April 17, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
I was asked to be a guest blogger at Everyday Sociology Blog, a site run by Norton Publishing and intended for undergrads. I dug up some material on guns and crime. Here's the link.
Bloody Fantastic
April 15, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
Susan Boyle had scarcely put down the mike and walked offstage before the video was up on the Internet. Within a few days, her performance of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miz on Britain’s Got Talent was one of the most watched items on YouTube (currently 8 million views, and counting).
Why was everyone surprised? And why was everyone so pleased?
The standard answer to the first question is “attractiveness bias.” Physical attractiveness comes with a halo effect; we tend to see attractive people as smarter and nicer, as better workers, lovers, parents, etc. (see Lisa’s post at Sociological Images). If attractive is good, then unattractive must be bad. So we expect a very plain-looking woman like Ms. Boyle not to have talent.
There’s some truth in that. But we all know counter-examples – the good-looking singer with a “relaxed-fit” relation to pitch. And even people who don’t follow opera may know the stereotype “Wagnerian” soprano – a woman who looks as though she’d be more at home in the Vikings’ offensive line but who has a wonderful voice. So we shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
Maybe what fooled us was not that Ms. Boyle wasn’t pretty but that she didn’t look like a performer. Her hair, her make-up, her dress, her walk – they all carried the message that this is someone who does not get up and sing in front of audiences. If she really wanted to be a singing star, she’d dress the part. So when she says she wants to be like Elaine Paige (who starred in all those Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals in London), the judges and the audience chuckle condescendingly. As she starts to sing, they are stunned – this is clearly someone who can sing – and by the second line of the song, they are all cheering wildly for her.
But why? It wasn’t just because she has talent.* My guess is that it was because she provided a new story-line for the show, one that might have been especially pleasing to British audiences, who may still retain some sense of class consciousness.
I’ve never seen Britain’s Got Talent, but I assume it’s the same as American Idol. The usual narrative is the Cinderella story – talent and hard work leading to success. We identify with the contestant and think: I, with just a bit of a break, could become one of them – the glamorous celebrities.
But success creates a conflict. It means I have to leave my world, my friends. (Leaving them behind is not a problem for Cinderella; all she has is some nasty step-relatives.) The American solution is to pretend that you can have it both ways. You can become the glamorous celebrity, and you can keep your unglamorous, ordinary friends. In fact, you can bring them along with you as your Entourage.
The Susan Boyle story* is different. It’s more one of class solidarity. She doesn’t become one of “them.” Instead, she remains one of us. She doesn’t leave her class, she represents it. So her triumph is a triumph for the group. Watching her force Simon Cowell and the others to eat their original snark is satisfying in a way that’s different from watching the usual schnook-to-celebrity scenario. And at the end, when her Scotland friends backstage ask her how she feels, and she says, “Bloody fantastic,” she speaks for all of us.
* I Dreamed a Dream is not an easy song. It changes key a couple of times, and its range of an octave and a half is a few notes wider than that of most pop tunes.
**I have no idea what will really happen or what Ms. Boyle will become. Maybe she’ll dye her hair blonde and wear black evening dresses like Elaine Paige. The story I’m talking about is the one that was played out in that seven minutes of television a few days ago.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Susan Boyle had scarcely put down the mike and walked offstage before the video was up on the Internet. Within a few days, her performance of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miz on Britain’s Got Talent was one of the most watched items on YouTube (currently 8 million views, and counting).
Why was everyone surprised? And why was everyone so pleased?
The standard answer to the first question is “attractiveness bias.” Physical attractiveness comes with a halo effect; we tend to see attractive people as smarter and nicer, as better workers, lovers, parents, etc. (see Lisa’s post at Sociological Images). If attractive is good, then unattractive must be bad. So we expect a very plain-looking woman like Ms. Boyle not to have talent.
There’s some truth in that. But we all know counter-examples – the good-looking singer with a “relaxed-fit” relation to pitch. And even people who don’t follow opera may know the stereotype “Wagnerian” soprano – a woman who looks as though she’d be more at home in the Vikings’ offensive line but who has a wonderful voice. So we shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
Maybe what fooled us was not that Ms. Boyle wasn’t pretty but that she didn’t look like a performer. Her hair, her make-up, her dress, her walk – they all carried the message that this is someone who does not get up and sing in front of audiences. If she really wanted to be a singing star, she’d dress the part. So when she says she wants to be like Elaine Paige (who starred in all those Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals in London), the judges and the audience chuckle condescendingly. As she starts to sing, they are stunned – this is clearly someone who can sing – and by the second line of the song, they are all cheering wildly for her.
But why? It wasn’t just because she has talent.* My guess is that it was because she provided a new story-line for the show, one that might have been especially pleasing to British audiences, who may still retain some sense of class consciousness.
I’ve never seen Britain’s Got Talent, but I assume it’s the same as American Idol. The usual narrative is the Cinderella story – talent and hard work leading to success. We identify with the contestant and think: I, with just a bit of a break, could become one of them – the glamorous celebrities.
But success creates a conflict. It means I have to leave my world, my friends. (Leaving them behind is not a problem for Cinderella; all she has is some nasty step-relatives.) The American solution is to pretend that you can have it both ways. You can become the glamorous celebrity, and you can keep your unglamorous, ordinary friends. In fact, you can bring them along with you as your Entourage.
The Susan Boyle story* is different. It’s more one of class solidarity. She doesn’t become one of “them.” Instead, she remains one of us. She doesn’t leave her class, she represents it. So her triumph is a triumph for the group. Watching her force Simon Cowell and the others to eat their original snark is satisfying in a way that’s different from watching the usual schnook-to-celebrity scenario. And at the end, when her Scotland friends backstage ask her how she feels, and she says, “Bloody fantastic,” she speaks for all of us.
* I Dreamed a Dream is not an easy song. It changes key a couple of times, and its range of an octave and a half is a few notes wider than that of most pop tunes.
**I have no idea what will really happen or what Ms. Boyle will become. Maybe she’ll dye her hair blonde and wear black evening dresses like Elaine Paige. The story I’m talking about is the one that was played out in that seven minutes of television a few days ago.
After They've Seen Paree
April 14, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
Remember “freedom fries”? The phrase was part of the spirit of France-bashing that the Bush administration and its friends in the media whipped up six years ago. France and other European countries were saying that invading Iraq might not be such a nifty idea. They even voted against it in the U.N.
The Bushies sure showed them who was right.
The Republicans still use France and Europe as synonyms for various forms of political wickedness. We Americans, they say, don’t want a “European-style” health care system (i.e., one that delivers health care at a lower price to all its people).
But the Americans-don’t-like-France idea is largely a figment of the right-wing imagination. These Republicans are speaking for a smaller and smaller portion of the US population. The Daily Kos poll recently asked the “favorable/unfavorable” question, and it turns out it’s not just us liberal, urban, coastal elitists who have a soft spot in our hearts for France.
QUESTION: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable
France is well-liked everywhere . . . except the South. The pattern was nearly identical when the places in question were not France but, respectively, Europe, New York, and San Francisco.
It looks as though what Sarah Palin referred to as “the real America” is merely one region of America. And if recent voting patterns in Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri are any indication, that region is shrinking. Tant pis.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Remember “freedom fries”? The phrase was part of the spirit of France-bashing that the Bush administration and its friends in the media whipped up six years ago. France and other European countries were saying that invading Iraq might not be such a nifty idea. They even voted against it in the U.N.
The Bushies sure showed them who was right.
The Republicans still use France and Europe as synonyms for various forms of political wickedness. We Americans, they say, don’t want a “European-style” health care system (i.e., one that delivers health care at a lower price to all its people).
But the Americans-don’t-like-France idea is largely a figment of the right-wing imagination. These Republicans are speaking for a smaller and smaller portion of the US population. The Daily Kos poll recently asked the “favorable/unfavorable” question, and it turns out it’s not just us liberal, urban, coastal elitists who have a soft spot in our hearts for France.
QUESTION: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable
opinion of the country of France?
| FAV | UNFAV | NO OPINION | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALL | 61 | 32 | 7 |
| DEM | 66 | 29 | 5 |
| REP | 56 | 37 | 7 |
| IND | 60 | 32 | 8 |
| OTH/REF | 58 | 35 | 7 |
| NORTHEAST | 71 | 21 | 8 |
| SOUTH | 43 | 51 | 6 |
| MIDWEST | 67 | 26 | 7 |
| WEST | 69 | 24 | 7 |
France is well-liked everywhere . . . except the South. The pattern was nearly identical when the places in question were not France but, respectively, Europe, New York, and San Francisco.
It looks as though what Sarah Palin referred to as “the real America” is merely one region of America. And if recent voting patterns in Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri are any indication, that region is shrinking. Tant pis.
Here We Go Lucy Liu
April 13, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
There’s been a big flap, especially on the left side of the blogosphere, about Betty Brown, the Texas legislator who suggested that Asians adopt Anglo names for purposes of registering to vote. Those Chinese names are just too hard for Texans to deal with.
Sure, we could get all cultural relativist on this one and say that if Chinese is so difficult, how is it that over a billion people manage to speak it every day. We could also accuse her of racism, but nothing in the news reports suggests that she’s mean-spirited or even that she wants to keep Chinese people off the voting rolls. In fact, in the excerpt from the hearing that appears on YouTube, she asks Ko to come up with a proposal for solving the problem.
But she is behind the times when it comes to name changing. (Ms. Brown is not even really saying that Asians should change their names. She just suggested that they adopt a nom-de-ballot so that the poll supervisors don't make mistakes.) I’m not sure whether it’s because of PC-mandated tolerance for ethnic differences or just fashion, but we just don’t do the name-change thing so much any more. Even among media stars, names no longer have to sound American; they don’t have to sound “good.”
Annie Mae Bullock (born in 1939) performed under her married name, Tina Turner (she later dropped the husband but not the name.) Turner good, Bullock not so much. But for Sandra, born a quarter-century later, Bullock was a keeper.
Actors now keep names that they (or the studios) in earlier times would have changed as too ethnic or just ungraceful. When the studios ran things, names like Dunst or Hudgens would never gotten cast. But now we have, to name but a few
Yes, some young hopefuls do change their names – Winona Horowitz, Jennifer Anastassakis, and others. But my impression is that it happens far less nowadays. Michael Shalhoub (b. 1932) became Omar Sharif. Tony Shalhoub (b. 1953) became Monk.
(Personal note. I saw Betty Joan Perske in the street the other day – old, bent over, walking slowly with her dog – so much different from the person in the movies that although she looked vaguely familiar, I couldn’t place her. I waited till she went inside, then asked the doorman of her building. He paused for a minute as if trying to decide whether this was a violation of a tenant’s privacy. “That,” he said, “was Miss Lauren Bacall.”)
Posted by Jay Livingston
There’s been a big flap, especially on the left side of the blogosphere, about Betty Brown, the Texas legislator who suggested that Asians adopt Anglo names for purposes of registering to vote. Those Chinese names are just too hard for Texans to deal with.
Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?So said Ms. Brown to Ramey Ko of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Sure, we could get all cultural relativist on this one and say that if Chinese is so difficult, how is it that over a billion people manage to speak it every day. We could also accuse her of racism, but nothing in the news reports suggests that she’s mean-spirited or even that she wants to keep Chinese people off the voting rolls. In fact, in the excerpt from the hearing that appears on YouTube, she asks Ko to come up with a proposal for solving the problem.
But she is behind the times when it comes to name changing. (Ms. Brown is not even really saying that Asians should change their names. She just suggested that they adopt a nom-de-ballot so that the poll supervisors don't make mistakes.) I’m not sure whether it’s because of PC-mandated tolerance for ethnic differences or just fashion, but we just don’t do the name-change thing so much any more. Even among media stars, names no longer have to sound American; they don’t have to sound “good.”
Annie Mae Bullock (born in 1939) performed under her married name, Tina Turner (she later dropped the husband but not the name.) Turner good, Bullock not so much. But for Sandra, born a quarter-century later, Bullock was a keeper.
Actors now keep names that they (or the studios) in earlier times would have changed as too ethnic or just ungraceful. When the studios ran things, names like Dunst or Hudgens would never gotten cast. But now we have, to name but a few
- Renee Zellweger
- Calista Flockhart
- Seth Rogen
- Jeff Goldblum
- Ben Affleck
- Amanda Righetti
- Antonio Banderas
- Liev Schreiber
- Leonardo DiCaprio
- Shia LeBeouf
- Gwyneth Paltrow
- Kate Beckinsale
- Milla Jovovich
- Charlize Theron
- Jake Gyllenhaal
- Zac Efron
- Betty Joan Perske
- Frances Gumm
- Bernard Schwartz
- Edythe Marrenner
- Constance Ockleman
- Laszlo Lowenstein
- Natalia Zakharenko
- Issur Demsky
- Margarita Cansino
- Marion Morrison
- Lucille LeSueur
- Fred Austerlitz
- Archie Leach
- Julius Garfinkle
Yes, some young hopefuls do change their names – Winona Horowitz, Jennifer Anastassakis, and others. But my impression is that it happens far less nowadays. Michael Shalhoub (b. 1932) became Omar Sharif. Tony Shalhoub (b. 1953) became Monk.
(Personal note. I saw Betty Joan Perske in the street the other day – old, bent over, walking slowly with her dog – so much different from the person in the movies that although she looked vaguely familiar, I couldn’t place her. I waited till she went inside, then asked the doorman of her building. He paused for a minute as if trying to decide whether this was a violation of a tenant’s privacy. “That,” he said, “was Miss Lauren Bacall.”)
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