Lead Blog Response: Sharkeisha, Shovel Girl and the Social-Permission Theory

Matt's blog post raised many interesting and compelling arguments to continue last week's discussion about desensitizing violence through Vine culture. In my last post, I talked about the "benign-violation theory" which stated that debasing of an individual or group is funny as long as we don't believe that the subject was harmed. However, the popularity of videos such as Sharkeisha and Shovel Girl beg to differ. In both cases, it is clear that these girls were seriously injured - so why do we laugh anyways? As Matt said, maybe it's the fact that we know that the subject continued on with their lives. However, we do not know this until after the initial blow. I think the relief theory is most fitting, because the build up to this climactic moment causes us to laugh when the moment finally occurs. Incongruity is also very fitting for the Sharkeisha video in particular, because of her very unusual name. As we already discussed in class (I'm late on this post), if the video would've starred a girl named Catherine, it most likely would not have grown into the phenomenon that it has become. This also leads to another thing we discussed - how this video encourages racial and gender stereotypes. Sharkeisha is not even her real name, but it sounds "ghetto" and feeds into the societal tendency to stereotype women of color as violent and belligerent. Anyone with decent common sense and awareness knows that this is a ridiculous notion, yet it is stereotypes such as these that continue to hinder our societal growth. I personally do not gravitate towards Vine humor, especially this type of video which involves senseless fighting. However, I see how these videos could evoke a humorous reaction through a feeling of superiority, and also the repetitive nature of Vine causing the viewer to feel detached from the situation.