Racism In Advertisements

According to a 2007 article in the New York Times called “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad” Americans see up to 5,000 ads everyday. Many of these 5,000 advertisements stereotype minorities; sometimes we don’t even pick up on the racial stereotypes when we see them. For example one of the most racist advertisements that I just recently noticed is the Native American on the package of Red Man chewing tobacco.  Not only is the Native American shown in a stereotypical headdress, but he also has "red skin." I've seen this package at gas stations numerous times but I didn't realize the racial stereotyping until we talked about stereotypes in advertisements in class.

Companies don't just stereotype Native Americans, they stereotype pretty much every minority. Many Australians were upset about a 2010 KFC commercial that stereotypes black people as liking fried chicken. KFC apologized and removed the ad after people spoke out against it for being racist. 

It doesn't make sense to me that companies would stereotype minorities in their ads when it's inevitably going to upset a people. Citizens of the United Kingdom are apparently fed up with racist advertisements, an article from bnet.com reports that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has been established to cut down on the amount of offensive advertisements in the UK. Hopefully at some point in the future the USA will set up something like the ASA to reduce the amount of racist advertisements. 

Blog #5: Chinese Media

On Thursday when Li Shi talked to our class she sparked my interest in censorship in China. Before she came to speak to us I knew that the Chinese government censors their newspapers but I had no idea that they basically censor everything including online video games. According to a 2004 article from chinadaily.com China banned the Swedish PC game "Hearts of Iron" for "distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity" it was also accused of "distorting historical facts in describing the Fascist regimes of Japan, Germany and Italy during World War II." The Chinese Ministry of Culture screens all foreign games before they are sold in China. The Ministry also banned a Norwegian game called Project IGI2: Covert Strike because "the game was accused of intentionally blackening China and the Chinese army's image as a freelance mercenary fights in the game across three linked campaigns in the former Soviet Union, Libya and China, where he steals intelligence and conducts sabotage in China and shoots at China's soldiers while China's national flag and signs like 'China Aviation' pop up frequently."
The censorship includes movies too. Many films have been banned in China for various reasons. The most recently banned film was Avatar because the Ministry thought the theme of forced removal would incite violence against the Chinese government. In 2007, the government banned The Departed. According to an article on eonline.com "there is no chance The Departed will be shown in mainland cinemas, because [filmmakers] declined to change a plot line in describing how Beijing wanted to buy advanced military computer hardware." 
President Obama summed it up perfectly while he was holding a town hall meeting in China when he said "the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes." 

Gender in Video Games

U.S. Patent 2,455,992 was given to Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1948 for the Cathode Ray Amusement Device or as we would call it today, the first video game. Their game was a missile simulator based on missiles from World War II, unfortunately it was too expensive to even be marketable and only a few models were ever produced. Since 1948 the video game industry has taken off, 65 percent of U.S. households own at least one gaming console. 138 million Sony Playstation 2 units have been sold, the highest amount for any console so far. 

But who are the people buying all of these video games? When I used to think of a gamer I pictured a nerdy male teenager, however according to a recent study the average gamer is 32 years old and two out of every five gamers are females. It makes sense that more females are playing video games nowadays. With new games like Wii Sports, many people can play and all players are able to get off the couch and have some type of exercise. Even my mom has Wii Fit so she can stay in shape without having to go to the gym (and she has a good time playing it). 

Only time will tell if video game developers will continue to market their product toward women with games that appeal to females but if the trend of games like Wii Sports continues we may see more and more female gamers every year. 

 

Blog #3: Bamboozled and logos in sports

On Tuesday we watched Bamboozled, a movie by Spike Lee that focuses around a black television producer, Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayons) who comes up with an idea for a show called Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show, where the African American actors dress up in black face and satirize racism. Delacroix hopes that Mantan will get him fired from his job because he's sick of his racist boss. On the contrary, Mantan turns out to be a huge success amongst the American people.

Ram Samudrala from KillerMovies.com wrote a review saying, "The message the movie appears to be telling us (in the way Delacroix intended to do) is that almost all Black entertainment today is made to satisfy the White majority. The movie also directly implies that the mostly-White executives who control the Entertainment channels support Black entertainment mostly in a condescending manner, one that isn't that much different from Slave-era treatment of Blacks. These are all powerful statements to make and Spike Lee argues for their truth (quite convincingly) through this role-reversal story where economics, class, and race intermingle in a complex manner. I recommend checking Bamboozled out if you have the patience for dialogue."

            Bamboozled is a great movie, it really makes the viewers think about racism in their everyday lives. At some point in everyone’s life they see some kind of racism, they might not be the subject of racist comments but at the very least they’ve seen racist sports mascots, which is what we talked about on Thursday.

Blackhawks logo

            Professor Evans gave a lecture about racist sports mascots on Thursday. I never really realized it, but there are quite a few teams that have offensive mascots or logos. The mascots that he talked about, such as the Seminoles, Indians, Braves and Redskins never struck me as offensive until he pointed out the racist aspects of each logo. One team that he didn’t mention is the Chicago Blackhawks. The Blackhawks logo is the profile view of a Native American warrior with “traditional war paint” and tribal feathers. The Native American has dark skin and a large nose. These are all stereotypes that many Native Americans must resent.

            Since 1997 Miami of Ohio’s school mascot is the Redhawks. Their logo features a fierce looking red hawk. However, prior to 1997 their school mascot was the Redskins. Their logo was a stereotypical Native American with feathers in his hair. This change is a sign that people are becoming more conscious about racial stereotypes and are not willing to accept racism in sports. Hopefully the Washington Redskins will soon change their name and racist logo.        

Blog #2: Reaction to All in the Family

Carroll O'Connor's character Archie Bunker in the show All in the Family is without a doubt one of the most controversial TV characters of all time, and in my opinion he's one of the greatest characters too. Archie’s recliner is in the Nation Museum of American History, so I’m not the only one who thinks he’s a great character. Bunker is a classic example of an American. He’s a hard working, middle class, white male; which is what made him so popular amongst viewers.

 The show focused around the Bunker family and the majority of the humor came from Archie's bigotry. In fact, before the first episode CBS ran a disclaimer that said, "The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are.” Just as the article theorized All in the Family was meant to be a satire.

In the episode we watched in class, “Sammy’s Visit”, the Bunkers receive a visit from Sammy Davis Jr. During Davis’ time in the Bunker’s home, Archie has some racist (but funny) remarks towards Davis such as “You being colored, I know you had no choice in that. But what ever made you turn Jew?” viewers can tell that he’s ignorant to the things he says by the way Davis reacts to Archie’s comments. Davis pretty much just ignores Archie’s bigotry during the episode. Of the show Davis said; "[It] has turned the heads of the nation. It is exposing some of the ills of today's society and doing it in good taste via humor and entertainment. I just want to be part of it all."

Even though Carroll O’Conner passed away in 2001, his character’s legacy lives on. All in the Family reruns are still played on TV Land. But Archie’s spirit lives on through Eric Cartman on South Park. In an interview between Ken Paulson and the creators of South Park Trey Parker said; “We saw syndicated runs of All in the Family. And we were, you know, really, like, ‘Wow, this, this was — what happened to this stuff?’ 'Cause it just went away when everything got so PC in the '80s. And, you know, you could never have had an Archie Bunker again. It was — really, when we started talking about, ‘How could you bring an Archie Bunker back? What if you made him a little eight-year-old fat kid?’ That, that really influenced one of our characters, Cartman, in the show. It was based on Archie Bunker.” I was really surprised that I had never made the connection between Cartman and Archie. Cartman is one of my favorite characters on South Park because he says whatever’s on his mind, just like Archie. 

Blog #1: Noticing Stereotypes

We started out the class by reading "Reel Bad Arabs" the article discussed how Hollywood has stereotyped Arabs as evil oil barons, terrorists or even people who ride on flying magic carpets (thanks, Aladdin). But as I kept reading, I realized that all of the stereotypes the article was talking about were things that I had come to believe because of Hollywood and other popular media. I've never been to an Arab country, so the only way I've learned about Arab cultures is through movies and news stories on TV. 

To be honest, when I picture an Arab I think of a man wearing a turban with a beard or a woman dressed in a burqa. After reading "Reel Bad Arabs" I researched online and found out that since Iraq's liberation many young women quit wearing burqas and started dressing like Western women. The New York Times article "What Not to Wear, Baghdad-Style: Fashion Rules Begin to Change" by Timothy Williams and Abeer Mohammed says

"After the United States-led invasion in 2003, women [in Iraq] found their fashion choices largely dictated by clerics during Friday Prayer and enforced by armed militia members who would threaten, kidnap or even kill those who were provocatively dressed. That was defined for quite some time as any woman who was not wearing an abaya, the cloaklike covering meant to conceal the shape of a woman’s body completely... But now that security has improved in Baghdad, the capital, some young women have begun shaking off their abayas and started dressing more like the women they see on satellite television channels beamed to the city from around the world."

I was shocked but also glad to find out that women are now free to dress however they want in Iraq. The right to express yourself through your clothes is something that I think most Americans (including myself) take advantage of everyday. 

Reading “Reel Bad Arabs” opened my eyes to the Arab culture. It helped me separate fact from fiction. We wrapped up the week on Thursday by watching part of Crash.

Crash is one of my all time favorite movies, so needless to say I was really excited to hear that we were going to watch it in class. There really isn't a better movie that we could have watched in class that accurately portrays many racial and gender stereotypes in our society. I first saw Crash in theaters, I was drawn to see it because of the star-studded cast but the movie won Oscars for Best Motion Picture and best Original Screenplay because of the excellent, gripping story. No matter what race or gender you are, I think anyone can identify in some way with the characters in the film. If you haven’t been a victim of racial profiling or a target of racism, I’m sure you’ve seen someone who has been. If not, you could probably identify with Matt Dillon’s character. He’s a cop trying to take care of his elderly father; Dillon’s performance was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

It’s easy to pick up on the racial aspect of Crash, but it’s a little more tricky to notice the gender discrimination in the movie. I wouldn’t have noticed some of the small hints if we hadn’t read “Audience Interpretations of Crash” the night before. The DA (Brendan Fraser) yells at his wife (Sandra Bullock) and treats her with disrespect in front of his staff after they are robbed. Detective Walters (Don Cheadle) tells his mother that he’s having sex with a white woman, who is actually his Latina partner (Jennifer Esposito). Crash is a movie that one can watch several times and notice something different each time. It helps to read an article like “Audience Interpretations of Crash” to fully appreciate all of the aspects of the movie.

Overall, I think it was a good week and I’m looking forward to the rest of the class.