Blogs from NT752

 

To the victor, goes the… Narrative: Connecting CRT to symbolic annihilation within the Criminality of Blackness

In March of 1857 a decisive 7-2 ruling amongst the Supreme Court declared that Black slaves we're not citizens but merely the property of their White slave owners (Corwin, 1911). Born into slavery, Dred Scott along with his wife Harriet, sued the Emerson family for their freedom in 1846. Political tensions fueled for years as the Missouri compromise served as a national settlement on the matter of slavery and signified The American campaign to expand westward into new territory. After Scott’s marriage, the newlywedded Scotts were ordered to return to the Emerson state in St. Louis in 1842. The Scotts in 1846 filed the suit against Irene Emerson, the widow of Doctor Emerson. With legal help from numerous local St. Louis abolitionist members as well as the Blow family the Scotts were able to successfully challenge Irene Emerson in courts of law. Despite Scott losing the first case in 1847, the Missouri Supreme Court allowed a second trial which granted the Scotts freedom from the Emerson family. Irene Emerson rapidly appealed the decision which went in favor of the Widower. The overturned ruling stated that the court would not enforce rules upon free states or slave states and claimed that the Scotts we're not American citizens and had no rights to sue. In 1856, the case made it to the U.S Supreme Courts and ruled against Dred Scott by declaring that all Black Americans were not citizens, federal government had new jurisdiction to free slaves or conduct legislation concerning the matter of slavery, and Black slaves were Whites property (Corwin, 1911). Although there are many cases concerning the disputes of property and race, the Supremes Court’s decision to rule against Scott frames the argument presented in the current reflection; the romanticism of Black subordination and mythical norms are narratives that are intertwined with Whiteness as property. Discusses the effects of media regarding media content that preserves and perpetuates stereotypes ascribed to people of color.

With 77% making up White journalist, 83% comprising of White response rate of newsrooms (American Society of News Editors, 2018), and 74% White local newsrooms and staff (Papper, 2019) indicate that the local newsrooms and editors are still heavily dominated by White persons. Historically rooted by White Colonization from the 1600’s through chattel slavery, White persons (Predominantly White men) have benefitted and relied on discursive (law and policies) and corporeal tactics and strategies to establish dominance and ownership (Focualt,1975). From Lincoln’s Proclamation in 1863, Whiteness found new ways to preserve and reinforce Black subordination through Jim Crow laws and (societal practices) and mediated depictions such as the 1915 film A Birth of a Nation. All previous examples that emphasize communicative mediated representation fueled by… Narrative.

Law scholar Cheryl Harris and the Critical Race Theory tenant of Whiteness as property to highlight narrative points of views that are connected to White identity and are connected to the basis of racialized privilege in law (Harris, 1993). I argue that White identity which can be associated to practices of Whiteness in the media connects to a particular racialized privilege and thus validated as a form of White status property, which results in symbolic annihilation and cognitive accessibility. The connection dates as far back as 1619 colonization, in which the colonizers become the victor (and in their eyes are the victims and heroes (Dixon, 2020)) and minorities the perpetrators, the terrorist, and the undocumented (Dixon, 2023). And to the victors goes the property, the culture, the language—and the Narrative.

 

References 

American Society of News Editor (2018). 2018 Diversity Survey. https://www.asne.org/ diversity-survey-2018

Corwin, E. S. (1911). The Dred Scott Decision, in the Light of Contemporary Legal Doctrines. The American Historical Review, 17(1), 52-69.

Dixon, T. L. (2023) The centrality of stereotypes in the 21^st century

Foucault M. 1975. Discipline and Punish. Transl. AM Sheridan, 1977. London: Allen Lane (From French)

Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard law review, 1707-1791.

Papper, B. (2019). 2018 RTDNA/Hofstra University Newsroom Survey: Newsroom Diversity. Retrieved from https://rtdna.org/article/2019_research_local_newsroom_diversity.

 

Trump Reflection

On November 9th, 2016, republican Donald Trump won the 2016 election, making trump
the 45th president of the United States of America. I remember sitting in a communications class
and listening to the pain and anguish of my classmates as well as the communication professor.
My classmates and the professor had high hopes for Hillary Clinton and the opportunity to crown
the first female president of the United States of America. Similar to the Chappelle and Rock
SNL skit Lind referred to in the required text, I felt shocked by everyone else's shock that a bigot
and a racist was elected into office. I also recall a time where I thought both candidates were
undeserving of one of the highest ranks to the American people. The following section maps out
why I think both candidates were undeserving and how a White woman played into the hands of
color blindness; while the victor of the 2016 presidential election benefited from the core of what
hooks coins as “White-supremist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 1995) values deeply embedded in
the very foundation America was founded upon.

At face value, it may come as a shock that Clinton did not win the 2016 presidential
election even though she gained the advantage of Black voters in a stifling 88% according to
CNN (2016). However, the untold narrative to Clinton’s defeat lies at the heart of the dramatic
decrease of Black voters turnout in the 2016 presidential election in tandem with the historized
discourse the Clintons utilized to degrade Black people. In an analysis conducted by the Pew
Research Center, the black voter turnout rate in 2016 declined for the first time in 20 years in a
presidential election from 66.6% (Record-high) in 2012 to 59.6% in 2016 (Pew Research Center,
2017). Black voter sentiment for Clinton did not translate at the same capacity as the Black voter
sentiment for Obama in 2012. I argue that the discourse of colorblindness the Clintons utilized

within policy and public addresses failed in Hilary Clinton’s campaign and efforts to reconcile
her feeble attempt of what Critical Race Scholar Derrick Bell termed as ‘White Interest
Convergence’ (Bell, 1980). In 1994 Bill Clinton employed a federal crime bill the extended
Nixon’s ‘tough on crime’ policy and in turn, furthered the incarceration of Black men. The bill
encompassed the concepts of mandatory minimums which mandated life sentences those who
were convicted after two or more prior convictions. Two years after Bill Clinton's 1994 bill,
Hillary Clinton address the public and support of her husband's bill and further stated the bill’s
effectiveness were meant to jail “super predators... people with no conscious or empathy”.
Clinton's 1994 crime bill Ignored the harmful ramifications place on people of color and race
was never addressed until 20 years later when Hillary Clinton sought to get Black voters support
to win the presidency. Color blindness works here because race was never addressed. Further,
Bell defined interest convergence as White people in power who seemingly care about the
matters of race and equality only when it benefits those same White people (Bell, 1980).
Trumps election came as no surprise to me.

References
Bell Jr, D. A. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-convergence
dilemma. Harvard law review, 518-533.

CNN, 2016. How Hillary Clinton lost. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/
clinton-votes-african-americans-latinos-women-white-voters/index.html
hooks, b. 1995. Killing rage: Ending racism. New York: Holt

Pew Research Center, 2017. Black voter turnout fell in 2016, even as a record number of
Americans cast ballots. Retrieved from:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/03/gender-pay-gap-facts/ft_17-03-
31_genderpaygap_career/

 

Sex Sails

Jean Kilbourne (2010) concurred that the utilization of sex in the media has always sold since it’s conception, especially at the expense of the sexual and violent trivialization and objectification of women. The impossible standard of body maintenance and beauty standards of women in the US (and other parts of the world) recapitulates heteronormative ideology by keeping woman’s mind and body in a state of docility for the pleasure and capital of men. The tightrope and complexity of societal narrative that informs women that they should be ‘innocent, yet seductive’ (Kilbourne, 2004) creates a perplex discourse as to how we as society subvert and dismantle empowerment in the attempt to feel good about our body and ourselves.

Someone in class mentioned the performance of eroticism in the form of the platform, Onlyfans, as a strategy and tactic to reclaiming one’s body image while acquiring a substantial amount money. In theory, the reclamation of the body while utilizing eroticism does sound interesting. However, because sex (the action and denotative meaning) is so deeply rooted in patriarchal heteronormativity, the conception of eroticism is easily confused with the act of sex and the acts of sexuality that reinforces the satisfaction of the male gaze. Further, even if we utilized Lorde’s definition of erotic “the assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives” (Lorde, 1978), is highly contested and often misnamed to the distortion of pornography objectification. In conjunction with the spiritual-political and epistemological factors that empower and self-affirm women’s sense of being, what Lorde is advocating becomes challenging regarding the reclamation of body via the platform of Onlyfans. Further, the macro-institutionalized compulsory of heteronormative ideologies still make a company like Onlyfans that much more profitable; and the erotic that much less an act of reclaiming.

 

References

Kilbourne, J. (2004). " The more you subtract, the more you add": Cutting girls down to size.

Kilbourne, J. (2010). Killing us Softly IV.

Lorde, A. (2012). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.

 

Kneeling is Healing

As the 2016-2017 National Football League began its season, the league and its fans would have discussion centered around the former starting quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick. The centralized discourse in the 2016-2017 NFL season was sparred by Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem and whether protest should occur on the football field or not. the exigency behind Colin Kaepernick kneeling during gameday National Anthems was a choice made by the quarterback to stand up and speak against the racial inequality and police brutality. Although lend 2023 discusses Colin Kaepernick’s protest amid police brutality and how media framing changed after the George Floyd murdering in 2020, I believe it is important to note the type of framing media and social media outlets we're exposed to during the kneeling. I mentioned these two framings because I think that the two framings that will be discussed in this reflection are frames that remain pervasive today.

Media scholar Robert Entman (2004) defined framing as media organizations focusing or highlighting certain facets have events or issues, to make judgment or connections promoting interpretations, evaluations, and or solutions. Carrington (2020) conducted a content analysis oh newspaper coverage regarding Kaepernick’s political activism over a span of two years. The author observed dominant frames that emerged from the observed coverage and proffered two dominant frames that deemed significant in the findings; the ‘Patriot Frame’ and the ‘Traitor Frame’ (Carrington, 2020). Media outlets that employed the patriot frame defined Kaepernick and various athletes, that were in favor of activism, as citizens that were exercising their constitutional right of free speech. Media outlets that employed the Traitor frame followed Trump’s sentiment describing Kaepernick’s actions as disrespectful and unpatriotic.

Media framing influences audience and as a result, I vividly remember social mediated platforms in the split divide in the discussion of not only if Colin Kaepernick was a traitor or a patriot, but also if the sports sector, which is dominated with colored bodies, traitors or patriots. I remember vividly that's the response from the media consumers always tended to be the latter. Trump 's words of “Get the son of a bitch off the field he's fired”, sports fans stating that “If players didn't like America they need to play in Canada”, and clips of people burning Kaepernick’s jersey went viral. The contestation and the influence of framing dictated (and continues to dictate) how people of color in sports should be policed and fixed—molded to the ideal upstanding citizen/patriot. Kneeling gets compromised, negotiated, and corrected by a linkage of arms, players are threatened to be financially penalized and punished, and people of color in their occupations fear of getting blackballed or subjected to some type of patriarchal retaliation. Although the results from Carrington’s study show minute favor for of the patriot framing from news organizations (45% patriot and 43% traitor) the contestation of framing still prevails of policing, silencing, and oppressing people of color by realistically racializing them as insubordinate; as ‘other’.

  

 

 

References

Boykoff, J., & Carrington, B. (2020). Sporting dissent: Colin Kaepernick, NFL activism, and media framing contests. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 55(7), 829-849.

Entman, R. M. (2004). Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and US foreign policy. University of Chicago Press.

Lind, R. A. (Ed.). (2023). Race/gender/class/media: Considering diversity across audiences, content, and producers. Taylor & Francis.

 

Niqab Crown

I first approach this blog post in stating my positionality regarding my thoughts on the readings of Islamophobia. I would like to acknowledge that I'm not extremely knowledgeable about the hijab or the ideals of Islamic belief and culture. I Approach this blog post within the perspective of an outsider. Islamophobia is not something that hadn't already existed or an ideology that wasn't already in place prior through the terrorist attacks that took place in America on September 11th, 2001. The aftermath of 9/11 amplified and reformulated the way a lot of Americans conceptualized race. What is interesting to me is how often material clothing or style of dress become synonymous with a singular narrative of a certain type of person. For example, hoodies. The wearing of hoodies is often conflated to mean that a person is up to no good or that they are inherently dangerous. The word hoodies or the wearing of hoodies somehow gets equated, ascribed to a type of person, particularly a person who is African American and male. Like the hijab (or niqab), I think it's traced back to a type of person who is associated or has some ties to Middle-Eastern culture, has ties to Islamic belief, and female. Along with Islamic culture these bodies are targeted and subjected to tremendous amounts of heat by the American people pre and post 9/11.

A Hijab is often worn by Muslim women to maintain their privacy and dignity and his warning what is a cultural practice The highlight to the individuals personal, cultural, or religious intersectionalities of their identity. Lind (2023) argued that clothing choices by Muslim women particularly the institution of the hijab and the niqab highlights a transformative role and the reconstruction of self and belonging that normalizes the hijab and ultimately the individual. Additionally, Lind points out the traditional function of the hajib as a veil to hide the female body but highlights the importance of the way some Muslim women utilize social media engage any bodily performance that normalizes and humanizes the visibility of Muslim women; refers this as the modesty movement.

Reference

Lind, R. A. (Ed.). (2023). Race/gender/class/media: Considering diversity across audiences, content, and producers. Taylor & Francis.

 

Cyberhate

Lind (2023), what's that specific hate groups and organizations are prone to consider cyber hate, Internet sites that are run by hate groups that spread hateful ideology, as an alternative to be physically engaged in protests. Further Linda explained that the hate groups that engage in cyber hate expand their arsenal beyond physically protesting, passing out brochures, and attending like-minded events. In fact, the increase of cyber hate is not only used to degrade minoritized groups and communities but can also be seen as a recruitment method to expand their population in order to disseminate hate speech. Additionally, Lind explained two specific sources that justify these hate organization’s exigency for spreading their messages: the First Amendment right and the Bible.

I have never heard of the website godhatesfags.com and nor will I site this specific source purely because the arguments that are made are coming from a place of hate instead of factual, scientific, and scholastic sources. I choose not to cite something as egregious as godhatesfags.com because everything that this hate group stands for is an opinionated bias rooted in self-righteous indignation. While approaching this website, I decided to browse for bit (granted it was a grave mistake because everything that I was reading and seeing made me feel as if I were losing brain cells by the second). I particularly clicked on the tab of multimedia and clicked on the video titled’ institutionalized sin’. The video is relatively short it was approximately 5 minutes and 30 seconds(a waste of my time). Within the video there appears to be a person who is talking about how policy, presidential power, and instant gratification capitalism is wrong and therefore a sin. What is interesting to me is that these folks say that they are spreading the word of God but failed to produce any visual or audio representations of scripture. In fact, they state where you can find the scripture but never really tell you what the scripture says. Now, I will not digress in to bring entertained by a person's interpretation of scripture, however, because no real scripture is read, really highlights how these opinions and biases are particularly personalized and have no merit. It was also interesting how the person in the video this explaining how government law and policy and capitalism is a detrimental sin, yet this person is not behind bars delivering the message-- so this tells the audience that he too also follows these particular laws and policies; not to mention the speaker is sporting an Under Armor sweatshirt. The rhetoric that is attached to this hate speech website is convoluted with complete idiotic ideology.

 

References

Lind, R. A. (Ed.). (2023). Race/gender/class/media: Considering diversity across audiences, content, and producers. Taylor & Francis.

 

Hip Hop feminism

The readings this week over hip hop feminism is a fascinating one. Lind (2023) presented sound arguments, and in ways I agree with the Lind. Indeed, one of the main selling points to rap music is within the discourse of hegemonic masculinity ideology. The sexualization and sexual imagery of women, particularly Black women still rules the hip hop sector at large. I do wonder if it is the prime reason as to why the number of Black women mainstream rappers remains scarce. Not that it has anything to do with the current post but I also think it's important to note that Black women rappers is not even a name that is socially accepted within mainstream rap; the term that circulates is female MC. Yet, I do think that it is the perfect time in this post to announce my beef with the selection of Nicki Minaj within Lind’s text.

Now I would like to preface by saying that I absolutely I have nothing against Nicki Minaj or the author that conducted the media analysis Nicki Minaj lyrics. While I do appreciate the historical typology that is brought to the forefront, I do think readers must conceptualize and place in context the relationship, the analysis, and the scholarship within hip hop feminist discourse today (in the year 2023). Today, Nicki Minaj is still a big celebrity and has a big fan base however Minaj's career within hip hop feminism has appeared to dissipate a bit. Secondly, disagree with the author utilizing the typology to describe or analyze Minaj's discourse and its relationship to Black feminism within her lyrics. I think a more suitable typology would have been the angry Black woman and I will explain a little later in this response. The last point I would like to make in this response suggests that there are better examples of Black female MC’s that utilize or conceptualize sexuality as the vehicle to counter sexual imagery in the gaze of hegemonic ideology.

I first would like to address the dissipation of Minaj’s hip hop career. By no means am I arguing that Minaj and her music is not vital to reclaiming a woman's essence and sexuality. What I am saying is that there are more contemporary Black women rappers that do the same work that Minaj is receiving credit for, but are a lot less profitable. Further, Minaj is not the pioneer of this sense of empowering Black woman feminism in the context of hip-hop feminism. Artist like Queen Latifah, Lil Kim, Remy Ma, and Lauryn Hill laid down the pavement for artists like Doja Cat, Cardi B, Megan the stallion, and Nicki Minaj. There are important pioneers that are left off the list but because Nicki Minaj appears to be more profitable and has spent a great deal of time on the top 100 billboards. Minaj continues to receive praised for doing the work that so many other Black women have already done in the music industry specifically in hip hop feminism. I extend the critique by offering another Black woman rapper who doesn't get as much fame as is Nicki Minaj yet still c projects her voice and lyrics to the abnegation of hegemonic masculinity and she goes by the name of Cupcakke. Cupcakke released her music in 2015 with two hit singles titled Deep Throat and Duck duck goose. Within these songs Cupcakke makes it explicitly clear about sexuality and sexual activities on her own terms. Cupcakke was seen as too vulgar for mainstream and in 2018, had both her videos Vagina and Deep Throat taken off of YouTube because it violated youtubes policy on nudity and sexual content. Cupcakke holds back no punches and is simply unapologetic for expressing her sexuality and the breaks the confinements of telling her experiences of what she defines as being a woman. I believe it would have served the author well to mention Cupcakke as an example of hip-hop Black feminism, sexual imagery, and the ascribed typology of the Jezebel. Cupcakke is one of the many artist that are rendered invisible because of the attack of masculinity within the context of hip hop music and her lyrics are viewed as not only non-normative but vulgar and disrupting and perhaps not parallel palatable to mainstream hip-hop that has simply been whitewashed.

The final argument that I would like to make because I know that this response is running a bit long-winded, deals with the critique have a missed placed typology describe to black women and that is the typology of the 'angry black woman'. I want to be clear that although I understand that's the expression of sexuality is one of the intersecting arguments that Lind makes in regard to Nicki Minaj and her impact of black feminism with the hip hop context. However, today in 2023, Nicki Minaj 's impact on black feminism within the hip hop context has been a bit watered down. I argue that the typology has changed, shifted to the typology angry black woman that has been silenced and even has hurt numerous potential collaborations that Nicki Minaj could potentially be a part of. Nicki Minaj has been in disputes with other female artists such as Miley Cyrus, Cardi B, Remy Ma, Lil Kim, Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift, and Demi Lovato. some of these spikes appeared to be physical altercations while others not so much; the media as often framed these disputes a scapegoating Nicki Minaj as a black woman who has beef with everyone. Various media outlets have even portrayed Minaj as violent by utilizing terms like “attacks”. The historical typology employed by the media and social mediated platforms depict Minaj as the angry Black woman scorned. What is fascinating to me is that Minaj’s decline begins to happen when she was in alleged disputes with Miley Cyrus (2015), Demi Lovato (2016), Mariah Carey (2013), Taylor Swift (2015), and Cardi B (2018). Note, but four out of the five women listed above are White women. The larger question to me, within the scope of hip-hop feminism resides in a concern; at the end of the day is it Black women that partake in the work of hip-hop feminism still gets silenced or still be punished by the other White women who to claim to be feminist?

References

Lind, R. A. (Ed.). (2023). Race/gender/class/media: Considering diversity across audiences, content, and producers. Taylor & Francis.

 

The Walkout

In 2006 many Texas high school students protested in opposition to a federal immigration legislation policy. The policy that would soon be enacted would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally. Before these peaceful protest demonstrations occurred the narrative that crowded the media accused Latine (I use Latine here in efforts to be inclusive) persons being undocumented people who ‘threatened the economy’ because of lack of tax payments, ‘stealing jobs from millions of Americans’, and being ‘rapist’ and ‘drug dealers’. When the 2006 high school walkouts occurred, I too was in high school. I remember hearing all of the terrible racial scripts the media and politicians ascribed to Latine folks in the U.S. I was sitting in coach JD’s classroom, a republican educator that would often partake in numerous microaggressions towards people of color in this classroom and also tell students that he would send them back to Africa and or Mexico (not so Micro). On the day of the 2006 walkout, he warned me and my classmates that if we participated in the walkout, he would “crucify us to the fullest extent”.

The discourse surrounding immigration reform struck fear (and continues to do so) into the hearts many Americans. Natalia Molina (2014) defined the immigration regime discourse with an American law and media as racial scripts that reinforce racial categories and contributes to perceptions of alterity in the United States about Mexican Americans, race, and ethnicity. Further, Molina (2014) described racial scripts as master narratives that not only racialize groups but also recapitulates the ways Americans (mostly White) conceptualize difference across time and space on marginalized groups. In context, the way in which media and politicians discussed immigration reform (especially in 2006), became synonymous with Mexican Americans. The discourse and master narratives surrounding the 2006 immigration legislation serves as a prime example as to how themes of race and citizenship are constructed. Media depictions in newspapers, within news television, and in Hollywood exacerbate racial scripts that continue to produce inaccurate depictions of Latine persons as the abject immigrant, over sexualize Latinas, and vilify Latino men.

As Picker and Sun (2013) demonstrate by exploring Latine representation in the media, the Latine voice is rendered invisible and vilified. What if my high school teacher was in support of my classmates? What if he listened to the voices and stories that populated his classroom? Threatening us to exercise our rights to stand up for what we believe in silences us. What if directors actually casted Latine actors to play Latine roles and supported the actors/actresses in the kinds of stories they want to tell? The challenge becomes how will we, as a society, open up more opportunities that allow those persons in the margins to tell their own stories.  

 

References

Latinos beyond reel: Challenging a media stereotype by Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun (dirs.). Lat Stud 12, 143–144 (2014).

Molina, N. (2014). How race is made in America: immigration, citizenship, and the historical power of racial scripts (1st ed., Vol. 38). University of California Press.

 

Air

Like Lind, I want to focus on the cinematic version of Air, the story told about how Michael Jordan revolutionized shoe culture. I intend to utilize the Grinner framework SCWAMP to argue that even in well-meaning movies that highlight the stories of people of color, Media still holds a privileged power of centering whiteness through a white-savior lens.

SCWAMP stands for straight\ cisgender, Christian, white, able bodied, mail, and property holding as an intersectional framework that emphasizes ideological positions are interconnected and relational. SCWAMP helps us understand who dominates narratives that may conceptualize how we live out these narratives by conforming or actively resisting. Air released in theaters in 2023 and narrates the history of Michael Jordan 's famous shoe brand Nike air. The story begins centering on a marketing executive by the name of Sonny Vaccaro. Sunny Vaccaro worked as a marketing executive for the Nike basketball shoe division in 1984. The Nike corporation appeared to struggle as shoe sales were on the decline, and the organization, on its last leg to compete with other organizations such as Adidas and converse. Adidas and converse appeared to have the competitive economic edge with their NBA superstars\ spokespersons to market their shoes in order to make profitable gains for the respective organizations. In the NBA 1984 draft class, Michael Jordan a player from North Carolina was chosen third in his respective draft class, therefore, making it difficult for marketing executives to build a certain brand around Jordan. In the movie Sonny Vaccaro sees the potential and Michael Jordan and convinces the Nike CEO's to take a gamble on Michael Jordan in hopes to save the Nike shoe brand. With help from various scouting agents Sonny Vaccaro is able to convince Michael Jordan's mother to persuade Jordan into signing Nike basketball shoe deal which landed millions into the pockets of Jordan and the Nike organization.

Straight and cisgender

The main characters of the movie appeared to be interested in the opposite sex. Lind (2023) posits that sexual orientation in regards to address sexuality, is framed as normative. Within the cinematic film there is very little evidence of gay, bisexual, and transgender people that played pivotal roles throughout the movie. Heteronormativity appeared to be hyper-visual in the form of jokes and comments directed at sunny Vaccaro to have a “life outside of work” or “find a girlfriend”. Further, most of the main characters depicted in the film portrayed having nuclear families that consisted of a mother and a father. This depiction presents a problematic mythical norm. One can make the argument that within the context of 1984, the visibility of homosexuality was highly scrutinized or that gay marriage did not simply exist. But to insist that homosexuality or queer persons did not exist in the 80’s serves as an erasure of historical episteme and reinscribes heteronormativity.

Christianity

Although Christianity This is not a highly reoccurring theme within the film, the religion of Christianity is the only religion that is identifiable in the cinematic film Air. Christianity in the movie is seen on two accounts; the wearing of the cross worn by Michael Jordan's mother who is played by Viola Davis and a scene where Davis is praying. Lind (2023) argued Hollywood films ascribe to a dominant Christian ethos and those that oppose suffer some sort of retaliation. Because Christianity is the only religion that is portrayed in the film, insists other religions were not valued or simply did not exist.

Whiteness

Lind (2023) described whiteness as a normative ideology within film that perpetuates its invisibility. Although the story is about Michael Jordan, a Black man, Michael Jordan is not the center of the movie. In fact, the young Michael Jordan hardly shows his face in the film. Now, the film does emphasize that Jordan’s decision of signing with the Nike corporation was predicated on Jordan's mother. Even then, the movie still centralizes Sonny Vaccaro who is played by Matt Damon, VP of marketing Rob Strasser who is played by Jason Bateman, and CEO Phil Knight who is played by Ben Affleck. All the three main characters are White. There is some sense of importance of Jordan's mother played by Viola Davis yet Davis is screen time displayed in the movie is not seen as much as the Vaccaro, Strasser, and Knight. The only other person of color that is displayed in the movie appears to be Howard White who is another scouting agent, who is played by Chris Tucker, and Tucker 's role in the movie is a minor character. Whiteness is overpowered within the film and even more problematic, the narration of the movie is told from a white point of view. The white characters appear to play a role in white savior complex, that is the white characters taking credit and dominating Michael Jordan 's success story.

Able-Bodiedness

We are able to discern that physical ability is valued not only within this film but also within the realm of sports. Within the movie marketing executives and scouts discuss NBA players injury proneness as they valued commodity. If a player possesses a history of injuries sports teams are not likely to strike deals or sign and players to contracts. Likewise, if a player possesses a history of injuries, market brands are not likely to sign or strike deals with those players. Because able-bodiedness serves as hey monetary commodity Within reality and within the context of the movie, the disabled are being devalued.

Male

Although the movie portrays Jordan's mother as the main decisive factor in striking a deal with Michael Jordan, the narrative arc of the movie still centralizes the three White male main characters and their ability to land a deal that revolutionized the sporting and the fashion industry. Additionally, it is important to note that the deal with Jordan could not take place if Jordan's mother and Jordan did not request royalties or a percentage of every Air Jordan sold. Further, historically young athletes did not and could not make as much as their counterparts in the field of sports because of the restrictions of collective bargaining and rookie contracts. Therefore, it was essential that young players like Jordan we're well compensated for their endorsements. Regardless, the endorsement deals and eventually the deal that Jordan struck with Nike still paid the man; but still benefited the White males in power. Today, Nike makes over 5 billion dollars in sales and Jordan receives 5% of yearly revenue (Office Sports, 2022). A deal that continues to benefit males.

Property holding

Lind (2023) referred to property holding as capital; forms of economic, intellectual, and cultural historic and monetary value. The interesting thing here is that the air Jordan brand saved Nike in 1984 and continues to be one of the most profitable shoewear deal in history. Yet, John Donahue the CEO of Nike, who is a white male profits more money than the person or the people who saved the company back in 1984. One would think with such a hefty contribution Michael Jordan would be named Nike CEO. However, John Donahue runs Nike and profits from a Black family’s contribution.

 

References

Lind, R. A. (Ed.). (2023). Race/gender/class/media: Considering diversity across audiences, content, and producers. Taylor & Francis.

Poindexter, O. (2022) Nike, Jordan Score With Jordan Brand’s Record Haul.” Office Sports, 2022, frontofficesports.com/jordan-more-than-doubled-his-nba-career-earnings-in-2022-from-nike-deal/#:~:text=Nike’s%20Jordan%20Brand%20brought%20in,licensing%20his%20name%20to%20Nike.