Media and Minorities - Term Paper Example

Media and Minorities Prejudice ideology is an inherent part of the social world, but in western culture its effects are more apparent in film and on the television. The media’s depiction of ethnic groups, women and religious factions has a dynamic influence on the way in which these groups are perceived within their communities, and the orchestrates behind these depictions are as connected to the public as the stereotypes themselves. This author intends to show the dynamic influence the media has on public perception of minorities and how their depictions are more closely related to capitalist ideology than any genuine cultural understanding. In Richard Dyer’s essay The White Man’s Muscle, he talks about stereotypes that have been enforced connecting as far back as the Greek era, and that now dominate film and television basically promoting the superiority of white masculinity. Body hair is animalistic; hair­lessness connotes striving above nature. The climax of Gli amori di Ercole has Hercules fighting a giant ape, who has previously behaved in a King Kong-ish way towards Herculess beloved Dejanira, stroking her hair and when she screams making as if to rape her; close-ups contrast Herculess smooth, hairless muscles with the hairy limbs of this racist archetype. (Dyer) Here Dyer points out how the uppermost echelon of masculinity is equated with shaven white muscle, through its very contrast to that of hair apes, who are historically associated with blackness. He acknowledges the racist aspects of this archetype, but also gives notice to the private boys’ club-like tradition that has formed from this prejudice. This same ideal of exclusion is expressed in Gamy Robson’s Millwall Football Club: Masculinity, Race and Belonging in which the author points out how Millwall Football Club is a devout fan base-community that excludes those who aren’t born within it and those of different races. In western culture, muscular bodies are associated with much leisure time, discipline, and affluence. Dyer also makes the Christian connection that a muscular body connotes pointing out the ideal of finding salvation or purity through the experience of pain. He points out that historically body building culture has been an equal opportunity medium when he says, Bodybuilding as an activity has a relatively good track record in terms of racial equality. From the 1950s on, non-white men - and especially those of African descent - became major figures in bodybuilding competitions. Yet the dominant images of the built body remain white. Kenneth Dutton (1995: 232) points out that black bodybuilders are rare on the cover of Muscle and Fitness, the bodybuilding magazine now most responsible for establishing and promulgating the image of the sport. (Dyer) Within the world of contemporary bodybuilding, this view has been greatly contrasted considering the current popularity top African American bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman, but even still, unless a particular bodybuilder is professional the chance of them finding their way on the cover of a magazine without being white is still sparse. Thus pointing out that, bodybuilding culture is one of great prejudice. Dyer states that the culture itself in western society ideologically is connected as far back as the Greek era, when they believed that to improve the physical structure through body building was to bring it that much closer to divinity. While bodybuilding ideologically separates the white man from the beast, the black man is the beast. This creates the misconception that to be white is to be masculine and to be black is to be animalistic. Dyer identifies this theme of white superiority and masculinity being plaid out in modern day film by connecting it with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his character in the film the Terminator. Schwarzeneggers films contain nothing so agonised, and he has been cast as a machine in the Terminator films (1984 and 1991) rather than as a machines opponent. Schwarzenegger, as a multiple Mr Olympia winner, is always already a champion physique;… Schwarzeneggers body is simply massive, his characteristic facial expression genial, his persona one of Teutonic confidence; (Dyer) Here we see that Schwarzenegger in his role as the Terminator embodies all of the ideals praised by males and promoted within popular western society. His militant and machine-like persona represents the upper echelon of masculinity. The irony is that while this film further enforces the misogynistic misconceived notions of the meaning of manliness, maintaining the edgy tradition common of the science fiction genre, it breaks stereotypes pertaining to females. The Terminator launched the career of former body builder and current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but more importantly, it is the quintessential science-fiction film, countering many contemporary stereotypes. A young woman named Sarah Connor is hunted down by a cybernetic killer, who has traveled back in time from the year 2029 to kill her unborn child. In the future war between the Robots and humans, it is believed Sarah Connor will give birth to a heroic general in the fight for the human race. On top of this, Sarah Connor is also heralded as a great military hero herself. A character by the name of Reese initially is sent back from the future to protect Sarah Connor. Unbeknownst to either of them, he inadvertently becomes the father of the baby he is sent to protect. Reese is still mortal, and continuously reminded of this fact when confronting the Terminator. Sarah Connor is mortal, but she is also destined to be a great war hero. Sarah Connor’s character is empowered in this film and Reese is actually effeminized; by this, I mean that Reese is actually the weaker of the two. In the greatest measure of manliness against the ultimate destroying machine, Connor manages to survive; and in the end, she is the one who kills the Terminator. While Reese, dead, has failed as a protector and the only purpose he served was to produce offspring. The man and the woman switch roles in this way. This is a prime example of the evolving nature of female representation in the media. In this case, one might be prone to believe that western audiences are more comfortable seeing a masculine woman than letting go of dyer’s ideal of the white muscle man and seeing a black model of supreme masculinity. The heroine in cinema has come a long way since the origin of the medium. It can be argued that this is a direct reflection of societal change. The performing arts have evolved from not allowing blacks, or women to perform, to having minorities in lead roles where they play everyman/woman characters. From the villainously empowering days of the Femme fatale, to the current science fiction roles in which women save the world without any male assistance, the female in cinema is on the verge of equal empowerment. This is most apparently true of those female celebrities who have established themselves as capable to play a broad range of roles. Actresses like Angelina Jolie, Demi Moor and Sigourney Weaver have played everything from action adventure heroines to pregnant mothers. These women have contributed to the tradition of expanding societal expectations of women through film; but as these signifying lines of identity expand self identification within society has a tendency of only becoming more confusing. Though these actress have created alternative identities for women to model after, as Claire Dwyer reveals in her essay Contested Identities, the real path for female to negotiate her identity is not as cut and dry as it is depicted in the movies. Dwyer’s essay focuses on the Muslim woman’s struggle to establish identity within British culture. Ideologically outsiders to the society, stereotypes are projected on the women that are misconceived and complicating cross cultural understanding. As Dwyer argues, young Muslim women seek to define their own identities and resist dominant representations of `Muslim Women… the articulation of their own identities requires the negotiation of dominant representa­tions and stereotypes and a challenge to existing discourses (Dwyer). The author does credit the media as a very important factor to the challenging of existing discourses; but, she also acknowledges the unique social conflict pertaining to the particular circumstance of the Muslim women. As pointed out by Dwyer, these women find themselves trapped in between two cultures, one of Asian expectations, and the other of the British ideals; both pertain to their identities in the community as Muslim women. If they do not wish to adhere to the criteria set out for them by what Dwyer calls the dominant representations of Muslim Women, then they may find themselves subject to exclusion. This is a prejudice whose specifics are reliant on location, but tends to produce the same results across communities. A direct comparison to the plight of the Muslim woman searching for identity in Britain can be made to that of the American Black in the south. Dr. Susan Opotow is a professor at Columbia University, who specializes in Dispute Resolution. In her publication, Social Injustice, she does an in-depth analyses of some of the key correlating conflicts within the Black Man’s burden. She says, morals operationalize our sense of justice by identifying what we owe to whom, whose needs, views, and well-being count, and whose do not (Opotow,2001). It is Opotow’s view that we use this sense of morals to decide who we accept into our social circles. Those who do not fall into the specific criteria, be it a certain race, class religion etc.., they are subject to exclusion. In William Faulkner’s classic novel Light in August, he confronts the racial stigma that is inherent in the American south. Through the experiences endured by his fictional seemingly white but part black character Joe Christmas, he examines the same type of exclusion to which Opotow refers. After a long time of neither adhering to the popular western ideal of what is to be black or white, overwhelmed with inadequacy and in a fit of rage, Christmas kills his white girlfriend for demanding he join an all black law firm. He does this in response to his inability to claim a stigma within the community. After he commits the murder, he is still disillusioned by his status, thinking that because he has refused to identify himself as black or white than he is invisible to the rest of the town. This is a detrimental miscalculation, as this townsperson expresses in Faulkner’s novel: He never acted like either a nigger or a white man. That was it. That was what made the folks so mad. For him to be a murderer and all dressed up and walking the town like he dared them to touch him, when he ought to have been skulking and hiding in the woods, muddy and dirty and running. It was like he never even knew he was a murderer, let alone a nigger too. (Faulkner, 350). Opotow credits the type of social isolation and vilification which Christmas experiences to certain communities’ class and race stances on morality. Christmas is a undeniably a murderer, but he has become so as a result of a society that had no place for him. By there being no niche for Christmas within the community, he threatened its very existence, therefore making it a necessity that he be destroyed. Dwyer claims the prevention of incidences like Christmas’ lie in the media. This is disserting when one considers the media as an entity with its own agenda. Pierre Bourdieu is a highly acclaimed French sociologist. In all of Bourdieu’s beliefs, his most popular is his assertion that the public does not exist (1984). This concept is addressed in his book, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, in that he feels there is a different of class taste between the ruling class and popular culture. But, within this conflict, there is no public, only a media mediating between the two by using a culture to which they often artificially construct. Therefore, he argues that the popular culture presented as a product of public perception is really just the artificial persona created by the economic elite, who own the media companies, to further enhance their accumulation of wealth. Whatever stereotypes best feed into the capitalist nature of the western culture, those are the stereotypes that will be depicted on television. In sum, this author certified that the traditions of prejudice ideals that bombard western society through the media are initially caused by the consumer. The objectification of women, racist views toward other nationalities, and religious prejudice only find validity through the certification of high ratings and consumer approval. If the owner’s of media corporations found that they could sell more Pepsi by promoting their product with intelligent Muslim women, the stereotype that all Muslim women are intelligent would become a common perception. It would become imbedded into the human psyche of the community on which it’s projected, and eventually it would be adopted by the Muslim community. Every Muslim girl growing up would be told that all Muslim girls are intelligent and she would feel confident to excel in school and life. Work Cited Bourdieu, Pierre. (1984) Distinction, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Christie, Christie J., and Susan Opotow. Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century. Prentice Hall, 2001. Social Injustice. 8 Dec. 2006. Dyer, Richard “The White Man’s Muscles” in White London Dwyer, Claire. “Contested Identities: Challenging Dominant Representations of Young British Muslim Women” in Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine Edwards, Brent H., Cheryl Johnson-Odim;, Agustin Lao-Montes, Michael O. West, Tiffany R. Patterson, and Robin D. Kelley. ""Unfinished Migrations": Commentary and Response." African Studies Review os 43.1 (2000): 47-68. Jstor. Strozier Library, Tallahassee. 5 Dec. 2006. Keyword: Back to Africa movement. Freydberg Elizabeth Hadley “Sapphires, Spitfires, Sluts, and Superbitches: African- Americans and Latinas in Contemporary American Film” in Carter, Cynthia and Steiner, Linda Karen Ross Black and White Media: Black Images in Popular Film and Television Cambridge, Polity Press, Robson, Garry “Millwall Football Club: Masculinity, Race and Belonging” in Munt Sally R. Read More