Google searching “common phrases black people use” generates more than seven million results in less than half a minute. The first link is a Yahoo Q&A where a non-black girl is writing a novel about two black high school seniors. She needs help finding some realistic, non-stereotypical phrases that “black people of a high school education would use”. In a post scriptum, she does emphasize that they are excellent students… (Nightwishfangirl)
In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America. Ever since, race has been an “issue” in this country. The issues, or rather problems, range from the early history genocide of the natives and slavery of blacks to the contemporary bullying in school because of skin color. Newspapers, Radio, TV, and now the Internet have affected these inequalities in various ways, some of them by raising awareness, others by using their biased opinions to naturalize the concept of race-inequality. Human beings have a tendency to compartmentalize whenever possible. From elementary school through workplace, to cemetery we wish to be buried in - we are categorized. Race is definitely one of the more prevalent factors for the division of people in society and media has, in many ways, made it happen.
Television, for instance, changes our perception of reality and “thence also [of] each other and [of] the world” (Williams 36). In other words, race depiction on TV highly influences the way we look at our everyday lives. Mainstream teenage programming on television is one of the instances in which Williams’ point is made very clear.
Evidence number one – Gossip Girl. Also known as, “the one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite”, the show scores an eight out of ten on the Internet Movie Database. The blindingly white show has ethnic diversity of represented by “coded brown” Vanessa (Wang and Nguyen). Seeing as Vanessa is the only representative of “colored people”, it is pretty ironic that she is the only one of the characters that works. Once again, racial stereotypes have worked their magic in dominant white programming. John D. Delmar, featured writer in the 'zine The City Review, describes Gossip Girl as depicting a New York “devoid of New Yorkers”. He means that it is lacking everything we see every day in New York – ethnic diversity (Delmar). When I think about it, even the scenes where the characters are in public places their surroundings are overwhelmingly “white”. Yes, they are from the Upper East Side where around 80% of the population is white (Kelly), yet they spend a lot of their time close to our campus and in Brooklyn not necessarily represented by their “whiteness”. However, Jewish producer Josh Schwartz disagrees claiming that the show depicts a “very romantic view of New York”. When asked why the cast is “uniformly white” he responded that he was “working off of the source material” (Solomon). A very neutral and cowardly answer if you ask me. Does that mean that the romantic view of the city is the upper class, stylish and very white community, as opposed to the real view of an ethnic and socioeconomic melting pot?
Moving on to evidence number two – 90210. “The virtual whiteout” generally known as the CW airs the spoiled Caucasian brat show, 90210 (Elber). As in Gossip Girl, the spinoff of Beverly Hills, 90210, it introduces us to the world of Bev. High students with their (read ‘their parent’s’) money, parties and sexual experimenting. Responsible for the representation of ethnic diversity in the show is black Dixon. As the show proceeds, we learn that Dixon is the child of a gambling single mother and has been adopted by this warm, caring and socioeconomically stable white family. Stereotyping much? Think about it, how often do we see a white poor child (which actually exist by the way) adopted by a middle class socioeconomic stable black couple? I believe we can all agree on that being a rarity. Instead black people are depicted as “reliant upon [the] white families” to provide with both shelter and nutrition (Coleman 79).
The shows work as telesublimes, or events that grant our wishes and "take us out of everyday life ... for a moment", in their appeal to the teenage and young adult masses (Mirzoeff 100). Today, many of us chose to watch the shows online or on our phones, which does not lessen the applicability of Mirzoeff’s aforementioned concept. We do indeed use these shows to escape and live in that immagined community promised to us (99). Nevertheless, if black people are depicted as reliant on white people, or just non-existent in an upper-class culture, whom and what are they going to identify with? Has this lead to a division in programming where whites have there shows and blacks theirs? Baudrillard carefully points to McLuhan’s argument of the medium being the massage when saying that the producers behind the medium also become the producers of reality (Baudrillard 56). The ongoing ethnic segregation in television makes the strain between the races in everyday life even bigger. We live in simulation. Why? We are not copies of other people, or of how media represents “us”. Or, are we? In this “hyperreality” of ours, the media produced realities have become blurred with the realities we live through our physical selves. In other words, "the medium and the real are … in a single nebula whose truth is indecipherable” (Baudrillard 57). If hegemonic practices of the media dominators work to blurr these "realities" – how are non-white teenagers to see themselves when they do not have Serena's "beautiful blond hair" or Naomi's trustfund? BET and channels similar to this have emerged through this underrepresentation of black people in mainstream television. The fact that this has happened has probably not helped society when it comes to racial issues, but further divided it into "us and them".
To try out society’s stereotypes for myself, I used Halloween to my advantage – a perfect opportunity to dress up as what is perceived to be the “complete opposite” of what I am. Thus, I dressed up as a convict. To make it more fun and provocative, I was a “gangsta” convict. With “thug life” tattooed on my knuckles, three tears under my eyes and “free Weezy” on my back I was ready to hit the town. Did I feel like I was pushing it with my costume? Seen from a stereotypical point of view – I was. I was portraying the stereotype of what is often understood as the character of a low-class, black man’s character, not one of a European girl in her early twenties. However, why should it not be? Why is it that every time the word "gangsta" is pronounced, we all see a "tatted" black man with jewelry and a prominent penitentiary record, while the stereotypical snob would be a blond caucasian woman with well-manicured hands driving a Bentley? Why should my hair- and skin color prevent me from being a “gangsta” or a "snob" if I wanted to? Because the medium is the massage.
This is not odd because the child is caucasian.
It is weird because he is a child and that is what he is,
prior to fitting into any other category.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. "The Implosion of Meaning in Media." Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 1994. 55-60. Simulacra and Simulation. 30 Oct. 2010 <http://files.meetup.com/328570/Simulacra_and%20Simulation.pdf>.
Delmar, John D. "Television: John D. Delmar views "Gossip Girl" and "Dirty Sexy Money"" The City Review. 18 Sept. 2007. 30 Oct. 2010 <http://www.thecityreview.com/gossipgl.html>.
Elber, Lynn. "NAACP Report Find TV Networks Lagging in Diversity." Black America Web. 18 Dec. 2008. 30 Oct. 2010 <http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/entertainment/gossip/4564>.
Gossip Girl. Prod. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Perf. Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, and Penn Badgley. 17th Street Productions, Alloy Entertainment, and CBS Paramount Network Television, 2007-. IMDb. 31 Oct. 2010 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397442/>.
"Gossip Guy." Interview by Deborah Solomon. New York Times. 14 Oct. 2007. The New York Times Company. 31 Oct. 2010 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/magazine/14wwln-q4-t.html>.
Kelly. "Is Gossip Girl “Too White”? «." Web log post. Crushable - Crushable gives you the celebrity news, style and scoop on the stuff you care about. 7 Aug. 2008. 01 Nov. 2010 <http://crushable.com/entertainment/is-gossip-girl-too-white/>.
Means Coleman, Robin R. "7 - Black Sitcom Portrayals." Gender, race, and class in media: a text-reader. By Gail Dines and Jean McMahon Humez. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003. 79-88.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. "Telesublime." An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge, 1999. 96-101.
"Nightwishfangirl" "Common phrases black people use? - Yahoo! Answers." Yahoo! Answers - Home. Jan. 2010. 01 Nov. 2010 <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091123143247AAuOKzg>.
Wang, Jen, and Diana Nguyen. "Disgrasian: Gossip Girl Goes Over to the Dark Side (Again)." Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. 11 Dec. 2008. 31 Oct. 2010 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/disgrasian/emgossip-girlem-goes-over_b_150033.html>.
Williams, Raymond. ""The Technology and Society"" Electronic Media and Technoculture. By John Thornton Caldwell. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2000. 35-50.
Okay, so I wrote out my comment and then ACCIDENTALLY DELETED IT, BOO. Basically what I said was that invisbility and visible dependency on whites is really problematic in representations of people of color, but I find [stereo?]typical portrayals of black middle class families somehow problematic as well, because they are often the only representations we see (I'm thinking Family Matters, Good Times, The Jeffersons). Having such a narrow focus in a representation of such an enormous demographic is wildly limiting, both in the stories one can tell and the identites one can assume.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, as I'm thinking about it, most of shows that come to mind are from the '70s, '80s and '90s. Is limited representation better than no representation at all? As a member of the LGBTQ community, I find myself frustrated by the lack of nuanced representations of queer characters. If a character on TV is LGBTQ, they are the effeminate gay guy from Glee, the crazy lesbian from The L Word (or even worse, The Real L Word), or a hot chick who is bi for sweeps. (If you're transgendered you don't exist on TV, unless you're Canadian and then you can be Adam from Degrassi: The Boiling Point, and you're AWESOME). It limits what people expect of you, but also provides avenues for discussion that wouldn't be otherwise available.
So, I guess limited visibility: not great, but useful in its own way. It still leaves the heavy lifting of discussion and education to the communities themselves, but at least opens avenues for those discussions to occur.
I think you bring up a lot of interesting points when you point out the status of Vanessa and Dixon. While it's true that Vanessa is the only character currently working, it's worth noting that it would also be Dan's situation had his father not married one of the rich characters. So in those terms I see it as a socio-economic "Brooklyn vs Upper East Side" thing rather than a race thing. And while it is true that there are not many characters, or extras, of different races that should represent the diversity of NYC, I can't help but reflect on my experience when in neighborhoods like uptown Manhattan and there are actually only White people for the most part. So in that sense I don't find it a necessarily false depiction of reality--but don't get me wrong the show is pretty bizarre and clearly is way off from real life.
ReplyDeleteIt's also pretty interesting to think how networks like BET work to provide programming for misrepresented audiences, which breeds further segregation. There was probably a strong need for such networks at one point, but I think media and America in general has gotten to a place where the next step is so just let programming be programming-- drawing different audiences to the same networks.
I'm curious about your Halloween costuming experiment: how did you feel in that costume? What elements made it "authentic"? I'd like to see you relate that experience back to some of the commentaries you explored earlier in this piece.
ReplyDeleteAnna Akbari