Monthly Archives: October 2010

Banksy and the Simpsons: a wink to what watching the show actually means

Posted on by

Part of the long-term appeal of The Simpsons has been its ability to effectively play with ambiguity: it has had the ability to both mock television in general while at the same time creating a likable cast that reach resolutions that are not that different from many sitcoms. Should viewers revel in its put-downs of all aspects of society or should they enjoy the heart-warming family outcomes?

The latest stunt on this front involves the elusive British street artist Banksy:

The episode, “MoneyBART,” opens with an extended “couch gag” — the opening sequence in which the Simpson family takes its place on their sofa — created by British street artist Banksy. The artist’s dark vision gives viewers a horrifying look at how he imagines the hit show and its lucrative merchandise are made: sweatshop conditions for its animators; unsafe conditions for producers of its apparel; boxes sealed with the tongue of a disembodied dolphin head; the center holes popped out of its DVDs with the horn of a shackled, emaciated unicorn. Really…

Were the show’s creators trying to draw attention to the unethical business practices an animated series must engage in to remain competitive? Are viewers meant to draw conclusions about our own complicity as we consumers indirectly fund companies that enslave people overseas? Or was the sequence merely a stunt calculated to bring attention — negative or not — on an aging, fading series?

While an interesting opening sequence that was longer than normal and contained typical Simpsons absurdities (like the unicorn), is this really edgy or new? Any television watcher should know what is really going on with shows: they are about making money. In its early days, the Simpsons was a rebellious show, drawing in a young audience and selling a lot of merchandise. Today, it is still about making money (and perhaps sowing ground for a second successful movie). The Simpsons may now be part of American culture but that is not why the show is still on television.

Ultimately, this may simply be about gaining attention. And with the show then moving on to a typical 22 minute storyline, can the opening really be construed as some sort of powerful statement?

Learning the norms of audience behavior at the orchestra concert

Posted on by

Going to a symphony orchestra concert of a major group, such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is an event: certain behavior is expected of the audience. An article from the Chicago Tribune offers some tips and a comment from a musician about how to learn about going to the orchestra:

It is extremely hard for anyone without significant exposure to classical music to truly understand it, he said.

“It’s something that has to be cultivated,” he said. “Beethoven’s music is filled with philosophy. …You can’t just come to one concert and understand it.”

But he hopes beginners try. One concert, after all, can lead to another. And another.

I would like to know when exactly symphony halls became places of quiet and decorum. If you read about classical music in the early 20th century, such as in The Rest Is Noise, some concerts, particularly those featuring modern music by the likes of Stravinsky and others, were places of displayed emotions. Classical music wasn’t just nice background music; it was music that was tied to bigger ideas and revolutionary thoughts.

The appeal of Google and its driverless cars

Posted on by

It was recently revealed that Google has been testing automated cars for some time now:

With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.

Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has.

Why does this story have as much as appeal as it seems to have on the Internet? A quick argument:

This is a dream dating back decades. The futuristic exhibits of the mid 20th century had visions of this: people blissfully enjoying their trips while the cars took care of the driving. To see the dream come to fruition is satisfying and fulfilling. On a broader scale, this is part of the bigger narrative of technological progress. Although it has been delayed longer than some imagined, it demonstrates ingenuity and the progress of Americans. Since Americans have a well-established love affair with the automobile, driverless cars offers the best of all worlds: personal freedom in transportation without the need to actually do any work. And if we soon get cars that run on electricity or hydrogen, it can be completely guilt-free transportation!

The sociology of competition and winning

Posted on by

Sociologist Francesco Duina has written a new book about the sociology of competition:

“My goal was to figure out what the language of competition is all about,” he said. About 90 percent of the book is analysis, looking at winning in politics, business, sports and elsewhere, he said.

He compared European, North American and Asian societies and he broke down different ways of winning, comparing the consistent winners to the ones who won only occasionally and to the steady losers.

I would be curious to read about how American competition differs from that found in other countries. Additionally, it would be interesting to know how kids in different settings are taught about winning and competition.

America’s Four Gods: Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical, Distant

Posted on by

A new book from two Baylor sociologists, America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God – and What That Says About Us, examines Americans’ image of God. They uncovered four viewpoints: an authoritative God, benevolent God, critical God, and distant God. And the image individuals had of God then influences how they view other issues in the world:

Surveys say about nine out of 10 Americans believe in God, but the way we picture that God reveals our attitudes on economics, justice, social morality, war, natural disasters, science, politics, love and more, say Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, sociologists at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Their new book, America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God — And What That Says About Us, examines our diverse visions of the Almighty and why they matter.

Based primarily on national telephone surveys of 1,648 U.S. adults in 2008 and 1,721 in 2006, the book also draws from more than 200 in-depth interviews that, among other things, asked people to respond to a dozen evocative images, such as a wrathful old man slamming the Earth, a loving father’s embrace, an accusatory face or a starry universe.

Researchers from the USA to Malawi are picking up on the unique Baylor questionnaire, and its implications. When the Gallup World Poll used several of the God-view questions, Bader says, “one clear finding is that the USA — where images of a personal God engaged in our lives dominate — is an outlier in the world of technologically advanced nations such as (those in) Europe.” There, the view is almost entirely one of a Big Bang sort of God who launched creation and left it spinning rather than a God who has a direct influence on daily events.

The image of God that we develop is likely strongly influenced by our cultural background which include our families and our surroundings. A couple of questions spring to mind:

1. How do churches promote or push these separate viewpoints of God?

2. At what age do children already have one of these images of God?

3. How difficult or common is it to change one’s image of God?

4. How much do people fit their image of God to their already developed or developing views of the world?

5. How are each of these four viewpoints rooted in wider American culture?

Explaining a short-term dip in chronic homelessness

Posted on by

A sociologist provides an explanation for the short-term dip in chronic homelessness in the United States:

Amid increases in poverty and unemployment, [the United States and Japan] have seen continuing decreases in street homelessness. The most recent Homeless Assessment Report to the U.S. Congress states that the chronically homeless, or those who have been on the streets or in shelters long-term and have disabilities, decreased by 10 percent from 2008 to 2009. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has reported a national decrease of street homelessness of 16 percent between 2009 and 2010…
While the provision of subsidized housing is crucial to get people off the streets, a lesser-known component in both nations has been the flexible, holistic and trust-building work of frontline staff persons at organizations linking people to and keeping them in housing.
This argument suggests that it is not just about providing resources (such as housing) to help reduce chronic homelessness but having staff help point them to and keep them using such resources.
I wonder how much data there is to back up this argument. Additionally, do governments see/acknowledge the value of these staff positions, particularly in lean economic times?

Sunday morning services still separated by race

Posted on by

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “”11 o’clock Sunday is still the most segregated hour of the week.” Recent sociological evidence lends weight to King’s observation:

According to a study published in the latest issue of Sociological Inquiry, 9 in 10 Christian congregations in America have a single racial group that accounts for more than 80 percent of membership. A similar study 10 years ago found a remarkably similar ratio.

There is a growing amount of sociological research on this topic. One body of research looks at how difficult it is create and then maintain a multiracial congregation. Even if one is created intentionally, it takes a lot of work to maintain this as a too large population of one racial or ethnic group can accelerate the departure of other groups. To learn more, read People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States.

Reviewing “American Grace”: it is readable!

Posted on by

The book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us was released this past week. In addition to being co-authored by Robert Putnam (author of well-known Bowling Alone), the study has been hailed by several sources as a (and perhaps the) comprehensive look at religion in American society.

But a feature of a positive review written by a historian in the San Francisco Chronicle struck me as intriguing:

Among the great virtues of this volume is its combination of two features that are all too rarely found in close proximity. One is a commitment to the most rigorous standards of contemporary social science, bolstered by statistical sophistication. Do you like multiple regression analysis? You’ll find lots of it here. The other feature is a commitment to get their message across to educated readers who are put off by the excessive jargon and abstraction of most sociological studies. Only such a combination could make a 673-page tome worth the attention “American Grace” deserves.

Reading between the lines, here is what is being said: sociologists are not often able to combine statistical evidence (regression analysis of survey results is the gold standard for studies like this that claim to be comprehensive looks at American society) and winsome writing. Essentially, the book is “readable.”

A few thoughts come to mind:

1. What exactly about it makes it “readable” or “understandable”?

2. When reading a book using regression analysis, how much should the “typical educated reader” know about this kind of analysis? This might say more about general statistical knowledge, even among the educated, than it does about the book.

3. This is a valid concern for a book that hopes to be read by many people – writers should always consider their audience. However, it still strikes me as a lower-level priority: isn’t the argument of the book much more important than how it was written? The style of writing can detract from the argument but what we should grapple with are Putnam and Campbell’s conclusions.

The religious views of American professors

Posted on by

Here is a summary of a recent sociological study that examines the religious views of American professors:

In a recent article published in Sociology of Religion, sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons use data from a new, nationally representative survey of American college and university professors to test the long-running assumption that higher education leads to irreligiousness. Based on their research, they argue that “while atheism and agnosticism are much more common among professors than within the U.S. population as a whole, religious skepticism represents a minority position, even among professors teaching at elite research universities.” This has been a long-running debate amongst those who study religiosity in higher education and pay attention to trends in societal secularization.

Gross and Simmons worked with a sample size of 1,417 professors, providing an approximate representation of the more than 630,000 professors teaching full-time in universities and colleges across the United States. It should be noted that they limited their study to professors who taught in departments granting an undergraduate degree. As such, professors teaching in medical faculties and law schools were not part of the sample.

There is a lot more information here including religious beliefs by academic discipline and religious affiliation of the professors.

The conclusion of the authors is that this refutes notions that people with high levels of education (“the intelligentsia”)  are necessarily at odds with religion.

It would then be interesting to follow up with these respondents and ask how they feel their faith (or lack of faith) interacts with their research and teaching.

Foreclosing foreclosure

Posted on by

Many news outlets are reporting on the escalating foreclosure paperwork mess, and the American Bar Association’s Law Journal has a roundup describing some of the most recent calls for banks to halt foreclosures entirely.

I haven’t had time to dive into the issue extensively, but my grasp of the underlying issues leads to the following two observations:

  1. I’m not sure what the banks–and especially the law firms–were thinking.  Lawyers are paid often-exorbitant amounts of money to dot i’s and cross t’s.  This is precisely what they appear to have failed to do here:  comply with important technicalities.  Why?
  2. None of the long-term fundamentals appear to have changed.  The houses in question will still be foreclosed; the only real question is how long the process will drag out.  That can’t be good for the economic recovery.