In our last sociology class we learned about how does gender
affect people’s behaviors, and does genes or environment influence those
behaviors. First let me start by demonstrating the difference between “gender” and “sex.” Sex is the biological characteristic of being a male and
female, whereas gender it refers to the social roles that men and women play.
So, the society and the environment have a great influence on how does male and female act.
When men or a women act the way they does it is not due to
genes, in fact it is mostly due to the expectation of the society. When first a child is born and it’s a boy people will
start treating him differently that if it was a baby-girl. Though he is just an
infant yet his parents will keep saying, “you’re a man you should be strong.”
They will start getting him balls, cars, painting his bedroom walls with blue
and many other thing that the society have decided that those this are only for
boys. If it was a girl on the other hand, they will start treating her more tenderly
and getting her Barbie dolls, and pink stuff. But the question is why does the
color blue and the color pink are associated with boys and girls respectively?
It is the Gender
Socialization effect!
Gender socialization
is the process of learning the social expectations and attitudes associated
with one's sex. And because people tend to link blue with boys and pink with
girls, it is unexpected for a baby-boy to wear pink cloths. Gender
socialization gets people to know their roles according to their genders.
Women at the house are expected to do the housework and the
men are breadwinners, thus due to
gender socialization people tend to do the job that is expected from them.
Driving cars in Qatar
In Qatar Driving cars is associated with men, most Qatari
families do not allow their daughters to drive because it is a men task. They’d
rather have a driver than allowing their daughters to drive! However, many
Qatari girls are breaking those rules that the societies setup. However, it is
unusual to see a man breaking the gender rules. Men do not get involve in
activities that are seen “girli activities” by the society! It is their masculinity that is affecting their
actions. Masculinityis set of
qualities that are considered to be
characteristic of a male. This explains that it is easier for a female
to gross-gender boundaries than for a male!
March 8, 2013 was the International Women’s Day. I’m dedicating this week’s blog to give recognition to Qatari women have taken the initiative to change the Qatari society by breaking barriers. It is very important to highlight the fact that many Qatari women are educated, and “According to the CIA World Factbook, the literacy rate of females in Qatar is 88.6%, one of the highest in the Arab world,” (Qatar Visitor). Therefore, these educated women play a big role in helping Qatar economically and socially grow and develop.
In the past, women in Qatar were mostly doing the household work and the man used to be the breadwinner. We learned in the Cinematic Sociology book that the in the traditional breadwinner-homemaker type of family life, the husband works and earns money to support the entire nuclear family, whereas the wife does the house chores and takes care of her children. Qatari families used to function or follow that type of system, but it has drastically changed in the past few decades.
Now Qatari women are competing with Qatari men in the work field. More than 70% of females have a bachelor degree in Qatar, (Qatar Today). Qatari women are already holding professional jobs in hospitals, schools, universities, companies, media, and other fields. Women’s life doesn’t depend on marriage. More women are pursing their education and thinking of building their own career path. There are a lot of Qatari women who have also started their own businesses. Women have opened their own abaya, cupcake, and clothing shops. Below are pictures of businesses that are running by Qatari women and women working in the media.
Women who get married don’t just sit at home but they also choose to work. The Cinematic Sociology book describes the second shift as the jobs that working wives do to run the household after they finish the workday. We see married Qatari women who work while they still have a husband and a house to take care of. The book described Hochschild’s study where she identified three types of couples. The first types is traditional couples where both the husband and the wife work outside home but the wife is required to come home to do her duties as a mother, which involves cooking, cleaning, laundry, and so on. The husband is only expected to do the traditional male tasks such as fixing something in the house or the car. Usually, married couples in Doha would fall under this category. The man comes home from work, and he expects his food to be prepared, as his wife makes sure that this is something that is taken care of. The second type is called transitional, and it’s when the husband helps his wife with the household stuff. The third type is egalitarian and usually the husband and the wife share the house work together by diving the work with each other, but the woman is expected to do the majority of the work because she’s more organized and more likely to have things done. As they say, behind every great man there is a great woman. Women are the foundation of the house and they have to help and support their husbands in order to maintain a healthy, successful marriage.
The video below shows how Arab women including Qatari women are breaking barriers in the State of Doha.
In our last
sociology class we learned about the family and how the gender roles might
affect the relationship of the family members. But what was interesting to know
is that each member of the family does his/her role depending on what’s the society expects from them. However, since the role of women outside the house
has changed, this has led to the secondary shift. In the book Cinematic Sociology written by Jean-Anne Sutherland, Kathryn Feltey they described the second shift to be a job for all working women where they get to
do household after they are done with their working day.
Breadwinner system dose not apply to families
of 21st century
The breadwinner system is a system where men are the only providers of money for the family.
But this system no longer describes families of the 21st century.
Women today might earn more than men. And the main reason why women work today
its because of the economic conditions. Parents with one income simply can’t
support their family, thus women work to provide the second income for the
family.
It is the expectations of the society
In the past few
years we can see a significant changes in the role of women out side the house,
but what about the roles of men inside the house! Surprisingly, though women
are helping in earning money role of men inside the house did not change very
much. Mostly because of society expectations, it’s perceived as women’s roles
to take care of the house, thus men don’t help inside the house.
Women in Gulf
Though the role
of women have changed in the gulf in the past few years, yet society especially
older generations will perceive working woman care less about her family. In
the gulf, people are still not convinced that woman can be a workingwoman and a
mother! But since work gives a woman a feeling of security and she will be
earning money to support her family, this makes her care more about her family.
So women are being judged because it is expected from them to take care of the
family not the men.
Today, I’m going to be talking about how the Cinema and Society course really made me to believe in the fact that films and the media do actually play a huge factor in shaping our way of thinking and behaving. It’s so true that movies are a powerful agent of socialization. Movies definitely have an influence on our minds. The reason for making this statement is because after reading the Race and Ethnicity chapter, I realized why I made a certain decision in the past that was pretty much influenced by the movies I used to watch as I was growing up.
In 2002, my father and my older sister made the decision of pursuing their education in the United States, so the whole family went together with them to make their dream come true. I was 13 years old at that time. I went to Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado. The first day of school was a terrifying experience. When entering the school I realized how much it looked like the American movies I had once watched. Boys were twice as big as me, and I wasn’t used to the co-educational system. There were a lot of students from different ethic and national groups. Students were from various countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. Another thing that I noticed was that there were a lot of African American students in the school. My older brother attended the same school, and we used to walk back to the house together. It was also another horrific moment for me because a lot of boys would walk together in groups and if their eyes were pointed at me, I used to get scared and walk faster. I thought they would just decide to attack or shoot me. I used to get scared of black and Mexican boys, the most. Thinking about it now, these misconceptions that I had were formalized based on the negative portrayal of black and Mexican people in movies. Usually the black and Mexican people were depicted as violent using guns to shoot others or knives to stab people and even using their hands for punching. The Cinematic Sociology book explains, “the origins of contemporary black screen violence are located in Hollywood’s blaxploitation period, which consists of about 60 cheaply made black-focused action-adventure flicks released between 1969 and 1974.” These negative portrayals stayed in my unconscious mind, and when I went to an American high school, my fear of people from different ethnicities that I inherited from the movies were reflected on my reaction. I also decided to go back to Doha because I couldn’t handle being scared of going to school. But, I managed to go back after a year to the same school and got over my fear. In addition, I got my high school diploma from Overland High School (OHS), which is something I’m very proud of.
Thinking about it now, people were staring at me probably because I was wearing the hijab. There were also Arab students at OHS and only a few Muslim girls wore the hijab.
To end this blog, I’d like you to listen and watch the video below as it gives some moral messages to kids and young adults to not get influenced by things around them.
We’ve been talking about Arab stereotypes quite a bit
recently and how Hollywood portrays us
in several different negative ways: the most prominent being as terrorists.
When we see these images, we usually (as expected) criticize the film and the
filmmaker for having such prejudiced views against us.
But, when we were watching the film, Amreeka,
which was directed by an Arab woman, I realized there were a lot of stereotypes
about Arabs in there as well. These stereotypes, however, had a much different
effect on me.
For me, a lot of the comedy in this film
came from recognizing these stereotypes. My favourite one being the cute,
sarcastic grandmother that tends to worry a bit too much.
I started to wonder why these were
stereotypes different. Was it because they had nothing to do with portraying
Arabs as backwards and violent people? Or did it have more to do with the fact
that these were stereotypes I faced on a daily basis and were written by an
Arab herself?
I think who the filmmaker or the screenwriter
is makes a huge difference. Usually, when Hollywood uses Arab stereotypes, they
use it to create an outgroup – they make the Arab the “other.” They use this to
socialize the viewers
and fill them with fear, hatred, and discrimination, When an Arab filmmaker
uses an Arab stereotype, however, they create an ingroup, allowing other Arab
viewers to identify with what’s going in the film and better connect with it.
I even caught myself writing a very
stereotypical portrayal of a Palestinian mother who only cares about her
daughter getting married in one of my scripts. When my friends read it, they
found it absolutely hilarious because they could all almost relate the
character to their own mothers. When I took a second look at it myself, I
criticized myself because I know that there is a lot more to Arab mothers than
just being an obsessive and psychotic matchmaker. But for some reason, I was reinforcing
that stereotype.
I guess the important thing with all
stereotypes, whether they’re “good” (I’m not sure they can be) or bad ones, is
to recognize the fact that they are stereotypes and to interrupt the process of
socialization.
I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’m a journalist, or just that I grew up around so many Hollywood movies, that I never really thought of the details portrayed in movies. To the smallest of details, like the race of the extras used for background shots that we don’t think we even notice, directors shoot a scene placing everything into place, as if they’re drawing an image. Ingroups and outgroups really affect the characters in movies, and basically decide on who is portrayed as the good/bad guy in movies. This happens for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that the presence of an outgroup, or an enemy, creates solidarity and unity for ingroups. When I say outgroup, I mean a group which is founded on hatred or opposition from an ingroup, which is a group with which people strongly identify particularly when that attachment is made. Basically, an outgroup is what sociologists call “The Other” in movies. Those are the people who don’t belong and shouldn’t necessarily belong, like the alienated, unwanted, enemies.
Usually, Arabs are portrayed as “The Other” in Hollywood movies. This is could be done by placing no subtitles on the Arabic “terrorists,” like they’re aliens who we shouldn’t even get and are deserted in a desert somewhere with all their money and belly dancer women. Watching the movie Amreeka really left me thinking of all these things. When I see movies like that, the first thing I think of is how much I could relate to the theme of the movie.
When I stepped back and looked at it from a sociological perspective, I realized how much it tried to implement all this messages through the way it was shot. It was obvious that the outgroup portrayed in this movie was Israel, who was automatically every viewers disliked character in the movie. This happened because of the scenes placed in the movie, which were basically scenes of them at the borders, acting like ignorant authority, who were just restricting a nice mother and her little boy from entering a city that they belong to. In this movie, America was portrayed differently that it would be in a Hollywood movie. It was not the most powerful, free country in the world. However, here we also see some Americans as ignorant beings who judge everyone on unrelated matters. Some of the boy’s classmates would call him Osama, or a member of “Qaeda,” based on his race, regardless of the fact that he is not Iraqi or even Muslim. I found this as a very interesting way of socializing a culture, based on the movies people see even as kids. Even for me, an Arab Muslim, I am a lot more aware of what terrorism is and differentiating that from Islam and Jihad. The biggest reason for this is the media and movies I was exposed to in the past 21 years.
There has been a worldwide stereotype against females as being bad drivers. From my experience and observations of male drivers throughout the years, I have noticed that most of the time when another driver does something wrong on the road, there is an immediate expectation that this driver is a female. They would say things like “that must be a woman,” or if they say the driver and recognized that she is a female they would say, “of course it’s a woman!” Some males would even make the claim that women should not drive because they are bad drivers.
This stereotype is further extended in the society here when it comes to the choice of the car bought by females and males. For example, I barely see females driving sports cars on the road here in Qatar. Most of these sports cars are driven by males, and the few females who drive sports cars are usually not Arab. This has almost led to gender polarization in the car market in Qatar, where males purchase most of the sports cars. There is an argument that justifies this phenomenon, which says that sports cars need mastery and high skill in driving that females do not have. This is not the only argument the society has created to keep females away form driving sports car. The other reason has to do with cultural acceptance. For many families here in Qatar, it is not acceptable for females to drive sports cars because they claim it grabs attention and can bring disgrace to the family. Some families don’t even allow females to drive at all for that reason.
All these reasons that society creates are made for the purpose of maintaining a patriarchal society. They shape the rules and the norms of the society to keep males in power, and even in driving males want to be the dominant, more skilled, and powerful. This stereotype and prejudice about females driving has been even extended flying airplanes. There is also a stereotype against female pilots as being bad pilots. Some people even get freaked out when they know that the pilot is a female, thinking that it is not safe to fly when a female is given the responsibility of flying the airplane.
According to the last reading we had for sociology class there was a lot of focus on Masculinity and the society. The book focused on Arnold Schwarzenegger, however my focus is on the Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo.
The examples given in the book, Cinematic Sociology, talk about Masculinity coming from the physical appearance of the male. The Terminator shows how the man is made of steel and his “tough” outlook makes him a man. This trend has been followed along by many to describe what a man really is, however, Schwarzenegger surprised many by changing his image in the Kindergarten Cop to the softer, more sensitive male.
Not all men should be bruits and have the sense of man-machine persona, however, there is a way in which a man can be seen as a man even when he’s sensitive. Schwarzenegger uses his terminator physic to win elections as governor in California. However later he changed his campaign tactics to be the man in the kindergarten. He used his masculinity to progress in his work and this helped him, which ever sort of man he choses to be.
For the counter-part, Johnny Bravo looks like the body-builder that Schwarzenegger is, however, it does not aid him in his progress. Other factors do, Factors such as his way of woo-ing women with his charms. Another factor may be his smart ways to dealing with things.
Children are socialized to watch these cartoons and movies and imagine themselves to being the males and females that these characters resemble. Masculinity is considered being a body builder who can also be compassionate and protective. I remembered how my teacher always said that “they” put in place these rules of society called norms. I think in this case, I know that “They” are women; because it is for them that the male can change and shape himself.
It is not anything to do with being a man; it is what you can offer society. As Schwarzenegger’s terminator, you can be a man of violence and with no words of expression. However, you can also be Bravo who uses his head more than his muscles. What I’m saying is that the appearance of the man can be cared for, but it’s not everything that makes a man, a man.
According to Jean-Anne Sutherland and Kathryn Feltey one definition of the most commonly understood notion of power in women’s films is Power-To. It is a when a woman can recognize the extent to which her actions determine her fate, and she cane come to know her own sense of agency and recognize her autonomy (120).
After watching Loverboy(Micklin Silver, 1989) I decided to apply this concept to the male character of the film. Randy Bodek is a pizza delivery boy, who discovers himself through showing love to rich unhappily married women and gets paid for it in return. The film has three prominent features that apply to women’s films regarding the power-to notion, and were discussed in Sutherland and Feltey’s book.
First feature is to separate from his life, culture and traditions. Randy drops out of college and is back to his hometown where he works at a pizza place. After one woman asks him to spend the night with her he realizes his power of satisfying other women, and above that he is getting paid for it. The second feature is waking up from years of unconscious living, and finding agency where there was little. Given that he was always in bad relationships with women. He finds his power after interacting with older women. What pushed him to go in that direction is the need for money. The third feature is discovering himself through the discovery of his sexual self. After “delivering pizza” to over 40 women, Randy discovers his performing and emotional skills that he never knew he had, and uses his maturity to get back his girlfriend. He lacked the real knowledge of his personal empowerment until he recognized the control he has over the consequences of his life.
This Hindi word for “land tax” became a household name in 2001 with the release of a namesake Bollywood movie. Lagaan, Once Upon a Time in India takes the viewer on a very believable time-travel to the Indian subcontinent of the Victorian Era. The movie revolves around poor villagers coerced to pay backbreaking taxes to the British and their struggles to rise above the oppression.
Lagaan instantly turned into a box office hit, grossing a considerable $9009043. It was hailed by Britain’s Empire magazine as one of the “100 Best Films of World Cinema” (Top Earners 2000-2009, retrieved from BoxOffice India.com).
This 3 hour 40 minute historical fantasy was described by the New York Times as “a carnivalesque genre packed with romance, swordplay and improbable song-and-dance routines” (Somni Sengupta, New York Times, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagaan)
Using Lagaan as an archetype for all Bollywood movies, this blog is about the “improbable” and how it has become an integral part and parcel of Hindi cinema.
The “musical drama” Lagaan owes much of its length to a varied assortment of songs and dances, as do most Bollywood movies-- a concept that a western audience is not very comfortable with.
Consider, for example, the following love song between the leads Bhuvan (Amir Khan) and Gauri (Gracy Singh), with particular focus on Elizabeth (Rachel Shelly), the easily discernible British actress.
When Amir Khan was asked about the reaction of Londoners to this particular song, he flashed an amused smile at the camera and said, “I heard that audiences in the theatres began to laugh. They just didn’t expect to hear Elizabeth sing.”
One important characteristic that sets Bollywood movies apart are certainly the tedious and elaborate song and dance sequences. It is particularly peculiar seeing a bunch of well-choreographed dancers twirling around the leads. “I don’t get it,” says American student and avid-movie watcher Kathy Rivera, “The songs merely attach an unrealistic quality to the movies. What’s the point?”
The answer is rooted in a number of influencing factors, from varied levels of production and musical style to commercial life and audience reception.
That previous sentence was not intended merely to to add to my word count. Though it may sound complicated, the whole idea boils down to the way society is reflected in these movies. Indian culture is profuse with color and movement, hype and activity, as is evident in most festivals, like Diwali (festival of lights) and Holi (festival of colors), to name a few.
Holi:
Diwali:
These aspects of society are mirrored in Bollywood movies through the highly ”improbable” dance and music. Such vibes and moves are best illustrated in the following song clip that shows Bhuvan and Gauri in a traditional Dandiya Ras dance.
The colorful songs are “firmly embedded in an Indian popular culture and are an integral feature of the genre, akin to plot, dialogue and other parameters” (retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Bollywood). Hindi cimema, in other words, not only shows you singing and dancing, it is about singing and dancing (Sociology Goes to Movies, Rajendra Kumar Dudrah, p48).
The many “disparate modes of story telling are bound in a coherent whole by songs” (Sociology Goes to Movies, Rajendra Kumar Dudrah, p48). Thus, they serve the dual purpose of stringing various movie elements together. It would not be wrong to say that songs are to Bollywood what a soliloquy is to a Shakespearean play-- they confer a certain metaphorical voice to the character’s actual emotions and sentiments.
Consider for example, the song Mitwa (Friend), from Lagaan:
When translated it means: Mitwa, O Mitwa Friend, O friend
Tujhko kya dar hai re Why do you fear?
Yeh dharti apni hai This earth is ours
Apna ambar hai re Ours is the sky. Tu aa jaa re You come on…
The lip-synced song brings Bhuvan's sentiments to limelight as he calls upon fellow farmers to stand up against the subjugations of the British. Through the song as a medium, he reminds them that the country is theirs and they needn’t be intimidated by any outside forces. It coherently pieces the movie together, as the next scene shows the villagers responding to his call and following his lead.
Furthering the storyline, the next song “Chale Chalo” (Keep Going) shows Bhuvan and his friends perspiring away as they ready themselves to face the British in an upcoming match of cricket, a challenge that will decide their fate.
But these filmi songs continue to be "derided" in Western movie circles, often being blamed for “unrealisticity.”
I chanced upon an interesting comeback on a Sociology blog site (http://thesocietypages.org):
"I still hear Western film buffs argue that lip-synced songs somehow make a film unrealistic. Let’s get one thing straight — the use of music in Western films is no more realistic than in Bollywood films. We don't walk around hearing music matched to our mood in real life, but Westerners accept the fantasy because it is familiar."
Although Bollywood takes it one step further, often heavily peppering movies with songs, the dance and music are “essential aesthetic elements of the film… that draw on a stock of Indian cultural and social references and elaborate them through aural and visual spectacles” (Sociology Goes to Movies, Rajendra Kumar Dudrah, p63).
