FIFTY-ONE PERCENT

I didn't watch any TV on the Fourth of July -- martial music, pretend artillery, and crowds reeling with xenophobic patriotism are not my idea of a holiday.

However, I did notice PBS's promotion for their own offering that evening, "A Capitol Fourth". After turning off the TV, I wondered if my impression of what I'd just seen was accurate. I went to their website and checked. Here's the complete list of performers: (after the fold)


Jimmy Smits
Huey Lewis and the News
Taylor Hicks
Jerry Lee Lewis
Brian Stokes Mitchell
Hayley Westenra
Scott Hamilton
Harolyn Blackwell
Erich Kunzel
The National Symphony Orchestra
Choral Arts Society of Washington
Military District of Washington
U.S. Army Herald Trumpets
United States Army Presidential Salute Battery
"The Commandant's Own" U.S. Marine Drum & Bugle Corps

There's an obvious attempt to represent a sampling of multiple American musical genres (plus the Celtic Woman fembot goop), but no rap or hip-hop, and a heavy emphasis on classical, orchestral, and operatic styles, in addition to the mandatory army band crap. In terms of racial diversity, there's two black folks and one Hispanic, aside from the large musical groups which are likely somewhat mixed, though likely not proportionately. No Asians or Native Americans. And the white are "non-ethnic" whites.

What really drew my attention, though, was probably a result of my spending the last several days researching the herstory of Women's Music in the 1970s, when my generation said "Fuck this crap" to the exclusion of female faces or voices except for a limited few and NO women allowed in the technical end of music production: Out of nine individual performers above, seven were men. And in the military groups, females were also a profound minority.

Honest to g*d, we did better than this kind of representation before our rebellion 30 years ago.

This is the Religious Right's version of America, their idea of a "national" line-up. Grown men who bigamously marry their 13-year-old cousins, that's just fine. But keep the women down to a ratio of one per four or five men.

I notice Pixar has another movie coming out -- about a robot who, of course, has to be male. Can't have a gender-neutral or (heaven forfend) female robot, the boys wouldn't watch it. This is what we mean when we feminists tell you we've LOST GROUND since Reagan entered the scene.

So here's some questions for ya'll:
Do you notice when a group performance doesn't have equal numbers of male and female performers? If you don't, why don't you?
Do you register racial make-up in the same situation?
Do you bring it up at work/among your friends/on your blog? What kind of arguments and defensive reactions are you having to deal with?

And, regarding the photo at the top of this post: Joss Whedon gets "feminist" cred because he has (gasp!) four women out of nine characters. But notice, in the photo, which figures loom large, take up the foreground, and which subside into near profile.

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