28 March 2010

Palatable Violence


I've been playing around with the word "palatable" lately to give meaning to something that has been bothering me lately. It's not as strong as to say there is a correlation or a link, but it does aptly describe a certain relationship between personal action and media messages. It would be wrong and unfair to say that certain messages no matter how blatant causes people to act violently. This would go against some very highly held beliefs about free will and responsibility which would be difficult to fight against. To make an idea "palatable" would mean to put at ease ideas that may have had some earlier disagreement. It is still the responsibility of the individual to act on such ideas, but the message had made the act feel less distasteful.

My friends and roommates have been clamoring about the new music video by Lady Gaga the hot new sensation who is trying to be Madonna to Adam Lambert's David Bowie.

Now I'm not being anti-Lady Gaga, or that Lady Gaga is "corrupting our youth" as Labor Whip Greg Donnelly would say. This is a part of larger trend which can not blame one individual or even her army of marketing, production, and visual design team. Let's take the simple idea of product placement in which "The Lady" seems to be fond of. No one really thinks...

"Perhaps I might purchase an LG rumor 2 because I saw Lady Gaga use it in that enticing video of hers, also I would like a diet Coke."

However, I do think that the idea of a cellphone with a pull out side keyboard is a more palatable type of phone in which individuals will be more familiar with this design and choose it it available among others. Then companies either in coordination or conspiracy against with the production team of Lady Gaga will provide such a phone at an attractive price point. "Ta da" consumerism wins. In this game, even a 60% success rate would be very lucrative.

So let's expand on this to more scary waters. I've become quite good friends with Dr. Meda Chesney-Lind at the University of Hawai'i. She has been tirelessly doing some excellent research and campaigning against the suspiciously gendered rate of arrests on the national average and in particularly Hawai'i. Her research had showed that "while the total number of arrests declined, females under age 18 had an increase of 6.4% in the ten-year period while arrests of juvenile males declined 5.9%...the trend for drug abuse violations arrests was upward--120% for girls compared to 51.2% for boys. Girls had a greater increase in “other assaults” arrests in the ten years—40.9% for girls and only 4.3% for boys." (Chesney-Lind 2004:7) This is showing a frightening change in rates of arrest for women in only 10 years.

Now one wouldn't be realistically looking for an accurate portrayal of women's prison's in a music video. If that was the case, I'd be attacking the "Dire Straits" for their over simplification of blue collar work, or Genesis for portraying our world leaders as bumbling fools. I do understand that this is supposed to be artistic and just in good fun. However, the message does make the idea of women in prison a palatable concept and we are less inclined to be concerned with any crazy statistical analysis which would indicate a serious exploitation of the women in our society. A reality which is just too horrifying or at the very least a "buzz kill" to an otherwise good time of imagining women wearing fashion made from junk. All the while real people and increasingly women are being abused daily in state funded prisons with reintegration programs cut from the budget due to these economic times.

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