Stacey Wong
VM-101-01
Vinicius Navarro
13 December 2017
Gender, Race, and Class in the 21st Century
Representation refers to the standing for something or someone, the reconstruction of the social world, and being seen and included in the symbolic world. In media studies, representation is the way in which aspects of society, such as gender, race, or class are presented to audiences (BBC). Representation is important because of the understanding of the social world gained by collecting and asserting information about them. The media also serves as an essential outlet in providing mediated information about the social world. Because of this, society is able to further develop opinions and viewpoints of the social world. In this essay, I will analyze how race, gender, and class are forms of stratification that promote group-based inequalities.
In order to understand the world through the lens of social roles, that involves observation and assessment of what we can see, hear, feel, and smell. This is known as stereotyping through iconography (Dyer 357). It is the visual signs such as the color of our skin, anatomy, dress, mannerisms, and even aural signs (speech patterns). For example, the stereotype of having a “gay voice” is usually described as higher-pitched, more “feminine” sounding, and sassy. Another example of how this practices comes naturally to us, even if it is not always accurate, is guessing sexual orientation.
The problem associated with gender, race, and class in media is under representation, or the absence of a certain group. Furthermore, the complete absence would be referred to as symbolic annihilation. This is known as the idea that “[individuals] do not see people like [themselves] in the media [they] consume” (Lauzen). In addition to underrepresentation, there is also overrepresentation, which is a disproportionately high representation of a social group. For example, in the news media, there has been an excess in the number of African American suspects in crime reports versus the NYPD Data (Colleluori, Angster). They were portrayed as suspects and therefore, stereotypes were unconsciously created. Darnell Hunt, the director of the Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA told The Huffington Post that the more media that you consume, the more likely it “builds up.” He further describes this “accumulated effect” to feel normal after a long period of time. Nicole Martins of Indiana University co-wrote about television’s effect on self-esteem. This study, conducted in 2012, found that TV made subjects feel good about themselves, if those subjects were white boys. Meanwhile, girls and boys of ethnic backgrounds reported a lower self-esteem. Martins concluded that a “lack of representation could be responsible for this effect.”
Another study conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University found that the number of female protagonists featured in films in 2016 is went up 7 percent from the previous year. However, women consisted of 32 percent of all speaking roles, and decrease of 1 percent from 2015. Also, female characters were more likely to play personal-life oriented roles such as mother, whereas male characters would play work-oriented roles such as business executive (Lauzen). Sometimes gender representation is completely ignored, as in the example of the film Ghost In The Shell. This film stars Scarlett Johansson, a white woman even though it is part of a Japanese franchise. Despite its failure to making significant improvements over the years, the media has proven to bring out compelling representations of race, class, and gender. To start, the representation of women in television and film has changed throughout the years. In the 1950s, women were always the stay at home mothers, caring for their children, and making sure that the house was tidy while men worked and provided for the family. Women are more present in media than ever, they play leading roles; they can be mothers, wives, and successful businesswomen without losing their femininity. The merging of post convergence and postfeminist culture is seen in the American sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977). It was one of the first examples of the shift from the domestic family situation shows into a single woman, career-oriented program. It depicts the independent and strong nature of female characters through social changes.
Sex and the city series is another example of how influential feminism is. The main characters are a group of friends, all who are women. The bright, fashionable Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, lives from paycheck to paycheck as a newspaper columnist for the New York Observer. Samantha Jones, played by Kim Cattrall, is a confident, sexually driven character that is uncomfortable with commitment. Charlotte York, played by Kristin Davis, seems to be the most “traditional” of the group, frequently dreaming about her wedding and children’s future. Miranda Hobbes, played by Cynthia Nixon, is a cynical feminist who has harsh view on men for taking advantage of women. Jane Arthur’s “Sex and the City and Consumer Culture Remediating Postfeminist Drama” argues that there is an expectation that postfeminist drama will be about single women wanting to get married. And while the show initially markets their show as that through their characters, the show rejects the shame of being single and sexually active in opposition to the bourgeois codes that are expected out of respectable women. In addition to that, a single woman’s unhappiness is not due to the fact that they must choose their career over a man (Arthur 85). In the episode, “Secret Sex,” Carrie gathers a group of her friends together for the launch of a new publicity campaign to promote her weekly column, “Sex and the City.” In her advertisement, she wears this risqué dress that she was initially apprehensive about, but decided to wear in the shoot because she could keep it afterwards. This is the very same dress that she wore on her first date with Mr. Big and had sex. On the day of the campaign reveal, Mr. Big fails to show up to support Carrie. When the bus arrives, she ends up being in dismay when she discovered a penis drawn on next to her mouth. What was meant to be a celebratory moment, turned out to take an unexpected turn. This scene demonstrates the exploration of women’s sexuality in a postmodern consumer culture. It is a culture produced by the commodification of the individual’s reaction to the body, self, and identity as seen in Carrie’s campaign advertisement.
Big Little Lies reflects the broader ideas of how toxic masculinity forces us, as women, to live through a persona that cripples us more than it helps us. The young and poor Jane has recently moved to the city with her son Ziggy, who is a product of Jane’s sexual assault. The quirky and assertive Madeline works part time at a local theatre and finds tremendous guilt when she cheats on her husband Ed. Meanwhile, her former husband Nathan is now married to a younger, yoga instructor Bonnie, played by Zoë Kravitz. Celeste is a retired lawyer and married to Perry, who spends most of his time abusing her. Lastly, Renata Klein, played by Laura Dern, is a powerful, wealthy CEO and is outraged when her daughter, Amabella, is bullied at school. While the series shows the raw relationships between female characters, it also is about the way in how men dominate society. When the show does explore the lives of authoritative white men, it goes beyond the surface to address the harmful standards of masculinity in relation to male privileges. Whenever Celeste and Perry are alone, he criticizes her, shortly getting violent. This manipulative behavior progressively gets worse, each time resulting in Celeste being beaten. Meanwhile, characters like Ed feel entitled to the affections of women due to their good manner. Laura Mulvey’s text on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” explores the idea of the perspective presented by Hollywood narrative cinema as a widely heterosexual male one. Mulvey explores the concept of scopophilia, or the pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. Her essay also discusses the male gaze, which is the pleasure looking at women displayed as sexual objects of erotic spectacle. In one scene, Ed pays a visit to Bonnie’s yoga studio to confront her about the issues between everyone. With her class currently in session, Ed is seen peeking through the shutters in a voyeuristic manner. The camera cuts to Bonnie’s athletic body physique, and then back to Ed’s eyes. The conditions of this scene allow the spectator to experience an illusion of looking at a pleasurable object, in this case Bonnie, privately. This also connects to the feeling that Mulvey describes as a sexual domination — to watch the person without them knowing gives the observer a satisfying pleasure (Mulvey 349). The close-ups on Bonnie’s body is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator’s look. Not only does Ed find pleasure in this, the camera invites us, the spectators, to watch. When Bonnie comes out to meet Ed, he comments how he “[loves] sweat on women” while looking gazing down her body (Big Little Lies). He has come here to express his wish for everyone to be civil at an upcoming dinner gathering. But he cannot help but assert his dominant role, suggesting that Bonnie not “give Madeline any advice” on cooking. At heart, he just wants Bonnie to be sensitive to Madeline’s agitation towards Nathan’s lack of presence in her marriage but externally, it is more of a demand for Bonnie to listen to him. Before he leaves the studio, he is seen sneaking a glance at a passing woman. No one around is able to catch these questionable moments, except for the audience. That reinforces the idea that as long as “good” guys continue to do what they are doing, it does not matter what kind of behavior they exhibit towards women. Even Madeline is blind to this, perhaps because Ed does not cheat, hit, or abuse women like Perry does. This idea seems to be drawn from this sense of patriarchy, in which unequal power relations seem innate and natural. The psychoanalytic background that is seen in the show is relevant to the pleasure offered in traditional narrative film and television. Big Little Lies’ critique of men is focused on power in a way that illustrations of female objectification on television fail to do.
Providing a voice to minorities allows everyone to have their their standardized beliefs challenged in a positive way. Despite the importance of representation in media, it continues to be an issue in media today. The Netflix series Master of None starring Aziz Ansari is an American comedy television series revolved around the main protagonist, Dev Shaw. In the episode "Indians on TV," Dev (Ansari) finds himself encountering racism as an aspiring actor in New York. The episode begins with a flashback of a younger Dev watching “Indians” on television and film. One the scenes he watched growing up was from the film Short Circuit 2, and was actually played by white actor Fisher Stevens. In the present day, Dev is auditioning for an unnamed cab driver, to which the casting director requests him to do an Indian accent. He refuses to do so, and never gets a call back for the role. Later into the episode, Dev and his friend Ravi, who is also Indian, audition for the same television show. After the audition, Dev is accidentally sent an email chain from the casting team saying how both Dev and Ravi were great, “but there can’t be two.” When the director realizes his mistake, he asks Dev to meet with him. He is told that if a show was to feature two Indian guys, then everybody would think it is an Indian show to which he responds "but you'd never say that about a show with two white people" (Master of None). To connect this to what the reading pointed out, it's that the dominant order is sustained by marginalizing the "other." Stereotyping largely affects how the public react to social influences on a day to day basis. And in the digital world that we live in now, we see people posting about these ideas that they came to believe over certain groups of people. In Richard Dyer’s “Stereotyping,” he argues that stereotypes come from the “understanding” we encounter from what other people us. And although we may not necessarily trust this, most of our knowledge over people of certain groups are based on “the evidence in front of us” (Dyer 354). Relating this back to stereotyping through iconography, what they do and how they do it, what they say and how they say it, where they live and so on contribute to these false notions over a person or thing. Indians have been synonymous to the stereotypes of working at convenience stores, Dunkin Donuts, or gas stations. These are all jobs that are categorized as entry level, or requiring little to no education.
Julie Bettie’s “Roseanne and the Changing Face of Working-Class Iconography” argues that media denies the working-class experience, painting the American middle class as ideal. Characters of blue-collar professions are rarely portrayed on television, while white-collar characters are overrepresented. By saturating television with characters who work as business professionals, managers, and other executive positions, it is telling society that this is the norm. However, Master of None’s defies this idea of the ideal class. “New York, I Love You” is the only episode where the focus is not entirely on Dev, but rather on three strangers that are also people of color. The first character that we have is Ed, a doorman at a luxury apartment. He stops by the local bodega, where a woman named Maya works as a cashier. After her shift, she is shopping around with her boyfriend, who is also deaf. Their day ends up turning into a fight in the middle of the store about their lackluster sex life. The focus then shifts to a taxi driver by the name of Samuel. That same night, Samuel and his friends go to a club but, with a change of plans, end up watching Death Castle with everyone else including Ed, the deaf couple, and Dev and his friends. This episode does an interesting approach to depicting people that we see in our daily lives. They do not merely serve as background characters, but instead. Master of None sheds a light on characters are not normally depicted in TV and film. In television, we usually see either middle class or upper class white families in shoes such as Modern Family, .. Master Of None captures New York in unconventional ways, rejecting the romanticized renderings of the city and instead, offering an authentic look into the lives of ordinary people.
Black men have been subjected to a history of violence and belittlement, and for the most part, associated with negative stereotypes. Moonlight (2016) explores the difficulties that the main character encounters with his sexuality and identity as a lower class, black male. We take a look at the three chapters of his life: as Little, constantly picked on for being gay while struggling to develop a relationship with his drug addicted mother: As a teenager, he known by Chiron, still suffering from bullying by the antagonist Terrel. In his chapter has Black, he becomes unrecognizable as a more muscular, masculine drug dealer. It challenges stereotypes of black masculinity while also acknowledging that these stereotypes exist. Moonlight became the first film with an all black cast to win the Oscar for Best Picture (cite).
Works Cited
http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-17_Boxed_In_Report.pdf
https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2015/03/23/report-new-york-city-television-stations-contin/202553
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-on-screen-representation-matters_us_58aeae96e4b01406012fe49d
Arthurs, Jane. “Sex and the City and Consumer Culture: Remediating Postfeminist Drama.”
Feminist Media Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, Jan. 2003, pp. 83–98.,
doi:10.1080/14680770303794.
Dyer, Richard. “Stereotyping.” Gays and Film, pp. 27-39. New York: Zoetrope, 1984. Print
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Media and Cultural Studies:
Keyworks, Blackwell, 2010, pp. 342–352. Web. 23 Nov. 2017.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/z9fx39q/revision