Blog 1 - Intro to Television and film by Thompson and Mittell

Paul Dudson

TV representations: social identity and cultural politics

We live in a world where unfortunately people are stereotyped. Everyone has done it. I often get the jokes about drinking tea and crumpets and speaking as though I am Dick Van Dyke from the film, Mary Poppins. For starters I hate tea and I think the last time I ate crumpets was probably five years ago. I also may not talk with a posh accent like Hugh Grant or Colin Firth, but I am not a cockney Londoner.

I wanted to write about this section of the book “How to watch television” by Thompson and Mittell as they gave great examples of shows that stereotyped and how most would try and reverse it. The three chapters I talked about were 24, The Amazing Race and The Cosby show. Two of these shows went against what people thought, and created a different perspective on looking at certain groups. The remaining show stereotyped the places it went along with the people it encountered and showed.

I have written a general idea of what the chapters talked about in the book, so that readers can get a general idea of what topics were being raised. I found each chapter full of useful information that was an eye opener into the way shows are worked from behingd the scenes and how certain elements can cause such a spanner in the works. 

24

The show “24” is based on a Government team fighting terrorism. Although the show began just before the 9/11 attacks, it only picked up audience viewings after the attacks took place. The show starred Jack Bauer, who with his team of counter terrorists go out and race against time to stop bombs going off whilst also capturing the bad guy.

 In 2004, the show was accused of wrongly stereotyping all Muslims and Arabs as terrorists by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam will only serve to increase anti-Muslim prejudice” (P114). To come back from this comment, critics of CAIR claimed that shows like 24 proclaimed pressing matters such as the social and political issues on today’s war on terror. They also claimed that CAIR was only trying to deflect the reality of Muslim terrorism by confining television writer to become politically correct.

How did the show respond to these claims though? For a start, the show included Arabs and Muslims as the good guys helping the American Government, whilst also showing ethnic, religious and political groups as multi-dimensional to the American audiances. For example, the villains on the 8^th season came from all over the globe such as Russians, Germans, Mexico and other areas of Europe. 24 didn’t stop there though, in 2005, during one of its commercial breaks, a featured lead actor reminded viewers that “the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism”. (P115)

The show also stepped up its strategies by:

1.     Included portrayals of Muslim Americans as patriotic or as innocent victims of post 9/11 hate crimes.

2.     Humanizing Arab/Muslim terrorists

3.     Presenting an array of terrorist identities.

The show wanted to show the American public how stereotyping would be seen on television when in season six, a Muslim woman from Pakistan who was brought up in American from a young age and worked for the terrorist group was framed as an innocent victim of a post 9/11 backlash against Arabs and Muslims, when falsely accused of leaking information to terrorists and as a result tortured in interrogation by her colleagues. The show wanted to challenge and bring to the public’s attention how wrong it is to judge people.

      

       The show even went further by casting a family of Muslims in one of its seasons. It soon turns out though that this family has an agenda of destroying a nuclear power plant, killing millions as a result. Before we find this out, we are shown an everyday family having a family discussing. In the following episode, each family members idea's towards terrorism is explored. The farther will kill his family to complete the mission, the mother would reconsider her involvement to protect her son, and their son who was born in American is portrayed as having a sense of humanity that ultimately prevent him from being a terrorist.

In regards to presenting an array of terrorist from different types of backgrounds, 24 depicted more Euro-Americans as a larger network of terrorist. Throughout season two, we are lead to believe that the terrorist being chased are from Arab based countries. We eventually find out that they are being controlled by Euro- Americans aiming to get rich from the Oil in the Middle East.

The show also decided to present the U.S public as multi-cultural. This was done for many reasons, such as the U.S president being African American, whilst his secretary is Asian American. The counter terrorism unit was also diverse with Latinos and African American. All of these facts were taken into account and so the show has leaned, evolved, grown and developed each season into not stereotyping certain individuals, countries or religions, but rather depicting a terrorist as anyone in society.

I thought 24 did a very good job in trying to make up for what critiques claimed were stereotypings in the show. Many shows might not hve budged, but 24's producers were quick to figure out ways in which to show a more realistic way of showing true terrorists rather than showing your stereotypical arab/muslim terrorist.

The Amazing Race

I had to present a PowerPoint on this blog and found it to be an interesting read as it did what I expected a show like that to do. The main thesis behind the game is contestants travel around the world to different countries performing a variety of tasks. Each week they are at different countries and at the end of each episode one group is eliminated. Eventually the winner takes home $1 million. The show as a result has become one of the biggest reality shows in American introducing many Americans to the not so known non- American.

In 2011, 95% of shows on television were set and scripted in America. For the American public shows like The Amazing Race brought something different to the table, bringing in over ten million viewers and episode. The problem is, as many shows in America never show their heros travelling around the world much, the audiance never gets a real idea of what it is like outside of America.

The show has come under criticism for stereotyping individuals and countries in every episode. “The show carries a significant amount of weight in speaking of, for, and about the world at large” (P126). The show is constantly being criticized for portraying locals in certain ways whilst not allowing them to speak to the cameras, mealy being seen, but not heard. The locals quite often only function as backdrops alone. The show isn’t about them at all and it seems that the less the are seen the better.

The show sells itself on being completely reality, even though we all know what that means. The contestants are supposedly put in real life situation with real people from around the world. This is not the case however. In season seven which this chapter gives examples from, the teams are racing to get to some llamas and lead them to a specific location in Peru. Rather than being told this in the Peru airport and sent out without any help to find llamas, they are in fact guided to a specific location in the countryside where specific llamas are awaiting them. They are met by pre hired llama herders and sent on their way to the next area. The producers have therefor pre-determined where they are going, who they are meeting and what as a result will be shown and not shown. To go into more detail they can basically determine what they want to depict from a certain country leaving that country with little or no way of speaking for itself .

On another episode set in South Africa, the tasks are described as common and traditional. The challenge is called “Tunnels and Tribes”, which basically introduces South African to the audiance as cavemen, or primitive tribal elders who demand those most stereotypical belongings such as necklaces, drums, pipes and bowls. “Whether the nation is presented as traditional, simple, and rural, or as commercially vibrant, modernized and urban comes down entirely to the producers”.(P129)

When the episode has finally finished and everyone has gone home, the footage is put in the editors hands that basically have the task of what to put in and what not to put in. They are usually guided by the producers. The contestant might interact with the locals a lot but the viewers at home are left with restricted or directed visions. Non Americans are not the focus, they are not allowed to speak much and if they do, it’s minimal and to the point. Its only depictions of architectural building are those that have been influences by American cultures showing the modernization of American culture influencing other countries.

To conclude The Great Race, the show does not for me, shows any country in a positive light but instead sets out to belittle people, stereotype, and lift American above others. The problem  for eople who see this show as wrong is that this show is watched by millions of people, and so as long as the show is making money, the shows will keep appearing on television.

The Cosby show

I used to watch The Cosby show when I was younger, I can’t remember any of the episodes in detail, but I knew I enjoyed watching it. I grew up watching the fresh Prince of Bel Air, and feel that The Cosby show started that style of show.

The show was around a wealthy, upper middle class family who went about their daily lives. The show wanted to set the record straight to the people at home that there were many wrongful black representations out there and wanted to show a true reality, such as the mother being a lawyer and the husband a doctor, who both had five children together.

The show came around time when African Americans were being portrayed in a negative light. For many year Politicians had been arguing over what was the cause of such a slump to the country and it seemed that the African Americans were having to take the blame which they felt was wrong and unjustly. Bill Cosby, the comedian brought in for the show based his jokes on such issues but instead of using his show as a way of hating on white people, he in turn tried to make light of the situations. When he originally signed for The Cosby Show he made sure he was the executive producer, a role that no other African American had attained thus far. With this role, he was able to hire actors and shape the storylines.

With his hands on the steering wheel, Bill Cosby addressed issues such as blackness, but opted to keep his own personal opinions out of it. This show was a first of its kind. Previously, shows depicted African American (A.A) as “working class, single – parent, and often poor” (P139). 

Bill Cosby would come up with the ideas for the show and put it to his script writers who would then go off and write him a script. Cosby then hired Alvin Poussaint, an A.A psychiatrist from Harvard University to review each script for psychological consistency, racial authenticity and freedom from unintended insults.

As a result the viewers saw an “upstanding, independent, hardworking family contrasting the numerous perceptions of welfare families who were said to be draining the American economy” (P140). The show decided to ignore the race of the family and show storylines that white Americans could accept and more importantly, empathize with.

As each episode air, it addresses life in a normal house hold, looking after children, how Cliff will react to his daughter dating a new guy; basically the norms that most families face. They are also set with meanings usually involved such as the meaning of working hard and putting ieffort into everything.

The show became a success and was granted many more seasons. With its success though, questions kept being brought up to Bill Cosby such as should he use his show to deal with issues such as blacks struggling twice as much as whites. Bill's response was simply “no”. He didn’t want the show as a platform for a dialogue of race.  Bill was not willing to back down and kept his views that The Cosby show would be unwilling to challenge the conservatives of race, suggesting that one’s status is solely the matter of the individual and not of the system.

The show went on for many more years until its final episode around the time of the L.A riots in 1992. However, Bill Cosby was a influence for many more shows to appear such as the Simpson who also shows a middle class family.  Bill refused to be brought into political or race issues as he so easily could have with the power he had. Instead he took an important step to spread positivity and break down the barrier or stereotyping black families in America.

Conclusion

Reading these three chapters was very interesting into how each show acted towards stereotyping. For example, “24” after being accused of stereotyping Arabs and Muslims went about changing people ideas of what a terrorist really is and depict them from all over the world. “The Great Race”, did nothing but stereotype countries and individuals, leaving the viewers with nothing but a one minded way of viewing that country. “The Cosby show” however, had the chance to raise political issues out in the real world, but decided to not go down that path, but more so change people stereotypes by showing that A.A are just like your everyday white person who can live in a nice area and have good jobs.

As you can see stereotyping goes on all around us on a daily basis and it won’t change for a very long time. We must all change our way of thinking and the way we treat our society otherwise we will never move forward properly.