Final Reflection

Blog 10

Before taking this class I did not know much about the stereotypes, oppression, and racism found in the media today. I guess you could say I never thought about it or open my eyes to realize it. I am so happy that I took this course because there were so many things that I was able to learn through out my semester. Ideology and hegemony is something everyone should learn, because it helps decode the environment we are living in and absorbing. It helps when one questions what they see in order to get a better understanding of truths. For instance, if girls and women knew that the images they see everyday of skinny, sexy females is a fictional reality, then less disorders, such as, anorexia, bulimia, and depression will decrease among the population.

Retrieved from

            Looking into video games and what people go through when experiencing the game was an eye opener also. I never knew that the Marines used the video game Doom as a training and disentwining mechanism for war, and a lot of people in the world play it for fun. It was also crazy to see racism and oppression towards females and other ethnic groups. Usually main characters are white, and, if one is playing a combat game, one will be shooting at another race with a white hand. Also, females are portrayed as big boobed, tiny waste, and have a very sexual appeal to them to arouse their gamers. There is not one female character, besides Princess Peach, who is not very sexually explicit.

            Needless to say, there are many things about gender, race, and class in the media that can be learned if one stops to recognize and open their eyes to it. Most of the population (mainly white people) believe that what they see in the media is true or the way life is, but in actuality the media world is very different than the real world. To get to know the real world, people need to turn off electronics and look outside.

Gay Communities are Becoming More Prevalent in the Media World

90210's Teddy Gay Character

Will and Grace

Blog 9

           In the documentary Further Off the Straight and Narrow the director shows how gays are booming and becoming more prevalent on television today. On cable television, homosexuals can be more divers and open to new characteristics unlike network television. On network television homosexuals must abide by the rules to be a “normal” (heterosexual) gay character, otherwise, the character will be casted as a joke. The television show Will & Grace (1998-2006) started the popularity with a homosexual cast; although the show was a success, the gay men in the show never had sexual explicit scenes. The gay men were never seen kissing another man or having a sexual relationship with another man. The show also did not have a gay community, it was largely based of off a relationship between a man (Will) and a woman (Grace). Will & Grace is a show that followed the rules to be a “normal” gay character on network television. Other shows on network television have gay characters, but the gay characters are rarely the main character. In 90210 (2010), a guy named Teddy came out of the closet. Before he came out of the closet, Teddy was in a lot of episodes and was becoming a main character. After his character came out, Teddy has been seen less in the episodes. Although Teddy is seen less now, the show does have Teddy kiss another man on network television, which fights the rules of a “normal” gay character a little; however, Teddy is still this macho, masculine character and not a “floozy”. According to Jay Clarkson, to normalize a gay character is to portray them as “’real men’, but their strategy for confronting homophobia is limited to challenging the conflation of gender and sexuality, and does not seek acceptance for those who degrees of transgression are higher. It does not challenge the fear or hatred of gayness” (2011, p.340).

            Having cable television helps the gay community a lot, because they are not dependent on advertiser to produce their show. Shows like The L word and Queer Eye for The Straight Guy can be more expressive and realistic. The L word portrays lesbians and the troubles they encounter in their everyday life. The L Word also shows lesbian sexuality: sex scenes, kisses, relationship issues and so on. The L Word became a break through for the gay community, even though some of the things shown gay members do not agree with, they will still watch the show because it is the only thing close to their lives and what they go through. These break out television shows are just the beginning. Since the 1990’s the gay community has been trying to become more prevalent and rightfully stigmatized. The gay community has successfully been trying to come out and it is going to keep getting better for them, since this era is about equality. Once viewers are used to seeing gay characters and story lines, then the issue of wrong stereotypes and not having a main character that’s gay eliminated. However, trying to make a transgender become more visible is the next fight to take on. Transgenders are barely seen in the media, except for when MTV’s the Real World casted a transgender.

References

Clarkson, J. (2011). The limitations of the discourse of norms: gay visibility and degrees of
           transgression. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M. (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in media (pp.
           335-40). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage

Sender, K. (director). (2006). Further off the straight and narrow: New gay visibility on television 
            1998-2006 [Documentary].

Working Class- The Classic Idiot

Blog 8

Click to go where the photo was retrieved from

The media is filled with stereotypes, and the one thing that never gets old is the working class idiot (as seen on the Simpsons, Family Guy, King of Queens, The Office, and so on). “Studies of comic strips, radio serials, television series, movies, and popular fiction reveal a very persistent pattern, underrepresenting working-class occupations and overrepresenting professional and marginal occupations, minimizing the visibility of the working class” (Butsch, p. 101). The working class is said to be taboo because no one talks about it unless it is the middle or upper class. The media wants to produce settings with lavish stuff to get people wanting to live lavishly like their favorite television show. However, when the media does script a working class family, the main character (mainly the dad) is a complete idiot.

Click to go where the photo was retrieved from

            In Family Guy, the father, Peter, is a working man trying to provide food for their family. However, Peter is said to be diagnosed as a retard in the show (only a couple time it has came up). Peter is also a belligerent drunk and likes to get into stupid schemes. In other shows, such as, The King of Queens, Doug is also a working man at a UPS delivery type of job. Doug is seen as the funny man and does stupid things to make people laugh. Doug is the comedy in the show, and so is Peter the comedy of the show. Other types of shows and movies with working class introduced seem to have a common theme the idiot. Do the media conglomerates believe people in the working class are stupid, lazy, and obnoxious? Although these characters make us all laugh, couldn’t there be more of a realistic representation of the working class out there? The real representations are barely visible. In the movie Maid in Manhattan, Jennifer Lopez plays a working woman, Marissa, who is a maid at a hotel. Marissa is shown as a hard working woman and will do anything to get ahead for a better life for her and her son. In the media there are realistic views of the working class; however, realistic views of the working class is hard to find and recognize since it is so taboo.

 

Maid in Manhattan

            In order to see more realism and less fictional stereotypes of the working class, people may not feel embarrassed they are part of the working class. Since the working class is taboo because no one wants to talk about, then eliminating the negative stereotypes will allow people to open up more. We need to eliminate:

…[the] attitude based on the presumption that these sitcoms repeated again and again-that this man is dumb, immature, irresponsible, lacking common sense, often frustrated and sometimes angry. This legitimates his low pay and close supervision at work... It is that disrespect that is the ultimate “hidden injury” that working class interviews expressed… (Butsch, p.107).

By eliminating the stereotype sitcoms represent of the working class, the working class then may feel appreciated and well represented opposed to underappreciated and underrepresented.

References

Butsch, R. Ralph, Fred, Archie, Homer, and the King of Queens: Why television keeps re-creating
           the male working-class buffoon. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M. (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in 
           media (pp. 101-9). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage.

Video Games and the Violence Behind It.

Blog 7

Are people becoming more violent due to video games? Video games are becoming more prevalent in households. About 90% of households have video games and an average of an hour worth kids are playing video games everyday (Hutemann). Consumers of video games invest their emotions and the main characters become more real, because the consumers believe they are the ones actually doing it. The more real the video game looks the more real it is going to become for the players. Even the Marines use the video game Doom to desensitize themselves for actual combat war. Killing and seeing a lot of blood and gory, for the Marines, in the video game Doom provides training and conditioning for the Marines.

Doom

Since the Marines use the video game Doom as conditioning, training, and desensitizing along side with trainers telling them what is right and wrong, what about the rest of the population who play the video game for fun and no one telling them what is right or wrong? Is the rest of the population assumed to not become desensitized and supposed to know automatically what is right or wrong? I do not think so; otherwise, the Marines would not need supervision while playing the video game. If this video game and other video games help desensitize their consumers to killing and seeing gore then this may help with the rising numbers in violence. In video games, people are not shown about remorse for killing or hurting someone/thing, but, instead, are given point for the most people someone kills. Killing now becomes a rewarding mechanism to consumers. Just one of my blogs below, Tough Guys, men act out how they believe is considered macho and masculine. Hurting or killing someone is a way to show respect. Could this notion also been drawn out from video games and not just movies, television, and advertisements? Although there is no factual truth about video games making people more violent, there might be an underline of desensitization of the violence that occurs if someone routinely plays Doom, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and so many more games.

References

Huntemann, Nina (Producer). (2007). Game over: Gender, race, and violence in video games.

DVD

Racism In The Media

Blog 6

          When it comes to mainstream television, stereotypes are always going to be prevalent among all communities, classes, races, and genders. African Americans have been depicted as maids (slave, caregiver), natives (“savage”), and clowns (minstrel) on American television since the 1950’s. In shows, such as Amos & Andy, there is an underline of racism through the shows. African American characters are stereotyped as the clown, crook, and lazy in Amos & Andy and many other shows. There are few television shows on African Americans and their family values, way of life, and so on. It is very important how television shows portray African Americans because everything the public absorbs will start to think the negative stereotypes are true (real). In television shows today, such as The Game and Everybody Hates Chris, the stereotypes have remained but in a more implicit way.

Photo retrieved from

            In Everybody Hates Chris, the main characters still have the maid/slave, “savage”, and clown/minstrel stereotypes. Chris’s father Julius has two jobs to make sure the household has money, but most of the jobs Julius takes on are janitorial and assistant jobs. Janitorial and assistant jobs are a resemblance to be being a maid or slave to someone since they are working for someone. The “savage” stereotype character comes from Chris’s mother Rochelle who is short tempered, humorously sassy, cranky, and strict. Lastly, the Clown stereotype character is Chris. Chris is always the butt of the jokes, he is very unlucky which means he always end up in bad situations, and he wants to be a comedic in the end. In older shows, such as Amos and Andy, the stereotypes are made more clear and present, but, nowadays, the stereotypes seem to be more implicit. Shockingly, the stereotypes are still present today even after so many years of trying to get over racism and oppression. The African American community is stuck with “…naturalized representations of events and situations relating to race, whether ‘factual’ or ‘fictional’, which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions” (Hall, p.83).

References

Hall, S. (2011). The white of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M.
           (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in media (pp. 81-84). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage

Good link to check out: http://www.thedefendersonline.com/2010/01/29/my-top-10-african-american-tv-shows-of-all-time/