The news and newspapers are a good source for creating stereotypes, when incidents involving crime and violence, ethnic minorities are given prominence.
In the recent controversy surrounding asylum seekers and refugees and their impact on British society, the stories presented in the media could be said to contribute and in some cases be the contributing cause to moral panic, using the public to demand a political response from the government.
If not being a form of rebellion against the government they could just be used as a way of expressing underlining national prejudices, for example the way in which black people are portrayed in the news as a constant threat to white British society, through immigration and as posing a law and order problem. This is done in a number of different ways such as having dramatic presentations of stories, using provocative or damn quotations, statements from people in high authority, circulating popular stereotypes and manipulating popular fears.
A dominant representation of blacks in today’s media that provoke fears that the public may have about blacks would be in the case of the ‘yardies’. It seems that when anything related to guns and drugs with a black person involved the media automatically associate it with yardies. This could manipulate people’s understandings of any black Caribbean person in this country, assuming that they are all the same and behave in this way. Giving a particular group a label only captures certain aspects of a person giving no room for any other features they may have. In many documentary’s such as ‘Bang Bang in the manor’ this form of prejudgement is said to be a very oppressive way of dealing with gun and drug crime by pining the blame on yardies instead of looking at the core of the problem which might not have nessicerilly come directly from yardies. When people have no understanding of a certain area it is easy to believe false or manipulated ideas that are constantly being presented in the media. Stereotypes help us to make sense of our surroundings and naturalise difference making differences seem normal and real even if their not. People think that their perceptions of things are final and ultimate but we are sure as we have not experienced them ourselves.
The media creates certain identities through representation, therefore creating and circulating particular identity discourses. In victor rouso’s film the celliod closet homosexuality was represented as something to be ridiculed, pitied or frightened of by creating stereotypes of what it is to be gay. Identity is an effect of discourse. The media creates certain identities through representation, therefore creating and circulating particular identity discourses. Discourse is a language or system of representations that has developed within society in order make’s and circulates meanings about a particular subject matter. The meanings created are in the interests of the group in society which the discourse originates and works ideologically to seem natural to make the meanings become common sense. Discourse is a social act that is used to either promote or oppose dominant ideologies. This is sometimes referred to as a discursive practice.
It’s not only the news that uses representation to create stereotypes many forms of advertising reinforce dominant discourses within society by promoting it and encouraging it. For example Nike, has a target consumer that they promote their products to being young youths generally black. Many of their recent adverts have black, male wearing thuggish clothing. The stereotype created here is that this is the way that this group dresses and is a way of identifying themselves by what they buy. Reebok has also adopted this technique of buying into black culture and promoting and selling their products to youths by using famous rappers in their advertising such as fifty cent and jay-z. Rappers glamorise the idea of the thug lifestyle seen in their music videos and in some films.
“The media give us ways of imagining particular identities and groups which can have material effects on how people experience the world…” (G. Branston & R. Stafford, 1996:125)
Today the television that audiences are exposed to has a clear amount of information about many cultures and different identities, it has become a law that programmes such as Eastenders and Coronation Street must have a substantial amount of different race characters. One programme that I have looked at is Coronation Street. Coronation Street is based in Manchester and has been broadcasting over 30 years it follows the stories of different families and there daily issues that happen in their lives. Recently an Asian family have moved into the area, I first noticed that the family was working in the local corner shop, this is a common place that Asian people are placed on soaps, movies and films even made fun out of in comedies this is stereotypical and we can see clearly that this family has already been categorised as having a low status job, while the rest of the characters in the soap maintain owning their own business such as owning a pub, clothes factory or working in the city.
On the other side of some TV programmes such as the cosby show were criticised for not addressing the issues of racial or class conflicts and that this representation of black culture and lifestyles were superficial and idealised.
Eastenders is one of the few dramas that include a variety of characters that come from ethnic origin; Eastenders comes very close to representing the real ethnic conditions and cultural diversity of east London. Even so it is still dominated by white cockney families.
Even though belonging to certain groups are obviously a natural process the media are always given women for instance guidelines with constant images in adverts and magazines of what the stereotypical women should be like.
Some critiques such as Angela McRobbie have said that magazines like Jackie in the 1970’s reinforce the stereotypical feminine way with girls magazines being moralistic with numerous stories, photo-stories, problem and letter pages and readers true life confessions all used to convey clear messages to teenage girls about how to or how not to behave, with particular focus on finding the perfect partner.
Women’s magazines reflect the dominant social values and ideas of what is the right way women should be, confronting women with underlining guidelines which they must abide to. If they do not follow this template of appearing, feeling and behaving, they are considered failures and rejected by society and not considered ‘normal’. Women are put under pressure from society because of the media to take on the perfect female roles as mother, lover and wife.
As society changes, so does the media, the way in which ethnic minorities have been represented in films and TV programmes reflects social change. Before the war black characters in films were used as a form of light relief, sing and dancing, displayed as wide-eyed simpletons these degrading images came from white perceptions of blacks. It wasn’t until the 1970s that films began to feature predominately black casts and started to really capture black culture but still taking emphasis on violence and sex which was known as the blaxploitation films. Black males have been portrayed as sexually ravenous and predatory which tells us that the group doing the stereotyping, white males fears such as mixed relationships and desires what they are labelling the other.
“I believe very strongly that the programmes we get on screen reflect the kind of people who make them. By and large the BBC is run by white middle class males and we get that kind of television (crick, 1992, p.129).
They projected their fears onto black men. Stereotypes bounce back at us as they project our unconscious thoughts and anxieties. Finally in the 1990s there was an emergence of films starring black actors that were made by black producers. Such as spike lee’s film, do the right thing black film makers were eager to represent the many different features of black culture that was ignored in previous white dominated films.
I feel that the relationship between stereotyping and representation is a very simple one they work in correlation to each other. Stereotypes are caused by certain representations and representation of certain groups is created through certain stereotypes. The reason why these stereotypes are able to be continued is because people are not nessicerilly educated enough to recognise what is true and what is false about certain groups.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Branston & R. Stafford, (1996), The media student’s book, London, routledge
