Critical Conversations
The Plan for Liberation as Provided by the Robber Bridegroom Tale and the Struggle for Legitimacy
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Padilla
Marina Warner, in her piece titled The Old Wives’ Tale, argues that fairy tales have the potential to “exchange knowledge between an older voice of experience and a younger audience” (314). Warner's claim suggests that the loss of spoken folk tales and the denigration of fairy tales have silenced stories such as the Brother Grimm's The Robber Bridegroom, which in turn silences warnings within those stories for marginalized groups, such as women. Interpreted through Warner's critical lens, The Robber Bridegroom can be interpreted to mean that the oppression or liberation of women is contingent on available knowledge, passed down through the female characters, and whether it is silenced or vocalized. However, given the need for the Me-Too Movement, it is clear that the issues this tale means to address have not been effectively dealt with, as elements of a patriarchy are still firmly in place today. In fact, the Me-Too movement shows that the problem is much larger than many previously thought. Unfortunately, such media outlets as Fox News, using the same sociological mechanisms described by Warner in her piece of criticism, attempt to delegitimize the movement, forcefully vocalizing their opinion that the women of Me-Too are disingenuous. Relatedly in the civil rights movement, the powerful voice of W.E.B. Du Bois underscores the oppression of women, suggesting a parallel with the centrality of racism. Furthermore, Du Bois suggests that plans for the liberation of women and of “Blacks” share a pattern which is recognizable in The Robber Bridegroom.
Stereotypical Depictions of Latino Criminality: Donald Trump’s Representation of U.S. Latinos in the Media during the MAGA Campaign
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Eduardo Gonzalez
Depictions of U.S. Latinos in the media and politics are often rooted in narratives of illegality, criminality, and immigration. By reproducing stereotypes of violence, lawlessness, and foreign identity, Latinos in the U.S. often exist in the social imaginary of media and political elites as being culturally and legally incompatible with conventional understandings of U.S. citizenship. Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was rooted in nativist politics that sought to criminalize legal and unauthorized immigrants by representing them as the largest threat to U.S. national security and the economy. This article employs a content analysis of all 74 speeches made during Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign to investigate how U.S. Latinos were depicted in the media and politics during the 2016 election cycle. The proceeding section situates the empirical findings within a broader time-series textual analysis, tracking Latino depictions across the eighteen-month campaign. The findings corroborate Trump’s anti-Latino and anti-immigrant positions, as well as a progression on Trump’s discussions of Mexico and NAFTA. Moreover, the analyses show that Trump exports U.S. Latino stereotypes to criminalize his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Taken together, this paper demonstrates how Trump refurbished and aggrandized Latino and immigrant narratives and stereotypes for the consumption of a 2016 audience.
A Saviour Among Us: The Spectacularization of Emma Gonzalez
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Monica Pauls
Postfeminist notions of idealized girlhood have found their way into activist culture, where discourses have constructed an image of girl activist who is assertive, dynamic and self-determining. These girls are celebrated by the media, as long as they conform to idealized notions of girlhood. What, then, can explain the media fascination with gun control advocate, Emma Gonzalez, whose alternative identities are far from such notions? Through a textual discourse analysis of news coverage of Gonzalez, this article explores the media framing of this young activist, arguing that it is a discursive strategy used to support society in coming to terms with a contentious social issue. And while this media coverage makes an alternative version of girl activist visible, the discourse also brings attention to who counts in youth activist culture.
Kaposi Sarcoma Lesions and the Social Construction of HIV/AIDS in the United States, 1983-1993
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kylo-Patrick Hart
This presentation explores the role of Kaposi sarcoma (KS) lesions — the bluish-purple blotches that typically appear on the bodies of individuals suffering from KS — in the social construction of HIV/AIDS in the United States during the period 1983 to 1993. It demonstrates how, from the moment that U.S. popular media and related forms of visual culture ‘discovered’ AIDS and began to regularly represent it, KS lesions served as a default way of depicting individuals in the advanced stages of AIDS and emphasizing their presumed ‘difference’ from everyone else in the same society. It further articulates a noteworthy series of qualitative shifts that occurred in using KS lesions to socially construct HIV/AIDS over the course of this ten-year period, to the extent that by the time the AIDS movie Philadelphia was released in 1993, KS lesions were being utilized to substantially challenge the pervasive 'us' versus 'them' dichotomy in U.S. society rather than to reinforce it.
