writing

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Mommy, Where Do

Stereotypes Come

From? On December 22, 1941, two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Time magazine ran an article with the headline “How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs.” There were annotated photographs to help readers identify characteristics that would distinguish, for instance, friendly Chinese from the Japanese, America’s enemies during World War II. The magazine offered the following rules of thumb, although it admitted that they were “not always reliable”:

Some Chinese are tall (average: 5 ft. 5 in.). Virtually all Japanese are short (average: 5 ft. 2-½ in.).

Japanese are likely to be stockier and broader- hipped than short Chinese.

Japanese—except for wrestlers—are seldom fat; they often dry up and grow lean as they age. The Chinese often put on weight, particularly if they are prosperous (in China, with its frequent famines, being fat is esteemed as a sign of being a solid citizen).

Chinese, not as hairy as Japanese, seldom grow an impressive mustache.

Most Chinese avoid horn-rimmed spectacles.

Although both have the typical epicanthic fold of the upper eyelid (which makes them look almond- eyed), Japanese eyes are usually set closer together.

Those who know them best often rely on facial expression to tell them apart: the Chinese expression is likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese more positive, dogmatic, arrogant.

How can Gramsci’s concept of hegemony help us understand this piece from Time? Does this article tell us more about the physical differences between Japanese and Chinese, or about the state of mind of the American public at the time? What values are reflected and projected? Are the descriptors empirical (based on fact) or normative (based on opinion)? This is what racism looks like on paper, and it clearly illustrates America’s fear and hatred of the Japanese at that time.

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THE RACE AND

GENDER POLITICS OF MAKING

OUT

“When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.’’

— ACTRESS MAE WEST

The movie industry’s Production Code (1930) enumerated three “general principles”:

1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin. 2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. 3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Specific restrictions were spelled out as “particular applications” of these principles:

Nudity and suggestive dances were prohibited.

The ridicule of religion was forbidden, and ministers of religion were not to be represented as comic characters or villains.

The depiction of illegal drug use was forbidden, as well as the use of liquor, “when not required by the plot or for proper characterization.”

Methods of crime (e.g., safecracking, arson, smuggling) were not to be explicitly presented.

References to “sex perversion” (such as homosexuality) and venereal disease were forbidden, as were depictions of childbirth.

The language section banned various words and phrases considered to be offensive.

Murder scenes had to be filmed in a way that would not inspire imitation in real life, and brutal killings

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could not be shown in detail. “Revenge in modern times” was not to be justified.

The sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld. “Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.” Adultery and illicit sex, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified; they were never to be presented as an attractive option.

Portrayals of interracial relationships were forbidden.

“Scenes of passion” were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot. “Excessive and lustful kissing” was to be avoided, along with any other physical interaction that might “stimulate the lower and baser element.”

The flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, as were the people and history of other nations.

“Vulgarity,” defined as “low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects,” must be treated “subject to the dictates of good taste.” Capital punishment, “third-degree methods,” cruelty to children and animals, prostitution, and surgical operations were to be depicted with similar sensitivity and discretion.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 1950s hit television

comedy / Love Lucy. Even though their characters were

married, they still did not share a bed.

“Rules were made to be broken,” the old saying goes, and the film industry did its best to prove the maxim true. Filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock pushed the boundaries of a ten-second time limit for kisses by filming a lip-lock for the maximum allotted time, panning away, and then returning to the couple still passionately embracing. Rules such as this were slow to change, but not as slow as others. For one thing, you can be sure that the people kissing were a man and a woman, and they were both white. In fact, in the beginning they would have been married, too, but that ideology—the sanctity of marriage—fell away more quickly on the silver screen than did notions about racial and gender hierarchies and stereotypes. The first on-

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Racism in the Media The media continue to reflect and perpetuate racist ideologies, even if such examples are not usually as blatant as the 1941 article in Time. Sometimes the racism is obvious, and these instances present us with the opportunity to discuss racism in the media. In June 1994 the front cover of both Time and Newsweek showed the police mug shot of former NFL star O. J. Simpson, who had been arrested for allegedly killing his ex-wife and her friend. Time was accused of darkening its image, perhaps implying that those with darker skin are more dangerous, criminal, and evil. In a case whose trial months later would prove to be a racially charged event —Simpson’s ex-wife was white, and the police detective overseeing the case had a long history of racial prejudice —the media added fuel to the fire. What purpose was served by darkening Simpson’s image? Did the stir surrounding these photos affect the eventual outcome of the trial? Again, we can’t state with certainty how one questionable instance in the media affects society, but we can look at the continued negative portrayals of minorities and hypothesize about the cumulative effects of those images.

screen interracial kiss, between Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, didn’t occur until 1967, the same year the US Supreme Court ruled that state laws preventing interracial marriage were unconstitutional. And in a 1968 episode of Star Trek, William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols boldly ventured where no one had gone before with the first black-white lip-lock televised in the United States. The first homosexual kiss between two women hit prime time in 1991 (on the TV show LA. Law, which received backlash from advertisers), while the first same-sex kiss between two men did not happen until 2001 on Will and Grace. Change in the media takes time; as society’s ideologies about what constitutes good and bad love change, the media will reflect those changes by portraying more positive images of people loving whomever they choose.

Tituss Burgess and Mike Carlsen portray a gay couple on

Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

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The controversial O.

J. Simpson arrest

photo. Time

magazine was

accused of

darkening his

features for its

cover.

In early September 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina had devastated the areas surrounding the Mississippi River basin, two photos quickly began to circulate on the internet amid discussion of racism and the role it played in the reaction (or inadequate government response) to the catastrophe. The first photo, published by the Associated Press, showed a young African American wading through chest-high water toting groceries; the caption proclaimed that the man had just been “looting a grocery store.” The second pictured a white couple doing the same thing; the caption stated that the two were photographed “after finding bread and soda at a local grocery store” (Ralli, 2005). The conclusion these images and their captions conveyed was this: White looters, in their struggle to survive the catastrophe, were not committing a crime, whereas blacks resorting to the same behavior were. Indeed, much of the coverage in the wake of Katrina focused on the looting, vandalism, and other criminal acts that took place. What critics have pointed out, however, is that these people did what most of us would logically do—try to obtain food and water for our suffering families in the absence of competent government assistance and disaster relief. Because the city of New Orleans, which received the majority of the media attention, was 78 percent nonwhite, the victims were frequently portrayed as criminals.

The photo above, published by the Associated Press,

shows a young African American wading through chest-

high water toting groceries; the caption proclaimed that

the man had just been “looting a grocery store.” The

photo on the right pictures a white couple doing the

same thing; the caption stated that the two were

photographed “after finding bread and soda at a local

grocery store.”

The coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which was exceptional in the amount of criticism that was publicly levied against such racially charged portrayals (unlike, for example, the December 1941 Time piece), supports the main thesis of Barry Glassner’s The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of theWrong Things (1999).

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Glassner asserts that, as a culture, we grossly exaggerate the frequency of rarely occurring events, often through amplification of a single instance through media repetition. We tend to divert or redirect our attention from political, economic, and cultural issues that are either taboo or simply too difficult to talk about toward sensational, but rare, events like school shootings and terrorist attacks. The media are the main vehicles through which this process occurs. In the case of Katrina, we blame the victims, the poorest of the poor, for not leaving the city, rather than ask how the government could leave its own citizens stranded like refugees without access to life’s basic necessities.

Sexism in the Media A frequent critique of the media centers on the representation of women. American media in particular, and Western media more generally, are charged with glamorizing and perpetuating unrealistic ideals of feminine beauty. Some argue that repetitive bombardment by these images decreases girls’ self- esteem and contributes to eating disorders. Women’s magazines have been heavily criticized, although some researchers (such as Angela McRobbie from the United Kingdom) have taken care to show that women who are active, critical readers still enjoy reading women’s magazines. However, as the Canadian sociologist Dawn Currie (1999) points out, although girls can choose which magazines, if any, to read and how to critically read them, they can’t control the images available to them in those and other texts. Another focus of feminist media critiques has been

images of violence against women. Jean Kilbourne has become one of the most popular lecturers at college and university campuses across America. In 1979 she released a film titled Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women, in which she examines the ways in which women are maimed, sliced, raped, and otherwise deformed in advertising images. One classic example is a photo that shows the image of a woman’s body in a garbage can, with only her legs and a fantastic pair of high heels on her feet visible. The message is clear: These shoes are, literally, to die for. Kilbourne’s point is clear, too: Such images help sustain a kind of symbolic violence against women. In this critique, advertising does not just reflect the underlying culture that produced it but also creates desires and narratives that enter women’s (and men’s) lives with causal force. Of course, there’s always room for innovation. Some

girls (with the help of their parents) have responded by creating their own magazines that focus on topics other than makeup, clothing, and boys, as mainstream teenage magazines do. For example, New MoonGirls is written and edited by girls aged 8 to 13 and contains no advertisements. Likewise, magazines exist for adult women that have more pro-woman messages; Ms. magazine was founded in 1971 during the feminist movement to give voice to women and explore women’s issues. Because such magazines don’t accept advertising from huge makeup companies and designer fashion houses, however, they are often less economically viable

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A 2005 billboard

from Dove’s Real

Beauty advertising

campaign, featuring

women who are not

professional

models.

than mainstream women’s magazines, which carry ads on as many as 50 percent of their pages. Bitch magazine (“It’s a noun; it’s a verb; it’s a magazine”), which has been around since 1996, is a self-declared feminist response to pop culture. It is supported by advertisers but is a not-for-profit publication. Some advertisers have

responded to feminist critiques of the media with new approaches. In 2005 Dove, a manufacturer of skin-care products, launched a new series of ads backed by a social awareness program called the Campaign for Real Beauty. Instead of models, the ads featured “real” women complete with freckles, frizzy hair, wrinkles, and cellulite. The images were intentionally meant to offer a contrast to the images we’re accustomed to seeing. And, as Dove’s advertisers have said, “firming the thighs of a size 2 supermodel is no challenge” (Triester, 2005). The latest version of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign shows side-by- side sketches of the same woman as drawn by a sketch artist. The first image is drawn based on the woman’s description of herself and is always less attractive than the second image, which is drawn based on someone else’s description of the woman, revealing women’s inner negative body images. But can calling attention to the way women describe themselves change this inner dialogue? Or will it simply point out another unattractive flaw—low self-esteem? On the one hand, a pessimist might point out that

these “real beauty” ads use nontraditional models merely as a way to be novel; typical models are all so uniformly perfect, they’ve become boring. Also, Dove isn’t telling women that they’re beautiful whether or not they have dimpled thighs and therefore they don’t need firming lotion. Rather, the manufacturer’s message is that it’s okay to need firming lotion because you’re not the only one who does. Furthermore, the women in the campaign are never overweight, yet 70.7 percent of adult Americans are overweight or obese (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). An optimist, on the other hand, might view this ad campaign as Dove’s effort to be socially responsible and to provide alternative images of beauty that aren’t based on the stick-thin, perfect bone structure, wrinkle-free, supermodel ideal. Because you’re an active, critical reader, and not a passive receptor of the media, I’ll let you decide.