two way mirrors
I've just noticed a class of effect I'm thinking of as two-way mirrors; there's a divider, and how things look, what awareness of the world one has, is very different depending on which side of it one is located.
When the Cosby show aired, to me it was just some sitcom. To black America, it was transformative, a sitcom that showed African American people as middle/upper class. I was on one side of the mirror, they were on the other.
This is markedly different from say, affirmative action programs or real estate steering/redlining; in those cases what is going on is generally not invisible from one side, even if it looks different.
Giglet once asked me if I remembered Title IX. When she was a young girl, it was a huge bone of contention, lots of people very sure it would mess up boys' sports if public schools had to equally support girls' athletics. It was invisible to me; I barely remembered the controversy, and my opportunities had certainly not been noticeably impacted. To Giglet, it meant she got opportunities that hadn't existed just a year or two before.
Mad Max: Fury Road is pretty much chock full of this.
Possible spoiler alert.
In one scene, I see a character with limited bullets shooting a big heavy rifle and missing, another character who is a better shot walks up, first character hands them the big gun and acts as a gun rest, better shot character uses last bullet to harm baddies. But see, better shot character is female while less good shot character is male. So to many viewers, especially female ones, this scene isn't about who is the better shot nearly as much as it is about gender issues. If 12 year old me, or probably 20 year old me, had somehow seen this film, the scene would have made subconscious statements about gender, but consciously, I don't think I would have noticed or considered that.
Even now, I noticed enough to write this mainly because the film has caused such a stir; the first few times anyone mentioned the film's existence were people saying that "men's rights advocates" were upset about it. If I had just gone out and seen it without that background, I'd probably have been like "Hey, it passed Bechdel really well!" but I wouldn't be writing this.
This effect probably exists all over the place, and while all three of my above examples relate to invisible privilege backpacks, I suspect there are many cases that don't involve them.
Note that calling it a two way mirror is obviously oversimplifying; there undoubtedly exists a set of humans for whom the Fury Road scene would not be about either who is the better shot or about gender; given billions of humans, you can certainly find some who will land in the middle of nearly any division, but the qualitative difference between phenomena that result in evenly distributed spectra of reactions vs those that mainly cause a certain reaction or don't cause that reaction is interesting to me. But of course, actual two way mirrors aren't simply binary either; they work differently depending on lighting level, degree of transparency, viewing angle, etc.
When the Cosby show aired, to me it was just some sitcom. To black America, it was transformative, a sitcom that showed African American people as middle/upper class. I was on one side of the mirror, they were on the other.
This is markedly different from say, affirmative action programs or real estate steering/redlining; in those cases what is going on is generally not invisible from one side, even if it looks different.
Giglet once asked me if I remembered Title IX. When she was a young girl, it was a huge bone of contention, lots of people very sure it would mess up boys' sports if public schools had to equally support girls' athletics. It was invisible to me; I barely remembered the controversy, and my opportunities had certainly not been noticeably impacted. To Giglet, it meant she got opportunities that hadn't existed just a year or two before.
Mad Max: Fury Road is pretty much chock full of this.
Possible spoiler alert.
In one scene, I see a character with limited bullets shooting a big heavy rifle and missing, another character who is a better shot walks up, first character hands them the big gun and acts as a gun rest, better shot character uses last bullet to harm baddies. But see, better shot character is female while less good shot character is male. So to many viewers, especially female ones, this scene isn't about who is the better shot nearly as much as it is about gender issues. If 12 year old me, or probably 20 year old me, had somehow seen this film, the scene would have made subconscious statements about gender, but consciously, I don't think I would have noticed or considered that.
Even now, I noticed enough to write this mainly because the film has caused such a stir; the first few times anyone mentioned the film's existence were people saying that "men's rights advocates" were upset about it. If I had just gone out and seen it without that background, I'd probably have been like "Hey, it passed Bechdel really well!" but I wouldn't be writing this.
This effect probably exists all over the place, and while all three of my above examples relate to invisible privilege backpacks, I suspect there are many cases that don't involve them.
Note that calling it a two way mirror is obviously oversimplifying; there undoubtedly exists a set of humans for whom the Fury Road scene would not be about either who is the better shot or about gender; given billions of humans, you can certainly find some who will land in the middle of nearly any division, but the qualitative difference between phenomena that result in evenly distributed spectra of reactions vs those that mainly cause a certain reaction or don't cause that reaction is interesting to me. But of course, actual two way mirrors aren't simply binary either; they work differently depending on lighting level, degree of transparency, viewing angle, etc.