Category: Sociology of Culture
By bmckernan During the spring of 2008, a heated debate emerged within the video game community over what some considered to be the presence of racist imagery in a trailer for the latest installment of the popular video game franchise Resident Evil. As a franchise, Resident Evil has generally been well received by the gaming community, with many of its games garnering both critical acclaim and commercial success. As a series, Resident Evil is known for combining a rich narrative...
nmccoy1 Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Africa (see BBC article below) included comments on the AIDS epidemic that has disproportionately affected Africans worldwide. While staying true to Catholic doctrine and its teachings on abstinence, his insistence that condoms are both ineffective against the spread of HIV/AIDS and can in fact increase the rate of contamination further diminish the gendered aspects of this problem. The fact that condoms are a cheap and accessible form of birth control has been overshadowed by...
by theoryforthemasses Immigrants’ stories of sacrifice and (re)settlement are often overshadowed by statistics about demographics like educational attainment, income, and family size; the stories themselves remain untold. A recent New York Times article explores the impact of these stories on the children of immigrant families. Each year sociologist and Hunter College professor Nancy Foner teaches a class entitled “The Peopling of New York” wherein she asks students to interview a close relative about recent family history. Given that many of...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1aenJK08] What happens when the internet, a supposed open space for free speech and expression, is censored by government authorities? Early this year, the Chinese government initialized a policy focusing particularly on the “repair of internet integrity,” which basically means “anti-obscenity.” The policy aimed to break down and cast off all online websites and web pages containing contents against the Chinese government’s principle of “harmony and peace.” Under the policy, over 2000 websites and blogs are blocked and forced to...
by NickieWild This week, the American Religious Identification Survey conducted by Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut was released. Regions are seeing religious shifts – the Northeast is losing its religious population, while the South is gaining. Clearly, this is due to migration within the country, as well as the more typically religious Hispanic population increasing in numbers in the South. But there has been an overall decline in those who identify with a particular religion. This systemic change can be...
Over the weekend, The Watchmen grossed approximately 55 million dollars in its opening weekend in the United States. More than sixty years ago, sociologists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argued that movies no longer need to pretend to be art and are in reality, just businesses made into an ideology in order to justify “the rubbish they deliberately produce.” The recent big budget gates in hard economic times suggests a fresh reading of this classic. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as...
by bmckernan A while back, a previous blog post wondered how Hollywood and American television would react to the current economic crisis. Would these industries continue to focus on affluent and lavish lifestyles, or would they instead redirect their gaze to more humbling “middleclass” concerns in light of the dire economic straits many Americans now found themselves navigating. Well, according to a recent article in Time magazine, at least one American television network is not only staying the course, but...
nmccoy1 In a New York Times article (see below), consumers of organic food have become distressed to learn that organic food may not actually be safer than other food products. While it is clear that consumers who shop organic are right to expect higher standards, we may need to question what standards they are invoking. In an age of information, consumers are more capable than ever before of researching food product ingredients, nutrition, pesticide use, and labor rights. Yet labor...
By rbobbitt A recent report from the British medical journal The Lancet reports that over 100,000 women died in fires in India in a single year (see New York Times article). These fires stem from a serious domestic abuse issues in India in which women are doused in gasoline and set ablaze, their deaths blamed on “kitchen accidents.” Domestic abuse as become a major problem in the country, as women are often killed over dowry disputes, with no repercussions sought...
by Joel Best Barbie, the teenage fashion doll, turns 50 this month. The years have been kind to Barbie; she hasn’t gained weight or lost her figure. Of course, her critics would say that’s the problem. We’ve all heard the complaints by sociologists of gender and other intellectuals. Barbie, they say, is harmful–even dangerous–because she promotes traditional gender roles. Her beauty teaches little girls that society will judge them primarily according to their looks, and not...
by linanne10 Tokyo may be one of the most extreme examples of a hybridized international city, in an age of rapid globalization. Cultural negotiation and reconciliation between Western notions of modernization and traditional Japanese civilization (or to some extent, Asian civilization) found their way in this kaleidoscopical urban space, whether in tension or in peace. The film, Tokyo! (opening on March, 6 in New York City), is a triptych by three foreign directors, Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry,...
by ishein1 “It takes tremendous courage to think for yourself and examine yourself, this Socratic imperative requires courage.” This quote is taken from the trailer of the second documentary from Astra Taylor and is spoken by Cornel West in the back of Taylor’s car. Taylor’s first film, Zizek, was a documentary in which the ‘intellectual rock star’, Slavoj Zizek, is shadowed on his lecture circuit. Taylor’s new film “Examined Life”, set to open in New York City, once again attempts...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4mBRYueMss] by NickieWild Last week, a very racially charged cartoon appeared in the New York Post, featuring a couple of police officers having killed a chimpanzee, with the caption, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The cartoon was supposedly a somewhat weak joke about an animal that attacked a woman, and was shot by police in Connecticut, linked tenuously with commentary of a sort about President Obama’s economic plan. Civil rights leaders weren’t laughing....
by bmckernan A battle is looming within the video game industry between video game developers and video game retail outlets. Over the last decade, the trading in of used video games for store credit has become an increasingly popular activity for a significant portion of the gaming world. For many gamers, trading in their old games for store credit is the only way they can afford to continue to pursue their video game hobby, while on the retail side the...
Later this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is scheduled to hold their 81st Academy Awards in Hollywood, California. While the Oscars is the premiere awards ceremony for the United States film industry, in recent years a variety of other awards ceremonies have begun to proliferate across the calendar to recognize members of the film industry in a variety of similar categories to the Oscars. Recently, sociologist Joel Best has written an article describing the proliferation of...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRZyymYe-FQ] By linanne There is a long tradition of using gender and sexual dualism as marketing strategies in industries from technology to entertainment. Discourses in advertisements are often framed as “targeting at” whether male or female consumers. Products are also packaged in ways that are gendered according to certain sets of binary codes. Such dichotomous gender representations not only reproduce the existing social and cultural structures of gender segregation, but also inform individual and collective activities which oftentimes are responses...
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