become legal, with what many call, “the Cuban Amnesty.” To this day, any Cuban that is inspected or paroled into the United States can become a Legal Permanent Resident a year after they first enter. This law also grants this status to a Cuban national that crosses the United States’ Mexican border illegally.”  All in all the author attempts to create a dramatic sense of “mystery” regarding the Senator’s family’s legal status and outrage at an alledged hypocrisy that is unproven.

The ideology the author attempts to create is not so subtle.  That all immigration should be treated the same and that immigrants that are classified by the U.S. census as a particular race should stick together regardless of their ethinic, cultural or historically different situations.  More to the point the author attempts to attack Rubio for not being a good hispanic and voting along color lines.  In some aspects this article post is very racist in its not so cleaver attempt to appear not so – by argueing that skin color and family background situations that may or may not be comparable should automatically dictate political position and supersede national identity.  What is ommitted from the article is any actual substance.  The entire article is based on first a lack of evidence to backup the authors allegations.  She presents no evidence that Rubio’s parents were illegal immigrents, that Rubio’s family situation was comparable.  She also fails to make any connection between illegal immigrents from Mexico and immigrents from Cuba – deliberately ignoring that the Cuban immigration policy in effect was developed as a cold war human rights policy to waive normal immigration restrictions and allow citizens of country’s with repressive murderous regimes to immigrate to safety in the United States.  While Mexico may be a trouble country and an arguement may be made for granting refugee status to Mexican nationals it is not comparable to a country ruled by a communist dictator that attempted to faciliate nuclear strikes on the United States during the 1960′s.

Overall the goal of the author in sending this message is to undermine Rubio’s image and that of the Republican Party.  For years claims have been made that the Republican Party is a racist party that appeals only to white men and that the hardline stance on illegal immigration in recent years was evidence of this.  Rubio’s ellection undermines this image and so the author’s goal is to undermine Rubio’s image as a much larger attack on the U.S. Republican Party for taking stances un-favorable to a self-described race based political movement.