Paramore's "Misery Business" - A Sociological Analysis

Front stage and a back stage. When I heard of this, I thought of people who are always hiding their front stage with makeup. As a clear warning, I am not depreciating makeup in this post because I love wearing makeup, too. I am just referring to the girls who refuse to go out if they have no makeup on. That's a personal choice, but this video, "Misery Business" plays with this idea. In the video by Paramore, a high school girl walks through the hallways like a boss. She believes she is invincible by bullying and intimidating anyone in her sight. This continues until the last scene where Hayley Williams, the lead singer of Paramore wipes the makeup off her face. She breaks down, expressing humiliation and embarrassment. This is her back stage.  This is an example of how dramaturgy, a form of sociological analysis was expressed through a music video. 

The Lion King- Marxist Analysis

                                            


Through a Marxist lens, Marxism encompasses social aspects such as family structures, politics, and government, just to name a few. The film, The Lion King, is a perfect example of Marxism because  there are different animals that can be seen as different societal classes, though one animal that is prominent in most scenes throughout the film is the bird, Zazu. Zazu flying around the herd of all animals and above the lions symbolizes that animals can increase their societal status. The lions are seen as authoritative figures that make sure there is order kept amongst the animals in "The Pride Lands."

The weaknesses spotted in the film through the lens of Marxism are visible when the hyenas take over the power of The Pride Lands. It is evident that power was still not equal between all animals and an apparent inequality is shown when imbalance starts to cause chaos. When Scar finally becomes king of the lands, this is seen as a dictatorship. The first sign that this film can easily be analyzed through the Marxist perspective is the opening scene, "The Circle of Life". During the scene, you see all the animals lined up by their kind. With the lions highest in hierarchy (also highest in the food chain) holding their rightful place at the top of the rocks.

Narratives of Empowerment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43QTjFCPLtI

To examine feminist theory I would like to look at that advertisement call ‘Equality’ presented by Nike at this year’s Grammy awards and later at the NBA-all star game. In examining this ad I am less interest in the text itself, although it is an interesting ad and I would encourage you to follow the link above, but instead on the supposed representation of women’s empowerment that comes specifically from the inclusion of Serena Williams in the advertisement. Serena Williams has, for years now, been a celebrity elevated to the highest level of social empowerment. She is considered to be a roll model by many and the perfect image of an empowered woman by others. The issue I see is that advertisements like Nike’s ‘Equality,’ or most other advertisements, especially in sports, that present women through this narrative of empowerment fail to address the real nature of power in our world today.

First, lets examine the way in which Serena Williams has been presented as both feminine and masculine depending on the efficacy it provides to the consumer or producer. Despite being portrayed as the image of an empowered woman many critics, mostly scummy, racist misogynists if we are being honest, have suggested that she is not ‘feminine’ enough to be presented in this way. Of course there are multiple issue with this interpretation the least of which is the racial implication that her muscular form (also a symptom of being literally one of if not the best tennis player in the world) does not qualify her for the more traditional image of what a woman should look like. Naturally, this interpretation is also representative of an extremely sexist and patriarchal construction of the female from which is fundamentally wrong and dehumanizing. What is so unique about this scenario is that the act of empowerment comes precisely from the anti-normative construction of her body as an image of power. The problem is that in the attempt to subvert normative constructions of body image in order to empower less traditional concepts of body image, while connecting those less traditional images to empowerment. The question is why did it fail, the answer is that gaze has never been undermined. As much as it appears to be empowering for Serena Williams to be presented in these ads it is not only tokenizing but actually fails the goal of subverting traditional power structures. If the normative structure is a very limited image of women and power then it would be subversion to in some way dismantle that connection. Ultimately, I think that the link of not being able to dismantle the male gaze creates a problematic narrative for what women’s empowerment looks like. If we suggest that women can present themselves, or more accurately be presented (an issue in itself), as empowered regardless of the gaze enforced through norms then we are essentially suggesting that being oppressed is a choice that can be moved away from on a whim. This sounds like emancipation-philosophy entrapment and nothing more.

Stage and Political Spheres

To examine sociological analysis I would like to go back to the discussion that took place around the final presentation. In regards to President Trump the discussion surrounded the issue of stages and the means by which celebrities can, and must, market both their image and their reality to consumers. As a political candidate who's popularity disseminates from an almost cult of personality-like relationship with his supporters the issue of marketing was never a far off concern for candidate Trump. What he offered to his supporters was the chance to vote for an outsider, a person "just like them." In finding ideological similarities with his campaign supporters felt as though they gained a direct link to the presidency and the government. This link, this backstage pass-holder feeling, was emphasized by candidate Trump's constant Tweets and has been no less significant now that he has taken office. What I find unique about this situation is that rather than marketing his backstage life President Donald Trump is marketing backstage politics in the hope that people who feel left out up to this point will relate with and support him. This practice, while effective in gaining support and causing people to relate is, in my opinion, exceptionally bad for the political process; in the process of attempting to open the political process to more people political concerns become necessarily less potent, reason is lost in the name of ideological justification.
The current discussion of fake news is perfectly representative of the issues of framing mixed with the desire of the consumer to shift spheres. First, what is meant by the desire to shift spheres? Political discussions place us in different spheres in so far as different groups are able to access and discuss different issues in different ways. Some spheres of discussion, such as technical firms, lawmakers and elected/appointed offices, have barriers to entry, which prevent the public from entering the discussion. Other spheres allow for and even encourage public and open displays of opinion, which should, and to a certain extent must, be accessible to as many people as possible. What’s the issue? Placing politics in a technical sphere, such as the need to be elected to have a say in the construction of policy, limits the ability of many who are subject to those policies to have a say in their creation. (As a side note I accept that voting is an option but at this point the claim that voting gives you an equal say is almost as absurd and politically suicidal a position to take as the Gateway drug theory or trickle-down economics, so I won’t bother). The manner in which Donald Trump played the idea of the front stage and back stage issues is, I believe, perfectly representative of the desire of many to see politics move into the public sphere where they are not limited in their access and understanding of those politics. Donald Trump presented people an opportunity to engage with politics as back stage, as a real thing, as a public sphere. While this was incredibly popular it lead to extreme damage to our understanding of politics and our consumption of news, that is the major conflict today.
I was going to do a lot of work to try to prove these issues though some sort of sweeping examination of political prudence over the last 20 years but instead I will turn to the simple idea of junk politics. As much as I enjoy the technical issues being accessed by the public I also recognize that the public does not understand technical issues, sort of the point of a technocratic politician. There are two perceivable impacts from the mixing of political spheres in the context of Donald Trump marketing the back stage of his political journey: 1) Fundamental damage to our understanding of the issues and 2) Culmination in the election of a president who is fundamentally incapable of the work of technocracy and is only now starting to realize that political issues are technical regardless of whether we want them to be. The damage to our understanding of the issues is not only linked to President Trump but he is representative of the culmination of this failure to understand. Everything from the 24-hour news cycle and the way it must limit and gate-keep issues to the profit driven need to emphasize violence to gain attention display a system in which news has become more like entertainment. In that line news agencies must frame their issues in a way that people will pay attention; the unique thing about our new president is that he does that too. From the oversimplification of globalization that he used to paint China as a target to his simple idea of “just negotiating” with Kim Jong-Un, Donald Trump has simultaneously brought political issues into the public sphere while turning them into garbage that we consume while thinking that we are an informed citizen. I hate the reality that we live in where stupidity and ideological simplicity are considered to be informed citizenship but I want to use the last example of Kim Jong-Un to represent the real problem here. Not only do we consume political trash but we have, excuse me our new executive has, begun to practice politics like they are garbage. Donald Trump’s oh so brilliant plan to negotiate with Kim Jong-Un sounds good to a simpleton who believes that governments should be run like a business (i.e. Negotiate when you have the stronger hand). To a person who actually understands political technicalities, however, negotiation is, in and of itself, a bargaining chip to be given and withheld as a tool of diplomacy to discourage behavior. Essentially, my point is politics are complex and despite the fact that we might like more access to the ‘band’ we will probably not know what to do once we actually get there.

Target Toy Aisles

It's not terribly surprising that the toys children play with tell them how to act. During the formative times of childhood, just about everything is an influence. What's more shocking is that children's toys seem to tell adults how to act too. Or maybe not according to some. In this picture it's pretty easy to tell which toys are for boys and which are for girls. Although there's no specific label saying boys or girls above them, the aisles couldn't be more gendered if they tried. But for many people this is still an outrageous breach of morality. How will adults know what to buy if there are no specific labels? They could be color blind so they don't see the pink, and mute so they can't ask the target employees what toy to get, and they could be really drunk so they can't tell the difference between a barbie and a G.I. Joe, and if all of those were true they might get their kids the "wrong" toy. So many things in this picture tell us what we're "supposed" to do, but people are still up in arms because they want to be specifically told. Good news for advertisers though, instead of using subtext, just tell the customer to buy your product and many of them will.

Jayden Smith, son of famous actor Will Smith, has recently been in the news for wearing dresses, and other clothing articles that are created to be worn by woman. HE is not a homosexual, but many people do call him one. When he is doing this he is changing the way that modern society may perceive the way people dress and he is trying to show that just because people dress a certain way does not place them in a certain category of sexuality.

The way a female is portrayed in films has been pretty cookie cutter for years. How ever I think that in GI Jane back in 1997 brought up a topic that was not talked about to broadly and that was women in the military. I think the movie changed the way that people viewed woman in the military and wanted to enforce that women can contribute equally as much as men. Like many things in todays society people tend to just keep looking at them the same way they have for decades but this film brought up an important topic for woman and brought it to the fore front of conversation at the time.