Posts tagged culture
A Media Guide on Aging
Recently came across this, a 2009 guide for media and advertising folks on how to avoid perpetuating ageism in the media, which is in itself a nuanced conversation. But it’s worth having a look at and thinking over for those who like to consume their media with wider, kinder, eyes. Here’s Senior Planet’s summary and cheatsheet on the document:
“Media Takes: On Aging,” a 53-page style guide for journalism, entertainment and advertising, lays out the many subtle ways in which older people are ignored, stereotyped and demeaned on a daily basis and recommends language that is respectful and inclusive.
You might not agree with every one of its recommendations, but as the guide’s introduction states: “Media do oftentimes perpetuate ageism, even if inadvertently. Still, they have the best forums and opportunities to offer redress and to ensure that they are providing accurate depictions of older Americans.” In other words, you can use online commenting features as a way to demand fair representation; when you see the invitation to comment, do so! Most important, the guide is worth reading because it can help us to more clearly parse the media we’re consuming and see the less obvious messages that they carry.
On Representation
- Fewer than two percent of prime-time television characters are age 65 and older, although this group comprises 12.7 percent of the population.
- Research shows that people who watch large amounts of television believe that older people are in poor shape financially and physically, have no sex lives, and are closed-minded and inefficient.
- Approximately 70 percent of older men and more than 80 percent of older women seen on television are treated with little if any courtesy, and often with reason – because they’re perceived as “bad.”
- Twice as many older people portrayed on TV are men, while in reality older women outnumber older men; and television portrays women as “seniors” at a younger age than men, who are more often portrayed as productive professionals.
- When older guests are booked for late night shows, they are often asked to make silly cameo appearances, rather than sit down and talk.
- In its representation of older people, much of the media focuses on those who are infirm, ignoring the 80 percent of us who are healthy enough to engage in normal activities.
- Conversely, now that there’s a growing population of active people 60 and up to market to, we’re seeing a surge in images of “Woofies” – a term coined to describe the Well Off Older Folks whom advertisers are trying to reach. This surge underrepresents less well off older people and affects how as a society we think about programs like social security.
Keep reading the summary for points on inclusion and language. Or read the whole guide here.
What Google Autocomplete Tells Us About Ourselves
Performing age related searches such as “I’m 15 and”; and then letting Google take over with its autocomplete this short video gives a depressing look at what’s on our collective minds.
Via Marius B:
Using billions of searches, Google has prototyped an anonymous profile of its users.
This reflects the fears, inquiries, preoccupations, obsessions and fixations of the human being at a certain age and our evolution through life
While search results may vary, Marius indicates in the video’s comment thread that “the queries are made in the “incognito tab” with no user signed in, no cookies nor history and with a permanent paid VPN targeting US.”
The Complete Glossary of Hipster Hallmarks, cribbed from the pages of The New York Times and presented without comment.
Starting with A, “all-night roof parties” (May 19, 2002), and ending with W, women with Feist haircuts” (“young”) (June 11, 2009).
Unfortunately, there’s no X, Y or Z.
Harlem Shake, North Africa Protest Edition
Internet culture and the memes it generates can be a wonderful thing. The swiftness with which something happening in one part of the world takes hold in another and many points in between constantly amazes.
Take The Harlem Shake, begun in Australia, emulated about everywhere from the Miami Heat in their locker room to a bunch of folk on a plane.
Better though, from Tunisia and Egypt where protesters have appropriated the dance and are using it to demonstrate against conservative Islamists.
Via The New York Times:
Hundreds of protesters danced outside the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, and students and ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafists clashed in Sidi Bouzid, the Tunisian town where the wave of uprisings in the Arab world began with a very different gesture of defiance.
The clashes in Tunisia came one day after conservative Salafists had tried and failed to stop the recording of a “Harlem Shake” video at a language school in the capital, Tunis.
The rally by about 400 activist dancers in Cairo on Thursday night, outside the offices of President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, was streamed live to the Web by activists and caught on video by the news site Egyptian El Badil.
The protest in Egypt followed the arrest last week in Cairo of four pharmaceutical students. They were charged with violating the country’s decency laws by dancing in their underwear to emulate the Australian “Harlem Shake” video that sparked the craze and has been viewed more than 18 million times in the past four weeks.
The version I’ve embedded here is from a small gathering in Tunisia with some dancers wearing thobes and fake beards to imitate their country’s conservatives. It starts with a few seconds of Gangnam Style before moving into the Harlem Shake which I find an impressively deft comment on how quickly our global culture moves from meme to meme and appropriates them as our own.
For other examples from larger demonstrations, visit The New York Times — Michael
YouTube Does the Harlem Shake
There’s no escaping it.
Nifty bit of programming though.
Same as it Ever Was
Browsing through Time Magazine’s covers archive is an exercise in deja vu all over again.
Shown above are Internet-related covers from 1993 to 1996. Looking back years later, the memes and themes of our general interest technology reporting remain about the same.
The Internet and those who spend a lot of time on it produces a weird, “other” culture. Porn’s an issue. So too cyberwar. Who controls the Internet? It’s been a question for some time now.
Contemporary equivalents of the above covers?
- Iceland wants to ban online porn.
- It’s looking more and more likely that China’s military is behind a large digital espionage campaign against American infrastructure and corporations.
- Government’s are trying to exert increasing control over the Internet while technology, entertainment companies and service providers do battle over things like Network Neutrality, copyright laws and even what consumers can do with their devices.
- And Internet culture is still weird.
Images: Selected Time Magazine covers, 1993-1996. Select to embiggen.
The Death of the love letter: Can love’s poetry survive in the age of emails, texts and tweets?
What does it mean for love, if we no longer write love letters? If a dashed-off, electronically sent sentence or two saying I’ll pick up milk on my way home is the contemporary equivalent of the multi-verse Byronic declaration of devotion?
“Something has certainly been lost to us,” says Andrea Clarke, curator of Early Modern Historical Manuscripts at the British Library in London and editor of Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance, in which Bottomley’s missive appears.
“In an age of digital communication everything is so much more functional, ephemeral and two dimensional. What letters are, is loads of information waiting to be excavated.
“A love letter tells a story, from its physical dimensions to the way the words are laid down — you can imagine the person writing it.”
FJP: Write one for the love.
IMPERIAL CENTER, CORUSCANT – The overwhelming military superiority of the Galactic Empire has been confirmed once again by the recent announcement by the President of the United States that his nation would not attempt to build a Death Star, despite the bellicose demands of the people of his tiny, aggressive planet. “It is doubtless that such a technological terror in the hands of so primitive a world would be used to upset the peace and sanctity of the citizens of the Galactic Empire,“ said Governor Wilhuff Tarkin of the Outer Rim Territories. “Such destructive power can only be wielded to protect and defend by so enlightened a leader as Emperor Palpatine.”
Representatives on behalf of the nation-state leader from the unimaginatively named planet refused to acknowledge the obvious cowardice of their choice, preferring instead to attribute the decision to fiscal responsibility. “The costs of construction they cited were ridiculously overestimated, though I suppose we must keep in mind that this miniscule planet does not have our massive means of production,” added Admiral Conan Motti of the Imperial Starfleet.
The Galactic Empire Public Relations team responds to the White House’s refusal to build a Death Star. Star Wars Blog, Planet Earth Abandons Death Star Project In Face Of Superior Galactic Imperial Power.
Fighting words, no?
Democracy Now and Lawrence Lessig remember the life and career of Aaron Swartz.
FJP: See also Lessig’s post, Prosecutor as Bully.
In a way, staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse. It’s brilliant and you don’t realize the damage until its too late.
What We Talk About When We Talk about the N-Word
- FJP: In Django, the N-Word, and How We Talk About Race in 2013, Grantland's Rembert Browne quotes a recent interview between film critic Jake Hamilton and Samuel L. Jackson. Rembert's article is here: http://goo.gl/x28ug
- Hamilton: There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the usage of, uh, the N-word, in this movie.
- Jackson: No? Nobody? None ... the word would be?
- Hamilton: [Whispered.] I don't want to say it.
- Jackson: Why not?
- Hamilton: I don't like to say it.
- Jackson: Have you ever said it?
- Hamilton: No, sir.
- Jackson: Try it.
- Hamilton: I don't like to say it.
- Jackson: [SAMUEL JACKSON SCREAM] TRY IT.
- Hamilton: Really? Seriously?
- Jackson: We're not going to have this conversation unless you say it.
- [Pause.]
- Jackson: Wanna move on to another question?
- Hamilton: OK. Awesome.
- Jackson: [Laughs.]
- Hamilton: I don't like — I don't want to say it.
- Jackson: Oh, come on.
- Hamilton: Will you say it?
- Jackson: No, fuck no. It's not the same thing.
- Hamilton: Why do you want me to —
- Jackson: They're gonna bleep it when you say it on the show. SAY IT.
- Hamilton: I, I can't say it. If I say it, this question won't make air.
- Jackson: OK, forget it.
- Hamilton: I'll skip it. Sorry, guys. It was a good question.
- Jackson: No it wasn't.
- Hamilton: It was a great question.
- Jackson: It wasn't a great question if you can't say the word.
Digital Parenting: Father and Son Edition
A frustrated father in China hired hitmen to put an end to his son’s online gaming. But not the gun-toting analog-world type. Instead, he found players in the role playing games his son played and set them to attack.
Via Kotaku:
Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Feng decided to hire players in his son’s favorite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng. It is unknown where or how Feng found the in-game assassins—every one of the players he hired were stronger and higher leveled than Xiao Feng. Feng’s idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job.
FJP: Filed under nerdtastic parenting.
Image: Screenshot, World of Warcraft.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller Turns 30
Billboard has an interesting history about the November 30, 1982 release of Thriller. In it, we learn of technology disruption (FM was replacing AM radio) and the audience fragmentation that occurred because of it.
We also learn about CBS Records’ concern over the album’s potential success:
Since the start of the [80s], black music had been increasingly banished from most white-targeted radio stations. This was partially due the virulent, reactionary anti-disco backlash that resulted in the implosion of that genre at the end of 1979. As the 80’s dawned, programmers increasingly stayed clear of rhythm-driven black music out of fear of being branded “disco,” even when the black music in question bore little resemblance to disco. This backlash was greatly magnified by the demise of AM mass appeal Top 40 radio at the hands of FM, which led to black artists being ghettoized on urban contemporary radio, while disappearing from pop radio, which focused on a more narrow white audience.
How dramatic was the decline of black music on the pop charts in that period? In 1979, nearly half of the songs on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 pop chart could also be found on the urban contemporary chart. By 1982, the amount of black music on the Hot 100 was down by almost 80%.
Also, and notably, MTV had just launched. But the music videos the station played were very white as it followed the playlists occurring on the FM charts. They too were very hesitant to give Jackson airtime.
[MTV executives at the time] concede that the channel initially assumed it would not play the video, as its thumping beat and urban production did not fit the channel’s “rock” image. They contend however that in mid-February, after seeing the clip—which was possibly the best that had ever come across their desks—they began to re-think things.
Good thing they did.
Billboard, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ at 30: How One Album Changed the World.
And You Wonder Why You’re Exhausted
Background via Fast Company:
In The Human Face of Big Data, Rick Smolan, a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer famous for creating the Day in the Life book series, and author Jennifer Erwitt examine how today’s digital onslaught and emerging technologies can help us better understand and improve the human condition—ourselves, interactions with each other, and the planet.
Susan Karlin, FastCo Create. Earth’s Nervous System: Looking at Humanity Through Big Data.
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