SOC Lecutre 4

Question 1

Lecture 4 topics

Answer 1

ideology, hegemony, social conflict theory, critical race theory, Hall’s encoding/decoding and media framing and stereotyping.

Question 2

Main Ideas

Answer 2

mainstream sports culture intersects with race, Black culture and ideology and power in terms of representation, popularity, social and cultural capital, influence, rebellion and power.

Question 3

Black popular culture has specifically been variously characterized as occupying an…

Answer 3

inherently oppositional, or counter- hegemonic, space.

Question 4

1.Within this space traditionally marginalized voices (previously restricted to the margins of dominant culture) are now…

2. this causes?

Answer 4

1.are now active in a controlling role in the production of the various cultural texts
2.privileging the voices of experience within the Black community and the cultural expressions prominent within.

Question 5

critical Race Theory (CRT) reveals…

Answer 5

many of the troubling elements of Spencer’s conception of race,

Question 6

also emphasizes (1) while examining representations of (2) as they appear across all forms of (3).

Answer 6

(1) - critical and interpretive thinking
(2) - race and the various examples of racism
(3) - dominant and popular culture

Question 7

race then is ultimately a (1) that has historically (2) by falsely implying that marginalized groups have (3)

Answer 7

(1) - a hegemonic concept
(2) - justified social inequalities
(3) - inferior abilities.

Question 8

Four introductory tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) that sociology

Answer 8

1. Understanding racism as an existing and defining characteristic of American society.
2. Racism as an active malignancy that weaves through and intersects with all social
   structures and institutions.
3. Racism’s formation through whiteness and ideologies of ”colourblindness”
4. Privileging and engaging narrative storytelling to centre the reality of racism and racial oppression in the experiences and stories of those marginalized, both formally and informally.

Question 9

CRT examines the symbolic significance of the body and…

Answer 9

(a) traces the meanings embedded within cultural representations of “particular bodies as constituted within a social field”
(b) examines how these operate to sustain specific power relationships between groups and influence lived cultural experiences

Question 10

Stuart Hall:

Answer 10

cultural meanings organize and regulate social practices, influence our conduct and consequently have real, practical effects

Question 11

Race (1) with other social identities and areas of (2)

Answer 11

(1) - intersects
(2) - oppression and inequality

Question 12

Popular cultural representations of race and racial difference are central in the reproduction of racial and racist ideologies, including the so-called “common sense” beliefs that assign socially imagined stereotypes to racialized bodies.

Question 13

Racial categories are not objective, inherent, or fixed; however, they are categories that endure while also maintaining many structures and institutions in which racism and discrimination endure, also.

Question 14

a. Whiteness, in terms of privilege, power and mobility, is often experienced as a natural order of a way of life. For example, “colour blindness’s” claim that “I don’t see race.”

b. This claim may seem to be a social and fictional “racial neutralizer”; however, it more so reveals the privileged power of those making the statement in not “having” to see and experience race as a result of racism.

Question 15

Cornel West -

Answer 15

Race represents different things to different people in different places at different times

Race reflects the formation of social groups has shaped the formation of real or Imagined Communities

Race also represents the lived experiences of individuals and groups and reveal clear and real dimensions of social inclusion, exclusion, equality and inequality.

Question 16

Stuart Hall -

Popular cinema (1)

As such, we make sense of the world through these (2), and in this way, the social construction of race becomes a (3) – for example, “(4)”

Answer 16

(1) - “constructs a definition of what race is and what the imagery of race symbolizes
(2) - representations
(3) - lived reality
(4) -“I see that representation of myself”

Question 17

Hollywood typically represents demographics in ways that reflect the hegemonic process of negotiation – this process reflects the ways certain subcultures, for example, can move upwards towards popular or dominant culture.

Question 18

Youth subcultures – today, hip hop in the 1980-90s - demonstrate hegemony at work as hip hop and rap music represented a challenge & protest towards the dominant through socio-political music, clothing, rituals and language that was deeply symbolic.

Question 19

Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Edward Guerrero,1993).

Guerrero sees three primary areas of pre-2000s Black cinema:

Answer 19

1. The Pre-Blaxploitation era (pre-1970s) during which a mainstream image of the black body connoted subordination and submissiveness, both through race and gender.
2. The Blaxploitation era (1970s) of political resistance dominated by black action films employing strategic reversals of mainstream ideology.
3. The 1980s-90s when the filmmaking practices of both the new Indie and earlier Blaxploitation filmmakers began to merge and collaborate.

Question 20

1. The Pre-Blaxploitation era (pre-1970s) during which a mainstream image of the black body connoted subordination and submissiveness, both through race and gender.

Question 21

2. The Blaxploitation era (1970s) of political resistance dominated by black action films employing strategic reversals of mainstream ideology.

Question 22

3. The 1980s-90s when the filmmaking practices of both the new Indie and earlier Blaxploitation filmmakers began to merge and collaborate.

Question 23

In his essay, “New U.S. Black Cinema,” (1983) Taylor Clyde identifies New Black Cinema as a cultural moment initially born out of the Black Arts movement of the Post-Civil Rights era of the 1960s.

Question 24

Initially referred to as the L.A. Rebellion (or the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers), the L.A Rebellion was made up of a group of young Black filmmakers emerging from the UCLA Film School starting in the late 1960s and continuing until the last half of the 1980s, at which time New Black Cinema became the formal and primary moniker or term of reference.

Question 25

Core features of New Black Cinema, aside from a determined antagonistic – or counter hegemonic - relationship to Hollywood

Question 26

Core features of New Black Cinema, relationship to Hollywood, included three directions:

Answer 26

1. a dimension of realness as an extension of social reality 2. a relationship to Afro-American oral traditions and storytelling 3. a connection to and intimacy with Black music and Black popular culture itself

Question 27

The term New Black Cinema - in a 2nd generation sense- refers to a second generation of Black filmmakers and reflects their cultural production in and outside Hollywood beginning in the 1980s.

Question 28

As a period of cultural production, 2nd generation New Black Cinema roughly begins with She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 1986)

Question 29

NBC: to tell stories of the “everyday experiences within the black community” as well engaging in the “cultural intervention and re-coding of existing discursive narratives and visual codes of Blackness on the screen” (Keith M Harris)

Question 30

Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986) and Do The Right Thing (1989) were both were released in the latter half of the 1980s, and this was an interesting time for popular culture as

Answer 30

Rap music was making significant inroads within mainstream popular culture Rap music’s relationship to fashion, sneakers and basketball was becoming increasingly influential Nike signed a young basketball player named Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal

Question 31

Rap music was making significant inroads within mainstream popular culture as the newly established music videos-only formatting of MTV in America and Much Music in Canada both came to produce a rap-specific programming: MTV’s Yo! MTV Raps and Much Music’s Rap City premiering on televisions not long after.

Question 32

Rap music’s relationship to fashion, sneakers and basketball was becoming increasingly influential as the stylized “image” of rap music became a marker of “cool fashion.”

Question 33

Nike signed a young basketball player named Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal punctuated by the designing and production of the Air Jordan I sneaker by an as-then unknown young sneaker designer, Tinker Hatfield.

Question 34

Specifically, in DTRT, hip hop, rap, basketball and sneakers all intermingle and are consciously injected with symbolic racial signification while also deployed formally as a style and visual world signifying Blackness, contemporary youth and urbanity.

Question 35

This wave of NBC that Lee ushers in saw Black filmmakers making films for both Black audiences and the mainstream public.

Question 36

One result: a fundamental change in the broader cultural sentiments during this time (1986-91): mainstream American culture had made a shift, from repressing race to actively consuming it.

Question 37

For Keith M. Harris, Do the Right Thing visualizes the inner-city as a racially geographic and demarcated space and establishes hip hop and basketball culture (s) as the cultural familiars of that time and space (1989).

Question 38

That is, the hip hop & basketball was of that very moment in time

Question 39

These links between place, race and culture and the popularity of NBC demonstrated that the inner-city as a setting was marketable beyond an audience of urban, black youth, and identified a broader demographic and market: the mainstream suburban (non-Black) teenager consuming the “Blackness” viewed on screen.

Question 40

Prior to 1986, sneaker purchasing patterns were more closely aligned with use-value, as opposed to brand loyalty, social power, status, social media, celebrity endorsement etc.

Question 41

As the Nike commercials reveal, post-1986 sneaker consumption was marked by a complex system of meaning, status, race and power. * For example, and as Miner argues, the rise of Air Jordan’s formally signals a shift from a sneaker’s use-value towards their social juice-value

Question 42

Juice Value: the ability of a mass-produced commodities such as a sneaker to be both transformative for the individual, as well as transformed by the individual themselves.