So here we are on the last day of 2008. Resolutions will be made – quit smoking, lose weight, find love, make more money, save more money – and broken in the next few days by people all over the globe. And while I’ve got my own list of resolutions for 2009 this is more about what I’d like out of pop culture and advertising in the coming year.
1) Stop trying to use “change” to sell me products
Women’s magazines fascinate me. They’re basically advertisements with a sprinkling of content usually about improving yourself for “him” by buying the products around the article. As sniffers of trends, though, they can’t be beat.
The current issue of Vogue features Ann Hathaway, not exactly your standard enhanced beauty, on the cover along with a big banner headline reading “Change! Yes, you can” and the first item on the list: dress cheap & chic (aka: buy more stuff!)
Awesome, Vogue editors! You’ve sensed that people want change, that they’re tired of the status quo, but don’t you think trying to tap in to that desire for change to sell us makeup and shoes and handbags and clothing is just a wee bit cynical? How about using that energy for something positive instead, like helping women become more independent and confident? Radical, I know.
2) Enough with the reflexive, compulsory heterosexuality
The Washington Post has a pretty lame comics page. Not surprising since the comics page is possibly the second or third most contentious page in the paper and comics page editors are notoriously conservative. No chance the Post will ever run Mikhaela Reed (too political) or xkcd (too sarcastic and math-y) but there’s a big difference between being edgy and being regressive.
“Baby Blues” follows the daily life of a white, suburban family; Mom, Dad, three kids. Fairly stereotypical in and of itself but last Sunday’s cartoon really stuck it to me. I know that in the past few years the term “babe” has come to apply to both sexes but it’s largely something that applies to females. Now you tell me, is the heterosexuality in this cartoon really necessary? What could it have been like orientation neutral? (check the first panel, second row).
(Of course, this doesn’t get by the whole uber-creepiness of imposing sexuality on a character that is supposed to be about seven years old but I digress.) Maybe the joke at the end doesn’t work if you remove the heterosexuality (eeewww…girls are gross!) but that just gets back to that uber-creepy thing again.
It’s not just the comics, though, that are guilty of this kind of reflexive, exclusionary heterosexuality. Next time you’re reading an article directed at women, particularly if the subject is relationships, mentally substitute spouse or partner for boyfriend or husband and see if it changes the essential meaning of the piece. It won’t but making that change for publication would be an easy way to include all women regardless of their sexual orientation.
3) More fiction, fewer “memoirs”
Yet another “memoir” centered in the Holocaust has been discredited. That makes two Holocaust memoirs, two “outsider” memoirs, and one addiction memoir in the past five years to have been published, hyped, and knocked off the pedestal. Are publishers really not getting enough decent fiction submissions that they think the only way to make people buy books is to peddle them as true-life stories? Really? Seriously?
4) Stop peddling addiction as entertainment
Yes, I’m talking to you VH1. Regardless of whether you believe addiction is the result of bad choices, genetic predisposition, or a disease, it’s not entertaining. Watching people detox – the seizures, the vomiting, the random episodes of anger – and then watching them try to figure out how the hell they got to the fucked up place they’re in is only illuminating in a culture that actually makes people take responsibility for their actions, something that’s key to recovery and sobriety but not such a big part of American popular culture (big hint: just saying “I’m sorry” isn’t taking responsibility).
5) Start treating us like we’re smart, ’cause we’re smarter than you think
There’s a reason people are watching more basic cable and less network television: the quality of the programming is better. Yes, we can keep track of multiple characters that have multiple dimensions. We can to follow serial plot lines without tons of filler or reminders. Plot twists interest us, they keep us coming back for more. Look at it this way, if we don’t come back all that ad space will go to waste.
Just a few of my wishes for popular culture in the upcoming year.
Leave a Reply