By Jonathan Wynn
Welcome back to school! Lots of books, new friends, new classes. It’s a lot to take in.
With all the hubbub, it might slip your mind to read your syllabus carefully. I understand. You’re busy. You might think, “Hey, this class is like all the other ones. I’ll figure it out as I go along.” But, as you should expect, I couldn’t disagree more!
To encourage you to read your syllabus carefully, I would like to tell you an infamous story about a 1980s rock band, Van Halen.
By Jonathan Wynn
I watched the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why, this summer.
The story, based on a young adult novel, centers on the suicide of a high schooler named Hannah Baker. The premise is that Clay Jensen is given a set of seven old fashioned audio tapes, with Hannah telling the story of one reason for why she committed suicide on each side of tape. Throughout the series, viewers get two perspectives: in one we learn about the months leading up to Hannah’s suicide, and a second narrative in the present day, with the Clay dealing with the aftermath.
The following post contains some spoilers and uses sociological tools to understand the show’s meaning. This post should definitely not be read as a resource on suicide.
Continue reading “Thirteen Sociological Things about 13 Reasons Why”
By Jonathan Wynn
As a professor at a large northeastern university, I spend a fair amount of time listening to students talk. Particularly before class, as I do some last minute shuffling of my notes or plugging in my PowerPoint, I’ll overhear conversations. There’s a common—but assuredly not universal—male speech pattern I’ve noticed. It’s a kind of low, back-of-the-throat mumble I started to call a brumble (i.e., bro + mumble).
Two years ago, there was quite the uptick in interest on how some women speak with a kind of rasp or “creaky voice”—an example is Zooey Deschanel’s character on New Girl–and the term “vocal fry” became quite popular. This corresponded with other supposed concerns over how women speak, like using “uptalk” or, more technically, “high rising terminal” (i.e., ending every sentence with a high note, implying a question) and, like, dropping “like” in a sentence. The idea of vocal fry becoming problematized as a characteristic of young women’s speech was seen as pervasive enough that even feminists like Naomi Wolf spoke out to say that women should drop vocal fry and “reclaim their strong female voices.”
By Jonathan Wynn
Have you ever argued with a stranger on Twitter? I recently published a Washington Post op-ed based on my research of the corporate consolidation of music festivals, and was drawn into a Twitter argument with an employee of the second largest corporate entertainment conglomerate in the world. (We ended up agreeing!)
The conversation made me reconsider how technology shapes and informs our discourse. A sociologist who is rarely taught in undergraduate courses, Jürgen Habermas, can help us understand this. (His theories are complex, and his books are not really geared toward American students’ tastes.)
By Jonathan Wynn
If you haven’t had a chance to see Jordan Peele’s thinky-horror blockbuster, Get Out, you should. It’s the story of a young black photographer named Chris and his new girlfriend, Rose. Things start getting really uncomfortable when they visit her white, suburban liberal family. And then things get really crazy.
Get Out pays homage to many of the usual tropes of the horror genre that kept me on the edge of my seat, but it’s the biting social commentary that kept my sociological imagination on high alert. It is a fun film, but it’s also an unflinching allegory for race in America that doesn’t let the white liberals in the audience off easily. You should not read any further until you see it, so go ahead. I’ll wait…
Continue reading “Get Out and Du Bois: Sociology at the Cinema”
By Jonathan Wynn
There is a hard-right provocateur who has made a name for himself as being willing to say just about anything to get attention, whom I’ll refer to by his initials: M.Y.. He does his best to poke and jab at convention, offend and even hurt those he disagrees with, all while claiming that what he says is protected as free speech. He attacks the left with particular relish, since being shut down by them reveals a certain hypocrisy, in his mind: the left and universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech, yet, M.Y.’s speech at University of California, Berkeley sparked a riot and his talk was canceled over the ensuing brouhaha. (Here’s a riveting account of the event from a journalist who was traveling with this person and his entourage.)
How can we explain outrage in a sociological way?
By Jonathan Wynn
Are you new to sociology? If you are, you might think ”creativity” and “sociology” are words that don’t go together. In introduction to sociology classes, the texts we read seem to arrive from on high as if tablets of stone from Mt. Sinai. Some of what you read might, indeed, seem to be dry-as-dust. But I would like to convince you that each concept that read about, every theory or idea, is the result of some whimsy, some poetry.
Sociology is a vibrant and lively field, and thinking sociologically requires imagination and inventiveness at every stage: from hypothesizing and theorizing, to writing and teaching. (In reviewing my earlier, ten metaphors blog post, there is absolutely some creativity that is at work in those examples!) Generating new ideas, thinking about things in new and exciting ways is the cornerstone of all scientific work, not just sociology.
By Jonathan Wynn
Little gets me more riled up than the proliferation of fake news in an age where we can get quality information with ease. It just gets my goat.
My nearly perfect mother-in-law forwarded an email to me recently. Just looking at it caused trepidation. It was forwarded multiple times as evidenced by the four vertical lines along the left side of the email. The big font text was bright blue and red with a lot of CAPITAL AND BOLDED AND UNDERLINED LETTERS. These are markers for concern. It cites the reputable Mayo Clinic, and a Dr. Virend Somers. It starts with a provocative title “MAYO CLINIC – DRINKING WATER.” Then it follows: “A cardiologist determined that heart attacks can be triggered by dehydration. Good Thing To Know. From The Mayo Clinic. How many folks do you know…” It ends with a plea: “Do forward this message. It may save lives! “Life is a one time gift” (Let’s forward and hope this will help save some!!!)”
A quick Google search took me to the Mayo Clinic’s website which, unsurprisingly to me, issued a statement discounting the circulated email, noting that it was “inaccurate and potentially harmful.”
By Jonathan Wynn
In the week following the 2016 presidential election there have been over 700 cases of hateful harassment and intimidation–more than in the aftermath of 9/11. The debate on college campuses and among people involved in social movements has been heated over how social justice-oriented folks can support people in marginalized communities who feel acutely vulnerable in this moment.
Can you be white and support Black Lives Matter? Can you be cis-gender and straight while also supporting LGBTQ causes? An initial answer is likely “Sure!” although such a response is more probably followed with a “but…”
By Jonathan Wynn
It’s the height of the presidential election and perhaps you are as caught up in it as I am– to the point of distraction. I’m reading newspapers more than usual, and constantly scan headlines for new bits of news. I’ll watch the talking heads debate. It’s a reasonable guess that you were, like me, one of the record-breaking 84 million people who watched Hillary and Donald debate on September 26th.
It is a good time, however, to take a step back and think about what we are really seeing, and think about how it might relate to the sociological classroom.