Progress in the Media

Something that has been brought up several times is racism in the media. We discussed how if there is a character on the T.V. of a minority group, they more than likely portray their stereotype. In fact, I think we only came up with about two examples that conveyed the contrary. We compared retro television shows from the past and shows that are playing now and came up with the conclusion that they tend to have the same idea: that minorities would typically play a role depicting their stereotype to some degree while the number of minorities we see on the screen has increased over time. This brought up a lot of questions in my head. What I was left wondering was the process that this occurs. So a minority is selected for to play a character in a show and they would be aware that they would be portrayed as a minority. However, is this portrayal better than no portrayal at all? The way I see it is that that those minority actors must agree to this role, thus putting their ethnicity out there in the mainstream culture. It is not as if we are shocked if we see more than one color on our T.V. screens as people most likely were in the 50’s and 60’s. What I have noticed a lot in television today is that while a show would acknowledge a particular stereotype and most likely poke fun at it, the minority character doesn’t necessarily embody that stereotype or would say something to combat it. Perhaps the mere existence of stereotypes in television can be used as tools for minorities to gain more progress in both the media and society as whole.

Meredith Cotter - Post #4