Sunday, October 16, 2011


My apologies for the lack of a censor, but I thought that this image was interesting, not for the Facebook or Google+ aspect, but the fact that all of the members of the board were drawn as (from what I can tell), white men.

From certain characteristics, such as facial hair, glasses, the environment that they're in, one can assume that these men range from a young adult to older, middle-aged men. As indicated from the box in the first panel, they're all in a board meeting where apparently no one of color, or females are present. This gives a skewed view of only white men being able to progress in large corporations, even in an industry where the target market is heavily diverse (social networking). One might even go a step further and infer that they're all of a higher economic status, being board members of a large company such as Facebook, segmenting them even further.

At first when I read this, I chuckled a little bit and decided to keep scrolling through the hordes of other pictures to find a 'better' one that represented cultural bodies more directly. However, I thought about it for a second and realized that not all things are so blunt. Subtle cultural bodies can be hidden amongst humorous comics such as this one, but the underlying tones are still there. Some may attempt to seem innocent enough, not intentionally being culturally insensitive. Others may be a little on the 'off' side, beckoning second glances and are a little less covert in our minds. Then there are those that are off the deep end. I also find that there's a another way to hide cultural contexts and instead of being innocent in nature (from the ad/television show/picture), they would present it to a naive or innocent audience.


Power Rangers: A show about teenagers with attitude that save the world from alien creatures on what seems to be a weekly basis. When you're a kid, that's all your really care about. You sat there watching television shows waiting for the (lack of) plot to unfold before your eyes.

But wait... Is the Yellow Ranger Asian (Chinese-American as stated in the show) while the Black Ranger is African American (also stated in the show)? As if that wasn't enough, the show went on to basically enforce whatever stereotypes they could find as if it would make the character more 'real'. The Black Ranger, Zack, loved hip-hop music, loved to dance, and was a smooth operator. They even incorporated a "hip-hop kido" martial arts style to him. I'd also like to point out that the Pink Ranger is female (and has been in every installment onwards), while in the Japanese series there have been several male Pink Rangers.

Although my examples are of two different kinds of cultural bodies, my point is that things that may not directly seem like points of cultural bodies may indeed be just that. Whether masked in humor, or simply shown to those too oblivious to notice it for themselves, there are signs of this in our everyday life.

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