How useful is the concept of stereotypes for the analysis of media representation?

Even though we consider stereotypes to be negative, as a counterintuitive human tendency to reduce individuals and entire cultures into one sided and often slanderous visual clichs; they are the rigid templates with which we confront reality. The world we live in is too big and complex for us to absorb and comprehend all the nuances emitted by the various experiences we live through and although we are expected to live in this world we have to reconstruct it with these habitual molds which assist in deciphering the vast multitude of individual experiences we face in this heterogeneous world we live in. Hence, stereotypes are the fortress of our tradition, and behind its defenses we can continue to feel ourselves safe in the position we occupy.

This process of defining people according to simplistic categories dates back to ancient times; this can be seen in myths, legends and historic records in which people have been identified as easily recognizable attributes such as being good, evil or cunning. The word stereotype had been derived from the printing process by which molds were made from full pages of handset types; the printing process coincidentally embodies a facet of the relationship between media and stereotypes- the central role played by media representations in creating stereotypes through its capacity to generate mass impression about issues and people.

Media representation takes many forms. We are inundated by the representation of people, events and ideas every day; while some might seem realistic, we must bear in mind that they are just constructions. What we see on our Television screens is an interpretation of reality, a constructed image which has been created through the process of selection, omission and construction. Even a photograph, which is considered to be the most basic form of representation, is not a perfect image of reality and goes through the same process of image construction where the photographer would filter out certain objects from the image and accommodate the ones that he intends to represent.

Stereotypes have a profound influence on what is filtered out and what is focused on in a media representation. The framework people use to see the world and make sense of it vary significantly with differences in cultural and racial context, social class, life experiences and this difference has had an important influenced on media representation. This is because, for instance, major mass media outlets in western countries represent the global frameworks through white, middle class contexts because most reporters are white and middle class and subsequently their interpretations of reality would be influenced by the prefixed visual clichs they see the world through. Therefore this has resulted in the focus of media representation on the attitudes and perceptions of the narrow cluster of reality reporters rather than on the actual conditions that led up to the event or the situational contingencies that scaffolded it. For instance, in the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina, the recurring question asked by most of the reporters, with a considerable amount of skepticism, was that why most of the residents of Katrina choose to stay, even though the U.S government alerted the community of the impending hurricane- A question which was forged as a result of the predominant view of blacks being foolhardy and unable to act with prudence. This inadvertently created in the minds of the audience a feeling that it was the foolish and adamant nature of the residents of Katrina which led to their demise, which deprived the victims of the sympathy and ultimately aid from a majority of their fellow nationals. But

this reason was far from the ground reality, the residents of Katrina belonged to one of the lowest income groups of the American society, a majority of the members of this community lived from paycheck to paycheck and neither did have the resources to evacuate nor the ability to bear the risk of losing their belongings due to theft or damage. The residents of Katrina who stayed back did not make rash or poor choices; in fact they had no choice or had an array of sub optimal alternative to choose from. Another notable instance of this was when media representers generalized Islamic

fundamentalists as members of radical Islamic terrorist groups. This misinterpretation has blown up on a massive scale, transcending borders and resulting in the creation of laws and security measures which many fundamentalists see as an appropriation of their religious sovereignty. Islamic fundamentalists are motivated by sincere and deeply held religious values, firmly rooted in their faiths; the violence that the media associates with Islamic fundamentalists is perpetrated by a small minority of radical fundamentalists who have hijacked the religion to further their own political and violent ends. These followers dont necessarily need to be bearded south Asian men as per media generalizations; as we have seen in the recent bombing in Boston, even non south Asians are parts of these groups. The above mentioned stereotypes have provided people as well as institutions with narratives, stories that encouraged them, without reflection to see certain things, certain people in predetermined ways, regardless of countervailing evidence. Another way in which stereotypes influence the way we reality is represented could be viewed as a dimension of the Reinforcement Theory by Joseph Klapper. Media Representers often attempt to conform their representations into generally accepted notions held by the audience. For instance telecasters, film directors and interviewers make changes to camera, lighting, editing, music and sound to better complement the ideological codes that the audience holds of the event, scenario or person being represented. A notable example is how, unlike theatrical directors who relied on talented actors, early moviemakers selected characters on the basis of physical appearance, scouring the streets for easily identifiable social types. By the 1920s, Hollywood typecasting had become

a widely used practice where directors would caste the same actor for similar roles in different movies. Hence, stereotypes are the prevailing tools by which reality is made more digestible by eliminating the subtleties, complications and confusions of social realities. But there has been a shift in the use of our dependence on stereotypes to analyze media representation especially in films wherein directors construct characters, at the level of dress performance, etc. as a stereotype but is deliberately given a narrative function that is not implicit in the stereotypes, thus leaving the audience questioning the assumption signaled by the stereotypical iconography.

The above mentioned influences of stereotypes represented the significance of stereotypes in media representations from the point closest to reality- where the representation is being made from. As an audience; the functions of stereotypes as an ordering process, a shortcut and the expression of values are useful in analyzing media representations. Consumers are exposed to a glut of data from the world and to make sense of it all we have the ability to do what some call a cognitive marvel and others an impairment, depriving us of creativity- the ability to generalize and make pattern. We make sense of all this information through generalities, typifications and patternings. The information used to interpret the world around us might not be complete but it is definitely not untrue, only not absolute. A few problems with this dimension of stereotypes is that people fail to recognize the partiality and limitations of stereotypes and rather than using it as a rough guideline to make order of the chaotic world they live in, they believe in the absoluteness and certainty of any particular order and use this as their base for making judgments and rigid perceptions. This problem can be traced back to an early 90s case Louis Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyard, where Louis, who was one of the 5% of the JSI shipyards workforce who were women, filed a case against the company because of the discriminatory and derogatory attitude of the male workers and the management. The reason for this hostility towards women was because the dock workers considered the docks and the construction work to be a part of the male

sphere, the women workers were seen as redundant, out of place, outnumbered and powerless. During the trial one of the workers explicitly cried out- theres nothing worse than having to work around women; women are only fit company for something that howls. Another drawback of this function of stereotypes is that the one with power is usually the one with the highest chance of imposing his version of reality. Another attribute of stereotypes which helps in analyzing media representation is its simple, striking, easily graspable form of representation- like a shortcut. Another important role played by stereotypes is in making visible the invisible so that there is no danger of it creeping up on us unawares.

The significance of stereotypes can be viewed as a cycle. We are caught within a mutual reinforcement system played by the society and media representations; within which the audience acquires these rigid definitions of aspects of reality from their society and the media representations they are exposed to, the representations they view are usually made to conform to the commonly accepted social definitions on various elements of reality or through the perspective of the reporters, this information viewed by the audience is either absorbed through stereotypes which people align between their eyes and the world they believe they were seeing or helps in the formation of new stereotypes or provides a fresh perspective on previously generalized subjects. This cycle is useful in the analysis of media in its absolute sense, but in order to truly benefit from them we must attempt to break away from the relationship we share with stereotypes which go along the lines of this famous saying by Marshal McLuhan- We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish. We must always be aware of the omnipresence of stereotypes- like the water around fish.

-Roshan Menon (12129365D)

References Fiske, J. (1987). Television Culture. : TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Markus, H. R. (2005). Race and Representation Ewen, E. & Ewen, S., Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality Dyer, R., The Role of Stereotypes Hall, S. (1997). Representation & the Media. : Media Education Foundation Campbell, J. J. (2009). Saussure, Locke and Lacan: Semiotics, Semiology and the Evolving Linguistic Community Lippman, W. (1921). Public Opinion Berger, P. & Luckmann, T. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality.London: Penguin. Fiske, S. T., Controlling Other People: The Impact on Stereotypes