Author Archives: Sam Bockhold

In a controversial episode of his political comedy series, Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj provides a concise, yet comprehensive analysis of Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic crisis over the killing of Journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. More specifically, Minhaj dissects the coverage of this event by Saudi Arabian and American media and highlights the similarities and differences in reporting between the two nations. Minhaj stresses the distinction between the way this event has been framed by the media, and the way it has been understood by the populace in both regions respectively. Moreover, he outlines the impact such a disparity between what is encoded by the media, and decoded by everyday citizens has on Saudi Arabians, Americans, and people of the Islamic faith.

To understand the significance of the Khashoggi case’s media coverage, one must have some prior knowledge of the long-standing economic and political relationship between these two countries. Thus, within the episode’s first five minutes, Minhaj summarizes the history of their “strategic alliance,” stating that due to Saudi Arabia’s unique location and significance within the Islamic faith, “whether it’s for oil or for arms deals, [Americans] have always played it cool with the Saudi’s no matter what they do” (Minhaj 2018). Acknowledging this history is important, as it explains why American news coverage of Saudi Arabia has been, as Minhaj points out, disproportionately favourable to Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammed bin Salman (MBS). For instance, American media framed MBS as a reformer, reporting primarily on his lifting of the female driving ban and his plans to end Saudi reliance on oil, and omitting his history of power grabs and autocratic behaviour. Simply put, U.S media aligned themselves with MBS’s “sales pitch” and framed him as a progressive “Rockstar” to maintain the aforementioned American-Saudi Alliance (Minhaj 2008). This in turn explains why American reception of news that the Khashoggi killing was under MBS’s orders was characterized by shock and feelings of betrayal. However, within Saudi Arabia, where citizens had knowledge of MBS’s past wrongdoings such as detaining and torturing family members, people were not surprised by this news. Despite similarly biased coverage in which the Saudi government continually denies stories of tyranny, Saudi Arabians refer to MBS as Abu Rasasa (father of the bullet) and recognize his power grabs as “standard procedure” (Minhaj 2018).

In sum, Minhaj points out that the discrepancy between the truth, what is encoded by Saudi and American media, and what is decoded by the citizens of these nations perpetuates the misunderstanding that the U.S and Saudi Arabia are true allies. Furthermore, due to Saudi Arabia’s significance within Islam, when news such as that of the power grabs by MBS is reported in the U.S. it breeds misplaced distrust of Muslim people within the U.S.; the consequences of which are suffered by Muslim-Americans. It is worth mentioning that due to the comedic tone of Minhaj’s program, one could misinterpret him as making light of these serious issues. However, a counterpoint to that would be that comedy is a more accessible format through which everyday people can begin to educate themselves on politically charged issues such as those discusses in Patriot Act.

Works Cited

Minhaj, Hasan. “Saudi Arabia.” Patriot Act, Netflix, 28 Oct. 2018.

Located within a brightly lit display case in the heart of the museum of Anthropology’s Multiversity Gallery are Artist Dionne Paul’s striking Photographic prints Her First Day of School and its companion piece His First Day of School (2013). The composite images, printed on paper and hung one above the other, depict in colour the artists own daughter and son baring proud smiles as they stand ready for their first day of school. Superimposed on top of these innocuous photographs taken in a familiar style are those of indigenous children of similar age on their first day in an Indian Residential School. These discordant pictures are edited together such that the bodies of the students attending the residential schools, pictured in black and white, seem to replace those of the artists children, forming what is in my opinion one haunting image. In her artist’s statement located beneath the two pieces Paul explains how, being of Coast Salish and Nuxalk ancestry, she aimed to present us with a stark juxtapose. With the images Paul contrasts the typical experience of a child on their first day of school which encompasses myriad emotions including angst, pride, and joy ending with the return to their parents with the inhumane and abusive experience of an indigenous child forcibly taken from their family and placed in a residential school. Through this juxtaposition, the artist presents us with “visual manifestations of the crimes against humanity committed at the 139 Indian Residential Schools in Canada” (Paul, 2013). Furthermore, these images are displayed within a western museum environment among many historical and anthropological artifacts and artworks. However, Paul positions the historical images of children in residential schools against very recent, and stylistically familiar images of a culturally recognizable experience thus rejecting the idea that the wrong doings of colonial settlers, such as the creation of residential schools, occurred in the distant past. She then reinforces this point by explaining how her own father attended a residential school which as recently as 1975, the year the Paul was born. In so doing, Paul not only educates those who visit the museum, she re-contextualizes the other artifacts and artworks that surround these images, and through her own work and in her own words takes ownership of her indigenous identity. Therefore, it is my view that through her works Her First Day of School and His First Day of School Dionne Paul engages in a form of “figurative repatriation” (Kramer, 2004).

Works Cited

Paul, Dionne. Her First Day of School. 2013 Photographic image on paper. Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver.

Paul, Dionne. His First Day of School. 2013 Photographic image on paper. Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver.

Kramer, Jennifer. “Figurative Repatriation: First Nations ‘Artist-Warriors’ Recover, Reclaim, and Return Cultural Property through Self-Definition.” Journal of Material Culture, vol. 9, 2004.

As social media becomes increasingly ubiquitous in today’s culture and political climate, it is critical that we assess its efficacy in affecting sociopolitical change. In preparation for the in-class debate on this very topic, I was responsible for assessing Manuel Castells’s The Egyptian Revolution (2015). Furthermore, it was required that I make a case in favour of the aforementioned resolution. Going into this exercise, it was already my belief that social media could, in fact engender sociopolitical change, and given that it was my role to defend such a belief, I consequently read the assigned chapter in search of information which affirmed this position. Those in opposition of this argument made several strong points, such as social media’s extraneousness to the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, thus causing me to analyze social media’s effectiveness more critically. However, my overall perspective remained largely unchanged after this debate. Following the second debate regarding The Promises of Communicative Capitalism (Dean 2009) however, my perspective on social media’s ability to affect sociopolitical change shifted slightly. The Egyptian Revolution (Castells 2015) focused primarily on social media’s ability to form networks and connectivity among protesters as well its ability to provide protesters with a platform to share their uncensored opinions. While Dean concedes this is true, she addresses how merely stating one’s opinion online is not an effective means of protest. She develops this point further by stating that in the weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq, “the terabytes of commentary and information, then, did not indicate a debate”, but instead got lost in the masses of circulating content and “cultural effluvia” that fills the online space. (Dean 2009). As a result, though social media provides a platform for people to call out an issue, it does very little in the way of solving said issue. This point was made very clearly in the second debate and resonated with me greatly. Therefore, while I retain that social media is an effective tool for protest insofar as it provides the infrastructure to callout social and political issues, I now believe that social media alone cannot affect sociopolitical change.

Works cited

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution.” Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, 2nd ed., Wiley, 2015.

Dean, Jodi. “Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism.” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press, 2009.

Maintaining relevance in popular culture is a priority for all brands, and the marketing strategy of adhering to a prevalent political movement to appear culturally aware is far from new. For instance, the tactic was famously employed by Coca-Cola in its 1971 “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” commercial and was more recently practiced by Nike in its latest campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. However, in 2017, Pepsi’s attempt at this form of marketing engendered controversy and proved to be a major misstep. The ad features Kendall Jenner modelling amidst a mass protest which resembles those of the Black Lives Matter movement. The reality star turned supermodel is then shown joining the protest, which Pepsi attempted to keep nondescript by depicting protesters holding signs with generic messages of peace and unity. After a slew of problematic images, such as the one of Jenner mindlessly handing her wig to an African American woman without making eye contact, the commercial ends with Jenner approaching the police and handing them a Pepsi uniting them forever and effectively saving the day. Aside from being idealistic, this ad may seem innocuous. However, the major problem lies in the fact that the image of Jenner echoes that of Ieshia Evans standing up to police in a brave act of protest. Outrage ensued on social media with people claiming that the ad, which incidentally was produced by an entirely Caucasian team, trivializes the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the face of backlash, Pepsi initially attempted to defend the commercial stating that the ad “reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony.” However, after backlash failed to cease on social media, the soda company released an apology: “Clearly we missed the mark and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue.” While I genuinely believe that Pepsi’s intent was not to trivialize the Black Lives Matter movement, I maintain that there attempt to profit from it is equally problematic. The company thought it would benefit them economically to assert their cultural awareness by using imagery of a movement that is “in vogue”. What Pepsi failed to realize however, is that Black Lives Matter and other such movements are not trends. In reality, these movements are brave acts of frustration necessitated by the discrimination felt everyday by marginalized groups. Discrimination that does not disappear with a gulp of soda.

It is important to note that much of the backlash over this ad occurred online. In a sense, social media’s accessibility and reach allowed a larger volume of people to speak out on this issue to a greater, more influential audience at a speed that would be otherwise impossible. In turn this allowed the withdrawal of the ad, and Pepsi’s course correction to occur just as quickly. This is a clear example of the ways in which social platforms can act in a positive way by giving rise to a wider and more diverse set of voices. However, social media can, and did, also serve to magnify the outrage culture that is prevalent in today’s society. For instance, in the wake of the ad, Kendall Jenner has been labelled a racist. While the commercial is indeed tone-deaf, I would argue that to label Jenner a racist goes one step too far. In fact, I would argue that this type of accusatory language, which is easily and anonymously distributed via social media, thwarts productive and educational conversations. Instead, those on the receiving end of online vitriol become defensive and/or reclusive, as was the case with both Pepsi and Jenner. From my perspective, the ad was not made in an act of racism as much of the online debate suggests, but rather in an act of ignorance and self-interest on the part of both Pepsi and Jenner. Furthermore, while much of the backlash has been directed at Jenner herself, the lion share of the blame lies with Pepsi’s marketing team who thought it appropriate to monetize the pain and frustration of others. Jenner’s culpability, on the other hand, lies in her lack of thought.

References:

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Bale, Miriam. “Critic’s Notebook: The Real Problem With Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi Ad.” The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Aug. 2017, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/critics-notebook-real-problem-kendall-jenners-pepsi-ad-991932.

Sanghani, Radhika. “Pepsi Ad: Everything That’s Wrong with THAT Kendall Jenner Video.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 5 Apr. 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/pepsi-ad-everything-wrong-kendall-jenner-video/.

D’Addario, Daniel. “Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad: Why It’s a Glaring Misstep.” Time, Time, 5 Apr. 2017, time.com/4726500/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner/.

Newbold, Alice. “Kendall Responds To Pepsi Ad Criticism.” Vogue, British Vogue, 4 Sept. 2017, www.vogue.co.uk/article/kendall-jenner-responds-to-pepsi-ad.

Kylie, Kendall and. YouTube, YouTube, 4 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5Yq1DLSmQ.

Comedy and humour are often looked upon as abstract concepts. However, laughter is a physical response caused by several chemical processes in the brain which can, in quite certain terms, be explained by science. Comedy, therefore, does not exist in the abstract. It is instead a science and an art form founded on three basic principles: shock, surprise, and, as physicist Richard Feynman has coined it, the “kick of the discovery” (leading an audience toward one conclusion or meaning and shifting suddenly to an alternate conclusion). In other words, comedy is a proverbial balancing act between denotation and connotation, and between what is encoded versus what is decoded by the audience. The concept of encoding, outlined by Stuart Hall, is the process of putting events, information, and/or ideas into a “message” that can be circulated and received by an audience. Conversely, decoding is the process of deciphering the meaning or importance behind a message that had been encoded. In so doing, the recipient of the message is imparting it with their own views, experiences, ideologies, and understandings. A comedian’s job is to encode a message and anticipate what the audience will decode only to guide them in another direction. This juxtaposition between the message which is initially decoded and what is ultimately meant to be decoded is not only comical, it also reveals a deeper message about individuals and society.

Because the success of a joke is so dependent on what the audience decodes, and, by extension, the lens through which they view media, comedy can very quickly go haywire. In 2017 comedian Kathy Griffin’s photo of herself holding what appeared to be the disembodied head of Donald Trump exemplified the importance of the different positions from which audiences view media. One of which, according to Hall, is the oppositional code in which one “detotalizes the message […] in order to retotalize the message within some alternative framework of reference” (Hall p.14). Considered from this position, Griffin’s photo could be, and has been, taken as a threat to the President of the United States, and as such, has been labelled un-American, Treasonous, and criminal. Others who subscribe to the negotiated code in which the legitimacy of the encoded meaning of a particular piece of media is considered in addition to its downfalls may have simply deemed the photo distasteful, but far from criminal. Unfortunately, many people encoded Griffin’s photograph according to the two aforementioned codes which resulted in the comedian being blacklisted by the entertainment industry in the United States and abroad. The final code by which one considers media is the dominant-hegemonic code in which the recipient “takes the connoted meaning […] and decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded” (Hall p.12). From this position, which incidentally is the position I take, one might see the photograph as a response to the violent and hateful language of the President himself. One might consider how the fake blood coming from the eyes of the mannequin head could be in reference to the president’s vulgar words toward journalist Megyn Kelly. In short, from this perspective one would take the photo as Griffin intended: a satirical statement about the president’s behaviour, language, and policies.

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