Lecture 3: What are Stereotypes?

1. Lecture 3: What are Stereotypes? Professor Daniel Bernardi / Professor Michelle Martinez

2. In the last lecture… • What is this class about? • Assignments • Ethnic Labels • Complexion

3. In this lecture… • Stereotyping • Eleven (11) Theses about Stereotypes • Learning Stereotypes Charles Ramírez Berg, Author, Latino Images in Film You can pause the lecture at any point, click on one of the hyperlinks (text that is underlined) to visit a site or view a clip, and then return to the same point in the lecture when you’re ready.

4. Stereotyping Lecture 3: Part 1

5. Working Definition Social Scientific Theory Sociological (socio-political formation) Psychological (cognitive & behavioral processes) Cultural Theory Questions of Representation & Discourse Question of Narration and Myth

6. Value-Neutral Process “…the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question.” – Walter Lippmann Cognitive Mechanism Create Categories to Manage Data

7. The Big Point We All Stereotype We Have to Stereotype “It is important to accumulate experiences and be able to distinguish a door from a window, a male from a female, a snake from a twig.” – Charles Ramírez Berg

8. Value-Laden Process Ethnocentrism: “View of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled or rated with reference to it.” We are superior. They are inferior. Prejudice: “Judging Others as innately inferior based on ethnocentrically determined difference.” They cannot change.

9. Graphing the Process Category Making + Ethnocentrism + Prejudice = Stereotyping “A stereotype is the result of this process and can be defined as a negative generalization used by an in-group (Us) about an out-group (Them).” – Charles Ramírez Berg

10. Eleven Theses About Stereotypes Lecture 3: Part 2

11. Thesis 1: Applied with Rigid Logic Reductive Logic (one size fits all) “All or Nothing” (all fit the one size) Fixed (nothing can be done about it) “If you are ______________(fill in name of group),” the thinking goes, “then you must ________ (fill in the predictable traits, characteristics, behavior, etc.).”

12. Thesis 2: Basis in Fact “Yes, there indeed were and are Mexican bandits, lazy African Americans, and Italian American gangsters. But banditry, laziness, and criminality are not culture specific, nor do those qualities represent the group’s complete experience.” – Charles Ramírez Berg “Kernel of Truth” Explains Why Masses Agree on Stereotype

13. Thesis 3: Simplified Generalizations thatAssume Out-Group Homogeneity Simplifies Out-Group Experience Select Only Traits that Signifies Difference Traits Applied to All to Effect Homogeneity “Stereotypes flatten, homogenize, and generalize individuals within a group, emphasizing sameness and ignoring agency and variety.” – Charles Ramírez Berg

14. Thesis 4: Too General to be Predictive Unfair (reductive & simplified) Generalization Poor Predictor of Out-Group Individuals “Knowledge of actual out-group experience, their history, culture, traditions – to say nothing of knowing actual out-group members – forces one to recognize the group’s overall heterogeneity.” – Charles Ramírez Berg

15. Thesis 5: Uncontexualized & aHistorical Omit Out-Group’s History Social Political Economic “Cinematic Sign of el bandido” Rebel Soldier (1910-1920) Good Guys Fighting Dictatorship Carries Ammunition w/ Them Sombreros = Shade

16. El Bandido: Uncontexualized & aHistorical Emiliano Zapata Frank Silvera in Hombre

17. Thesis 6:Repetition Normalizes Stereotypes Douglas Fairbanks Is Hollywood “only” fiction? Representation Narration Hollywood Repeats Images / Vicious Cycle Fiction is Ideological Normalizes Naturalizes Antonio Bandaras

18. Thesis 7:Stereotypes are Believed Note Just Frames of Mind / Beliefs Attitude (which comes first) Fixed Belief Remember the doll experiments: White children picked the white doll as “nice” and the black doll as “bad.” Black kids picked the white doll as “nice” and the black doll as “bad.” Not to Same Extent Click Here to Listen to Story on the Doll Study in Relation to Brown Decision

19. Thesis 8:Stereotypes Go Both Ways In-Group Stereotypes Out-Group Stereotypes “Where mass media is concerned… one can say that stereotypes generally go one way: from the dominant to the disenfranchised in the margins.” – Charles Ramírez Berg

20. Thesis 9:Stereotypes are Ideological Indicate a Power Relationship Vestige of Colonialism “The most important function of the stereotype is to maintain sharp boundary definitions, to define clearly where the pale ends and thus who is clearly within and who is clearly beyond it.” – Richard Dyer

21. Thesis 10:The In-Group Stereotypes Itself Dominant Finds Unacceptable in Ranks Dumb Blondes Neanderthal Jocks & Socially Inept Nerds Rednecks and Rich Snobs Youth & Beauty are In Old & Poor are Out Obese & Inform are Out Disabled & Mentally Ill are Out

22. Whiteness “These are whites who do not posses the requisite amount of the in-group’s superior characteristics, those WASPs who, in Richard Dyer’s phrase, have failed ‘‘to attain whiteness and are consequencly excommunicated.” – Charles Ramírez Berg Media Awareness Network

23. Thesis 11:The Antidote is Knowledge “If,” as Chicano historian Michael R. Ornelas has said, “stereotypes fill the void created by ignorance, then more information about the Other makes the stereotype's simplified generalities less and less applicable.” In the best-case scenario, stereotyping breaks down as a useful category. “Experience, contact and maturity usually erase [stereotypical] images among reasonable people,” concluded Ornelas. – Charles Ramírez Berg

24. Review Applied with Rigid Logic Basis in Fact Simplified Generalization / Homogenizes Too General to be Predictive Uncontextualized and aHistorical Repetition Normalizes Are Believed Go both Ways Ideological In-Group Stereotypes Itself Antidote is Knowledge

25. Learning Stereotypes Lecture 3: Part 3 Click Here to Read Washington Post Journalism Article by Annie Gowan, “Latino Toys Criticized as Stereotypes “

26. Acquiring Stereotypes Socialization Cultural Articulation “Ideas, including values and attitudes – and, hence, stereotypes – are conveyed to people by their culture as preexisting categories.” – Charles Ramírez Berg

27. Lippmann’s Big Point “In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world, we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked in the form of stereotypes for us by our culture.” Walter Lippmann

28. Ramírez Berg’s Big Point “When the dominant group is threatened by the subordinate one, because it perceives itself to be competing for the same resources, the dominant's descriptive terminology about the subordinate becomes more severely derogatory, ‘aggressive’, ‘brutal’, ‘corrupt’. The change is thought to be a convenient way for members of the group to rationalize ‘their own violent or ungenerous impulses’.”

29. Repetition Normalizes /Ideology Naturalizes “When beliefs and images are uncontested or are even just dominant within a given society, individuals typically come to accept them as self-evident truths…. An individual learns the cognitive models of his culture, like grammar, surely and effortlessly.” – Jonah Goldhagen, (from his study of German attitudes toward the Jews before World War II)

30. Questioning Stereotypes Risk of Being Ostracized Risk of Decentering Self Leads to Knowledge: Historical Specificity & Theoretical Insights Leads to Change: Personal & Social Suggested Supplemental Reading: Shot in America by Chon Noriega

31. Dominant Group / Dominant Media Hollywood Cinema is Dominant Media / Privileges Dominant Ideology Dominant Ideology Is Representation of Dominant Group (“white”) as Homogenous / Monolithic Despite Diversity Harrison Ford Tom Cruise Kevin Costner

32. Dominant Group / Dominant Media Hollywood Cinema is (at times) Conflicted / Self-Reflective / Artistic Struggle Over Dominant Ideology Exists

33. Good and Bad News “The bright side of stereotype evolution is that human consciousness can change and stereotyping can sometimes diminish and even be eradicated. The dark side is that time alone cannot be counted on to automatically end stereotyping.” – Charles Ramírez Berg

34. Touch of Evil Released in 1958 Directed by Orson Welles Stars Charlton Heston & Janet Leigh Set on the Border Shot from Touch of Evil(1958)

35. Plot Summary Mexico's chief narcotics officer, Mike Vargas, is in a bordertown on a quick honeymoon with his U.S. wife. Soon he must testify against Grande, a drug-lord whose brother and sons are tracking him, hoping to scare his wife and back him off the case. When a car bomb kills a rich U.S. developer, Vargas embroils himself in the investigation, putting his wife in harms way. After Vargas catches local legendary U.S. cop, Hank Quinlan, planting evidence against a Mexican national suspected in the bombing, Quinlan joins forces with the Grande family to impugn Vargas's character. Local political lackeys, a hard-edged whore, pachucos, and a nervous motel clerk also figure in the plot. Summary written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

36. Critical Point Good Latino is White Actor in Brown Face All Other Latinos/as Are Shady, Shifty, Dirty, Deviant, Immoral White Women are Pure & Innocent Dark Women are Opposite Mexico is Represented as Dirty U.S. is represented as Clean

37. Evidence: Opening Scene Good Latino is White Actor in Brown Face Mexico is Represented as Dirty U.S. is Represented as Clean Mexicans Pose Threat to U.S. Click Here to See Scene from Touch of Evil (1958)

38. Evidence: Rape Scene All Other Latinos/as Are Shady, Shifty, Dirty, Deviant, Immoral Threaten U.S. w/ Drugs Rape White Woman White Woman is Pure, Innocent Brown Woman is Opposite Click Here to See Scene from Touch of Evil (1958)

39. End of Lecture 3 Next Lecture: How do stereotypes function in film?