True Friends -- Relationships Week 12

Friends. Friends are represented in popular culture in a variety of different ways, but there are definitely some dominant representations of friends that we see more than others. This video clip is filled with such dominant discourses about what makes someone a "true friend."
What are these discourses? What do they tell us about how friends "should" behave?
If the target audience for this video is people under the age of 15, how does that social location impact the meaning of these discourses?

The In-laws -- Relationships Week 12

http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&brand=msn%20video&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:de6a5020-ed90-4120-9eb0-9d5605b20ab6&showPlaylist=true&from=iv2_en-us_lifestyle_relationships&fg=MSNlifestyles_relationships

What do we expect from our relationships with our “in-laws”?
Many of us are told that the parent’s of our life-partners are supposed to become part of our family, but what is that process supposed to look like? Well, when you watch the way that popular culture reflects the process, it sure seems like it ain’t gonna be something pretty.

“The in-laws” is, in and of itself, a dominant discourse, filled with jokes about uncomfortable moments, awkward relationships, and conflict. This dominant discourses actually suggests that our relationships with our in-laws are bound to be so unpleasant, that they are acceptable to mock. And while many of us experience positive relationships with our in-laws, it would seem from representations in popular culture that these successful relationships are few and far between.

Consider the two clips above. The first, is the trailer for the film, “Meet the Parents,” which epitomizes the dominant discourse about in-laws (in particular the one about the female partner’s father being especially critical and unpleasant). The second, is from the “Today Show,” where we hear a “reporter” in a mall try to make people’s relationships with their in-laws sound worse than they actually are, and a psychologist in studio who prescribes various “solutions” because she believes that there are bound to be various communication problems for people and their in-laws over the holidays.

Watching these clips, what do you learn about the expectations we develop for our in-laws? What potential impact can you see this dominant discourse having on real-life relationships?

My Mom's on Facebook -- Relationships Week 12

In this rather entertaining comedic song, we come across a relatively new development in familial relationships: parents and facebook (or any other social networking site).

Now, I’m not sure how many of you interact with your parents on facebook, or how much you share with them about the things you do when you’re not studying hard at school, but I do know that over the years I’ve discovered there are a lot of things that MY parents are better off NOT knowing. Don’t get me wrong, my parents are VERY cool, and VERY understanding, but there are some behaviors, like drinking and sex, that early in college I discovered were things that my parents didn’t need to know about.

The video above reinforces this discourse—that parents and children are better off not sharing too much of their lives. In fact, this video reproduces some very important discourses about how parents and their children should interact. This video reminds us that there should be limitations surrounding what parents and children know about one another and how “involved” they are in each others’ lives. “Children,” this discourse says, need boundaries with their parents; otherwise, they can’t really be themselves, which of course suggests that children are their “true” selves when they aren’t with their parents. Any chance this discourse facilitates boundaries in the relationships between parents and children?

As we see in the video, this discourse seems to be particularly prominent for mothers and their children. For while it is safe to assume that many fathers wouldn’t react well to seeing their sons (and CERTAINLY their daughters) “debauchery” on facebook, this video promotes the dominant discourse that it is moms as parents who are more likely to be nosy, more likely to try and “connect” with their children, and more likely to be upset by their behavior.

What I find particularly interesting about this video, though, is the way it presents discourses about how relationships between children and parents are changing as a result of social networking sites like facebook. This discourse, like so many others about the internet, reminds us that parents should be fearful/suspicious/on top of their children’s social networking, and reminds us that when “children” are being asked by mom or dad to be a “friend” on facebook—and likewise when they have to deal with the process of deciding whether to “confirm” or “ignore” them—they are going to feel uncomfortable and awkward. This video employs discourses which teach us that “confirming” mom might lead to “destroying all my [our] privacy,” and that social networking sites are going to be a place of tension between parents and their children. Parents need to "watch out" for what their kids are doing on the internet, and "kids" need to watch out for their parents getting too close and too involved with their lives.

Defining Family -- Relationships Week 12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhbNJ4zJA1A

The clips above are both from reality TV shows in which families are the focal point. We see from these clips some VERY different styles of families. These clips show us a wide variety of discourses about the ways that motherhood, fatherhood, work, marriage and parenting function in a family.

It would seem, then, from watching these clips that discourses about families in popular culture provide a certain amount of flexibility—a way of seeing that all families are different.
However, while there is no question that these families look and behave differently from one another, there is also no question that there are dominant discourses present in these shows that create consistency in how we define families. For example, all of these families have two parents, which reflects a dominant discourse about the ways families should be structured.

In fact, these dominant discourses reinforce the basic parameters for how we perceive and understand families in the first place. In other words, these dominant discourses are what inform us that these groups of people are not just groups, but ARE families.

What are some of these dominant discourses? What do they tell us about how families should function? In particular, what do these clips show us about which types of relationships & roles families “need”?

In the end, while popular culture does reflect different “types” of families, what we can see from these clips, is that it also reinforces certain hegemonic ideas of what families should be.

Cancer -- The Body Week 11

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/koppel-living-with-cancer-you-dont-stop-living.html

Cancer afflicts about 1.5 million Americans every year with over 500,000 dying from the disease. Cancer (and its prevention) has become a common discourse that informs us about our bodies and how they can “betray” us. Discourses about cancer in popular culture have made ALL of us familiar with the disease being both common and deadly.

Yet what do these discourses tell us about cancer and how we are to understand it? What are the representations of cancer we see most often? What do these discourses tell us about our own bodies, and the realities of living with illness? Does popular culture teach us to “fear” cancer and illness?

The videos above highlight a variety of discourses about cancer, our fears of illness, how our culture should "respond" to illness, and even illuminates the links between discourses of happiness and discourses of illness. Don’t let cancer get the best of you, we are reminded. Prevent it before it happens, we are told. But can you “live life to its fullest” even when you have cancer?

In her book, “Ordinary Life: A Memior of Illness,” Kathyln Conway writes the following, "I resent reading glib, cute stories about cancer not being so bad, and I hate hearing that cancer made someone a better person. It's only making me a worse person”…People want to hear stories "of lessons learned, of cancer as a transformative experience."

Do dominant discourses about illness and how they “other” our bodies make more it likely that we will hear more positive stories about people “overcoming” the challenges of cancer instead of more negative stories about people suffering through it? Why/why not?

I'm on a Diet -- The Body Week 11

The industries surrounding health/fitness, weight-loss and diet make over 35 billion dollars a year in sales. The success of these industries depends heavily on the production & reproduction of dominant discourses that criticize and “other” bodies that are not thin. The impact of these discourses is obvious, AND profound.

With clever names like, Nutrisystem and Medifast, we are informed that we can actually transform who we are, not just the way we look. In other words, these discourses create “othering” by reminding us that being overweight is not only bad dangerous, and undesirable, but apparently, it fundamentally changes who you are (and clearly, not in a good way).

Furthermore, the fact that these discourses are encoded in so many different ways plays a large role in the impact they have. The basic dominant discourse that fat bodies are wrong, bad, ugly, unhealthy etc., is reproduced through websites, ludicrous surveys, and medical professionals who talk about the dangers of belly-fat.

Take a look at the videos and websites below and consider how they “other” fat bodies. What do you observe? What impact does this type of “othering” have on our indentities?






http://chli.com/packages/individual_package/promotional?gclid=CNiu9MDHp54CFShSagod4wrklw

http://www.medifast1.com/?campaign=3257&gclid=CI7VlszHp54CFRhfagodEQhWlQ

Gender Wars -- Gender and Sex Week 10

The title “Why Men Are Becoming More Like Women” caught my eye on Huffington Post this week (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcus-buckingham/why-men-are-becoming-more_b_360349.html).
It’s an article written by Marcus Buckingham in response to Time magazine’s article “The State of American Women”
(http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1930277_1930145_1930309-2,00.html).
Time declared the gender wars “over” and the result a “tie”: “It's no longer a man's world…nor is it a woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with bylaws under constant negotiation, and expectations that profits be equally shared." However, Buckingham has a different interpretation of the research and trends Time used to justify their declaration. His interpretation centers on the issue of choice, which makes it particularly relevant to this class, since we’ve been talking about the positive value of being able to position oneself in relation to gender discourses rather than simply being positioned by them.

Interestingly, Buckingham links this idea of choice with “being women” – which explains his title (which I assume was meant to be provocative – “oh no, men are becoming like women, scary!). So his interpretation of the outcome of the gender “wars” is that gender norms are less rigid, that everyone has more choices about how to “perform gender”, and because of that “women have won.” According to the author, “The choice-filled world that women have bestowed on men is a tough world. Tough on women; even tougher on men.”

What might be the effects of assuming and declaring that less rigid gender norms and more choice means that women – their “attitudes, behaviors and preoccupations” - have won? How does this idea relate to the gender discourses we see in popular culture (and that we’ve been exploring in class)?

These articles highlight the social constructionist view of multiple realities and how these are constructed based on social location, the different experiences these locations give rise to, and the stories we tell ourselves and others – what we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore (including research and “trends”).

Have we as a society been engaged in a “gender war?” Is this war ongoing, or is it indeed over? Are we at a stand-off? A truce? Did one side win? Are we better or worse off now than before? The answers to these questions undoubtedly depend on who is answering them and what they choose to use to justify their answers.

How do the ideas of multiple realities & social location from social constructionism help you make sense of (deconstruct) these two articles? Why might deconstructing these “stories” be helpful and important in our society?

And what about the “negatives” that Buckingham says are the result of “women winning” – that more choice means more confusion and more guilt? How might a social constructionist respond to that?