Cinema and television teach rural migrants how to read urban strangers by appearance

Evidence

In the modern city, as we have seen, appearance is less reliable as an identity indicator than it was in times past. Nevertheless, the contemporary theater (along with its technological equivalents, movies and television) continues to provide instructions in “who looks like what.” Sometimes, of course, these prove to be less than helpful-as with television’s recent responsibility for teaching that the “hippie-radical costume” was a sure clue to its wearer’s identity. Yet despite such instances of oversimplification, many of the appearential meanings provided by the legitimate theater, movies, and television are sufficiently accurate to prove useful, especially if not depended upon too exclusively. A number of my informants, who had been raised in rural areas or small towns, reported that they were “prepared” for the people they met in the city through years of Saturday afternoon movies and evening television shows. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 559

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s cross-reading of how city dwellers categorize strangers (Lofland’s shared project) and to media studies work on spectatorship as preparation for social life.
• QUESTION: Worth pursuing: does media-derived appearential instruction break down precisely where appearance has become least reliable — e.g., televised ‘hippie-radical costume’ warnings that misled viewers?

Related

• Media teach rural migrants the appearance codes needed for urban life (similarity 0.93)
• Urbanites still read strangers by appearance despite spatial ordering, and err (similarity 0.80)