ladysquires's blog

The Protagonists: Photodocumenting the bin Laden Op

ladysquires — Thu, 05 May 2011 12:56:43 +0000

(Photo Credit: Pete Souza, White House Photographer, via TPM)

The Obama administration is currently debating whether or not to release photos of Osama bin Laden's body, though it is looking more and more likely that they will. I can understand the arguments from both sides of this issue, though I suspect that anyone inclined to a see a conspiracy in all of this will not be deterred by such evidence any more than hardline birthers were deterred by the release of the long form birth certificate.

As the debate about bin Laden's image wages on, however, the photo above, taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, is rapidly becoming the iconic image of this story. It depicts the President, the Vice President, and members of the national security team--including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates--in the White House Situation Room as the op was unfolding on a live feed broadcasted to the White House by the SEAL team. I imagine that this will be a defining image in the history of photojournalism for its ability to capture a mood. Though we have no idea what was happening at that moment, the tension and stress in the room is absolutely palpable, the gravity of the situation immediately real.

The other reason for this image's iconic status, I suggest, is that given the context in which it appeared, it is an absolutely masterful piece of visual rhetoric. "These are the protagonists of this story," it seems to say, not Congress, not Donald Trump, not John Boehner, not even bin Laden himself. These are the people who make the decisions and feel the weight of unimaginable responsibility, it suggests. Considered alongside the Obama's eye-rolling release of his long form birth certificate and the mocking of people like Donald Trump at the White House Correspondants Dinner, this photo suggests that certain media figures and Republican presidential hopefuls have been chasing trivialities and ephemera while the President and his team have been engaged in serious business. It would not suprise me at all if this photo starts turning up during the 2012 Presidential campaign.

The Theory and Pedagogy of viz.: Reflections on the 2010-2011 Academic Year

ladysquires — Wed, 04 May 2011 18:39:28 +0000

As the year closes, we're reflecting on the ways our posts have connected visual rhetoric, digital literacy, and pedagogy. We've presented lesson plans that use programs like Animoto, iMovie, Sound Slides Plus, Xtranormal, etc. There are longer posts that detail how these programs were used available on the blog, but in the first part of this post, Elizabeth will focus on those that present ideas for using iMovie in the classroom. In the second part of the post, Ashley will explore one of the broad themes our posts this year have addressed and talk about the ways in which we are theorizing the connections between embodiment and pedagogy.

Elizabeth: In Megan Eatman's RHE 309k: The Rhetoric of Tragedy students used, among other media, iMovie to make visual arguments in the form of narrated slideshows. In one of two posts detailing how she used iMovie in the classroom, Megan wrote The use of images often plays a large part in determining whether something registers as "tragic" in public discourse, so constructing visual arguments allowed students to build on their participation in extant conversations through engaging with the visual rhetoric already surrounding their event." Students were given time to experiment with iMovie during class and were not required to use images related to their topics while learning the program. This created a low-stakes atmosphere in which they could learn the program comfortably. Megan also constructed her own video as a model that could be shown to students. Students then had the option of using iMovie as well as other programs such as Photoshop to create multimodal arguments.

Here is the model Megan created and a link to her lesson plan:

I also began to think about how iMovie could be used in the classroom. I noticed that I was writing a lot of posts about how images and digital media were being used to enhance online experiences of poetry and bring poetry to new audiences. In particular, I was taken with this piece by poet and scholar and UT alum Susan Somers-Willett in which she worked with a photographer to create a series of docu-poems. (Sidenote: there will be an interview with Susan available on our “Views” page.)

In Verse: Women of Troy from InVerse on Vimeo.

I wanted to create an exercise that would allow students to think about documenting their own engagement with poems of their choosing. Creating iMovie files that include their reading of poems they interpret critically allows for a visual record of that interpretation and a public performance that goes beyond rote memorization.

Ashley: This marks the first year of aggressively using Google Analytics to track activity on the blog, and the data that we have gathered shows not only a growing audience for viz. but offers us a better sense of what readers are responding to. Posts that dealt with various representations of the body tended to be the most popular for all of the reasons you can imagine, but as we marked that trend, we talked about using those responses to shape a socially responsible and relevent set of posts on the theme of embodiment. These posts point to the ways in which bodies and representations of bodies function as a powerful form of visual rhetoric in our culture, and that importance has significant pedagogical implications. Our students operate in an image saturated world in which bodies are constantly circulating, so understanding how image producers and image subjects engage with their intended audience is an important part of building visual literacy.

Megan's post on American Apparel advertisements and Mike's post on the use of pornographic images in PETA ads focused on sexualization and exploitation. Both posts point to the ways in which the use of stereotypical, oversexed images may actually work against the rhetorical purposes of their creators. As Mike says of a PETA campaign that visually links nude women to animals and/or cuts of meat, "The message these images convey is simple: women are sexy animals. I suppose PETA wants us to treat animals with as much respect as we, as a society, treat women. Since, however, PETA seems perfectly fine with the sexual objectification of women and the insistence that they always be beautiful and naked, their message becomes incoherent."

As a counterpoint to those posts, I explored the work of two photographers who use nudes or partial nudes in very different ways. The first was Howard Schwartz and Beverly Ornstein's The Athelete, which uses images of male and female Olympic athletes to make a point about the variety of bodies that excel at particular kinds of physical activity, broadening our idea of what a fit, healthy, or athletic body looks like. Later in the semester, I had the opportunity to interview award-winning New York-based photographer Substantia Jones, who photographs nude or partially nude men and women who self identify as "fat" as part of her Adipositivity Project. Jones's project is explicitly political. She aims to challenge our notions of what constitutes a normal or even healthy body by depicting subjects whose bodies are typically either inivisible or vilified in the media and celebrating thier physicality.

The interview provided powerful insights into the ways in which a photographer can engage with her subjects in a way that celebrates rather than exploits their bodies. All of Jones's models are amateurs, many of whom approach her about participating in the project. Jones talked about how she establishes a rapport with a photographic subject who is obviously placing him or herself in a very vulnerable position: "By the time someone contacts me and asks to be an Adiposer, I presume they've already done all the "Can I really drop trou for a stranger's camera?" work. Many lose their nerve during the scheduling phase (far preferable to losing their nerve during the me-ringing-their-doorbell phase, which has happened). But I think when (and if) they open the door, they see a smiling fellow fatty--a comrade--who wants the experience to be good for all involved. What we're doing is indeed ridiculous, so we usually laugh at lot. That helps. As does a cocktail."

This interview brought over 1500 unique visitors to our site in the first 24 hours, and the posts mentioned above have been among the most popular blog entries of the entire semester. Naturally, that raises questions about how we ought to use NSFW (Not Safe for Work) or pornographic content on the blog and in the classroom. Obviously, we would be irresponsible to present such images merely for the sake of titillation or provocation, but the widespread circulation of these images speaks to a greater need for dialogue both with the public and with students about the effectiveness and responsibility of using bodies to make arguments.

Visibility, Physicality, and Size Acceptance: Substantia Jones of the Adipositivity Project

ladysquires — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:59:15 +0000

(Image Credit: Substantia Jones, Adiposivity.com)

Substantia Jones is an award-winning, Manhattan-based photographer whose work has been featured in The New York Times and showcased at galleries and shows throughout the Northeast. Her website, The Adipositivity Project, is dedicated to documenting and celebrating bodies that are typically invisible--except as negative examples--in modern media. In her own words, Substantia promotes size-acceptance "not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that's normally unseen."

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to exchange emails with Substantia and develop a post that would showcase some of her favorite photographs. Her answers to my questions are in bold. Many of the photographs below are NSFW.

Welcome to our blog, Substantia, and thank you for taking the time to talk with me. What role do you think images play in shaping our acceptance of different bodies and what role do you see your own work playing?

It's my pleasure, and thank you for your interest.

Images are as important in creating body acceptance as they are in creating body shame. My view of the role I play has changed over time. My original goal was widespread bombardment of fat-positive images, in hopes of changing mainstream minds, super-double-reverse-Clockwork-Orange style. Instead it's become something that has more of an impact on the subject, than on the mainstream. But increasingly I'm hearing from those who occupy the lower end of the size spectrum. Some revolutions are slow and steady. But no less effective.

While so many people have found your photography inspirational and life affirming, I imagine it would be a bit terrifying to appear in them, especially since, as you say on your website, these are regular people, not models. How do you develop a rapport with your subjects and encourage them to reveal themselves in such vulnerable (though compelling) ways?

By the time someone contacts me and asks to be an Adiposer, I presume they've already done all the "Can I really drop trou for a stranger's camera?" work. Many lose their nerve during the scheduling phase (far preferable to losing their nerve during the me-ringing-their-doorbell phase, which has happened). But I think when (and if) they open the door, they see a smiling fellow fatty--a comrade--who wants the experience to be good for all involved. What we're doing is indeed ridiculous, so we usually laugh at lot. That helps. As does a cocktail.

In your early photographs, the faces of your subjects are almost always concealed, and you had a very specific point to make with that choice. I've noticed that you include a lot more faces in your most recent work. Why the change?

Lately I've been interested in capturing how a fat person exists in their environment. Going faceless in that situation would make it appear that I've removed something which belongs in the image. That's not what I do. I'm perhaps also influenced by the fact that increasingly, Adiposers want their faces to be included. I still love the close-up detail shots, though. They'll never go away.

The choice to conceal faces always struck me as interesting given the "headless fattie" phenomenon in journalism about dieting and obesity. Those photographs, which usually just feature a disembodied stomach always seemed to be encouraging viewers to dehumanize fat bodies while simultaneously encouraging them to think "that could be me" and feel subsequent shame. Do you see yourself as subverting or playing off of that convention?

A disembodied stomach in a grease-stained T-shirt, no less. And usually moving much more slowly than those around them. Never do they show a fat belly bouncing along on a bike or a ball field. That wouldn't support the alarmist junk science they're purveying.

While it's a kick to co-opt the format and repurpose it to promote fat acceptance, I've never thought of it as particularly subversive. In fact, I believe it's among the least subversive things I do, perhaps because it wasn't the biggest motivator in my decision to put the observer's eyes on the vessel, rather than its contents. Subverting media's use of the grease-stained belly is certainly in the mix, but it's not among my top few reasons for doing it. It's primarily a creative choice, and one I think has been validated by the fact that Charlotte Cooper, the fierce London activist whom it's said first coined the term "headless fatty," has posed for The Adipositivity Project. More than once.

Though almost all of your photographs are nudes (or feature the subjects in "revealing" clothing), your erotic photographs, particularly the 2011 Valentines Day series, are particularly striking. Do you see those photographs as particularly subversive? Why do you think it is important to portray fat people as (healthy) sexual beings?

Love and sex are as important to the wellbeing of fat folks as they are to those of smaller size, and displays of such commonalities are important humanization tools. Both groups need to see more of them. Everyone wants to see their lives represented in media. Fat people's lives include love and sex, yet while the largest percentage of entertainment is about love and sex, rarely are the subjects fat. I'd really like to knock a few dents into that paradigm. Plus, it's hot.

Not only do you feature a variety of body sizes and types, you seem to take care to feature women of all races, and I've been noticing more photographs of male bodies and of gay couples. What role do your photographs (and fat acceptance more generally) play in promoting diversity across a range of intersectionalities?

I wouldn't presume to be qualified to answer this with any accuracy, but I believe I understand (as much as is possible for a white, cisgendered hetero to understand) the reluctance to get involved in a campaign in which you don't see people who look like you already present. Factor in that if you're part of another marginalized population, your energies may be spent correcting injustices elsewhere. But one would hope that seeing one's self visually represented in a fat acceptance effort might encourage more queers, transfolk, people of color, the disabled, men, etc. to become a part of the movement. I think we can all learn from one another's struggles without it turning into the oppression Olympics. It's not a contest, and weight-based discrimination is most certainly not "the last accepted form of prejudice." Sorry, Oprah. It just isn't.

The BMI Project by Shapely Prose

ladysquires — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:38:52 +0000

(Image Credit: Kate Harding, Shapely Prose)

The special guest contribution I had planned for this week is not quite ready (but should be soon!), so here's a quick preview of some of the themes we'll be exploring on bodies and visibility.

As I said in my post on childhood obesity campaigns, increasing access to healthy food and exercise is a public health and social justice goal that is worth aggressively pursuing. However, too often efforts at doing so tend to target bodies that do not conform to ideals of healthy appearance rather than encouraging healthy behaviors or promoting access to the means of engaging in those behaviors. The affect is the stigmatization of non-conforming bodies, which is, of course, counter to the goals of promoting diversity and treating all human beings as persons entitled to respect and bodily autonomy. It also tends to encourage hypocrisy, as it is possible to have a body that "looks" healthy but really isn't. As my post on Schultz and Ornstein's The Athlete showed, we often have a very narrow conception of what a high-functioning body looks like.

The slide show above has been hosted on the Shapely Prose blog for a few years now, but it is still one of my favorite visuals representations of body diversity and the skewed notions we have of what normality and abnormality look like. Enjoy.

The Decorah Eagles as Anthropomorphized Nuclear Family

ladysquires — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:39:02 +0000

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

(Video Credit: Raptor Resource Project, UStream)

Over the past few months, the Raptor Resource Project has been hosting this live "nest cam" feed of a pair of eagles in Decorah, IA. As of last week, the pair became the proud parents of three babies, and the drama of their incubating and hatching eggs has become a bit of an internet sensation. The project is part of a conservation effort directed toward monitoring and understanding the nesting habits of avian raptors (eagles, falcons, owls, etc.), maintaining nesting sites, and educating the public.

As you can imagine, the behavior of the human beings observing the birds on the interenet is, in many ways, almost as interesting as the behavior of the birds themselves. The Ustream site features a social media feed, and certain conventions have sprung up among people who discuss the birds on Facebook and Twitter. Inevitably, viewers refer to the male and female eagle as "Dad" and "Mom," and as Twisty Faster of the blog I Blame the Patriarchy has noted, viewers seem to be pretty quick to ascribe gendered behavior to them:

It is remarkable that human people can look at eagles — creatures that inhabit Volkswagen-sized piles of twigs 80′ up in trees, that lay eggs, that have no hair and no boobs, that eat raw squirrels, that can fly, for crying out loud, and that in pretty much every other respect that is germane to discourse on human social structure are the very antithesis of H. sapiens — and see themselves. And by “themselves” I mean the patriarchal paradigm. In a nest of eagles.

Twisty notes that several personal acquaintances who are obsessed with the feed sometimes critique the eagles' parenting skills, as if they were watching episodes of "Kate Plus 8" (sans Jon) or "Super Nanny" rather than the behavior of creatures who are different from us in almost every perceivable way.

Then again, info-tainment television shows about animals have, in a very real way, primed us to think about animal behavior and social organization in the terms in which we understand our own. The highly popular Animal Planet show Meerkat Manor is a prime example:

So my question is, does this help or hurt? Do visual representations of animals that allow us anthropomorphize them encourage us to support conservation or do they simply lead to misunderstanding? Is our tendency to anthropomorphize inevitable or could these representations discourage it in some way?

Bodies vs. Behaviors: The Problems with Childhood Obesity Campaigns

ladysquires — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:24:40 +0000

(Photo Credit: Billboard, Georgia Childrens Health Alliance, via Body Impolitic)

No one could argue that efforts to promote healthy eating and exercise among school children, such as Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, aren't well-intentioned. But as Paul Campos argues in this recent Daily Beast article, too often anti-obesity campaigns focused on children stigmatize the very individuals they are supposedly trying to help. The image above, a billboard produced by the Georgia Childrens Health Alliance, is a case in point. These scowling children with warning labels slapped across their stomachs seem to have crossed the line from being victims of genetics, environment, lack of opportunities for healthy exertion, and inavailability of affordable healthy meal choices to, I guess, being perpetrators. Something has clearly gone wrong here. Seriously, how would you like to be one of the kids in these pictures with your body held up as a symbol of a national crisis?

Far too often, anti-obesity campaigns in general tend to focus on simply changing bodies rather than changing behaviors, pointing to a simplified understanding of the relationship between body size and health, stigmatizing bodies rather than promoting positive behaviors and improving access to exercise and healthy food. Though the intended message may be, "We are here to help you be healthier and happier by teaching you how to practice self-care," it comes across as, "seriously, just quit being so fat already." The effect is to encourage unhealthy weight loss strategies and further ostracize fat kids. As Campos argue

Michelle Obama spoke movingly last week at a press conference about how parents agonize over the pain bullies inflict on children. Maybe she should talk to Casey Heynes about that. Heynes is a 16-year-old Australian fat kid who according to his father has been bullied for years by classmates about his weight. A few days ago, some of them decided to record their latest attack on a camera phone.
The first lady would, no doubt, be horrified by the suggestion that her Let’s Move campaign, which is dedicated to trying to create an America without any fat kids, is itself a particularly invidious form of bullying. But practically speaking, that’s exactly what it is. The campaign is in effect arguing that the way to stop the bullying of fat kids is to get rid of fat kids.

No humane person would argue that the answer to keeping gay and lesbian teens from getting bullied is to get rid of gay and lesbian kids, though I acknowledge that the analogy isn't perfect. Yet childhood obesity campaigns tend to problematically suggest that in order to address the problem of fat kids being bullied and ostracized, we need to change the fat kids, but somehow we have yet to master a rhetoric that would promote healthy behaviors and tolerance at the same time.

10th Annual Sequels Symposium

ladysquires — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:19:38 +0000

This is just a quick plug for the upcoming Sequels Symposium, called "Hemispheric Crises: Race, Culture, and Representation," being held this Thursday and Friday at the University of Texas. Organizer Connie Steel promises it will be a rousing display of rhetoric in practice. For details, visit the E3W Facebook page or the main website.

Affect, Bias and the Maine Labor Department Mural by Jane Taylor

ladysquires — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:24:40 +0000

The former Main Labor Department mural, Judy Taylor, via The Portland Press Herald

As of Monday, a 36-foot mural in the Maine Department of Labor was removed by order of Governor LePage because of its perceived "anti-business" bias. The mural, created by artist Judy Taylor, depicted scenes from Maine's labor history and was criticized by local business leaders for being overtly "pro-union" and therefore inappropriate for a taxpayer-funded building. Debate over the mural, of course, appears to be an extension of the intense debates about the status of the labor movement nationwide, but particularly in states like Wisconsin and Illinois, where public-sector unions have experienced considerable political setbacks following the conservative "wave" election of 2010.

So where, you might ask, is the bias in this mural. Critics of LePage's decision point to the fact that this mural is simply an objective depiction of historical facts. Indeed, it would appear that the facts aren't really in question. Rather, proponent's of removal tend to simply say that there is just something about the mural that makes them uncomfortable. As the The Portland Press Herald reports, one anonymous letter writer claims that, "In studying the mural I also observed that this mural is nothing but propaganda to further the agenda of the Union movement. I felt for a moment that I was in communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses."

I'd like to briefly consider the mural debate and alongside other debates about the nature of liberal bias, particularly in the wake of the James O'Keefe NPR "sting" and the resignation of top NPR executives. NPR's weekly show "On the Media" has, for the past three weeks, been featuring a lively and soul-searching debate on the nature of bias in media and how one detects it. For me, one of the most enlightening revelations to come out of this series was the relationship between fact and affect in the perception of liberal bias. Sam Negus, a conservative listener who was asked to participate in the discussion, could find little fault with the factual reporting offered by NPR and agreed that, for the most part, NPR journalists attempted to mediate between both sides of contentious debates, though he noted a couple of cases in which he felt conservative positions were marginalized. One such case, he argued, was reporting on labor conflicts in Wisconsin and Indiana:

There were a couple of journalists and they started the show talking about the labor situation, obviously, Wisconsin and Indiana. So the panelists were talking, and one of the first observations that one of the guests made was that the situation in Wisconsin would probably galvanize the American labor movement. And the tone of her voice told me very clearly that, that she was thrilled by that, which she has every right to be.
What I didn't hear was another guest who shared my ideological concerns with the overarching goals of labor unionism. There was nobody there I felt speaking for the electorate of Wisconsin. The people of Wisconsin went to the polls and they returned the Wisconsin Democrats as the minority in the Senate. And what happens when you’re in the minority is bills get passed that you don't like. That’s democracy, you know.

So, in addition to the perceived one-sidedness of the discussion, Negus objects to the affect of the reporter, the "tone of her voice." This comes up a few times in the conversation between Negus, Ira Glass, and host Brooke Gladstone. At one point Negus says:

Maybe the best way to explain it would just be that there are assumptions. It, it, it’s – you can explain facts, but the way that you state facts or the way that you structure them, sometimes it’s more than others and sometimes it’s because I'm, I'm sensitive.
I'm aware of my own biases, too. I understand sometimes I'm reading into questions hostility that isn't there, but sometimes it’s definitely there. And I'll give you a, an example that, that my wife and I have kind of joked about a couple of times. We remember very clearly the morning after the 2006 midterms when the Democrats took back the House. It was just obvious that the anchors on Morning Edition and, and the other shows that followed were happy. You, you can't hide when you’re happy, right?

The ways in which people perceive bias (and I suspect that this applies to liberals perceiving conservative bias as well), seems to have as much to do with the affective or aesthetic qualities of the report or artifact in question as it does with the "facts" in question. So perhaps this does help explain why the mural, which, according to supporters, is a portrayal of objective historical events, was viewed to be offensive by some.

Seen from a certain perspective, the drab colors and the stark, two-dimensional quality of the painting could evoke a kind of Soviet austerity. I suspect that the dress of the women in the right panel above--with kerchiefs that have a "Russian" feel--could bring up the same could contribute that that vague (and vaguely sinister, for some) Communist aura. In other words, the detection of bias in this mural seems to be partially--if not primarilly--aesthetic and associative.

Media Sensationalism and the Crisis in Japan

ladysquires — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:00:00 +0000

(Image Credit: Time Magazine)

Following on the heels of Megan, Cate, and Elizabeth, I've been monitoring media coverage of the disaster in Japan and coming across some interesting points for debate. I found this Time cover shortly after reading an anonymous letter to Talking Points Memo by a Japanese scholar critiquing Western media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear power plant:

From my perspective as a scholar of Japan at a major American university―one who was also in Japan when the quake hit (I left one day later than scheduled on the 13th)―I must say that the coverage was, with some exceptions, largely substandard: full of factual errors, misconceptions, and bent towards sensationalism and alarmism. It is very unfortunate that this poor coverage will probably result in many Americans having false conceptions of Japan for years to come.

The writer takes the Western media to task, citing several specific examples of inaccurate reporting over the past week, particularly the consistent portrayal of relief workers as desperate and overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. Conversely, he or she argues that reporting within Japan, "has been largely calm, rational, informed, and critical. Some of this is naturally to avoid creating panic, but it has been able to do that because as a whole it has answered many of the questions people have and thus gained a certain level of trust. As a media scholar, I can pick this coverage apart for its problems, and of course point to information that is still not getting out there, but on the whole it is functioning as journalism should." Indeed, Japan Probe's screen caps of coverage of the same event from both the Huffington Post and the BBC reveal that U.S. coverage tends to be more sensationalist:

The letter writer acknowledges that sensationalism sells and notes that foreign journalists reporting from Japan "do not have the language capabilities to access Japanese media," but he or she also argues that

[T]he coverage is rooted in long-standing prejudices held by some Westerners against the non-West: for instance, a superiority complex that feels only the West and its media have real access to the truth, which led to a downplaying of Japanese media reports. In the worst cases, there has been simple racism, as some reporters when viewing how calm the Japanese are, seem to think the Japanese are mere robots who cannot grasp the immensity of the crisis or, as one colleague reports when a Spanish reporter interviewed her, think that the Japanese are genetically tuned to accept disaster.

...
But worst of all, the inordinate and sensationalist attention given to the reactors by American and other media has taken attention away from where it should be: on the likely nearly 20,000 people who died in the quake and tsunamis, on the nearly 400,000 homeless people, and on the immense suffering this has caused for Japan as a whole. I cannot but think that the low amounts of donations given by Americans to relief efforts is not at least partially the result of this warped coverage.

Indeed, the nuclear crisis, which at first was merely one of the many destructive consequences of the quake, now threatens to become the entire story. And while the nuclear crisis and its long-term implications for the Japanese are certainly worth attending to, the casualties that have resulted from that particular problem are so dwarfed by the death toll and economic damage caused by the initital quake that I begin to wonder why it has received such a disproportionate amount of coverage. Perhaps it is simply the fact that the quake and tsunami are over and done, while the events and the reactor are a developing story. Perhaps Westerners are simply more interested in the story because it has potential implications for us, as seen in the fact that some people in California have begun taking (entirely unneccessary) iodine tablets and the fact that this disaster has sparked huge debate about nuclear energy in the U.S. (the consequences of relying on coal and oil for energy have been pretty dire in terms of damage to the environment and cost in human lives, but nuclear energy is more mysterious and thus tends to spark more alarm).

Which brings me back to the Time cover (finally). It strikes me that the editors of the magazine are trying to thread a needle here. They are attempting to cover the nuclear crisis while treating it as part of a much larger story, but I'm not sure they are entirely successful. While the photograph of the crying woman does thankfully avoid the stereotypes described above and seems to commemorate the disaster as a whole, I cannot help but be distracted by the headline. "Japan's Meltdown" centers the nuclear power plant crisis in the mind of the viewer and thereby undermines the work done by the photograph and the line "Earthquake. Tsunami. Nuclear Disaster. Resilience."

The 12 States of America

ladysquires — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:00:00 +0000

(Image Credit: The Atlantic)

I adore interactive maps, especially ones that come in sexy colors and with a wealth of demographic data. The Atlantic has a new one up by Dante Chinni and James Gimpel, authors of Our Patchwork Nation, that juxtaposes demographic data for individual counties and the rise or fall in average incomes. Chinni and Gimpel use these relationships to identify twelve "county types," each of which have some relationship to a demographic data point and a rise or fall in income. Seven of the county types have seen a decrease in effective income (adjusted for inflation) between 1980 and 2010.

The story this map tells is one of stagnating or falling household incomes throughout major sections of America an ossifying income inequalities. The map rather effectively argues that the United States is economically segregated, but by grouping these county types according to other demographic markers, the map is also clearly trying to tell another set of stories as well, and it is these that I am somewhat less certain about. Why these data points? Given the lack of analysis, what relationship are we supposed to be seeing between race, religion, occupations, age, and incomes? And without any other forms of mediation, do these, in a way, reinforce certain stereotypes? For example, the designation of certain counties as "Minority Central" seems to sort of obliterate race/income disparaties within counties and cities. (There is also something off-putting about the language that I can't quite identify).

The selection of Evangelicalism and Mormonism as the only two religious identifiers further also embodies the tendency to suggest that Evangelical Protestantism and its derivatives are the only religions that really count when we talk about religion, even, as I demonstrated in my post on the ARDA maps, the most religious counties in the U.S. are actually those that are dominated by Catholics.

In conclusion, while I find this interactive map helpful in some ways and basically rhetorically effective at its primary objective--illustrating income inequality--I find that its use of these other demographic data points oversimplifies and suggests relationships that need more intervention in order for the viewer to be able to determine if that relationship is causal or merely correlational.

The Athlete by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein

ladysquires — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:00:00 +0000

(Photo credits: The Athlete by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein, via SocImages)

Thanks to fitness magazines and the weight loss industry, we've become acculturated to the notion that fitness looks a certain way. This photo collection by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein challenges our assumptions about athleticism by presenting Olympic athletes with an array of body types, ranging from the typical "shredded" bodybuilder look to bodies that we might view as "unhealthy" in a different context.

As illustrator Nina Matsumoto states:

I tend to fall into the trap of drawing the same body type over and over for athletic characters. This photoshoot serves as awesome reference reminding us artists that strong bodies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and muscles show up in different ways. It also helps us keep in mind that not everyone who is fit is also lean. There’s often a layer of fat over the muscles, making them less visible for some.

In addition to the collection's commentary on body diversity and assumptions about fitness, I appreciated the simple fact that the athlete's sports were printed underneath their photos. To me, they provoke reflections on the fact that athletic bodies are trained to peform a specific task at an elite capacity, and thus each of these bodies is therefore "elite" in its own particular way. That's probably seems terribly obvious, but I find it helpful to be reminded that bodies can and do function at extraordinarily high levels even if they don't necessarily conform to stereotypes about "fitness."

I also found it refreshing that while all of these bodies are scantily clad, there is nothing particularly titillating about the photographs. Contrast this collection to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoots (photos at link potentially NSFW) featuring Olympic athletes. Photos of female athletes for popular magazines in particular tend to feminize and even infantilize them. Furthermore, they inevitably privilege the body types that most conform to modern standards of "hotness" and focus on Olympic events that have, for what ever reason, become the "sexy" events (volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, skiing, etc.).

Beyonce in Blackface

ladysquires — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:00:00 +0000

(Video Credit: QueenBeyonceStan, Youtube)

These images have been circulating just about everywhere, but the subject matter seemed particularly appropriate for viz. In this photo shoot for the French magazine L'Officiel, Beyonce has been styled in looks that evoke "authenticity" African dress, and in some of the images, Beyonce's face is deliberately darkened. The shoot--in keeping with one of the themes of Beyonce's newest album--was meant to play tribute to Nigerian musician Fela Kuti.

I want to offer these images with minimal commentary other than a few questions. Are these images creepy in a cultural appropriationist sort of way? Does it make a difference that this is a French magazine rather than an American one? Is Beyonce's mixed race heritage a factor in how we might read this as Lisa at Sociological Images suggests? And is this use of blackface ironically progressive in a context in which fashion mags regularly lighten the complexions of darker-skinned celebrities, Beyonce included? I've included a L'Oreal ad where Beyonce is clearly whitewashed for comparison. I believe her skin is darkened in only the last two photos in the L'Officiel series.

(Image Credit: QueenBeyonceStan via Tom and Lorenzo)

(Photo Credit: ONTD via Jezebel)

Jackie Speier - Toward a Better Pro-Choice Rhetoric

ladysquires — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:00:03 +0000

(Video Credit: CSPAN)

Last week, I wrote about some striking historical and cultural shifts in anti-abortion rhetoric. Namely, I argued that the pro-life movement has been so persuasive largely because in their verbal and visual rhetoric, they have successfully turned babies into the primary object of the viewer's identification and sympathy. I also argued that a successful pro-choice rhetoric would return women in need of abortions to the center of the frame. I was heartened by Representative Jackie Speier's (D-CA) speech on the floor of the house, this week, where she talked about her own experience.

It is probably unsurprising that others are trying to make sense of the erosion of public support for the pro-choice movement. Frances Kissling published a column in The Washington Post last week that reveals a drop in support for abortion from 56% in 1995 to 54% in 2009, and she argues that the problem is both a policy problem and a rhetoric problem. While I do not agree with Kissling that tight restrictions on late-term abortion are the answer here, I find her argument about the place of the fetus in pro- and anti-abortion rhetoric compelling:

The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights
movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a
right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant
woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant
event. Very few people would argue that there is no difference between
the decision to abort at 6 weeks and the decision to do so when the
fetus would be viable outside of the womb, which today is generally at
24 to 26 weeks. Still, it is rare for mainstream movement leaders to say
that publicly. Abortion is not merely a medical matter, and there is an
unintended coarseness to claiming that it is.

Which makes me think that T-shirts like this one aren't really helping. The argument that a fetus is not scientifically a viable human being simply has not worked, as someone can always insist that in their gut they know it is.

(Image Credit: Tiger Beatdown)

Academic blogger Historiann suggests, much better than I did, perhaps, that Speier's speech represents a real opportunity for pro-choice advocates to recapture the pathetic appeal in this debate:

Here’s my idea for pro-choicers: what worked for the movement to decriminalize abortion in the 1960s were appeals to emotion based on real women’s experiences. For
too long, the professional pro-choicers have thought abortion advocacy
is an intellectual proposition rather than an emotional one, and for too
long, women have been acquiescent in our silence while the forced
pregnancy crowd has effectively and freely used emotion to erase the
human incubators of fetuses to make abortion all about the murder
of cuddly little babies. Telling stories like U.S. Reps Gwen Moore and Jackie Speier did on the floor of the House of Representatives last Thursday night, in newspapers and magazines, on television and blogs, etc., is a lot likelier to move the needle on reproductive choice.

Think about it: Abolitionists wrote tirelessly about the injustice
of slavery and the evils it perpetuated among white and black Americans
alike, but Harriet Beecher Stowe’s dramatic rendering of Eliza’s escape
with little Harry across the semi-frozen Ohio River did a lot more to
put free readers in the mind of the enslaved mother and her heroic
determination not to let her master sell her little boy away from her. I
think some ugly stories about women bleeding out and nearly (or
actually) dying as their physicians sought a non-Catholic hospital, and
stories about women forced to endure a stillbirth or horrific,
life-threatening late-term miscarriage (for example) might wake people
up to the stupidity of permitting state control over our lives and
bodies. Because the truth is that if you are a heterosexual woman, it really could happen to you, too.

Anti-abortion Rhetoric Then and Now

ladysquires — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:24:04 +0000

(Public Domain Image found at Wikimedia Commons)

I came across this Russian anti-abortion poster from 1925, and thought it was pretty striking. The text translates to: "Abortions performed by either trained or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death." It shows a woman talking with a midwife, then a woman in a hospital, and then a coffin being lowered into a grave with mourners looking on. What struck me about the image is that the argument is essentially that abortions are bad because they endanger the lives of the women who get them. The pathetic appeal depends on the viewer's sense of identification with the woman.

While you do often hear pro-life advocates talking about the negative consequences of abortions for them women who get them, I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that the "life" at the center of most pro-life arguments is not the life of pregnant women. Rather, anti-abortion advocates today have been phenomenally successful at making the baby/fetus the primary point of identification and erasing the presence of the mother. I'm not going to post pictures of aborted fetuses on this site, but these rather maudlin images from the 1973 Right to Life comic Who Killed Junior get the point across pretty well (potentially disturbing):

(Image Credits: Ethan Persoff)

You can view the entire comic book here. I've been thinking for a while about what a pro-choice visual rhetoric might look like, and given our current public debates about the redifinition of rape, conscience clauses, and this disturbing but hopefully DOA bill in South Dakota, which would essentially make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions, it strikes me that there may be an opportunity to reclaim the language of life in a way that makes pregnant women in distress visible once again.

Mapping Religious Adherence: Association of Religion Data Archives

ladysquires — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 01:45:12 +0000

(Image Credits: Association of Religion Data Archives)

What do people mean when they say that the United States is a religious nation, or even a Christian nation? The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) compiles data taken from census records and surveys to provide comprehensive information on expressions of faith throughout the nation. Of particular interest to this blog is the impressive interactive map database that allows you to choose and compare data sets in order to gain specific information about rates of adherence, denominational affiliation, and demographics. I have used these in my Literature and Religion class to help students begin to think about the relationship between faith and other socio-cultural forces, such as immigration patterns and socio-economic changes in a region.

The map above shows proportional rates of religous adherence for all denominations nationwide. The darker a state is, the more religious it is. It is perhaps no suprirse that the Midwest and parts of the Deep South show the highest rates of adherence, but it is perhaps a bit counterintuitive that parts of the Northeast--New York and Massachusetts in particular--seem to be roughly on par with Mormon-dominated Utah and Oklahoma and is actually more religious than any of the states that constitute the Deep South. As you compare this map to maps that show adherence to specific denominations, a story begins to emerge.

As you can see here, Evangelical Christian affliation tends to be concentrated in the area we think of as the "Bible Belt," not exactly a surprise.

Perhaps equally unsurprising is the fact that Catholicism tends to be concentrated in the Southwest and Northeast, areas which are known for thier concentrations of Irish, Italian, and Hispanic families. This suggests that is, indeed, the high rate of Catholic affiliation that is driving the suprisingly high proportion of religious adherence in the "Godless North." In fact, proportionally, there are more Catholics per 1000 people in the Northeast than there are Evangelicals per 1000 in the South. What this data cannot tell us, however, is what adherence actually looks like. People may express a cultural or familial affiliation with the Catholic Church, for example, even if they haven't attended mass in 15 years. Religious adherence is, after all, often as much about cultural identification as it is about faith.

The database allows literally thousands of possible comparisons and allows you to examine data down to the state and county level. One can look at rates of religious adherence and compare them to demongraphic data on immigration, gender, voting trends, crime rates, proportion of men to women, urban vs. rural population concentrations, rates of new housing development, percentage of kids in private vs. public school, occupations, education levels, and how long it takes people to get to work in the morning. For example, below I took a look specifically at Texas and compared overall rates of religious adherence to the age of the population.

This is a comparison I don't quite know how to interpret. It shows rates of religious adherence becoming higher where the population is younger, when common wisdom suggests that younger generations tend to be less religious than their parents. Perhaps it is significant that the younger counties tend to also be border counties where the proportion of people who immigrated here in the last twenty years tends to be much higher. Age might simply be a correlation or it might indicate higher levels of cultural cohesiveness, where children identify with the values of their parents much more strongly.

This one, however, isn't really a surprise. The Evangelical Lutheran Church tends to be associated with higher concentrations of descendents of German and Scandinavian immigrants, and as you can see, it tends to be particularly concentrated (though the numbers are obviously statistically small) in that area between Austin and San Antonio usually associated with German heritage.

I could go on and on. If you do anything with religion, this is a great site for students to explore and play with. It is extremely user-friendly and has the potential to challenge what we think we know about religion in the United States. It also presents an excellent opportunity to talk about how we interpret data, correlation vs. causation, and statistical significance.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field 3D Images

ladysquires — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:26:42 +0000

(Video credit: NASA, public domain)

In 2003, astronomers pointed the Hubble telescope at a patch of sky that looked entirely empty. What they captured over the course of ten days were some of the most astonishing images ever produced by NASA, showing galaxies that were born mere millions of years after the Big Bang. This process was repeated a few years later, and using analysis of the red shift of these galaxies (light that is moving away from us trends toward the red end of the spectrum, and the faster it is moving away, the redder it appears), they were able to construct the 3D images shown in the video. One can talk about the vastness of the universe, but these images capture it the way words simply cannot. I'll leave these with you for your enjoyment sans inadequate analysis.

Revolution Chic

ladysquires — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:14:51 +0000

This past Sunday at Paris Fashion Week, New York designer Thom Browne showcased a menswear collection in a manner that evoked performance art more than a conventional fashion show. Male models strutted down the catwalk in creations inspired by the Founding Fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson's trip to Paris and the Thanksgiving tradition. Wearing 18th century sillouettes, top hats, canes, and knit caps that suggested powerded wigs, the models carried turkeys down the cat walk before sitting down at an elaborate table and "eating" a traditional Thanksgiving meal.

I personally find the entire thing delightful. First of all, menswear collections are usually just so boring, and this one, well, isn't. Fashion from the fashion-as-art school is about making an argument about where society is at a given time and place and avant-garde fashion done well reshapes our notions about what is beautiful and what is socially acceptable. I won't use the word "subversive" to describe fashion, since as a marketing technique for a luxury consumable accessible only to the extremely wealthy, fashion shows remain inextricably embedded in the status quo. Yet fashion does have the ability to alienate you from things you thought you knew and understood, and there is something fascinating and compelling about evoking Thomas Jefferson and Thanksgiving dinner in such a weird way given the manner in which political groups lay claim to the Founding Fathers with such frequency. There's a bit of a play on class signifiers with the "hobo-chic" (sliding perhaps a little too close to Zoolander derelicte territory) of the layered tartan coats contrasting the opulence of the dinner table. The makeup and use of skirts create an androgynous effect on some of the models. It also seems to be pretty clearly referencing the French Revolution, which, of course, Jefferson wholeheartedly supported. In fact, Jefferson's francophilia was so infamous in the new Republic that the Federalists printed the following critique, showing Jefferson about to burn the U.S. Constitution on a Satanic altar dedicated to the French Revolution:

No, not many men are going to rushing out to buy floor length wool skirts, jumpers, and puffy-sleeved coats, but that's not the point.

Photo credit: Getty Images via Tom and Lorenzo

Using Xtranormal to Model Argumentation

ladysquires — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:20:21 +0000

If you are a graduate student in the humanities, chances are someone has already forwarded this video to you to remind you what a stupid, stupid life choice you've made. In case you've been spared, the gist is that a naive undergraduate is asking her cynical professor for a recommendation for grad school and gets an earful of everything that is currently wrong with academic apprenticeship in the humanities, including exploitive labor conditions and terrible job prospects. It's one of those "funny because it's true/sad" sorts of things where you don't know whether to laugh hysterically or burst into tears. On second thought, it's probably not the kindest thing to post on a Monday morning. Oh well, too late.

Anyway, the program used to create this video is called Xtranormal, and it's a simple text-to-video program that allows you to select characters and a setting, input dialogue, and create your own cartoon. In the wake of the "I want to go to grad school" video, other academic bloggers have been creating their own, such as this one by Tenured Radical called "I Want a Raise":

In addition to its potential for academic self-flagellation and catharsis, it strikes me that Xtranormal could provide a fun and easy platform for various classroom projects, including:

* Arguing both sides of an issue by creating a dialogue about the controversial issue the student is researching for class
* Creating class presentations
* Modelling a teaching scenario in which one character has to educate another character about a particular problem or concept being discussed in class.
* Creating dialogues that anticipate and refute possible objections to an argument the student expects to make in a paper.
* Modelling different types of argument.
* Exploring the relationship between audience and how an argument ought to be made.
* Creating Socratic dialogues

Students can select characters ranging from suited professionals (as in these videos) to historical figures to anthropomorphic animals. They can add music, a laugh track, and play with camera angles. The possibilities seem pretty endless and the potential for fun pretty high. I would love to see what students might present to one another.

Excuse me, but there's some prejudice on your face

ladysquires — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:16:29 +0000

Photo credit: Pargon, Flickr Creative Commons

There are plenty of negative things to be said about the Tea Party, particularly in the wake of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally: that the movement's appropriation of the words and images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln represents the deployment of unreconstructed white privilege at its worst, that it is controlled by corporate and media elites with a vested interest in obstructing a Democratic agenda (note the Tea Party's inexplicable support of the Citizen's United decision, which seems completely out of step with their populist ethos though perhaps somewhat consistent with the libertarian ideal of unfettered markets).

Yet I'm noting, with increasing annoyance, a problematic elementary school nastiness in criticism of the Tea Partiers and their ideologues. Note the photograph above, which was posted on Flickr as part of a series called "Teabonics." The argument of this particular photo and a few others like it seems to be that Tea Partiers are fat and stupid and therefore don't deserve to be taken seriously. Such a reading seems to be confirmed by the first comment, which says, "Resisance is Conservative for Fat Ass." And while, yes, I agree that there is a dismaying irony in signs like the following, given the draconian new anti-immigration laws in the Southwest, I find myself asking, "Really? Is this the level to which we must descend?" (Forgive the hackneyed syntax. I did not want to be accused of ending my sentence with a preposition).

Photo credit: Pargon, Flickr Creative Commons

Such tactics might not merit concern if they weren't being legitimized in corners of the blogosphere that I had previously found quite lucid and respectable. I came across the first photo on the widely popular humor site Political Irony, which accompanies the image with a link to the site LOLGOP, a blog (which is designed to look like the Drudge Report, performing a sort of rhetoric before you even get to the content) that makes the claim that "there may have been only 87,000 people there, but they ate for 1,000,000." LOL indeed. As far as I can tell, that claim is as unsubstantiated as Michelle Bachmann's assertion that 1,000,000 attended the rally and appears to be simply a jab at the rotundness of certain attendees.

Let's take stock of everything that's wrong with that, shall we? First of all, this line of critique makes several aggressively sizest assumptions about the relationship between larger body size, intelligence, and human worth. Furthermore, it eclipses the presence of the many progressives who happen to be fat (or poor spellers). Then we have the Flickr album labelled "Teabonics," obviously a pun on the term "ebonics," which was used for a time to describe African American vernacular speech. In other words, this pun posits a relationship between the quality of one's grammar or spelling, intelligence, and worth as a human being, a logic that has historically been used to exclude African Americans and other minorities from the public sphere. Given the relationshisp between illiteracy and poverty, this is also a logic that erases anyone from a lower socio-economic background.

In other words, this critique--"LOL, Tea Partiers are fat and uneducated"--enacts the same forms of prejudice found within the Tea Party itself by making overt arguments about what types of people and voices count in the political arena, i.e. no fatties, no poor and/or uneducated people, and by extension no one who fails to embody hegemonic ideals of middle class respectability. And don't worry, there's sexism in there to. Among the taglines on LOLGOP is the following: "Sarah Palin is the porn industry's idea of what a businesswoman looks like." Ok, sure, this could be a critique of the way in which Palin has been sexualized by the media, but I doubt it. Devoid of context (and there is no link on that entry), this appears to be a dig at Palin's appearance. How droll. As Melissa McEwan of Shakeville so aptly states, the sexist attacks (most recently in the Vanity Fair piece) on Palin's appearance and performance of motherhood are infuriating precisely because they "compel feminist/womanist women to come to her defense, or, at minimum, point out the absurdity of the coverage. (Bauerlein also tweeted: "'Sarah, these aides say, seemed comforted by having the children around, and she seemed lonely when they were gone.' Truly a monster.") To have feminist writers mock the paucity of legitimate criticisms in a hit piece on Palin can't have been the point."

As the wise man said, before removing the splinter from your friend's eye, first attend to the log in your own.

A Drop of Golden Sun

ladysquires — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:12:33 +0000

Let's get this semester started with some happy, shall we? This is a 2009 video of a flash mob in Antwerp performing a choreographed dance to "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music. This stunt was apparently orchestrated to promote a Belgian television show. Though common sense tells you that this performance was meticulously organized and rehearsed, it's hard to deny the arrestingly joyous quality of the video. As with most well-done flash mob videos, both the filming techniques and the performance itself promote the illusion that this was a spontaneous event. The camera pans to individuals who appear to be regular by-standers, individuals who later join in the performance just for the sheer fun of it. It's initially unclear whether the crowd of dancers rushing down the stairs is part of the performance or simply spectators trying to get a look at what's going on.

The rhetorical brilliance of this performance is that it really invites us to take part in the alternate reality evoked by musicals, a reality in which people spontaneously break out into perfectly choreographed song and dance numbers at the slightest provocation. The ethos of the flash mob, like the ethos of the musical, is in carefully walking that line between joyous spontaneity and contrivance in order to encourage the audience to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride.

Indeed, flash mobs, which can be deployed as performance art, political protest, or publicity stunt embody that line as examples of populist art that frequently get appropriated by corporate and media entities. A flash mob was organized for Oprah's Kickoff Party in 2009, an act that garnered a tremendous amount of free publicity for Harpo:

So, does it ruin it for you to know that these acts are so heavily orchestrated? Is the use of flash mobs as marketing tools obnoxious or refreshing in a media culture so saturated with hard, shiny artifice?

Finally, would anyone be brave enough to organize a flash mob as a class project? Anyone? Bueller?