Representation in Movies/TV

I may turn this into a series, but today's topic is the representation of men and women in various films and television shows. Last time in class, we spoke about how voices and appearances cause us to draw conclusions about characters to the point where we know exactly what a character will do within five minutes of seeing or hearing them. Stereotyping is the primary cause of this, but to leave it at simply that would be an insult to the meaning of this class, so we'll delve deeper into this by examining the different stereotypes that there are, and why exactly they are problematic.

The first voice is one that indicates some matter of shiftiness or shadiness, and that is your stereotypical black voice. I won't record audio or video on this blog, but everyone that reads this knows exactly which voice I am talking about. That voice never belongs to a police officer or a lawyer, that voice/character is always a gangbanger, someone that can help the protagonist because of his involvement with the city's seedy underbelly, or a low rank thug working for a rich kingpin/boss. This voice adds to the idea that the black male is one to be feared and tread carefully around as it adds this idea of violence and disregard for the law, which is a common stereotype that black men face today with disastrous results, like what occurred in Fergueson, Missouri.

The next voice I'll be discussing is what I like to refer to as the "Foxy Brown." That voice is always associated with black women and comes with attitude, allure, and even more attitude. The negative implications of this voice/character paint black women to be exotic with just enough allure to make someone feel that they want to "tame" her. This isn't a character that settles down, this character sleeps around and gives her opponents all types of "jive." Note, that there is nothing wrong with free love and the like, but to have it consistently associated with black women makes them appear "easy" to a lot of people who can't really handle it when it turns out to not be true. The strength of that voice also takes away the black woman's ability to be feminine unless expressing herself sexually. That voice never has some emotional disposition about any problems it just kicks ass, gets laid, and fulfills male power fantasies all over the United States.

Because I am strapped for time, I will cut this post off at three, but the last voice I will cover is the "Lazy Mexican." That voice always has a very heavy accent, pronounces its words always comically slow or ludicrously fast, and is never associated with "high" society. This character/voice is always a day laborer or someone just trying to make ends meet. They may have even joined up with the aforementioned gangbanger. This voice is harmful because it's never just attributed to a single entity, that voice/character gets copy and pasted to the entire Spanish speaking community regardless of their country of origin or bearings in life. If it isn't negative, it's just neutral, a character/voice that isn't really doing anything of value to the story, its characters, or society in general, which makes it very easy for an unassuming populous to attribute that to every person that "isn't quite black, but has an accent."

Extra Credit Blog: Representation in Video Games

A few nights ago, a co-worker told me about Star Wars: The Old Republic. He enjoyed it and, seeing as it was free, I figured I had nothing to lose by checking it out. He walked me through the different classes, how the game worked in general, and we logged on. Starting at the character creation screen, I immediately set my character's skin tone to match mine, as I commonly do when playing video games that give me the option to do so. He turned around and noticed my character (at this point, I had even made him a larger man like myself), and he asked "Why do you always make dark-skinned characters?" I had honestly never questioned it before, it was a level of immersion in the games I play for me. So I turned and answered "Because a lot of games won't let me."

Video games often suffer the same pitfalls as movies with predictable casting, racial stereotypes, and lackluster representation. I still enjoy playing, but often times, I play as the same typical white, male lead, managing the same list of lovable, yet played out stereotypes. The damsel in distress, the woman that can kick some ass, but still ends up falling for someone in the end, the fat guy that is either funny, disgusting, or creepy (never the hero), and many others show up every game. The funny thing is that no one had probably asked him why he makes all of his characters white. In his defense, he is white, but still, I don't think that has ever truly been explored. It is because, as we have stated time and time again in class, white is the normal "default." It goes deeper than that though, "healthy" (read: not fat), straight, cis, all of these things are considered normal, so when developers and designers create characters, the only character they can create without putting much creativity into the progress is the white, cis-gendered, muscular male. Creativity comes when it's time to make the side-kicks and villains, for as long as the main protagonists meats the hegemonic standards of the powers that be, everyone else can be who or whatever they want.

This brings me to the harmful stereotypes that do exist. Four critical stereotypes truly hamper the gaming community and keep video games from reaching their full potential. The first is the protagonist, the often brooding hero with a past of his own that requires suspense, action, love, and his subordinates to make it to the end of his story. It doesn't really matter how he gets there, just as long as people enjoy the ride enough to overlook the fact that you've probably played this character in about 80% of the games you've played. He's charismatic, good-looking, and so full of testosterone that holding the controller causes the player to grow a mustache. He always gets the girl, or multiple if you play the game right, and his friends are satisfied just being in the picture, sometimes willing to sacrifice themselves so that the hero can get his good ending. Next we have his damsel in distress, this poor girl is alone in this world and needs the hero to do...well, anything. She walks head first into ambushes, gets captured/kidnapped/taken over repeatedly, but her worth isn't in her ability (or lack thereof) to protect herself, its solely in her relationship to the hero. They've been fated to fall in love ever since the game's concept hit the drawing board, they just stopped developing her character there. Next there is our badass lady. Unlike the damsel, she can take care of herself. The hero normally runs into her after she just wiped the floor with ten different baddies while our hero struggled with one. But what's this? Our hero has some magic spell about him that saps all of her skill, combat expertise, and general aptitude out of her and she becomes just useful enough to stay with the adventuring party. The hero becomes stronger than her despite years of training, a very wide skill gap, inferior equipment, or what have you because he is the hero dammit! And at long last, she can drop her tough exterior now that she has found such a brave, gallant hero to protect her. Last but not least, we have the friend! This friend can be anything from a robot, to a fat guy, to an alien, who cares? This friend is nowhere near as useful as any of his traveling companions and he's only really there for one of a few reasons. Either he/she/it has been the hero's only friend in his lone wolf life, he/she/it owes the hero his/her/its life, or it just randomly showed up to turn out to be a villain at a later time.

Video games seem to all be the same, and with so many groups lacking proper representation, its no wonder the gaming community feels like its under attack. It was largely ignored as this group of guys and a girl or two that play video games in their basement while dining on unhealthy snack foods and soda, but now that it has gained respectability as an art form, it resents the additional attention being paid to its flaws. Under the guise of protecting journalistic integrity in the gaming community, GamerGate was born, but that is another post for another time. For now, unless the game actually lets you make your character, you'd better get acquainted with those characters I mentioned above, because this is one game that isn't going away for a long time.

Extra Credit Blog: Race and Feminism

Since we just ended our segment on feminist critiques and are about to start our unit on critical race theory, it seems appropriate to discuss the intersection of the two. While discussing one, it is easy to forget about what we have learned about the other. No one is exempt from this, so all we can do is hope that we can view the issue with representation of the sexes and representation of various races as non-independent issues. I unsuccessfully brought up an example a while back about Miley Cyrus and the reaction to her twerking on stage with a married Robin Thicke, who received a significantly lower amount of criticism despite his involvement in the act. The reason this was brought up is because 3rd wave feminism protected her choice to do this, but some of the words used, not necessarily by my classmates, but concerning the dance style she attempted to perform were "ghetto," low-class," "trashy," etc. If you thought about any of those words, stop and look at the broader scale. I hesitated to do so in class, but given that this is a blog that may go unread by most of my classmates, I will say it here, twerking is a stye of dance that is commonly attributed to African American women and that fact has a large amount to do with why it is viewed negatively. What is funny about this is that all of a sudden, twerking hit the mainstream with more and more women (primarily white women) attempting this dance while either defending it by changing its origins entirely or laughing it off by remarking how "ghetto" they were.
Why do I bring this up? It is a great example of what happens when feminism goes wrong. In the pursuit of gender equality, racial equality takes a back seat, or worse yet gets thrown under the bus entirely. I could segue this into a discussion on how various things in minority cultures are being commandeered and re-purposed by mainstream America, but I won't because this video actually shows it better. http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6976820/columbusing-discovering-things-for-white-people (Warning for language).

Off the record: "Good" Criminals vs "Bad" Civilians

Today in class, I had several things to say about the Boston Marathon bomber, the way he was perceived by the media, his "fan club," and the way representation works in the media, but honestly, if I had started, I don't know if I could have come off of my soapbox in a timely fashion. Jahar Tsarnaev, or the Boston Marathon bomber, received a cover story in Rolling Stone magazine and county wide sympathy despite the fact that his actions lead to the deaths, injuries, and property damage. Although his guilt is apparent, there was (and possibly still is) a group of people, whom Marcotte referred to as "mostly young women" when referring to the demographic, that believes he is innocent. Jahar Tsarnaev has been treated with the utmost care by the media, maintaining that he committed the crime, but almost appearing to draw sympathy from viewers and readers for this poor, misguided soul. Now you may be asking why exactly this would rile me up, or you already know.

Let's take Michael Brown, a teenager (not an adult as he is often referred to as in the media) that was murdered in Fergueson, Missouri. On the day he was killed, his body was left on the street for hours before it was finally picked up. He didn't get a cover story, we didn't get a sappy slide show of his life (from the media anyway), what we got was a slanderous campaign highlighting all of the mistakes and ill-advised pictures (for a black man anyway) that he had taken over the course of his life. The people of Fergueson were rightfully angry that this young man was shot dead, so how did the police respond? With tanks, tear gas, and assorted military equipment that they shouldn't have in the first place, but that's another topic for another blog post. How was that handled by the media? They focused on the looters and degenerates, not the pain felt by a community that had been mistreated for long enough. The media, run by the hegemonic powers that be, intends to keep the score where it is.

People to this day hesitate to call Jahar Tsarnaev a terrorist, but Michael Brown and so many like him were immediately branded "thugs" by the media. I'll even go so far as to say that "thug" is what people say when they truly wish they could say "nigger." Race and appearance still control so much today, so much so that a convicted terrorist could have a fan club cheering for his release despite the people he hurt, and a young man could lay dead in his coffin, murdered, while people still continue to defame his name and justify his death. I said in class that American society is "shallow," which is true because we all place too much faith on appearances, but very few of us are willing to address the elephant in the room. Black has become associated with violence and crime for as long as this country has stood, but any mention of it and we're playing the race card, or bringing race into things when we shouldn't. Silence and inaction promote the status quo, it promotes cover shots and sob stories for lighter skinned criminals, it promotes the slander and hatred for black civilians, and until the very obvious race problem in the media is addressed, things will stay the same. In the end, that's just the way they want it.