Category Archives: Entertainment

The hypersexualization of female stars on the cover of Rolling Stone

Posted on by

A sociologist found that Rolling Stone cover images of female stars have become more sexualized over the last few decades:

Hypersexualized images of women, on the other hand, went from representing six per cent of female covers in the 1970s to 61 per cent in the 2000s…

During the 2000s, women were 3 1 /2 times more likely to be hypersexualized than nonsexualized, and nearly five times more likely to be sexualized (hyper or otherwise) than non-sexualized.

Hatton acknowledges that many people will dismiss this conclusion as old hat, citing the venerable advertising maxim that “sex sells.”

But Hatton argues that to simply shrug off the findings is to ignore evidence that popculture’s accepted image of femininity is narrowing, dangerously, by the decade.

Several thoughts come to mind:

1. Rolling Stone has certainly changed over the years. From my own vantage point, it was once more serious, particularly about music, but has now become simply another pop culture magazine with occasional over-the-top political coverage.

2. The biggest surprise here is that the hypersexualization has become much worse over the years. And this is from a “progressive” magazine?

3. I wonder if large-scale surveys have presented such images to Americans and asked for their opinion. If so, then might we see a shift in opinion similar to the shift in images on the cover of Rolling Stone? In other words, are these covers simply a proxy for larger cultural opinions?

Lady Gaga comments on the University of South Carolina course about her

Posted on by

When the University of South Carolina announced it was going to have a sociology course titled “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” it was a big story (as far as stories about sociology courses go). Lady Gaga herself recent commented on the course:

Lady Gaga’s attention to cultural detail has inspired a sociology course at the University of South Carolina called “Lady Gaga And The Sociology Of Fame,” which Gaga describes as a “wonderfully interesting art.”

“When you look back, movie stars sort of created their own sense of fame. Andy Warhol appropriated the fame of others in order to appropriate his own.”

“Especially in today’s media with social networking and cameras, everyone can take that same picture that the paparazzi used to take…It’s not so much about doing it as it is about embracing the art of it. And I think that’s what the course is about.”

I wonder if she has actually looked at what is going on in the course but she still makes an interesting point: “fame” and “celebrity” seems to be more concentrated in the hands of people seeking it now rather than requiring certain gatekeepers like the media. In the case of people like Andy Warhol or Lady Gaga, they can retain their celebrity by turning their own fame and the fame of others on its head to create and reinvent their own image.

This reminds me a discussion I occasionally run into: does creativity or originality today require creating something new or remixing older themes or piecess?

Another thought: will anyone really consider Lady Gaga an “artist” or is she more of a blip in the world of pop culture?

I will be curious to hear what Lady Gaga says or does when her popularity wanes. Will she just keep going over the top to try to attract fans or will she gracefully fade away knowing that her time is up?

Happy birthday to all

Posted on by

Over at Slate, Paul Collins has published an interesting analysis of the validity of Warner Music Group’s $2 million-dollar-a-year copyright claim to “Happy Birthday”:

“It is almost certainly no longer under copyright,” [George Washington University law professor Robert Brauneis] concludes in his study [link], “due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application.”

So why do people keep paying up to perform a public domain song?

Insurers, for one: The insurance necessary on film financing often requires that litigation be avoided by paying all permissions fees. And even without that barrier, it’s simply cheaper to pay the bill than it is to fight Warner.

Nothing new here.  Monopolists can’t really be blamed for acting like monopolists.  What’s more interesting about  Collins’ article is the role increasingly comprehensive digital archives are playing into this research:

Google Books and Google News, though, practically burst with “Birthday” clues….It might just be a matter of time—plus the right bit of scanning in a database—before [proof that the copyright is invalid] turns up. And if it ever does, Warner Music may find their $40-million birthday cake left out in the rain.

Now there’s something that we could all celebrate…

Friday Night Lights (TV version) missed chances to deeply explore issues of race and social class

Posted on by

The TV series Friday Night Lights recently came to a close after five seasons. I have read the original book, seen the movie, and watched all the episodes of the TV show. While the book was one that gained some popularity as an Intro to Sociology text, I think the TV series missed opportunities to tackle two subjects rarely tackled in mainstream movies and TV: race and social class.

Even as critics lauded the show for more honest portrayals of family life and teenage relationships (and football faded into the background), the show only hinted at these two issues. There are clearly some people who were more wealthy than others: some of the main characters, like Matt Saracen, Tim Riggins, and Becky Sproles come from humble and/or troubled backgrounds while others, like Jason Street, Lyla Garrity, and JD McCoy have more privileged backgrounds. But these issues, which surely would have affected interpersonal relationships, were usually downplayed in favor of football issues. Take JD McCoy for example: he lives in a big house and his dad has lots of money. But it’s not their relative wealth that matters much but rather their arrogance and interest in taking over the Dillon football program that makes them the villain. We do see characters struggling to work and get ahead: Billy Riggin’s wife works in a strip club, Smash Williams sees a football scholarship as the way out of his family’s circumstances, and Jess Merriweather has to work hard at her father’s restaurant and as the football manager. Race wasn’t addressed directly though it simmered under the surface, particularly after the split into the East and West Dillion football programs. The East Dillon Lions were clearly on the wrong side of the tracks because of race and relative wealth. Particularly as Coach Taylor moved away from the relatively opulence of the Panthers program to East Dillon, the us vs. them mentality was developed but it was a package deal revolving around beating the other side of town in football.

One key feature missing out of the book is the Latino population. Odessa, the town in which the original book was based, was 48% Latino in the 2000 Census. The TV show made Dillon out to be split between blacks and whites with little to no Latino characters. Perhaps this was because it is easier to work on the contrasts between two groups but the book’s depth was enhanced by these relationships. I would have enjoyed seeing the show tackle this as many areas of the country, such as Texas, are now adjusting to a growing Latino population.

A second issue involves the future lives of these high school students. A number of the main characters are portrayed as being fairly successful, particularly Jason Street who quickly transforms into an agent or Tyra Collette who goes to UT-Austin, while the less successful characters simply fade away. Perhaps this is a good illustration of what happens after life in high school football: the students who were once stars often fade into the sunset. But, on the other hand, the show could have found a way to follow these characters through the ups and downs after football. Tim Riggins is the main character we get to follow as he drops out of college and his football scholarship, ends up in jail, and then hopes to start a new life. We could have seen more of this and how one’s background in high school and before affected one’s life chances in the adult world in and out of Dillon. This is yet another show that suggests high school life is a peak and life afterwards is of lesser interest.

A third issue: how much interaction was there between the players and their families outside of school? We see gatherings for football but little else. Were there other institutions in the community, such as churches, that either bridged some of these divides or reinforced gaps between groups? In the end, should we think that high school football was the one and only institution in the community that was able to bring people together?

Perhaps the show should be applauded for even hinting at these issues but at the same time, it could have really explored these important concerns and how they affect high school, football, and community life. Instead, the show settled into more comfortable high school drama territory with a revolving set of relationships with a background of winning football teams. Like most shows, the series was about the lives of the individual characters, not about the town of Dillon or the impact of high school football in the community. I still the enjoyed the show but it could have taken some clues from the book and been that rare TV show that is able to entertain and address difficult social issues.

Moving away from academic journals and toward “Performative Social Science”

Posted on by

Most sociologists aim to publish research in academic journals or books. One sociologist suggests a new venue for sharing research: creating fiction films.

Kip Jones hates PowerPoint presentations. He doesn’t care much for academic journals, either. An American-born sociologist, who teaches in the school of health and social care at Bournemouth University in England, Mr. Jones says that “the shame of research is that you spend a lot of money and the knowledge just disappears — or worse, ends up as an article in a scholarly journal.”

So when he was invited to participate in “The Gay and Pleasant Land” project — an investigation into the lives of older gay men and lesbians living in rural England and Wales — Mr. Jones decided that the best way to present the project’s findings to the public wasn’t by publishing the results or delivering a paper at a scholarly conference, but by making a short fiction film…

That’s what Mr. Jones is counting on. “Most of my own work is around developing a method — what’s known as Performative Social Science. I’ve worked with theater. I’ve worked with dancers,” he said. The idea is to combine serious scholarship and popular culture, using performance-based tools to present research outcomes.

Jones suggests that research is often forgotten and that is why he sought to make a film. This raises some questions:

1. Is a film more “permanent” than a research article or book? Without widespread distribution, I suspect the film is less permanent.

2. Is this really about reaching a bigger audience? Academics sometimes joke about how journal articles might reach a few hundred people in the world who care. A film could reach more people but it would need effective distribution or a number of showings for this to happen. This also requires work and how many academic films are actually able to reach a broad audience?

3. Can a film acceptably convey research results compared to a more data-driven paper? Both data-driven work and films need to tell a story and/or make an argument but they are different venues.

In the end, I don’t think we will have a sudden rush to make such films as opposed to writing more academic work. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more established researchers create films and documentaries to supplement their work. (See Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk disc which included a documentary.) Such films could reach a broader and younger audience, i.e., putting it in the Youtube world of today’s college students.

(Another note: can you find many academics who would actually defend the use of Powerpoint? It seems like an odd way to begin the story.)

Using the Dave Matthews Caravan to help sell former US Steel Works site

Posted on by

The Dave Matthews Band has a proven track record for selling albums and filling large stadiums but now they are being asked to do more: showcase the 600 acre former US Steel Works site in south Chicago.

Early next month, in the first real use of the enormous lakefront land parcel since the plant finally closed in 1992, tens of thousands more will walk through a different set of gates. Instead of lunchboxes, they’ll be clutching tickets to a three-day, multiband rock event, the second stop of the Dave Matthews Band Caravan. The worker who checks their ticket may well be a volunteer, paid not with wages but with a ticket to the show…

Having the show there, in open space roughly centered on 83rd Street, was a risky choice: Land needed clearing, logistics needed developing, transportation needed planning. But to Jerry Mickelson, the partner in Chicago-based music promoter Jam Productions who brought Matthews and the old mill grounds together, it was a risk worth taking…

Where there were once 160 buildings, the only structures left on the property — which covers the lakefront from 79th Street on the north to 87th Street on the south — are massive masonry retaining walls once used to hold raw materials and a former clock house now used by a development company to show off its plans to turn the area into a bustling urban jewel…

What McCaffery wants to do, detailed in drawings and videos in the company’s on-site showroom, is dramatic — creation rather than a mere makeover.

In his plan, malls will be built, lakefront parkland donated, the city’s largest marina constructed, entire neighborhoods erected on ground that used to produce the raw materials of construction. It’s a $4 billion, 30- or 40-year plan, carved up into separate phases.

It sounds like this concert idea is a stepping stone to a larger plan for this sizable parcel and the article suggests most people, including local politicians, are happy with these concert plans. It sounds like a reasonable idea: the site is being clean, the concertgoers will only be there for a few days, the influx of people will presumably provide some boost to nearby businesses, and all of this could show off the viability of the site for more permanent uses.

But I would have a few questions about the long-term proposal for the site:

1. How does this concert and the big plans for future uses fit with the existing area? I imagine traffic could be a concern to some people.

2. The large long-term plan is contingent on extending Lake Shore Drive – who will pay for that?

3. Is there a need in Chicago for such a large mixed-use site, particularly this far away from the city center? If it is built, will they come?

Regardless of what happens in the long-term, this is a unique music festival site in Chicago and we’ll see if the Dave Matthews Band can also help sell real estate development.

Quick Review: Those Guys Have All the Fun, Part 2

Posted on by

In Part 1 of my review of Those Guys Have All the Fun, I commented on some of the things I liked and didn’t like. In Part 2, I want to tackle what I saw were two main themes: the business side of ESPN and ESPN personalities.

The authors provide some guidance in pointing out the steps that ESPN took to achieve global dominance. Like all TV networks that want to compete, ESPN had to pay big money for league packages and it took until the late 1980s for ESPN to even acquire a piece of the almighty NFL. I was surprised by the strong relationship between ESPN and NASCAR (perhaps because I am not a big fan): ESPN was willing to take a shot with racing in its early days when other networks were not so the two entities grew in popularity together. And one prominent negative for the network came when they finally acquired Monday Night Football only to find that the NFL and NBC had worked out a better deal for Sunday nights.

But like all businesses, ESPN needs to generate money. The key to this is that from its early years, ESPN charged cable services a per-subscriber fee. As it added content, particularly the NFL, ESPN raised these fees and now the book suggests something like around $4 of every cable bill goes toward ESPN. With advertising and subscriber revenue, ESPN was able to build its company.

Also from the early years, ESPN aimed for a particular corporate culture that valued the company above individual stars. Once ESPN became more popular, this became more difficult as certain individuals, like Keith Olbermann, who is featured a lot in this book, wanted to do things their own way and also wanted to make more money. While some of the executives seem to suggest that this corporate culture was about creating a tight-knit family, it also sounds like this was a business decision as it would help keep salaries down.

Even within this culture, I was surprised by the amount of sniping between personalities. This takes place in all companies, particularly in high-pressure situations, but some of it seemed silly here. Certain personalities, like Bob Ley, were cited as respected team players while others, like Mark Shapiro, were depicted as divisive. But there were a number of stories about yelling and aggressive behavior that made it sound like work life at ESPN could be quite unpleasant at times.

Another point of contention amongst the personalities was the strong emphasis on journalism, primarily attributed in this book to John Walsh. Many of the interviewed on-air personalities suggested they thought of themselves more as journalists in wanting to accurately and quickly report a story. Some personalities had some other thoughts and ended up leaving. Employees generally sounded like they didn’t get wrapped up or emotionally invested in individual stories, which I found a little surprising since the network seems to thrive on covering particular prominent athletes like Michael Jordan or Lebron James.

But this issue of journalism is where ESPN often seems to get into trouble these days: are they a news organization that just happens to only cover sports, or are they an entertainment company? The lines are blurred when ESPN becomes the story rather than reports the story and this seems to happen a lot. I understand why ESPN would want to appear more objective and ethical but I think they also need to acknowledge that they entertain and viewers are drawn to interesting voices and ideas.

(A side note: frankly, I am glad that the 1990s Chicago Bulls won their championships then compared to the over-analyzed and over-covered sports world of today. What might have ESPN done with such a dominant team and stories like Jordan’s gambling if their current form existed then? Back then, it seemed to be more about highlights than analysis – but I suppose they would argue that people can find highlights all over the place and so ESPN has to give them something else.)

These two issues, the business side and personalities, raise some questions:

  1. What would it take for ESPN to begin a decline or lose its prominence in the sports world?
  2. Why hasn’t there been a better competitor to ESPN over the years? (Perhaps they couldn’t access subscriber fees?) Ted Turner is portrayed as a competitor at times for league packages but he ends up fading away.
  3. How is ESPN viewed by other networks? There is some of this in the book but it is limited.
  4. Is ESPN’s corporate culture similar or different compared to other TV networks and other firms in other industries?

On the whole, I found this book to be quite engaging. If you are familiar with some of ESPN’s key shows and personalities, there is a lot of interesting material here. But if you want to better understand how ESPN became the behemoth that it is today, this is a good place to start.

Quick Review: Those Guys Have All the Fun, Part 1

Posted on by

I recently read Those Guys Have All the Fun,  a best selling non-fiction book. Through interviews with many of the business and on-air personalities of ESPN, this tells the story of the sports network’s first three decades. Here are my thoughts on this large book: in Part 1, I will tackle how the book was carried out and in Part 2 I will address what I saw as the book’s two main themes:  important business decisions and personalities.

1. As someone who fondly remembers ESPN from when my family first had cable in the early 1990s, I knew most of the products and many of the personalities that the book was about. It was funny to remember the programming that ESPN had at that time including fitness shows in the morning.

1a. This book reminded me that ESPN and all of its channels need a lot of content to cover 24 hours a day. In the early days, they struggled for content but even in recent years, I was struck by a comment from a manager that poker was a brilliant find not just because it was popular but because it filled a lot of hours cheaply.

2. I think this book wants to be authoritative but I think it tries to cover too much and talks to too many people to do this. It is an impressive feat to have talked with many of the important people from ESPN’s history and I assume that the authors have a lot more material that they didn’t include.

3. I don’t think I particularly like this format where the authors provide little overarching commentary and let the interviewees tell the story. The authors could have provided a little more summary material and this would have helped connect the chronological periods that each chapter covers. Letting the people involved tell their stories is interesting but ultimately there is an overarching story to tell.

3a. After I finished, I wondered who they didn’t talk to. I assume there were some employees who were not interested in participating and how they might have told a different story. In the end, this tends to be a very positive book about ESPN.

4. Bristol, Connecticut comes up a lot, almost always as a joke. It would have been interesting to hear from community leaders and residents about how they viewed the rise of ESPN as most of the employees don’t think very highly about it.

5. There is an assumption throughout from employees that sports are everything. Occasionally, events like OJ Simpson’s car chase and trial or 9/11 remind them that there are other important things going on in the world. I would be interested in hearing these employees talk more about the relationship between their job in sports and the rest of their lives. Is anyone in the company worried about a sports 24/7 world?

5a. Is ESPN set up to serve the ardent sports fan or does it make a concerted effort to draw new viewers? Certain events or sports, like the full coverage of the World Cup, might attract new viewers.

6. The issue of sexual harassment comes up throughout but the conclusions are unclear: has ESPN sufficiently dealt with this or has this book simply helped sweep it under the rug? And how many readers of this book would care about this issue?

7. I think more attention could have been paid to the Internet, how ESPN’s site compares to others, and how the company has balanced between TV and the Internet. I’m not very fond of all the video on ESPN’s sites and probably read more commentary on SI.com where the emphasis is more on the articles and insights than the overwhelming force of ESPN. Is there sniping within the company between the Internet and TV sides?

8. From a sociological perspective, there is a lot more analysis that could be done with this information. There is a quote toward the end from a Fox Sports executive that struck me: ESPN’s overall ratings are low. Yet, they draw a lot of attention. Perhaps this is because it is a favorite of males. Perhaps it is because they tend to dominate sports coverage in the US. Perhaps it is because their size has led to a number of competitors and websites devoted to their doings. But it sounds like ESPN has cultural influence beyond its ratings and this could be explored further.

Part 2 of this review will follow tomorrow.

A call for more TV shows about science and academia

Posted on by

Certain television genres are well-established. One academic suggests TV should branch out and include a show about science, knowledge, and academia:

No matter what new sitcoms and dramas the networks dream up this coming fall, I can almost guarantee the absence of one type of show: a show about academia. But a television show about academics — professors, scientist and graduate students — is more necessary than ever before. And with a film being made out of Piled Higher and Deeper — an online comic about the trials and tribulations of graduate students — the time may be right to fill this gaping hole on the small screen…

The interplay between the objective quest for knowledge and the all-too-human drama that surrounds it is something that the average viewer has probably heard of, but does not know much about.

And there’s no shortage of real drama to fuel story lines. This show, which I would call The Ivory Tower, would be packed with backstabbing and gossip, glimpses into the intellectual servitude of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, the agony of dissertation defenses, the thrill of scientific discoveries, the ulcer-creating tenure process, professors’ quests for 15 minutes of fame, and, of course, the inevitable lab love affairs.

Episodes could revolve around topics ranging from the conflict-of-interest riddled nature of how scientific ideas are vetted by peers, to those rare but gut-wrenching cases of academic dishonesty and faking data, to the intense deliberations over thesis defenses. Academia is a very non-rational endeavor.

Here are a few things such a show would have to deal with:

1. There seems to be a good number of Americans who think academics are elitist or liberal or Godless (or perhaps all three). Viewers need to be able to relate to the characters or the settings. This is an image problem.

2. As the writer suggests, the show would have to revolve around relationships in the same way that every other show does. Yes, it would have to include all of TV’s tropes including unrequited love between co-workers and bad/incompetent bosses.

3. I have a sneaking suspicion that this whole proposal is a joke. Who wants to watch “the agony of dissertation defenses” or the “ulcer-creating tenure process”?

4. Perhaps such a show could be based around an innovative science or research project. Therefore, the overall payoff of the show wouldn’t just be the episode-to-episode relationships but rather a large story arc about curing cancer or developing space travel vehicles for humans that would go beyond the moon.

4a. Why couldn’t the project-driven show work as a reality show on Discovery or National Geographic?

5. I suspect many academics get into academia because they are excited about “the objective quest for knowledge.” But how many professors have given such a speech to students about the joys of research, hard work, and discovery only to be met with blank stares? Some students enjoy this – but would the general public?

6. Which discipline would get to be featured in such a show? I wonder how TV creators and producers would make this choice. I imagine they would have to go with something relatively well-known and/or controversial.

7. There are plenty of shows and movies about high school. There still aren’t that many about college, let alone the academic side of college. Is this because high school is a more universal experience or is it more uniform across schools?

Quick Review: Revolutionary Road

Posted on by

In my continued quest to watch movies involving the suburbs, I recent saw Revolutionary Road (although I have not read the 1961 book on which the film is based). Here are some thoughts I had after watching the film:

1. The main thrust of the movie is that the couple is unsatisfied in the suburbs. This is not an unusual plot for books/movies/critiques of the suburbs. But I wonder after watching the film whether this couple would be truly satisfied anywhere or doing anything.

2. There are two complicating factors in the story. One, the couple decides to move to Paris in order to escape the suburban doldrums and two, while in Paris, the wife will work and support the husband who will have time to think and relax. These ideas, the glamor of Paris plus the reversal of 1950s gender roles, seem to dog the couple throughout the rest of the film as they are unable to to achieve these goals.

3. I was struck that the lives of the children in the film are quite tangential to the plot. The story suggests the adult couple is stifled in the suburbs but we don’t get much insight into how this affects the children. Or, perhaps this is suggesting that the children don’t matter very much or that if the couple is unhappy, the children are bound to be in for a difficult time as well.

4. Like some others stories in this genre, this film features a mentally ill man who is the only one able to see through the suburban facade. The irony, of course, is that the man who society says is unfit is the only one able to voice the issues that the couple faces. The implication is that those in suburbia are actually the mentally ill.

5. The husband works for a firm that suggests computers are the future. I wish some of this contrast between this machine-driven future and the dull suburban life was developed further: do computers provide hope or another nail in the consumerist, family-oriented suburbs?

Overall, I didn’t find the film particularly noteworthy as you can find a very similar story in a number of other places. The contrast between the suburbs and Paris and the suburban lifestyle versus a life where the wife supports the family could be truly revolutionary but it ends up more of a fleeting, unattainable dream than anything else.

(This film got good reviews from critics: it was 68% percent fresh, 135 fresh out of 198 total reviews, at Rottentomatoes.com.)