Cultural Choice or Cultural Marketing

In recent decades we in the industrialized world have a variety of cultural experiences available to us which we consider a form of recreation and entertainment. It usually involves an immersion into a different way of life, one that we would never see other than as cultural tourists. We buy the clothes that we wouldn't normally wear and try to talk the same way and about the same things as the people where we're going. But we're outsiders pretending briefly to be a part of the world that we've only read about or watched in the movies.

Now or Never

Graceland, 1987

After being dumped by our respective girlfriends, Hans and I decided on the spur of the moment to drive to Graceland in August 1987 for the 10th anniversary of Elvis' death. Hans' mother had been a big Elvis fan and owned a lot of his old LPs that we'd made fun of as kids. They had cheesy photos of Elvis with his arm around some buxom girls or a picture of him in his military uniform driving a convertible with the caption, "A Date with Elvis." We thought it was ridiculous. But then he died and we changed our tune, so to speak.

The U.S. Presidency and Hero Worship

The U.S. presidency has become a committee of a couple of dozen well connected and well educated people who advise a single, charismatic, photogenic person who implements the policies decided by the committee.

This may be objectionable, especially to those who have never considered the idea and who are accustomed to hero-worship. But it is unreasonable anymore to expect a single individual to have the capacity to handle the duties of the office. No single person knows the intricacies of energy and science policy and is at the same time able to negotiate trade or arms agreements with a variety of nations.

But that's just want most Americans want and expect from their president. They want John Wayne (as Gil Scott-Heron once surmised) or George Washington. A man who will walk over and punch the collective Islamic State right in the nose and tell them to sit down and shut up. Then walk calmly back home. That's an allegorical scenario but that kind of thing is just what this country thinks it can find if it just keeps looking for the right candidate. Delusional is what I would call it.

Beer Graduate

I started drinking beer when I was 16 and I spent the rest of high school in hot pursuit of the foamy beverage. Because I was too young to be served in a bar, my friends and I usually bought six-packs from the groceries and markets which were known to sell to just about anyone over 5 feet 9 inches. We then drank can after can in somebody's parents' car or basement when the adults were away. It usually ended with some foolishness, uncontrollable laughter and often, vomiting. 

Loads of fun.

Close Captioning's Beginnings

The deaf have benefited greatly from the close captioning of television. I wrote previously about the use of television in a deaf household prior to the 1980s and the limited amount of programming they found worth watching.

For many years the deaf have been able to rent films and although they were American productions and the actors spoke English, they were sub-titled like foreign films so the hearing impaired could enjoy them. Several nonprofit organizations including public libraries rented not only films but projectors and screens for the enjoyment of schools, clubs and deaf individuals.

Math Scores Down. Is Teaching 'People Skills' to Blame?

The Washington Post reports that in one of the nation's best school systems (Montgomery County, Maryland) test scores in math are at their lowest point in a long time. And it appears that this is a nationwide trend

And of course the question is, Why?

Poor teaching? Poor discipline and study skills at home?

I wonder if this fall in numeracy isn't related to the teaching of soft skills in schools. Soft skills (or people skills) teach children about relationships, getting along, negotiation, conflict resolution, etc. all of which are worthy lessons for maintaining harmonious citizenry in our increasingly crowded and interconnected world.

But teaching and cultivating these interpersonal skills may undermine mathematics concepts and teaching. Math is a 'hard' discipline. By hard I don't mean 'difficult' but rather unforgiving. In mathematics, there is very often a right answer and none other. No flexibility is accounted for. The rules are hard and fast in contrast to the lessons we teach our children regarding navigating the unpredictable ways in which we relate to one another.

Another potential reason  for the noticeable drop in math scores also relates to soft-skills teaching and that is that there seems to be a "math gene" that science has identified in humans. This gene (as far as I have read) enables its bearer to better understand values, ratios and other concepts that seem to elude (despite formal training) those who lack the gene.

I'm not sure about all that but if it's true it might explain at least partially the drop in scores. That is, that the numerate (those with the math gene) tend to be more socially awkward than those who excel in the people (or soft) skills. Therefore the latter tend to marry earlier (or at all) and have children earlier and have larger families, thus passing on this mysterious "math gene." The geeks on the other hand, are more studious and delay marriage and childbearing (either by choice or by lack of opportunities, skills and/or abilities) and therefore produce fewer children with this gene.

Popular culture is also (and as usual) a willing participant. We've seen for years in movies, television, music and other entertainment media that geeky math geniuses are undesirable companions. Children who might otherwise excel in reason and logic (both core to mathematical achievement) are excluded from many peer groups enough to modify behavior so that some of them conform by feigning ignorance and distaste for numeracy.

And voila, in 10-15 years you've got a cohort of school-aged children with a large proportion of innumerate who tend to drive down test scores in math.

No Longer Newsworthy

A syndicated feature in many alternative newspapers for many years was called, "News of the Weird," (NOTW). It featured (as the title suggests) stories detailing freak occurrences or idiotic actions of common folk like you and I. Many considered it a welcome alternative to the mainstream stories which dealt with heads of state, business tycoons, wars or public policy decisions. Sometimes NOTW contained accounts of people caught or somehow trapped in compromising situations (on the toilet, having sex, etc.). Others might include extremely pampered pets, delusional beliefs in aliens leading to odd behavior or freak accidents resulting in deaths, etc.

Every so often the News of the Weird had to retire a certain type of story because it happened enough to make it no longer, "weird." One example was stories about would be crooks who, before holding up a store, would ask for a job application, fill it out and use their real name and address before carrying out the armed robbery. It seems to happened so much that the NOTW had to stop running that kind of story as odd.

Similarly a certain type of event is sometimes reported in the mainstream news with such frequency that it becomes no longer newsworthy. The one that comes most immediately to mind is stories of corruption in municipal governments. How many times have we read about a big city mayor or town council member that has been forced to resign or indicted by authorities for monetary impropriety, bribe-taking or skimming funds, etc.?

It happens so much that it is now found primarily among the news wire briefs rather than the headlines.

I would add to that genre the school test cheating stories that we've seen in recent years. This also relates to municipal governments, but it appears that standardized test cheating by both students, teachers and abetting by higher officials is so common that it barely attracts any attention anymore. 5-10 years ago it was quite a scandal to read about a school district where teachers were helping students or erasing answers on tests but more and more today it attracts little notice.

Post Civil Rights Reflections

Occasionally I'll meet a person who went to Catholic school or otherwise had strictly religious parents and who now feels permanently harmed by the whole experience. They talk about being fearful of the nuns commands or of attending all manner of religious services and performing associated rituals, giving the impression that they've never been the same. And they now reject the whole experience and call it a scar on their past. A similar set of cultural baggage is associated with Jewish motherhood; certain people (mostly Jewish women) complain of the guilt or other emotional trauma associated with having a Jewish mother.

The Alvin Award

After Larry Bird retired from basketball in 1992, I loudly declared to anyone who would listen, "The NBA will never name another white man its Most Valuable Player."

And boy was I wrong.

Chowder Head

I was in the staff cafeteria the other day and being that it was Friday, the soup was clam chowder. I normally don't like the soup there but I look forward to Fridays and clam chowder.

It reminded me of an incident when I was a young boy. It's really just a snippet of a memory but worth repeating for posterity.

A kid in our neighborhood--a bit older than me--used the term, "chowder head' to insult another kid. I suppose he was just repeating something he heard on a cartoon or some other television content. I don't remember much else except that at the time I thought it was the funniest thing I'd heard. You know how kids are: we get to giggling over something and just can't stop. I remember myself being doubled over in laughter for a long time

I repeated the phrase over and over and called as many people chowder head as I could get away with over the next day or two. Probably made an ass of myself but as I recall it sure was fun.

The Boundary Between Man and Machine

Noted futurist, Ray Kurzweil has said that human immortality is probably less than 20 years away. Actually, I didn't hear him say this or even read his exact words. But I read the newspaper headline and that's more than most people do.

I strongly suspect that Kurzweil is predicting the marriage of biomedicine and computer technology so that it will be possible to revive failed anatomical systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive) and/or replace human organs beyond those that are currently possible (e.g. heart, kidney, lungs). And that therefore it is possible to keep an individual alive indefinitely. Or at least this is what immortality will look like in the beginning.

Some might argue that (if my assumptions are correct) replacing so many parts means that the resulting individual can hardly be considered the same person. I suppose the argument might be made that if I have a 40 year old car and over its life I have replaced the engine, front and rear axles, suspension, interior and enough other components that it really is a misnomer to say I have the same car today that I had all these years.

But no matter, I think that we humans will one day soon have components implanted in our bodies that are intelligent and that are custom designed to respond to circumstances enough so that instead of wearing out over the years, they improve with time. We already have artificial joints and organs so this is not that far off. The big difference is that we will now move into supplementing or replacing our thinking and memory functions in addition to our motor skills, circulation or respiration.This may one day make humans and machines virtually indistinguishable. Or at least humans and synthetic organisms and/or biological parts.

Furthermore on boundary blurring . . .

It seems that boundaries are disappearing everywhere. There is a border between the U.S. and Canada, but aside from a different form of currency, you wouldn't know you're in another country were you to walk across it. I would say the same thing about the boundary between Texas and Mexico; there is very little noticeable difference on either side.

In media, the boundary between the program and the advertisement has been eroding for years. Product placement has been growing in Hollywood film and television programming so that it is not clearly defined which part of the broadcast is paid for by the sponsor and which is part of the creative work.

A Sports Fan Grows Up

When I was a kid, I was a big reader. And I often read biographies of famous men throughout history. But I noticed that I usually lost interest in the story after the subject of the biography reached my age. As a pre-teen, I couldn't really relate to things that happened to adults so I often dropped the book and never finished. As soon as Benjamin Franklin turned 12 or 13, I stopped reading his autobiography (although I'm told it's one of the best ever written). This continued throughout my teen years as I kept interest in the person later and later in his life until today when I can pretty much keep focused on the person throughout the story of their life.

Well, something similar has happened to me and my interest in professional sports.

At age 9 or 10, I was fascinated with the spectacle of professional sports, especially the flashiest and most controversial players. Those players with funny nicknames or off-the-field antics that the media loved to present to me (in order to get me hooked, I suppose). Those that immediately come to mind are "Hollywood" Henderson, Mark "The Bird" Fydrich or Darryl Dawkins. They weren't the best in the league, but they were in the news a lot for breaking backboards or talking to the ball or otherwise providing highlight reel material and that was all I cared about.

Then as I became a teenager, I began to notice how championships were won and who the most valuable players were and like everyone else, I became interested in these all stars. This would include Julius Erving or Franco Harris, among many others. These players weren't very loud or boastful but they put up Hall of Fame numbers over the years and I knew these were the guys that sports history would remember better than the colorful characters that the TV broadcasts spotlighted during halftime.

I watched all 3 major sports as a teenager and twenty-something. But into my thirties I started to develop other interests and didn't have time to watch 6 hours of football on Sundays or to attend  multiple baseball games (although in 1989, I lived a few blocks from Baltimore's Memorial stadium and along with my roommate, made an appearance at over 50 home games.) As I matured I saw even the best players developing a sour attitude toward money, competing for the largest contracts and engaging  in some disgraceful off-the-field activities. And although I understand that the professional sports industrial complex is an abusive system and frequently drives overgrown but still immature young men to do foolish things with drugs or weapons or their girlfriends, I lost my boyish enthusiasm for most players. Besides I was older than most of them, anyway.

Rather, I began to become more interested in the coaches. I knew where many basketball coaches had played when they were in the league, where they had coached previously and under whose mentor-ship they were assistants and their coaching style was influenced. I began to believe that championships are won by coaches more than I had ever previously considered. I knew about Coach K. and working for Bobby Knight and Joe Gibbs being an assistant with the Dallas Cowboys, for example. I guess when my own body started to slow down and I began to be responsible, I started to admire strategy and leadership among pro sports figures.

One of the real tragedies (among many) in the professional sports industrial complex is that when a team is losing badly, it is frequently due to players poor performance. But unfortunately the vast majority of teams respond by firing the manager or coach. (The Washington Wizards did this twice in the past 6-7 years).

So as I aged further and I held a job for more than a summer and I bought a car on credit and eventually a home, I started to understand more about commerce and economics. Naturally my continuously shrinking concern with the professional sports world turned mostly to the general managers who were *really* the ones (I soon decided) who won the championships. Not the most valuable players or the team captain or the coach; it was the GM or whatever they called themselves.

These were the guys, mostly in the 40s or older, who scouted personnel, made draft and trade decisions. When a team started winning and  it wasn't because they traded for the MVP or hired the best coach, it was because of the older guys upstairs.

Clearly my opinions are biased since my reasoning for a winning team has advanced up the age scale as I have aged myself.

Product Competition and U.S. Politics

I have been thinking in recent years about marketing consumer goods and politics. My theory says that competing products on the consumer marketplace which are most similar and which differ very little in quality or substance are the very products that are marketed most aggressively. Ad campaigns for things like soft drinks, local auto dealerships or domestic beers for example are presented in a way to make the consumer believe that one of these products is far superior and beyond comparison to the other product of its type. Coke and Pepsi come to mind. They are practically indistinguishable from one another, made of largely identical ingredients. Yet based on the intensity of their marketing efforts, either company would have us believe that the other product tastes radically different and is entirely inferior.

There is no shortage of examples of this. Auto dealerships for example are merciless on the local news broadcasts of most major metropolitan areas. To hear them tell it, buying a Toyota at ABC dealer is a recipe for disaster and you're going to save hundreds if not thousands at XYZ Toyota showroom on the other side of town. But the truth is both businesses are working from the same supplier and paying the same price to the manufacturer. Their labor market and overhead are nearly identical, being in the same metro area so there can't be any discernible difference between the price you get at one rather than the other besides a difference based on random chance.

And there are other products whose peddlers spend what must be tens of millions a year to get us to buy a different brand but nearly identical product. The truth is, these extensively and incessantly marketed goods are extremely limited in the variety of choice they can offer the consumer. In addition to centralization and uniform manufacturing processes, there are state regulations on what can and cannot go into a product, what it can be called, etc. that force competitors to offer a product under different brands that are essentially no different from one another.

But perhaps the most exaggerated example is with American politics. In recent years the Democratic and Republican parties have been trying to sell themselves to voters as radically different in their philosophies and budget priorities and attitudes toward everything from health care to crime and immigration.

But the truth is, rhetoric aside neither of them has instituted any policies that are much different from the other. Neither of them, for example will drastically reduce entitlement spending. They may quibble about miniscule government spending on the margins such as educational or job training programs but these arguments are meaningless when viewed against the real threat to American fiscal health: Social Security and the Medicare/Medicaid programs.

As an example, welfare payments to the poor were curtailed under Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Conversely, medicare payments were expanded under Republican, George W. Bush. Yet both the Democratic and Republican parties would have you believe that only the opposing party would do something like that.

Both parties have their outliers, of course. But I suspect that if we took a random sample of legislation and asked American voters to identify which party sponsored or initiated the law, very few of us could (beyond blind chance) determine whether it was a Democrat or a Republican who was behind the bill. Yet they would have us believe that like Coke and Pepsi, the difference between themselves and those across the aisle is night and day.

I call politics the most exaggerated example, less because one person's policies exactly replicates another, but more due to the lengths to which these people will go to distinguish themselves from others whose policies might differ slightly but which in the end support the status quo.

Shift of Allegiance from State to Corporation

I have written about the corporate takeover of our lives but ought to elaborate here. For more information, see the book with the B-Movie title, "When Corporations Rule the World" by David Korten.

We owe support and allegiance less and less to our government and more and more to corporations. Most Americans today know much more about consumption than citizenship.

Among other things is our attitude toward the central collection of personal information. Many of us resist vehemently a national database run by the government of information such as our names, addresses, habits, political affiliations, employers, income, debts, preferences for books and movies, etc. It reminds us of George Orwell's novel, "1984."

But while we resist the collection and maintenance of a file or dossier on our personal lives by government for fear of a dictatorial state, we actively participate in this data collection when we create online identities. In other words, we don't seem to care that Amazon.com collects this information or that EquiFax does. At least, it doesn't stop us from buying products online or participating in the system that allows this data to be accumulated and maintained.

I read a book recently (Life, Inc.) which had a variation on the Toynbee quote that I posted earlier (http://historicalaccident.blogspot.com/2008/09/title-explanation.html) . This one went something like this:

in the past 500 years, since the inception of state-chartered corporations, people have gone from subjects to citizens, from citizens to workers and most recently, from workers to consumers.

In the 1940s and 50s, the United States experienced a wave of paranoia due to anti-communist sentiments in Washington. A U.S. Senator held hearings recklessly accusing public figures of being communist sympathizers and it ruined several careers. It was common in those days to call a communist an enemy of the state.

But today that label would have to be revised. Given that the U.S. Congress and the White House of either party feels that it is their job to keep America employed, the stock market rising and corporations earning a profit, they would likely consider any threat to those efforts anti-American. But today we have a growing simplicity movement which advocates consuming less among other things. And policy makers in Washington, although they may not admit it openly, would consider the voluntary simplicity movement an enemy of the state in that its end result is to reduce consumption and therefore production, employment and investment.

So it will probably become clear in a short time to everyone that we owe our allegiance not to the U.S. government but to the U.S. industrial state which provides us with much more than Uncle Sam does.

Alternative Advertising

Advertising is one of my pet-hates, primarily because so many ads seem to treat the viewer/reader as an idiot. Automobiles with names like 'The Magnum' or the 'XKE325' apparently try to appeal to the base emotions that might be more abundant in a nine year old than a grown man.

Of course there are some television commercials which are innovative and humorous, but unfortunately after the first 200-300 views, anything gets rather old.

And some ads are aimed not at buyers of a certain product or service, but at a different audience.

Potential employees is one example. Several years ago Wal Mart ran a television ad that featured several senior-citizen employees who spoke about the variety of activity in their particular Wal Mart and that you never knew what you were going to see at a Wal Mart. The ad didn't mention any of the products or prices or discounts but really featured the working life of a retired and presumably part-time Wal Mart greeter or cashier. It seemed to me at the time that the object of the commercial was not to get people to come in to buy stuff but to get people to come in and apply for a job.

And they were particularly targeting the elderly, part-time, bored, newly retired types who might find it a way to spice things up if they spent 12-20 hours a week earning an hourly wage down at the local outlet. I can only guess that Wal Mart likes these senior citizen, part time workers since they do not require health insurance since the law does not require health coverage for part-timers and that presumably those older than 62 qualify for medicare at some level.


Other advertisements are directed at cultivating investment in a particular company. These tend to be for products or services that don't have a retail market or that appear in media aimed at an adult audience for whom the product might not be appropriate.

Still others feature a corporation's good works and citizenship by highlighting charitable activities and such. Nothing mentioned about the product or the sale or benefits of buying their wares. Only that we're good guys for helping out the disadvantaged in your community or for our activities to restore environmental quality, etc.

In the area of public policy, particularly in the Washington D.C. area there are ads which run during the political commentary Sunday fare by large corporations trolling for government contracts or legislation to protect a certain company's business model. Northrop Grumman and Archer Daniels Midland come most immediately to mind. Almost nobody watching any television show is going to buy a fighter jet except someone who holds a high position at the Pentagon or who reviews military procurement in Congress.

It is said that taxes are an economic inefficiency because that money would be better allocated in the hands of consumers or the private sector generally; governments do just about everything less efficiently than consumers or private enterprise. If that's true I would say the same thing about expenditures on advertisements. Embedded in the price of every product or service, along with the raw materials, labor, insurance, licensing, delivery, warehousing and such is the cost of marketing the thing. And it seems that more and more resources are devoted to this attempt at persuasion which is widely recognized as deception. I'd say that's an inefficient allocation of capital.

Piracy/Copyright Solution

It is always popular to criticize the wealthy. The vast majority of us harbor stereotypes about the well-to-do: they're heartless, insulated, fragile and interested in profits above all else. This is supported by the fact that it has always been fashionable to support a tax increase on the wealthy given that most of us do not consider ourselves rich.

But the wealthy have made many of the latest products we enjoy today affordable. Often the latest gadget or device to adorn American homes began as playthings of the rich. Business or corporations were the only ones who could afford them, followed by the super rich, accustomed to such luxury.

A good example is flat-screen televisions which were out of reach for most of us just 10 or so years ago. They sold for several thousand dollars each so that only the very wealthy or businesses like restaurants, bars, airports or casinos could afford them. But as more wealthy bought these things once considered a luxury, the manufacturers of the sets could increase production and by realizing economies of scale, reduce the price based on greater manufacturing and shipping volume and efficiency. Soon these sets were under $1500 and many middle class families could buy one. Now that they can be bought for less than $500 they are commonplace in many American homes. That wouldn't have been possible if the very wealthy among us hadn't waded in first.

The same can be said of microwave ovens and videocassette recorders. Around 1980. They sold for several hundred dollars at the time which might be equivalent to nearly a thousand dollars today. They were a luxury that few homes had 30 years ago but as demand increased from commercial or industrial use to luxury item to upper middle class homes and finally into just about everyone's home the manufacturers realized cost-per-unit savings which drove the price down continually and fostered the proliferation.

I wonder if we couldn't solve the problems associated with intellectual property and pirating by following similar pattern of first-use/high-cost with the cost gradually decreasing as usage increases. For instance, it is silly that today one should pay the same amount of money to purchase a movie or a piece of recorded music that has been sold millions of times compared to a newly released film. Demand would seem to be highest for the latest song or movie rather than something that is decades old. It would make sense if the price reflected this demand.

If these entertainment products were very expensive upon release but the costs declined with each subsequent purchase (or block of a thousand or so) the costs of production would be realized much sooner by the artist and production company. And since there are (almost) no ongoing costs to replicate the product into units for sale, the price could drop quite rapidly after an initial windfall. The rich would have first access to these movies and recordings and the poor would enjoy them years after they were released.

Additionally, online retailing has the advantage of easy price adjustment compared with a physical paper tag that appears on goods sold in brick-and-mortar stores. Electronic retailers should take advantage of that.

But the bottom line is: the artist will earn the bulk of the total revenue on a given work much earlier in the process.

Even if the price drop curve was very slight, it would still make sense to make 30 or 40 or 50 year old movies and music available to consumers at a very low price relative to the latest release. The same could be said for music: why should Elvis Presley's Hound Dog sell for the same price as the hottest new single from the hottest new artist? The demand certainly isn't the same. Production companies, studios, artists and rights holders would still make money on the older material and probably likely head off any illegal reproduction if it was affordably priced.

Eventually, after years and millions or tens-of-millions of uses, purchases and plays, these movies and music will be extremely inexpensive to the masses who would otherwise end up pirating them. Current copyright law, which contains fixed terms after which content is in the public domain, is probably based on a similar principle that after a while, works should belong to the culture in which they are created and not to any individual.

Incidentally, I do not favor state-mandated price controls on movies and music but I think the media production conglomerates are beginning to face the facts that their content will be (and is currently) pirated because the price is too high. So it may be in their best interest to re-structure pricing lest they face wholesale theft. This appears to be another case where technology has become too sophisticated for institutions in much the same way that sophisticated financial investment products were not well understood by regulators which led to unfair if not illegal practices.

A recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review uses the examples of eBooks http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/whats_the_right_price_for_eboo.php

Mental Health's Second-Hand Smoke Equivalent

In the 1980s, a singer named Joe Jackson released a song called "Cancer." The line repeated throughout the song was "everything gives you cancer." It was a parody on the seemingly endless list of everyday products and practices that in laboratories has resulted in carcinoma cell development among mice. I'm exaggerating but only because the song itself was an exaggeration.

However, I do believe that sometime in the near future we are going to hear from scientists who find that the electronic audio and video that are so pervasive in our lives and that form a background of sounds to an increasing portion of our days is the mental health equivalent of second-hand smoke. In other words, published findings will demonstrate that passive listening to this noise leads to one of several neuroses like anxiety, insomnia or some more serious threat to mental health.

Popular media undoubtedly aim to cultivate a sense of dissatisfaction among viewers and listeners and are interspersed with advertisements purporting to fulfill those unmet desires. So the question for laboratory or field research will be what are is the net outcome of this dissatisfaction among the populace. Tranquility and acceptance? Unlikely. I can't help but think of teen suicide and cyber-bullying as the result of this sense of dissatisfaction which advertisers want to inject into a younger and younger audience.

In fact, it is so widely published in popular news accounts that watching television before bedtime does contribute to sleeplessness that I have no doubt the harm of electronic media will become common knowledge soon. We hear from a national pediatrics group that children under 2 should not be exposed to television as it might interfere with cognitive development.

I can only wonder whether lawsuits will ensue, asserting that television producers and advertisers knew the dangers but still pushed the medium in an attempt to downplay the effects or even spin them into some positive outcomes.

American Broadcasting and the Deaf

For most of the history of American electronic media, the deaf were excluded from participating. Certainly radio and sound recordings were useless to most deaf people, although if you turn up the music loud enough to generate vibrations, the deaf will get up and dance as readily as the hearing.

Silent movies turned out to be a real benefit for the deaf since they could follow the story as well as anyone else. Many silent films, although they contained captions every few scenes or frames, also included a lot of physical comedy or exaggerated acting for obvious reasons.

Sometime in the early days of Hollywood, someone began applying subtitles to films even though they were English language films and the captions were in English. This was for the handicapped-the deaf, primarily. And at state schools-for-the-deaf across the U.S. and at many deaf clubs, captioned movies were a big hit.

But when television came along closed-captioning was still decades away. It may be because the content was created too quickly for anyone to take time to caption each episode. In any case, the deaf were forced to either try to read lips, or to watch programming that didn't require any text translation. Sporting events is the clearest example of this. Many deaf people who probably would otherwise not be sports fans (including many women in the days when this was a much more male domain) began watching sports on television for lack of any other intelligible programming. My mother loved watching the big three professional sports as well as college football and basketball.

My mother also told me that when she was in college and just afterward, one of the programs she used to look forward to watching was, "Your Show of Shows." This was an American hit in the 1950s featuring Sid Cesar, Carl Reiner and many other comics. She pointed it out to me once when I was a teenager and had stumbled across some reruns. She said it was hilarious. And I guess it was appealing mostly because of the physical nature of the gags.

French Misrepresentation in U.S. culture mid-20th century

When I was growing up I was exposed to stereotypes of a wide variety of people via popular media. These messages were of course untrue and unfair but some of them were so distorted and pervasive so as stick with me and many other kids of my generation for a long time. One of them dealt with the French, particularly French men. The juvenile American television, movies and cartoons I watched caricatured males from this country to the point of ridicule. I've met plenty of Frenchmen throughout my life who are no different from American, English or Australian men, but as a boy I was left with the impression that French men were weak, effeminate and overly emotional. 

Kids growing up in the U.S. in the mid 20th century were told repeatedly that the French man was a namby-pamby weakling. They were often either artists or chefs or some other occupation stereo-typically associated with women and they displayed this in their interpersonal behavior, for example when they cried if they heard the French song, 'The Marseilles'. 

Additionally, most French men in comedies, dramas or (especially) cartoons had what we might consider thin and very weak mustaches. While Americans had Mark Twain or Teddy Roosevelt mustaches, strong and thick and robust as the American west, the French either had pencil-thin mustaches or goatees or something that seemed to violate an American sense of virility.

This caricature of French males could have grown out of government propaganda just after the Second World War, perhaps because of the American GI rescue or maybe it came from some personal vendetta among those in Hollywood and other media production types. I suppose it grew out of a young America seeing France overrun twice in the first half of the century.

There were some notable exceptions to this unfair media stereotyping. One was the French-Canadian lumberjack type who appeared in several cartoons of the period. He was an unshaven, burly guy who wore a knit hat and plaid hunting jacket. Two other exceptions, the Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau and Warner Brothers' French skunk, Pepe Le Pew, defied most of the messages that Frenchmen were lily-livered weaklings, although neither was terribly masculine like John Wayne or James Bond. And both perpetuated the bumbling idiot portrayal of French males to  American men.

 

The stereotype sometimes suggested homosexuality or hyper-sexuality (as we see in the Warner Brothers' Pepe Le Pew). I've nothing against French men or gay men but it reminds me of a bit of graffiti I once saw in a Baltimore restroom:

"Brian Murphy slept here with 4 french sailors and is still a virgin."

There were four of them.
They were sailors.
They were French.
And they still turned down Brian Murphy

Shaquille and Ali

Recently Shaquille O'Neal retired from professional basketball and in thinking about his career, I can't help but consider him the "Muhammad Ali" of his time. 

Ali and O'Neal are both larger-than-life professional athletes, but beyond that they both arrived in the spotlight as cocky and some would say, threatening figures only to later evolve into respected and well-admired public personalities. They both began to spend time involved in the media outside the sports world and were in some sense informal ambassadors to various groups.