4. "If popular culture has taken up the cyborg as a figure of progress, what happens to the way race is represented?"
John Safran's Race Relations & Kim Dalton; Pushing Small Screen Boundaries:
John Safran's Race Relations is an eight part TV series which explores interracial love in a thought provoking, occasionally offensive, hilarious way. The TV show is and the webpage are items of pop culture which deal frankly with race in modern societies using comedy. Safran’s confrontational style forces viewers of the website to ponder the realities of the ‘race relations’ he is discussing and pushing into our social consciousness via comedy, a form of popular culture that has increased exponentially in popularity in the last century, and which has been around for over a millennia.
As a preemptive response to the outrage assured to follow the premiere of John Safran’s Race Relations on ABC TV Kim Dalton, the Director of the Network posted this statement on the official website. ‘The Drum: Unleashed’ is a “robust community debate” forum where all sorts of news and opinion articles involving current events, politics, entertainment and a variety of other things are available. Dalton’s statement acts as both a warning and a declaration; he counsels people to avoid Race Relations if they easily outraged, or wish to be outraged and offended and almost in the same breath he defends the airing of it staunchly.
Racialicious & Blacktating: Breastfeeding news and views from a mom of color.
Racialicious is a blog which explores the “intersection of race and pop culture”. Race has always been a controversial, sensitive topic in popular culture; there is outrage over misrepresentation, or not enough representation. Racialicious has blog entries ranging from personal stories of being a “coloured” person running a marathon, to links to various news stories detailing the reason Americans aren’t giving for the Pakistan floods, or why the abortion rate among Asian-American women is high. The blog is a detailed and varied exploration of what race has become to mean, and how it is represented in popular culture. Popular culture is thoroughly explored, from celebrities to politics and other current events.
Racialicious to a degree also explores the role of gender in popular culture, one post commenting on black, female stereotypes and particularly the lack of healthy black women in breast-feeding campaigns. It links to the blog Blacktating, run by a black mother who bemoans the lack of black representation in the Nestle ads and website. She also makes the connection with the aggressive marketing of Baby Formula to ‘women of colour’.
Rob Fields on brands, pop culture and the ecology of business.
This is a critical blog, which is now closed, by an African American marketer which looks at the representation of race in modern fields. He keeps an eye on advertising involving race, deconstructing ad campaigns and analysing the psychology of different racial groups. For example in the post on October 18th, 2007 he looks into an article on the “Psychology of rappers and wounded young, black men” or on the “Black-White I.Q. Gap” on December 11, 2007. He links to various videos, a 37 minute speech from President Barack Obama on the unity of race in todays society, praising Obama’s openness in tackling such a difficult topic and calling for people to follow his example.
Fields approaches gender in popular culture as more of a side issue in Marketing Pop Culture, criticising ads which stereotype people by gender and race. One ad he focuses on is an Intel campaign to “multiply computing performance and maximise the power of your employees” which features a white manager in the center of his employees, all of whom are black physical specimens, signifying performance at the white man’s beck and call.
‘Boi or grrl? Pop culture redefining gender’:
From metrosexuals to Ellen, gender-bending goes mainstream.
‘Boi or grrl?’ is an article on MSNBC, an online breaking news website linked to the NineMSN news site. This article in particular is an analysis of what gender is becoming to mean among youth in popular culture. It explores the concepts of transvestites and how that has transformed into more fluid notions like being a ‘tranny boy’ as described by Alex Polanco, or a ‘transmale’. The article discusses the ambiguity of gender, consulting experts in Behavioral Science and interviewing youth who are in a state of limbo when it comes to their gender. It also looks at metrosexuality as a declaration of the acceptance of straight males expressing their more feminine side. An interview with the head of the board of directions for the National Centre for Transgender Equality in America establishes that gender is fluid and not a cut and dried issue with Andy Marra identifying her ‘gender identity’ as female, and her ‘biological gender’ as male.
The Sign of the Dancing Men: Negotiations of Masculinity in Film Musicals
This article is by Professor David Buchbinder at Curtin University who is the Chair in Masculinities Studies. He explores the role of male lead dancers in popular culture films, ranging from Gene Kelly in hits like Singin’ in the Rain (1952) to Richard Gere in the popular 2002 film Chicago. He also looks at the more recent trend for dance films in which the actors perform to other peoples’ music, like Bootmen, The Full Monty, Dirty Dancing or even the recent surge in teen films like the Step Up franchise. Buchbinder looks at how these films often emphasise the sexuality and pure physicality of the male lead. He also questions whether the resurgence of ‘the dancing man’ in mainstream pop culture signifies an ‘acceptance of feminisation of males in culture’ or whether it is a critique of it. He critically analyses the styles of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and the way they interact with their audience. A focus is placed on the representation of the male body through dance, with movement, social class and sexuality becoming inscriptions on the body, in a way ‘re-gendering’ it. He concludes that dancing men in fact reinforce masculinity, especially after significant socio-political events, eg. The Full Monty reconstructed Britis
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