Gender Norms and Gender Transgressions (in popular culture)

Gender Norms and Gender Transgression

Your assignment (not due yet--I will let you know) is to choose some public figure (musician, athlete, actor, artist, politician, fictional character, etc) who you admire (or admired growing up), and describe and analyze the “messages” they send about gender, especially the way they present themselves as men and woman in comparison to “the norm,” or various gender norms. Do they transgress (violate) gender norms for the various groups to which they belong, or do they reinforce them, or do they do both? Are they “manly men,” “girly girls” or do they mix or reject such expectations? If you choose gay or lesbian figures, be aware that sexuality (in the sense of who one is attracted to) will complicate your analysis.

There are many cultural "norms" for men and women in general, but there are also norms specific to smaller groups, like one's particular profession, one's generation, or various subcultures. Thus you might find that mixed messages are extremely common (and interesting). For example, if you chose Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, you might describe how Cobain was both hyper-aggressive in his music (fitting norms for young men, for male punk musicians, and for 90's rock stars), while also expressing an extremely un-macho sensitivity and vulnerability in his lyrics. One might argue that an artist who compared his libido to a mosquito did not share the same macho ideals of hard rock contemporaries like, say, Guns and Roses’ Axl Rose, who Cobain criticized for sexism, among other things:

"His role has been played for years. Ever since the beginning of rock and roll, there's been an Axl Rose. And it's just boring. It's totally boring to me. Why it's such a fresh and new thing in his eyes is obviously because it's happening to him personally and he's such an egotistical person that he thinks that the whole world owes him something."

Be sure and think about the context and history of your public figure, and what factors may have influenced the kind or “flavor” of gender they project. The more details you can think of to support your analysis the better—for example, hairstyle, clothes, make-up, or the messages in their art or professional field. Pictures would be especially helpful, or perhaps links to or embedded youtube clips....

BlogWonks

For your next, extra-credit post, you can do one of two things. You can get credit for finding one or two substantial blog posts by partisans on the left or right on your paper topic, and commenting on what you learned (if anything) from those posts, or discuss points made in the comments--many blogs have surprisingly erudite commenters mixed in with the "regs" (regulars) and "trolls" (usually partisan opponents who try to derail the thread or otherwise stir up trouble by making inflammatory, obscene, or off-topic comments). If you choose this option, see more instructions and links below;

OR

Examine and reflect on other media treatments of your issue online, commenting on issues of bias, subtle or plain. Thus you might consider how the media frames your issue, what it emphasizes most, what kind of balance the outlet achieves, how adversarial they are (vs. accepting the "official story"). You also might also compare coverage or reporters. For example, you might compare the AP (or other news services) and McClatchy/Ridder coverage of your issue, or compare how other online news outlets cover it: the NY Times vs. the Washington Post, CNN vs. Fox News, or international or regional coverage vs. the "MSM" (mainstream US media like the Times, USA Today, etc.).

If you choose to do the "blogwonk" assignment (many bloggers are issue "wonks"--often, they are professors or experts of some sort, or they may be educated lay-people who read obsessively about an issue for partisan or ideological reasons), I recommend starting with technorati or google's blog search function, and then use the search function on the following blogs, if you can find it:

On the left, some of the wonkiest blogs include Matt Yglesias (young nerd), Kevin Drum (older, center-left nerd), TalkingPointsMemo (reporter/blogger), Atrios (curmudgeon/economist), Ezra Klein (even younger nerd), Tapped (group blog), Brad Delong (economist) and MaxSpeak (another economist). On the right, use this list of award winners, or this one, or search google for conservative blogs. Here is a WaPo list of some of the most prominent blogs (though from 2004).

American Dream Blogging Assignment (Due Wednesday Night at 10:00pm)

For your next post, I'd like you to reflect on the American Dream as an ideology--as a set of assumptions about American opportunity and capitalism as YOU encountered them growing up. In other words, I'd like you to reflect on how you were socialized into whatever social class you felt a part of (or dissented from) in growing up. What level of success seemed possible to you, or is expected from you? Do you believe in the American Dream today, or do you see it as a myth, a false promise? What was expected from you as far as work ethic, independence, educational level? Were you expected to exceed the position of your parents? Did your parents have any "downclass" fears--anxieties about "keeping up," or lapsing into a lower class, perhaps by marriage, or through badly chosen friends? My mom's downclass fears came out in the form of grammar policing--people who could not speak "correctly" were seen as sort of slovenly and careless--a class to be avoided! How else did class, class identity, or class anxieties figure in your upbringing? Write a healthy paragraph or two with some analysis.

If you would rather not discuss your own family in this public forum, then comment on the American Dream instead...is it still with us? Is there anything particularly "American" about it? Is it a myth? etc.

Everybody loves to play...Hell in a Handbasket!

Hey all--your first blogging assignment will be based on a discussion from the end of Chapter 13 that caught my eye. Kendall there contrasts the Functionalist notion of "pluralism," where political power is dispersed among many competing groups, with the Conflict theorists' "elite model," where political power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of economic and political "elites."

In one or two meaty, well crafted, but not too long, paragraphs, I would like you to answer the question, which is it? Which description is closest to reality as you see it? Is power in American society widely distributed and shared among many groups who might be said to check, or balance, each other's power, just as James Madison, the founding father who wrote the system of checks and balances into the U.S. constitution, would have had it? Or is America an exercise in domination by a small number of corporate and executive branch "power elites"? Or is the answer somewhere in between?

Noam Chomsky, the radical leftist MIT professor, has famously grouped Republicans and Democrats together as two "factions of the Business Party," suggesting that neither party truly represents the interests of those citizens who Kendall, echoing Marx, calls "the unorganized masses who are relatively powerless and vulnerable to economic and political exploitation." Chomsky's formulation seems a sarcastic version of the elite model, of course, and suggests that America is to him a failed democracy, or plutocracy in which leaders pay lip service to democratic ideals, but really look out primarily for their own class. This is a harsh view--do you think it is justified? Overstated out of frustration? If this view is at all compelling to you, in what do you place your hopes for the future?

Welcome to Todd's Issues

Welcome--this is a test post.