SSR #2

Ryan Um

Due Date: 02-19-2018

Professor Brooks

English 320

SSR #2: Discrimination of Sound

Summary:

In the second chapter of Radio and the Gendered Soundscape, Christine Ehrick states that Radio Femenina’s owners were “more interested in capturing women as consumers rather than shaping them into political beings.” (Ehrick, 71) With women being less represented in the radio, it was hard for women to even get their opinions heard and it was common practice to have minorities in these positions to fill a minority position. The fact that the producers were not concerned at all with the representation and rather the demographic that the women would appeal to speaks volumes about the mindset of these individuals and it seems like history is doomed to repeat that mistake over and over again. Their representation, while important to the industry, was used as an appeal to women and lacked the authenticity of radio programs that decided not to focus solely on appeal.

Synthesis:

Ehrick goes into much depth in the first chapter of her book by focusing on the history of Silva Guerrico. The radio industry at the time was still primarily male, so it was uncommon for someone like Guerrico to be on the air at all. The appeal of her voice came from the male gaze (Ehrick, 51). The male gaze typically means something taken from a male perspective. And in this case it is the mental depiction of her voice. Generally, when someone is speaking or when a person hears a voice, they have a clear idea of the person who is talking and it is not difficult to determine general characteristics of a person based on that judgement. It is clear that the people who are listening to her program were attempting to place her in a box that would fit their expectations, but in reality, Guerrico defied their expectations and caused a lot of issues due to her political stances and her insistence on speaking on behalf of women who were not given the same platform.

In the introduction to Radio and the Gendered Soundscape, Ehrick has an entire section dedicated to the sound of patriarchy and how it has affected society today. She makes it clear that excuses were made in order to accommodate the expectations of men’s perception of who should be allowed to take roles on the radio. She even states that one of the main reasons why women were excluded from radio jobs was because of the pitch of their voice and how it was “uncomfortable” for people to listen to because technology was not able to accommodate for their voices. However, when technology improved the amount of women in radio remained stagnant (Ehrick, 16). It is generally assumed now that it was a means to exclude women from radio as a minority and shows the length to which excuses were made in order to keep the radio in a stagnant location. In many cases, there are these excuses that are made so that there is justification for their actions. Even in today’s society, it is a serious ailment that affects the media. It becomes even more noticeable with television programs or movies  that primarily featured white actors under the guise that their race is not a determining factor as to why they were not hired in the first place.

This phenomenon was actually touched on in chapter five of The Sonic Color Line, where Stoever states that “no black writers were regularly employed by any national station during the 1940s; the Los Angeles Radio Writer Guild had not a single black member (Stoever, 241).” Stoever also explains that this phenomenon was due to casting directors being “color blind” which generally means that race was not a determining factor in choosing the person that they cast for the job. This is a great idea in theory, but in execution, the purpose is lost. Much like how Ehrick talked about the changes of technology being an excuse for people not to cast women, this was an excuse as to not take chances on people of color. They look for people who have already shown their merit and capabilities as an artist or creator and neglect people who are looking to get into the industry or who have not had as much luck in terms of success. It is clear that this is another excuse made in order to exclude minorities and lacks substantial evidence that the opposite of their reasoning is true. Stoever’s statistics even show that this reason is flawed by the lack of black members in their guild.

Distinguishing between two demographics based on their sound has always been questionable. Most articles that we read point to the different races being different in sound, but one thing that they fail to mention is that what they are hearing is a facet of culture. In chapter 20 of the Auditory Culture Reader, the authors make a point of explain to readers that the differences come from that phenomenon. It goes into the differences between loyalist and nationalist with the nuances in sounds that they make. This goes into a whole different discussion that involves profiling different races based on this phenomenon. While it is not clearly stated in the book, society seems to judge those around them based on superficial points such as their tone of voice.

The second chapter of Sound in the Age of Reproduction seemed to focus more on the CV radio and how it was used to communicate with truckers as a form of entertainment. What I found interesting in this was that they seemed to put an emphasis on white truck drivers exclusively. It seems like there was an absence of people of color at the time who were communicating that way despite their only form of communication being through sound. It really invokes a sense of exclusion from the activity as a whole just by discrimination alone.

Questions:

1. In what ways are people being discriminated against by how they sound?
2. Have accents determined how you talk to another person? Do you adjust your accent to fit people who you are talking to?

Word Count: 1007