Friday, Jan. 27, 2006 | 8:21 a.m.
What is our television telling us? How does hip hop and rock music guide us and what can we learn from our video games? Sexuality, religion, gender roles and racial stereotyping are delivered daily to consumers.
Academics are watching.
This weekend they pick it all apart at the 18th annual meeting of the Far West Popular Culture Association and the Far West American Culture Association.
Hosted by UNLV, the three-day conference at Imperial Palace draws more than 200 professors and graduate students. This year they'll discuss video games, the Black Panthers, Hispanic films, gambling, globalization and "the inclusion of Christian mythology in the universe of 'The Lord of the Rings.' "
Forget the laughs, "The Gods Must Be Crazy" might just be a little racist, or is it merely slapstick?
Regarding the original film, which was followed by sequels and a series of low-budget knockoffs, Richard Voeltz says, "It was very popular. Now it's being very much interpreted as being racist and the director probably had an apartheid agenda." Voeltz is a professor and chairman of the history and government department at Cameron University in Oklahoma.
"On the other hand you can take the other tact that slapstick is slapstick and it's just really funny."
Voeltz looks at cinematic globalism through the Hong Kong sequels to "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and the implied racism in the original films, which have been released on DVD, and the knockoffs.
He also looks at how a popular genre is marketed. The Hong Kong sequels star N!xau. The Namibian, who appeared as a bushman in the first movies, appears in modern civilization in the low-grade Hong Kong sequels.
"It's a whole different substudy of cinema."
Are you man enough? And are you a black man or white man or are you a black man in a white man's body?
"There are alternate definitions of manhood in the West," says Frank Dobson, teacher of creative writing and African-American literature at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Through Clint Eastwood films, Dobson explores the phenomenon of the white man who "adopts blackness."
"Eastwood takes the whole issue of masculinity, breaks it down, tears it down, looks at it from different points of view and looks at what it's like to be human."
Citing Eastwood films, including "Million Dollar Baby" and "White Hunter, Black Heart," Dobson says Eastwood has moved further away from traditional white patriarchy to "a sort of embracing of humanity symbolized by the man who is not afraid to cross the line."
The gym in "Million Dollar Baby" might be a masculine setting, but Dobson sees the most heroic figures as Maggie the female boxer, played by Hilary Swank, and Eddie Dupris, played by Morgan Freeman, is the "moral arbiter" in the gym.
Regarding Eastwood's character in the movie, Dobson says, "In the end he becomes less of the white male patriarch and becomes a black man in that he commits a crime. He crosses the line."
Whoever says "Grand Theft Auto" is just a violent game is missing the message.
"It's the perfect form of post-modern entertainment," said Nathan Garrelts, associate professor of English at Saginaw State University in Michigan.
"They're taking these media images and spitting them back at us in a satirical way. With 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City' you're not consuming images from Miami drug lords, you're consuming images from 'Miami Vice.' "
Garrelts, whose book "Digital Game Play" examines the interactive nature of video games, says that "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" references such movies as "Boyz n the Hood" more than it does reality.
"It's not the real California," he said. "Nor was it the real California. They're playing with the image we thought it was and giving it to us again. That's part of what makes it appealing to adults. A 10- or 12-year-old isn't going to understand the cultural references.
"Post modern critics will say we wallow in the image."
Conclusion: 95 percent of the games consumers happen to be 18 or older. Rockstar Games not only creates for entertainment, the company is writing cultural commentary.
"I would love everyone to think about these games rather than just be passive consumers of media culture."
Come to our club. The women are loose and crawling all over each other.
We all see the hot women-on-women casino ads. Erika Engstrom, professor of communications studies at UNLV, examines the message it sends to women.
"This perpetuates a male fantasy that women are plentiful and will act like this," says Engstrom, who looks at how women-on-women images, used for male pleasure, affect the social status of women.
"It perpetuates the idea that women can be women who like men,but enjoy being with other women and it's usually for men's pleasure.
Engstrom says these ads are degrading.
"It's this harem mentality. Some say that this says that this is training for women, that if you want to attract a man you have to be able to attract a woman, too."
Conclusion: "I look at how it helps or hinder women's progress in society. I don't think it helps."
Give us a cliffhanger! Give it again! Another! Don't stop.
Jessica Lucero, a doctoral student at UNLV, examines the concept of delaying gratification in narrative through the television show "Desperate Housewives." She uses Peter Brooks' references to Freud's theories of the death drive and the pleasure principle.
"In the '80s '90s shows like Bill Cosby and 'Family Ties' introduced an issue and resolved it within the show," she said. "What we're desiring in pop culture now are issues that are brought up and never fulfilled. We desperately want to know, but we don't want to know."
Why all the talk about metrosexual? Let's look at homosocial.
Ric Jahna, doctoral student in literature at University of Arizona, examines male friendships in "Friends" through homosociality, which defines the range of male same sex activity from homoerotic behavior to platonic male bonding.
He concludes that "Friends" privileges the homosocial over the heterosexual.
"It's a show that pushes women to the side," Jahna said. "I'm a guilty fan of the show. I wouldn't say it's a terrible, sexist show, but I think that the complexity of roles and situation between women takes a back seat to the drama that's going on between men.
"Only when the male relationship is sanctioned can the heterosexual relations can go. When a woman enters that domain it has the potential to disrupt the male bond."
Citing various episodes that focus on the relationship between characters Joey and Chandler and turbulence between Ross and Joey over their romantic situations with Rachel. Always, Jahna said, "The male relationship has to be resolved before the heterosexual can be permitted."
Also, Jhana said,"The most consistent love affair is Joey and Chandler."
Superstition and folklore; When it comes to myths and urban legends, who is carrying the torch?
Heather Lusty, adjunct professor at UNLV, looks at the repetition of urban legends and old myths and uses the WB's television show "Supernatural" to explore how these myths are retold for new generations.
"I'm looking at where they come from and how they are being adapted to reach American cultural audiences," she said.
Conclusion: "Does it matter if they change things? On a larger scheme it does, on a smaller, it doesn't. As long as it exposes kids to myths it's good. We can meet them halfway.
"As instructors we use it as a jumping off point for a TV and video game culture."
Forget the lies perpetrated by government and media, we're numb enough to handle the truth
During World War II, certain truths were so important that when they were dissonant with our cherished beliefs, great efforts were extended to flush them out of consciousness, says Rob Hirschbein, professor of philosophy and director of the Peace Institute at California State University, Chico.
"To kill defenseless Japanese and Germans,they had to be dehumanized. In the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, they were presented as rodents or lice."
However, Hirschbein, who also teaches Internet courses at Walden University, said, "People get so accustomed to the destruction of the defenseless that these days there is no need to hide the truth.
"When there were no weapons of mass destruction, rather than make excuses or invent weapons of mass destruction Bush got contemptuous and got a few laughs while looking under desks and under chairs for the weapons of mass destruction."
Conclusion: "These days there's no need to dehumanize them because humanity has already been dehumanized."
Are we all lying? How can we believe anything when everything is exaggerated and generalized?
We can't, says Todd Jones, professor of philosophy at UNLV, looks at rules of language and hazards of generalizations made in daily life, in social studies and news media.
"There's a general way of talking about anything in this country. For example , 'My students didn't like this class.' 'Americans aren't religious.' 'French prefer wine to beer.'
"That doesn't mean all of them do, but we don't have a quantifying word."
Jones sees permissible occasions where one can distort the truth and breaks them occasions into five categories, including caricature and mutual understanding.
"The media is one place where someone will say, 'This is what Americans believe today...' Your most prototypical response to that is all Americans or most Americans and that might not have been what they meant.
"Given that there is five ways to do this, you're bound to get misled."
Don't bother us with World Music, we've got boy bands.
"Most of us live in a very narrow musical world," says Jay Coughtry, associate professor of history at UNLV. "I'm interested in how difficult it is for indigenous music (styles) to find a broader audience."
From Edward Seaga, who was Jamaica's cultural minister, then the country's prime minister, to Bob Marley, the revolutionary icon, Coughtry looks at the rise of reggae.
"Some would argue that Reggae music has been the most successful, if not the first, to make that jump successfully into the world market."
But that didn't come easy. It took the efforts of the record companies and the Jamaican government to bring ska into America via the World's Fair in New York City in 1964. And even then, it was in the shadow of Beatlemania.
Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at [email protected].
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