Ok, I know this is simply a way for me to procrastinate yet again in getting any real work done....but here I go. Actually I logged on to retrieve some of my previous posts on the books I am reading for my paper so that I could include them in my latest draft, but then I felt the need to write. So, I have been watching American Idol...online. I know many people think reality TV is trash, but I personally get a lot out of it. I love the stories of real people, even if edited for manipulative effect, better than made-up people. And I love singing...so American Idol is great for me. In any case, as I was watching I started thinking about what the show, and certain elements of it, could tell us about American culture. I think this about pretty much everything, since that's my thing. It occurred to me that Paula Abdul is a single women "of a certain age," meaning she's about middle age now, and she is constantly made fun of and demeaned on the show and off. Now, I have seen her do some crazy shit, don't get me wrong. And I saw some of her show, "Hey Paula" (or something like that). So, i know she does some cooky stuff. However...i think a lot of the reason people pick on her is because she is a single, childless, older woman....and as such she is devalued in our culture. First of all, you can't tell me there are not a LOT of stupid men out there doing and saying embarrassing things on TV, but how often do we see them? Except on the Daily Show. Every time Paula says or does anything a little off, it is front page news. Now - a lot of that is because the producers and publicists for AI MAKE SURE it is front page news. They use her to get ratings. However...this "stupid female" trend is all over in the media - think Brooke Hogan, the Miss Teen USA contestant, Sarah Palin...need I say more? You just don't see men's deficient intellects broadcast far and wide the way you do with women. People take such pleasure in women saying "dumb" things. Men, on the other hand, are often seen exercising bad judgement - think Blagojevich and Craig - but rarely blatant silly stupidity. This is NOT because men are never stupid and vacuous....the positioning of females in this light, and near exclusion of men from the same, is deliberate and tells us a lot about people's attitudes and anxieties. If this were Puritan times, Paula Abdul would be exactly the type of woman targeted as a witch...and probably executed. She violates much of what our cultures values in women - motherhood, marriage and homemaking, youth, subltety, and submission in the face of "strong" men. Paula is loud, enthusiastic, brazen, not afraid of her sexuality, strong, even pushy, and tenatious. She is a wild and crazy lady - also driven and ambitious. Some of the things that got Martha Stewart caged while men doing the same or worse than she are never punished. Just some thoughts to chew on about one of the biggest message making artifacts of our present culture, AI, and it's contribution to gender role development.
I have to blog now, before I find a reason to put off writing one more day. I have spent a couple of weeks wrapped up in The Tender Bar, a memoir by J.R. Moehringer. Well, that and the readings for my classes....but those are not yet capturing my imagination. Moehringer, or "M," as I will call him here, is a master storyteller. His memoir gave me all kinds of juicy bits for my paper. He was obsessed with the idea of how to become a man. growing up without a father, he turned to the many men around him who were primarily those associated with a local bar at which his uncle bartended. He tried to learn form these men, and I suppose he did, but he ends his book concluding that his mother held the characteristics he had always associated with manhood, and was a better "man" than any "real" men he had known. I found this same observation in Datcher's book. Yet, these men still yearn for their fathers. They are still heartbroken over the lack of men in their lives. It breaks my heart to read about their raw need for their fathers' love and their constant sense of inadequacy because they do not feel they can achieve manhood without some symbolic fatherly act to bestow it upon them.
I just finished reviewing Luis Rodriguez's "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." It got me thinking about the fact that so many of the stories I am reading have the thread of immigrant parents who do not communicate well with their American born children. This is always commented upon and seems more prevalent among the fathers than mothers. The fathers are referred to as "a man of few words," and "stoic," and almost universally do not offer much in the way of advice or even bother to speak much to their children. There is the obvious language barrier in some cases, as with Ben Fong-Torres' Chinese parents and the Spanish speaking parents of both Luis and Richard Rodriguez. However, even in the households of immigrants for whom English is not a problem, communication with children still seems to be lacking. This bears more investigation.
