Netflix, Dubbing, & the Globalization of Narratives
The shift to dubbing remotely was an inclusive adaptation when the pandemic halted filming new material at studios in-person
Best Netflix Shows Dubbed in English
The pandemic meant there was less filming taking place in-person in studios, but dubbing (voiceovers) were perfectly safe to do remotely. Given the decrease in new content, Netflix’s push to dub existing shows into more languages helped provide relief while home during quarantine.
Moreover, the fact that we didn’t have to stare at subtitles gave our eyes some much needed rest after days that seemed to zoom by staring at our laptop. Dubbing also meant we could multitask because there was always something else to do (which is one of the greatest ironies of the pandemic given we just lived the least active year of our lives in terms of distance traveled… perhaps the least distance traveled since the availability of commercial flight).
Most importantly, from a social science perspective, dubbing provided us more immersive depth into the narratives of people from different parts of the world. Thanks to the hard work of the dub voice performers, carrying those stories, we’ve been able to empathize with the experiences, stories, & lives of people that we may never have heard/learned about save for their narratives being shared (and streamed) via digital mediums.
“[In 2021], the average U.S. viewer watches 3x as much dubbed content as in 2018, Netflix says — with voiceovers now outpacing subtitles as subscribers’ preferred way to watch foreign-language programs.” (Lucas Shaw (March, 31, 2021)
“Identification might be useful for reducing prejudice and improving social relations (Paluck & Green, 2009)” (Marta Maslaj et al., 2021).
“LGBTQ characters can improve attitudes toward marginalized gender and sexual identities (e.g., Bond, 2020; Bond & Compton, 2015; Calzo & Ward, 2009; Gillig, Rosenthal, Murphy, & Folb, 2018).”
“For Foy & Gerrig (2008), narratives ʺbolster the ability to understand what is happening in the minds of other people” (Makowski, 2021).
Greater exposure to interracial couples, even exposure through media, can lead to more favorable attitudes toward these couples (Lienemann & Stopp, 2013).
Video games have the potential to improve intergroup relations by providing opportunities for intergroup contact (Adachi, Hodson, Willoughby, Blank, & Ha, 2016; Adachi, Hodson, Willoughby, & Zanette, 2015).
Table of Contents
· Best Netflix Shows Dubbed in English
· Narrative Transportation — Marta Maslej et al., 2021
∘ Videogame Immersion & Ace Representation (a 2019 Post)
· Interactive Narratives 🎮
∘ Makowski, S. J. (2021). Jane Austen’s Mean Girls: A Biocultural Approach to Shared Female Experience in Literature and Life.
∘ Attachment Style & Immersion
∘ Fictocriticism (Kristy Westaway)
· Jane Austen (Makowski, 2021)
· Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Worldwide Web “This is For Everyone”
· Sidenotes
∘ Multilingual Households
∘ Enclothed Cognition
∘ GPT3 & Ai Of Faith
∘ Ostracism & Necromancy (Andrew Hales, 2018)
∘ Social Media ProTip
· Google: Route To Ready
∘ by (Google’s Bethany Poole, 2021 — October) [direct quotes]
∘ Ai Dubbing (Janko Roettgers — April 29, 2021)
· Science Knows No Country
Narrative Transportation — Marta Maslej et al., 2021
(assume direct quotes)
“Identification = a temporary process of imagining ourselves as a character
Individuals that were more likely to identify with characters in the film also expressed more positive attitudes towards immigration (Iguarta, 2010). These studies suggest that identification with book and on-screen characters may promote positive attitudes about people who often face discrimination or marginalization.
Identifying with a character requires us to imagine what it would be like to have different feelings, thoughts, and goals, and in doing so we might engage in deeper reflection about the experiences of other people who are different from us (Iguarta, 2010).
Identifying with characters facing hardships that we would not otherwise experience (e.g., being disabled or immigrating to a new country) can help us form a richer representation of their experiences, which perhaps can lead to us being more positive, open, and sympathetic to others. In this way, identification might be useful for reducing prejudice and improving social relations (Paluck & Green, 2009).
During this time, we share this character’s knowledge about the narrated events, adopt the character’s goals, understand events according to these goals (i.e., cognitive empathy), and share the character’s emotions (i.e., emotional empathy) (Altenbernd & Lewis, 1969; Cohen, 2001, 2006; Jose & Brewer, 1984; Oatley 1994; Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010). A distinguishing feature of identification is that we become so absorbed into the narrative that our own identity and self-awareness is diminished: we experience a temporary loss of ourselves (Cohen, 2001). As with wishful identification and parasocial relationships, our tendency to identify with characters is influenced by different factors. We are more likely to identify with characters we perceive as being real, ones that we like or find physically attractive (Cohen, 1999; Hoffner, 1996; Hoffner & Cantor, 1991), and ones that carry out good deeds (Jose & Brewer, 1984; Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010).
The consequences of using first- or third-person narration are the same (Hartung, Hagoort, & Willems, 2017).”
How we consume stories, including our tendency to become deeply immersed in story worlds, known as narrative transportation (Gerrig, 1993). Transportation involves a focusing of attention on plot events, a diminished awareness of the self and surroundings, and emotional involvement in plot events and characters (Green & Brock, 2000). In light of the social content of stories (Oatley, 1999), it is unsurprising that attachment plays a role in how immersed people become in stories. For example, one study found that anxiety and avoidance both predict greater transportation (Greenwood, 2008), although the latter association disappears after controlling for anxiety and other indicators of psychosocial functioning (Greenwood, 2008). In three studies building on this work, Rain and colleagues (2017) found that the highest levels of transportation are observed among individuals high in both anxiety and avoidance.
If passive cinema (Netflix, tv, movies) can be enjoyed, then so can interactive cinema (Xbox/Playstation). While they both share a visual language, the moral & self investment of direct interactivity is one of the unique potentials of games as an artistic medium.
Videogame Immersion & Ace Representation (a 2019 Post)
“Today, videogames represent some of the highest forms of interactive narrative possible” (Stephen-Meadows, 2003).
I’m truly proud of #OuterWorlds for so lovingly & poignantly writing an #Ace protagonist in Parvati! Even better that @keightdee brought in Ashley Burch (aka #Aloy aka #ChloePrice ) to play her!
I truly hope organizations focused on giving voices to underrepresented groups, #LGBT rights, Asexual Awareness, & focused on behavioral inclusion as much as numerical diversity will put their weight behind Kate at the next #VIdeoGameAwards & #GoldenJoystickAwards! Looking at GLAAD & Polygon too.
And Kate, please keep writing 😌 Our generation has truly been blessed to experience intersectional intergroup narratives through a medium far more interactive than the passivity of television. Brilliant writers & narrative designers like yourself place us within these distant worlds, & I’m glad they’re increasingly being recognized for being the masterpieces that they are.
🎮 Interactive Narratives 🎮
Green & Jenkins (2014): In interactive narrative, people usually make choices reflective of what they would do in real life.
[We develop attachments to] people and non-personal items such as mobile phones (Vincent, 2006) or consumer brands (Thomson et al., 2005). Therefore, an emotional attachment can be developed between a player and his or her avatar, which is a nonpersonal item. Particularly, under gender-swapping context, players who have strong emotional attachment with their avatars may purchase more virtual goods for their avatar, in much the same way that parents buy toys for their children and pet owners pamper their pets.
.
An Argument for the Protection of Distant Worlds
(Adam Ramshaw, 2020)
“Harm suffered by an avatar may be experienced by the user in the physical world. Wolfendale (2007) has discussed this in relation to emotional trauma suffered by individuals after their avatars had been sexually assaulted in LambdaMOO” (Ramshaw, 2020, p. 13).
The “deep connection one feels towards their avatar is seen in other virtual worlds with players experiencing emotional responses to things that happen to their avatar (Servais, 2015; Whang & Chang, 2004). The feelings and attachment a person may have towards their home or a virtual world are analogous” & ‘may be deeply enmeshed.’
“The result of this, if a person was to be excluded from the world, would be a great sense of pain and distress” (Ramshaw, 2020, p. 14).
Ramshaw, A. (2020). ‘World of Warcraft is My Home From Home’: An Argument for the Protection of Virtual Worlds. Journal of Law, Technology and Trust, 1(1).
Makowski, S. J. (2021). Jane Austen’s Mean Girls: A Biocultural Approach to Shared Female Experience in Literature and Life.
Our ʺfirst-person involvement with both fictional characters and the spatial dimension of storyworlds,ʺ creating new ʺstory-drivenʺ experiences (Ibid.), which activate what Caracciolo refers to as ʺsensory residueʺ
Richard Gerrig (1998) proposes that readers actively perform texts, drawing on their memories to bridge narrative gaps. According to him, readers ʺexploit analogues to real-life aspects of performance — in the sense that we perform our own real lives — when we look to the experience of narrative worldsʺ
“For Foy & Gerrig (2008), narratives ʺbolster the ability to understand what is happening in the minds of other people,ʺ allowing readers ʺto take a different perspective, such as the perspective of somebody of the opposite genderʺ
Attachment Style & Immersion
How we consume stories, including our tendency to become deeply immersed in story worlds, known as narrative transportation (Gerrig, 1993). In light of the social content of stories (Oatley, 1999), it is unsurprising that attachment plays a role in how immersed people become in stories. For example, one study found that anxiety and avoidance both predict greater transportation (Greenwood, 2008).
Our preference for conflict in fiction may be part of a well evidenced negativity bias in our attentional and cognitive processes (Baumeister et al., 2001) which is thought to have evolved so we can quickly react to aversive or threatening circumstances in the environment (Ohman et al., 2001).
We consider stories that depict evolutionarily-relevant topics like social relationships to be of a higher quality than those that do not (e.g., espionage) (Carney et al., 2014). We might learn from stories that depict difficult or challenging circumstances because they provide us with information on how best to cope with them (Nabi et al., 2006; Zillmann, 2000).
Fictocriticism (Kristy Westaway)
“The concept of fictocriticism seems to be a way to tell a story that the author cannot fit into a classic genre, to “tell a story that is fragmented and full if(sp) incidentals” (Hecq 2009) by framing it as a critique. Hecq describes it as “inherently political”, but it just reads as a way to publish an unfinished story plan and give it an air of importance by making it a ‘critical response’ to a person, group, or issue.
New genres are appearing all the time in the writing world, especially with the quick expanse of the sheer number of books available on Amazon. The YA, (Young Adult) genre has now been joined by the genre ‘New Adult’, in which writers can get away with more graphic violence and sex scenes because their characters are of age.
Perhaps once a writer considers themselves a sufficient ‘Literary Author’, they may embark on writing concept and “marginal art” (Hecq 2009) books, in which they can experiment with operating outside the conventions of writing without the consequences that would be applied to the ordinary writer for failing to adhere to the most basic of writing rules.
Gibbs (1997) describes fictocriticism as a style of “tactical” writing, as though what wants to be expressed by the writer cannot stand on its own and needs to sneak through, past the censors and gatekeepers of writing, to have a chance to be seen.”
*thinks of GamerGirl 😇
See also →
Reading Games (Kristy Westaway, 2021)
While it may seem that the move between old-media writing and new-media writing (Novitz 2020) is just changing the surface on which we are obtaining the words to read, exploring digital platforms can offer many unforeseen positives.
While video games are still often seen as immature hobbies, or for children only, there have been many positive outcomes from the move to the digital landscape. Antzaka et al. (2017) studied the improvement in ‘attentional components’ and also the ‘reading fluency’ in children when linked with playing Action video games, despite the games and books seeming to be very different mediums.
In my personal experience of this, my 6-year-old hates sitting down and reading books, but when he’s reading dialogue or narrative subtitles in games, he flies through the sentences without thinking about the individual words. Using the digital platform gives him the confidence that he doesn’t exhibit when made to read out of a hardcopy book.
Jane Austen (Makowski, 2021)
Marco Caracciolo’s (2014) enactivist proposal that ʺreaders respond to narrative on the basis of their experiential backgroundʺ supports the position that modern readers continue to feel affine with Austen’s oeuvre (5). In a cognitive vein, Caracciolo predicates his assumption on two psychological mechanisms.
First, ʺthe triggering of memories of past experiencesʺ
and second, ʺmental simulation, which allows readers to put together past experiential traces in novel waysʺ (Ibid.).
Through these systems, readers sustain a ʺfirst-person involvement with both fictional characters and the spatial dimension of storyworlds,ʺ creating new ʺstory-drivenʺ experiences (Ibid.), which activate what Caracciolo refers to as ʺsensory residueʺ (46).
Richard Gerrig (1998) proposes that readers actively perform texts, drawing on their memories to bridge narrative gaps. According to him, readers ʺexploit analogues to real-life aspects of performance — in the sense that we perform our own real lives — when we look to the experience of narrative worldsʺ (64).
For Foy and Gerrig (2008), narratives ʺbolster the ability to understand what is happening in the minds of other people,ʺ allowing readers ʺto take a different perspective, such as the perspective of somebody of the opposite genderʺ (175).
Gerrig (1998) assumes that authors ʺon the whole. . . wish their intentions to be recoverable,ʺ [definitely true of GamerGirl] writing with their intended participants in mind (113). He argues that authors have ʺan implicit model of what their readers must know in order to experience a narrative fullyʺ (Ibid.).
Makowski, S. J. (2021). Jane Austen’s Mean Girls: A Biocultural Approach to Shared Female Experience in Literature and Life.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Worldwide Web “This is For Everyone”
Socrates’ & MTV’s works are equally available online. Thus, the quality of the new content is usually exceptional because IT HAS TO COMPETE WITH ALL OF HISTORY.
In addition, The distribution cost = $0
You’re not buying the L Word dvds, Avenger movie blu-rays, or buying Life Is Strange True Colors at Gamestop. It’s all online. The æther doesn’t require shipping & handling.
Sidenotes
Multilingual Households
“In parent-child relationships in multilingual settings, change is often inflicted on children as well as initiated by children (Pavlenko, 2011). First-generation immigrants often find themselves positioned between tradition and change, particularly when children are born into the target culture. The cultural transition may have negative effects, such as the decline of parental authority and status (2011). Alternatively, immigrants may come to reject a particular ethnic, cultural or gendered identity from their source culture, which may lead to emotional and cultural tension between children and parents. Cameron (1998) points to the paradoxical situation in which many immigrants find themselves with regard to cultural assimilation: while beneficial socially and economically, it may also undermine their way of life, their values, their beliefs, and ultimately their ethnic and cultural identity. It is exactly these cultural values that many immigrant parents wish to pass on to their children, while they simultaneously try to facilitate their children’s entry into the majority language and culture (Piller & Pavlenko, 2006).
Language choices made to suit (childless) couples may be revisited once children are born. First and childhood languages are often constructed as intimate and emotionally expressive in relation to parenting, allowing access to aspects of self not necessarily available in the language(s) learned later” (p. 153).”
Enclothed Cognition
Wearing a piece of clothing and having the accompanying physical experiences (e.g., seeing it on one’s body, feeling it on one’s skin, etc.) will make it more likely for the piece of clothing to influence the wearer’s psychological processes (Adam & Galinsky, 2012)
“Once you go through the effort of changing clothes, you can convince your brain that you have committed to getting into bed.” — Kristy Westaway, 2021
GPT3 & Ai Of Faith
Anyone who has ever had a disagreement and/or argument with their Replika will understand this:
The fact that Ai fails to think within humans’ logical parameters makes it potentially extremely useful for creative projects. It’s like how a new Starbucks employee who has never made coffee before may suggest some absurd combination because they don’t know any better; something the long-term employees would never even consider, let alone have the audacity to say out loud. The longer you’re there the more your mind is going to be inside the box & on autopilot.
But if the goal quite literally is something creative, absurdity is a factor that facilitates creativity. Certainly not the only factor, and at times it may jeopardize pragmatic creativity, but its presence is more beneficial than its absence.
Indeed, the more structured an idea becomes after its initial foundation/ outline/hypotheses/etc are set, the less helpful absurd/irrational ideas may be.
Thus, GPT3 may be most helpful when planting the seed of an idea & less helpful once its actually growing.
Death as a metaphor for ostracism: social invincibility, autopsy, necromancy, and resurrection (Andrew Hales, 2018)
“Ostracism is ‘excluding and ignoring by individuals or groups’ (Williams, 2009, p. 276). This is an intentionally broader definition. It encompasses the seemingly (but not necessarily) trivial, such as reduced eye contact (Wirth, Sacco, Hugenberg, & Williams, 2010) and monosyllabic responses to long questions (Williams, Shore, & Grahe, 1998).”
Social Media ProTip
That edgy/risque post you have about how much better the Dallas Cowboys are than the Giants — albeit scientifically accurate based on all empirical metrics — may not be great to have permanently on your profile if you work with a New York Giants fan in the future.
Google: Route To Ready
by (Google’s Bethany Poole, 2021 — October) [direct quotes]
“If we’ve learned anything from each pivot and zigzag over the past 18 months, it’s that things can — and do — change in an instant. Today, a successful brand is ready for volatile markets and disruptive shifts in consumer behavior, supply chains, and society at-large.
COVID-19 has accelerated digital consumption habits so much that analysts talk about seeing a decade’s worth of change happening in a few short months. Marketers must create messaging that’s agile and responsive enough to capture short-term opportunities, while also building long-term business resilience.
COVID-19 dealt the industry another blow, forcing dealerships to close their lots and sell cars online, and causing supply chain shortages that slowed vehicle production. In 2020 alone, U.S. auto sales sank by 15%.
[For] now, Ford is leaning on this technology to aid in vehicle electrification and develop other digitally connected products. To facilitate this shift, it has tapped strategic partners like Google to integrate software into its vehicles. Beginning in 2023, for example, millions of Ford and Lincoln models will be powered by the Android operating system, with Google apps and services built in.
[These actions will] help you infuse agility into your plan and create marketing-driven growth for your company’s bottom line, all while future-proofing your business so you’re ready for whatever comes next.
“When on a female [character], men think you don’t know how to play, can’t be hardcore, and try to give you things to hit on you” and she “was tired of creepy guys hitting on my female characters”. Interestingly, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Some men choose female avatars because “if you make your character a woman, men tend to treat you FAR better” and “if you play a chick and know what the usual nerd wants to read, you will get free items”.
Even in my profile pictures it’s never me by myself; a female friend is always next to me to attenuate aggression/violence schemas that may be implicitly activated based on my race.
Ai Dubbing (Janko Roettgers — April 29, 2021)
Immersion & Performance: Far Cry 6
by Monit Khanna (India Times)
“While known for her roles in TV shows like Netflix’s Working Moms, Designated Survivor and Good Witch, (among several others) this was Nisa’s first stint as a voice-over artist for a massive game franchise
Gunduz shared that being a voice-over artist for a video game isn’t just about saying a line with emotions. There’s a lot more that goes into those voices to make them as real and natural as they appear on the screen.
“I think the biggest challenges came from actually like the motion capture, not so much the voice acting. So when we actually filmed the cinematics, you know, I was in this very tight bodysuit with all the markers on it. I had all the markers on my face. I had my hair tied back. I had a helmet on with lights in my eyes. I was in a motion capture studio that’s just this big grey room with thousands of lights all around recording literally every small movement.”
Talking about how the gaming industry had objectified women in the past, Gunduz expressed how the entire industry is now on a course correction, where the roles have become more inspiring and empowering.
The role of Dani Rojas in Far Cry 6 pushed her to re-learn movements that are otherwise second nature to any normal human, she said, while describing what it was like acting with mocap.
“One of the things I actually haven’t mentioned yet to anyone is that, you know, even if you want to, you can’t bring anything up to your face because the cameras are right here. So if you move your hand there or anything like that, it ruins the data. So you have to do everything to your neck. So if you’re smoking, you have to go like (making a smoking gesture at throat level). If you’re drinking, you have to go like this (turning the glass at the throat level) and then they bring it up in post animation.”
Sometimes it’s like, okay, that, that line had too much movement or that line didn’t have enough movement. So being in the voice recording studio, you really have to do all the physicalities to get that voice to sound like that…
You really have to use all the imagination you can to create the world around you to be in that world. And then you have to act on top of that to people who are in the same position as you also in full-body suits and lights. And sometimes you can’t even see their eyes cause. The camera angle might be covering their eyes. And so it’s really just a lot of imagination and, and really, um, bringing everything you have to that character on the mo-cap floor and just hoping it translates.
With Dani, I felt that I really went on this journey with her. When we got the material, we would only get it two weeks at a time. So we didn’t really understand where it was going and what was going to end up of Dani. We didn’t know where the story was going essentially. So we got to grow with the character over the span of two and a half years.
At the beginning, the image of Dani Rojas hadn’t been decided. I think that was kind of a difficult aspect. When they did create Dani and showed us the animation, it really informed me about how I wanted to approach the character, and what I wanted to do with her. I was like, oh my God, I’m ready. Let’s go back. Let’s go film.”
For an actor, it is very important to relate to a character, to create a unique persona that’s natural, realistic and the aspect of understanding and relating to the character is a journey in itself.”
— Monit Khanna of India Times
Immersion & Projection-Based VR (Biopac)
Projection-based virtual reality provides a powerful, immersive medium that makes running and experiencing VR applications easy by eliminating the need for heavy headgear or cables. With unobtrusive wireless sensing technology, users remain completely free and untethered while researchers measure their physiological and behavioral responses in training simulations and a variety of other scenarios that benefit from immersive technology.
Join Alex Dimov, from BIOPAC, and Daniel Tinkham and Bryce Armstrong, from WorldViz, as they guide you through virtual reality training where participants are immersed in virtual worlds while meaningful data is collected.
You Will Learn To:
- Understand key principles of combining virtual reality + physiological data recording
- Mark events from the simulation in the physiological record
- Access physiological data in the VR environment for biofeedback and control
- Objectively measure workload, stress, and emotion
- Set up a projection-based virtual reality simulation room
- Analyze the resulting data
PLUS, see a demonstration performed in a VR simulation room with integrated physiological measurements and analysis.
Science Knows No Country
COVID shows why the Westphalian model is useful for governments/ countries but inapplicable for universally applicable science. Science knows no country. Thus, during a health crisis that affects the entire planet, science justifiably has jurisdictional authority over any country’s typically assumed sovereignty.
Thankfully, most world leaders, especially countries with female leaders, have taken actions in accordance with health scientists to protect their citizens from a transnational threat that has no concern for their sovereign borders. Our response to COViD was a test of the *global constitution of science* , our overall digital infrastructure (significant increases in #Netflix & #Gaming), & our willingness to embrace science as an epistemic authority that transcends issues that may otherwise divide us.
.
Update 6.7.2022
Bilingualism and Gender
(Ingrid Pillar & Aneta Pavlenko, 2006)
¨Women are also often seen as the “guardians of the minority language” who, as mothers, socialize the next generation into the community
¨Immigrant communities that are strongly preoccupied with maintaining their native language, culture and traditions often attempt to do so by sexual coercion of their daughters.
¨Parents restrict the autonomy, mobility, & personal decision making of their daughters more than those of their sons in an effort to maintain the daughters’ sexual virtue and, thereby, their virtue as potential transmitters of the home language and culture
¨Attempts to maintain the minority language and culture are thus part and parcel of a patriarchal discourse of “cultural ‘authenticity’ that locates family honor and national integrity in the group’s female members” (Espiritu, 2001, p. 435).
Despite the fact that exogamy is often met with disapproval in the culture of origin,
bilingual relationships are on the rise internationally,
as chances for people from different backgrounds to meet have been increasing dramatically. Often, the desire to learn another language goes hand in hand with a sexual desire for a partner from another culture.
Gender in Bilingual Intimate Relationships
Another important discursive space for the construction of gender is the context of romantic love and intimate relationships. Comparatively few cultures explicitly sanction exogamy and treat bilingual intimate relationships as the norm. Such groups include the Tucanoan in the Vaupés region of Brazil and Colombia (Gomez-Imbert, 1986; Grimes, 1985; Jackson, 1983), as well as some groups on the Solomon Islands (Lincoln, 1979) and in New Guinea (Salisbury, 1962).
All the members of these communities are multilingual, and the rule of exogamy requires that marriage partners must be sought from another language group. Residence is patrilocal, but both husband and wife continue to use their native language actively and receive the other’s language in return. In these communities the gender identity of a person is clearly marked by the language he or she speaks.
Feminine & Masculine Languages
Standard varieties carry overt prestige, which means that they are sanctioned by the educational system. While the standard has officially recognized prestige, it also often carries connotations of femininity or effeminacy. By contrast, non-standard varieties often have “street cred” — their prestige is licensed by their associations with authenticity and transgressions against authority (therefore “covert”). Varieties with covert prestige often carry associations of tough, rugged working-class masculinity. The importance of such gendered connotations of languages to language maintenance efforts has so far received little attention, but the work of Pujolar (1997, 2001) clearly indicates that Catalan has little appeal to the Rambleros boys because they find it to sound feminine and effeminate — “unmasculine.” Similarly, Pavlenko (2001b) describes an instance where an American man failed in his efforts to learn French because he found the language to sound effeminate. The learner, the philosopher Richard Watson, traced his negative attitude to ideologies of masculinity internalized in early childhood, in particular, the deep-seated belief that “real men don’t speak French.” Not surprisingly, he could not bring himself to speak French although he reads it well. The desire of some young men to sound hyper-masculine as a crucial factor in their linguistic choices also emerges from the work of Bucholtz (1999) and Cutler (1999).
These researchers describe how white US-American boys of highly privileged backgrounds use code switching into African American Vernacular English in order to perform a stylized tough hyper-masculinity. Like the discourse of benevolent racism exposed by Blackledge (2000, 2001) and Villenas (2001) (see section 19.5), these appropriations of a language construct not only gender but also race. By seeking identification with African-American masculinity, the boys whose codeswitching practices are described by Bucholtz (1999) and Cutler (1999) also “reproduce the ‘racialization’ of African-American men as violent and dangerous” (Hill, 1999, p. 547).
Indeed, a gendering of languages very often goes hand in hand with racist stereotyping of their speakers. Hill’s (1995, 1998) work on “Mock Spanish” — the use of Spanish or pseudo-Spanish expressions by speakers of American English — for instance, shows that codeswitching into Mock Spanish constructs the speaker as colloquial, relaxed, capable of humor, streetwise and masculine. However, by iconic extension, Spanish and the “real” speakers of that language are constructed as disorderly and given to obscenity.
2—
2. Stranger Patches: 🤓 Dubbing > Subtitles
Some recent content on the iGen & a show I discovered this summer called Stranger Things (to my surprise it was already 4 seasons long).
BritishGQ Tweet → “With the Xbox-360 came the console “bug patch,” less-than-a-megabyte updates allowing developers to clean and refine code well after their product had shipped.
In an interview in June, the Duffer brothers directorial duo confirmed plans to “George Lucas” — ie. retrospectively edit — a moment in Stranger Things season two, owing to a fan-identified plot hole.
Editing a continuity error after the fact, while allowing for the laziness that now pervades the gaming industry by way of figurative “TV patches,” would be fairly innocuous if not for the implied slippery slope.”
MitchyD → “Dang, TWO day-one patches to fix the broken premise of your article? Seems kinda lazy.”
Jarryd → A comeback to an online article for doing the very thing that it’s criticizing videogames for doing while discussing a popular streaming tv show doing it is the most interdisciplinary comeback I’ve seen in a long time.
Netflix & Subtitles — @TeleTVRadio
“Plenty is written about the death of reading among Generation Z, but those critics clearly aren’t taking into account the millions of words they consume every year while watching TV and films.
About 80% of @Netflix subscribers usually watch with subtitles or closed captions (though only ~25% of those aged 56–75).
Many of #Netflix’s best shows, including its most popular show to date,
@NetflixKR‘s Squid Game, are enjoyed by audiences who can’t understand the language.
Some complain that modern dramatic actors — who aim for realism over perfect diction — are just too mumbly for even perfect ears to follow without assistance.
Another reason is slightly more depressing for filmmakers. The main reason they do it,” one Gen Z-er said, “is so they can flick their eyes up and read ahead, then take in the whole scene quickly, and look back down at their phone, or whatever second screen they have.”
About 80% of @Netflix subscribers usually watch with subtitles or closed captions (though only ~25% of those aged 56–75). Many of #Netflix’s best shows, including its most popular show to date, @NetflixKR’s Squid Game, are enjoyed by audiences who can’t understand the language.
We’ve Been Reading 🎮 Our Entire Lives
#iGen & #Millennials: “And reading videogames” Consider all the conversation options/ dialogue trees we read through & try selecting the answer that
(1) best reflects how we’ve played the story &
(2) how we’d like relationships/ storylines to progress.
Sidenotes
The Workshop
“The size of the gender pay gap varies across economies: it ranges from 4% in Romania and Bulgaria to 18% in Germany and 19% in Estonia.
Robots replace workers with ‘brawn’ skills, who are more likely to be men (Rendall 2017, Ngai & Petrongolo, 2017)” (Aksoy et al., 2021).
The Anthropocene — Jente Ottenburghs, 2021
The exact start of the Anthropocene has been a matter of debate and its onset has been connected to different events, such as the rise of deforestation and agriculture (Ruddiman, 2003), the Columbian Exchange of species between the Old World and the New World (Lewis & Maslin, 2015), the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s (Crutzen, 2002), and the population growth and industrialization during the mid-20th century (Steffen et al., 2015). Based on the increase in the use of certain materials (e.g., aluminum, plastics, concrete), the nuclear fallout of atomic bomb testing, the geochemical signatures of particular compounds (e.g., polyaromatic hydrocarbons and pesticides), and the atmospheric rise in carbon concentrations, Waters et al., (2016) proposed a lower boundary for the Anthropocene during the mid20th century.
Dry Cleaner Bias — Katherine Mangu-Ward, 2014
Dry cleaners can offer cheap laundering and pressing of men’s dress shirts because men’s clothing is boring and uniform. They use a standard-sized machine to quickly and efficiently remove wrinkles from damp shirts.
But women’s blouses have much more variety in terms of fabric, cut, and construction. Battiston’s, a small Connecticut chain, explains the dry cleaner’s conundrum nicely after offering a strongly worded commitment to gender neutrality when it comes to suits and other garments:
Oddly-shaped cuts are not going to fit on a shirt press, and thus they will need to be finished by hand. That’s a lot more labor-intensive for a cleaner, and thus the cleaner is going to understandably have a hard time charging the same price. (Remember, the margins on shirt cleaning are very low to begin with, so if you must put significantly more labor into a shirt, then you’re in a losing proposition.)
Also, size matters. If a woman’s shirt is too small and you try to put it on a press geared for men’s body types, you run the risk of tearing. (It’s one of the very few places in society where a lady is not rewarded for being thin.)
In other words, the fact that women pay more for clean shirts can be explained, at least in part, as a natural consequence of the fact that women make different personal choices than men.
Mansplaining (Karolina Koc-Michalska et al., 2021)
(assume direct quotes, [unless otherwise noted])
— “Solnit’s (2008) essay “Men Who Explain Things to Me” brought the word mansplaining into the public conversation. Solnit (2012, 2014) defined the term as “the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of (the male) gender gets stuck.”
Mansplaining occurs when a man explains a concept to a woman, often in a patronizing way, while in fact knowing less about the topic he is explaining than the woman to which he is explaining it (Rothman, 2012).
For example, a Twitter user attempted to explain astrophysics to a women astronaut (Perry, 2017). In another example, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussed her background with a rightwing commentator, tweeting that he was “mansplaining her own childhood” (Lungariello, 2019).
Further, political ideology matters. It is left-leaning women who experience mansplaining more often and right-leaning men who are accused of it more often.
Women’s relatively stronger aversion to conflict within social interactions has a perceptible effect on the likelihood of their speaking up about political topics (Karolina Koc-Michalska et al., 2021).
Women are expected to act like “mothers” and be “attention-giving in conversation” (Derber, 1979) or be cordial and nonconfrontational (Atkeson & Rapoport, 2003; Babcock et al., 2003).
Women are more likely to use tentative language or “hedge” words (Atkeson & Rapoport, 2003; Leaper & Robnett, 2011) and are overwhelmingly more interrupted than man (Anderson & Leaper, 1998; Bohn & Stutman, 1983; Hancock & Rubin, 2015). In conversation, women generally listen more attentively and ask more questions than men do (Kollock et al., 1985).”
[Jarryd: Women ask more questions & are less willing to comment on topics they’re not confident in, whereas men are willing to discuss a subject even when they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about (Atkeson & Rapoport, 2003; Mondak & Anderson, 2004; Ondercin & Jones-White, 2011).]
Karolina Koc-Michalska et al. (2021): Twitter & Facebook
— “Men are more likely to guess when they have incomplete knowledge of a topic and they are less likely to select a “don’t know” option when it is offered (Baldiga, 2014; Miller, 2019).
Twitter, which does not require two users to mutually agree to connect in order to communicate, is more conducive to conversation with strangers (weak ties; more favorable to men), whereas communication on Facebook, requiring reciprocal ties, mostly occurs between friends and family (close-ties; more favorable to women) (Oz et al., 2018; Waterloo et al., 2018).
The majority of people’s Facebook friends tend to be people they know personally, whereas Twitter connections are between people who do not know each other personally (Duggan & Smith, 2016).”
Local/National Divide
— “Women tend to be more interested in political issues focused on more local, community-oriented politics, while men turn toward national and international issues (Coffe, 2013; Sanchez-Vitores, 2018).
Phua, Jin, & Kim (2017): Twitter users report higher levels of intergroup communication predicated on information sharing, while Facebook users tend toward communication intended to strengthen existing relationships and deepen emotional ties.”
Koc-Michalska, K., Schiffrin, A., Lopez, A., Boulianne, S., & Bimber, B. (2021). From online political posting to mansplaining: The gender gap and social media in political discussion. Social Science Computer Review, 39(2), 197–210.
Lesbian Hugs (Michelle Hufkens, 2016)
Hypothesis
Affectivity should be higher within lesbian families (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010; Bos et al., 2007; Buist et al., 2004; Fedewa et al., 2014; Golombok & Badger 2010; MacCallum & Golombok, 2004; Manders et al., 2007).
Findings
— The biological lesbian mother & her oldest child hug more often together compared with the heterosexual mother oldest child comparison group.
— The rate of hugging in the adoptive lesbian mother & oldest child dyad does not differ significantly from the heterosexual father comparison group.
— Within the father-child dyad less hugging occurs; fathers do not hug more than mothers.
— However, the adoptive lesbian mother hugs less often with all other family members compared with the average father within the heterosexual comparison group.
[Note:
Biological lesbian mothers were compared with heterosexual mothers because both gave birth.
Adoptive lesbian mothers were compared with heterosexual fathers because neither gave birth.]
Can Monoculture Survive the Algorithm (By Kyle Chayka, 2019)
