Blog 4: How are the Elderly Represented in the Media?

According to a U.S. News article I read, people of retiring age (65+) make up over 13% of America's population today. I think the biggest problem with their portrayal in the media is that the media does not reflect this statistic. Elderly are almost completely shunned from many forms of media. I rarely see older generations regularly in movies, shows, commercials, etc. This severe underrepresentation of the elderly in the media is an issue because it does not reflect the diversity of age spans in America and in the world.

When the elderly are represented in the media, they are almost always shown with one of a few common stereotypes of the elderly. These include: weak, immobile, of extreme income groups (very poor, very rich), miserable, grumpy, in nursing homes, or the butt of a joke. A quote featured in newsworks.org explains how the media portrays the elderly:
"In the media, aging is about being in a nursing home or conversely we will see it as living 'til 100 and still being able to run a marathon and in between those two poles is where most people will actually live."
-- Bruce Chernoff, president and CEO of the SCAN Foundation

Almost every instance I can think of an elderly person in the media involves one of these stereotypes.

In this clip from the TV show, King of Queens, Arthur, the elderly character, is shown not knowing what is going on at all and can't understand what people are trying to say when they talk to him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMiJzne3Wmk&feature=related

This popular Taco Bell commercial from this year's Super Bowl features elderly people breaking out of a nursing home and doing rebellious things. People find it funny because these are things that young people do that elderly individuals do not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2yBevCWbRA

Almost every instance of a commercial, TV show, ad, or movie I can think of or looked up features an elderly person in one of the listed stereotypes. This is an extremely negative portrayal for people our culture has been taught to have a high level of respect for. And, perhaps the biggest problem with the elderly in the media, is the severe lack of representation they are given which is extremely misleading.

Is the Media Homophobic? Presentations of Gays and Lesbians in the Media

While much progress has been made in recent years of the presentation of gays and lesbians in the media, the way they are most often represented is problematic. Thirty years ago, gays and lesbians were severely underpresented, or even not shown in the media at all. Today, they are no longer shunned from the media and kept in secrecy. We now see gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders shown often in every form of media. In my opinion, they are often shown in a positive light: successful, wealthy, attractive, employed, and charming. The following pictures are from popular TV shows in which gays and lesbians are shown positively:

Eric: Gossip Girl

Emily: Pretty Little Liars

Sophia: Orange is the New Black

Leslie: Chicago Fire

With all of this in consideration, LGBT community is a minority, and with every minority comes stereotyping. These stereotypes, wrong and demeaning as they may be, are also often shown in the media that gays and lesbians appear in. Lesbians are often shown as either masculine females, or extremely hyper-feminine, and often portrayed to have an interest in heterosexual sex. Examples of this are: both Arizona and Callie from Grey's Anatomy and Carol from Friends.
Gay stereotypes shown in the media are no better. Gay men are often shown as feminine and extremely flambuoyant. They are often the butt of the joke. This is shown in the movie Mean Girls, in which one of the main characters, Damien (described in the infamous quote as "too gay to function"), is shown always wearing a pink shirt, caring excessively about his appearance, and using words such as "fierce", "fabulous", and "own it" in a feminine voice. His only friends are girls and he is shown throughout the whole movie without a love interest. He is pictured below:

 

 

In conclusion, while gays and lesbians are misrepresented in the media, the media is making slow but sure progress in their representation. Slowly, stereotypes are being broken down. The stereotypes that are shown that are mentioned above, though, are wrong and demeaning to the LGBT community, which is why I commend people behind the media that are beginning to show gays and lesbians in a positive light. The video below features many more examples of my points proven above:

Birth of a Nation Extra Credit Response

At first, I was not necessarily struck by the film, "Birth of a Nation." I couldn't really understand what made the film so controversial because it seemed to depict the time period effectively. This led me to look further into this film. I watched YouTube clips of some of the controversial scenes in the movie which I did not really notice how controversial they were until I paid close attention to them. I also did a bit of research into the history of the time period.

After re-watching a few scenes and doing research, I reflected back on "Birth of a Nation" and realized just how shocking this movie was. It portrays African Americans as complete savages. They are shown wearing torn up and worn clothes, sloppily eating scraps of whatever food they can find, stealing things they wanted, and often visibly coveting the white women in the movie especially when the law was passed that legalized interracial marriage. It was even shown later in the film that the only solution to America's problems, in the opinion of a white man, was to deport all of the African Americans back to Africa. In reality, all the African Americans wanted at the time was their freedom, and many at the time respectfully worked hard to gain it.

The K.K.K. scene was the most appalling scene in my mind. It gives praise to the members who did awful things to a man who was wrongly accused of killing a white woman after not having gotten a proper trial for the charges against him. The writer of "Birth of a Nation"  praised these awful actions of the K.K.K. when they delivered the corpse of the black man to the lieutenant's door.

All of the white people in the movie (with the exception of the white people in the raid) were portrayed as incredibly wealthy, polite, rule-following, and noble individuals. There were no exceptions to this in the film, as there were no exceptions showing the African Americans in the film as anything but slaves or savages. Maybe this was accurate for a handful of families during this time, but this film shows such a lack of diversity since this was not how everyone living in the south lived during this time.

The heroes of "Birth of a Nation" were made to be the rich white southern men who kept slaves and fought against the freeing of slaves. This film was just incredibly biased and made completely from the writer's closed-minded point of view. There were obviously many other aspects to the people of the time period in this film that could have been brought in the film to make it more dynamic and not so one-sided.

After analyzing this film, I attempted to figure out what it was that made this film so successful. Of course, one of the aspects to its success was the simple fact that it was so controversial. It also shows how people in the south at the time felt about the integration of America. Despite all of this, the more research I did, the more I realized how advanced this film was for its time. "Birth of a Nation" was an absolute box office hit across the country because of how well the director shows the actor's emotions in the film. It was considered to have phenomenal acting, aesthetics, and special effects.

Blog 2: Is there Gender Bias in the Media?

From the earliest stages of the media, stereotypes of men and women have been shown to extremes. Men are shown to be strong providers for their family and women are shown to be delicate supporters. Although that might've been somewhat true many decades ago, we all know that this has drastically changed in recent years. Women are rarely stay-at-home moms, and family dynamics have also changed just as much. What used to be a typical American family consisted of a married man and woman and about 2-3 children. Today, there is no "typical" American family. The reality is that many, if not the majority, of families are separated. It is just as common to have a divorced couple splitting time with their children as it is to have a married couple with children. Because family dynamics have changed so much, there are not many conventional gender differences anymore. There are no longer "norms" for women and men. Yet, the media still portrays men and women to be this way for the most part. There are a few exceptions, for example, the show Modern Family portrays three different unconventional families, much like how family dynamics are today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5uuMr1YEyE

Here is an example of gender bias in early media where women are portrayed to be weak, delicate, and dependent on men.

While this stereotype has faded a bit in today's media, a more shocking one has appeared. The media today portrays women as sexual objects. This is seen not only in visual media, but is also completely blown out of proportion in so many different types of music. For example, the song "Wildflower" by Ghostface Killah is absolutely horrific that I will post the link but do not even wish to type the lyrics out. They are located at the bottom of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPLOI0PFoF8

 The sad part is that is was so easy to think of a degrading song to use as an example. They are everywhere and even on the radio stations that I grew up listening to. You can find women being called b****es and other names in so many songs, especially rap music. Almost any song by Akon, Lil Wayne, or other rappers includes horrifically degrading lyrics.

Women are also portrayed as sexual objects in advertising. Since advertising is absolutely everywhere, men expect women to look like the models in the ads do in real life. The reality is that the models in these ads are so photoshopped, they can't even live up to the standards society has set for them.

There are a few companies today trying to change this issue. For example, the following Dove and Aerie campaigns have been met with such positive feedback that I predict many more companies will start to follow their lead. They feature average-sized women and little-to-no photoshopping. I would love to see more of this in the media so that the images we see today will not be so harmful to men and women.

 

 

"How is the Other Presented in the Media?" How Asians are Presented in the Media

Asians make up about 4.2% of America's population and are gaining more and more representation in every form of media. Yet, it seems that they are presented in extremely similar ways each time they are presented. The prominent Asian stereotypes that come to mind are the "genius", the Jackie Chan-like kung fu fighter, the dangerous and ruthless killer, and the seductive Asian woman.

In the popular TV series, Dexter, one of the main characters (Masuka) is an Asian lab analyst. He is portrayed as being an incredibly smart man with no social skills because of this fact. I think that the show almost overplays this stereotype and it could be considered offensive considering he is the only Asian American on the show. He is even made fun of on the show for being a "typical Asian genius"

Often Asians are presented as ruthless killers in the media. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, this stereotype became extremely prominent in American mass media. For example, in the movie Lethal Weapon 4 (see video), Jet Li is an Asian character involved in illegal labor smuggling, drug dealing, assigned killings, and other crimes. This type of character is presented everywhere in the media, often to increase the sensationalism and entertainment value of the film. This is something Americans have been so used to seeing that someone would think twice if the Asian character in the media were presented as the hero of the plot.

The final major way Asians are presented in the media is the seductive Asian woman. We saw an example in class of the two Siamese cats in the movie Lady and the Tramp with thick accents and who were seductively prancing around and singing. This is just in children's media. The issue gets much worse in other media outlets. This "China Doll" stereotype of Asian women has no point, yet often for some reason Asian women are often shown as prostitutes who are eager to please rich white males. This is shown in the movie "Year of the Dragon" in which the Asian female character has sexual relations with someone who was initially racist and spoke to her about his hatred of the Chinese. 

The majority of Asian Americans, who only make up a small percentage of the American population, live near the coasts, therefore most American's view of Asians are from what they see in the media. Asians are completely misrepresented, as are many minorities, and this was possibly a product of the attack on Pearl Harbor. While not all of these stereotypes are negative, it is still wrong to completely generalize Asians into these stereotypes.