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TV Analysis Week 11 Television and Race. TUESDAY: SMALL GROUPS LECTURE. TV Analysis. What does Torres say about how African-Americans have traditionally been depicted on television?
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TV Analysis Week 11 Television and Race TUESDAY: SMALL GROUPS LECTURE
TV Analysis What does Torres say about how African-Americans have traditionally been depicted on television? Do you agree with Torres assessement of how race representation has changed over the years? What are you opinions of contemporary race representation on Television? -- what does Kraszewski suggest is a problem inherent in the casting and editing of The Real World Do you agree with Kraszewski’s explanation of how race is portrayed on The Real World (or other similar reality shows)
Television and Race Spectacle of Race as a Problem -undesirable social conditions -linked to racially marked communities
Television and Race Typical representations - life in the “ghetto” -oppression -violence African-Americans traditionally depicted as victims of circumstance or those who were able to “rise above” their social situations. The “race-as-problem” narrative aimed at white audiences.
Race and Television Race as Commodity – - the “problem of race” can be solved through consumerism. -poor people need equal access to PRODUCTS not POLTICAL change
Television and Race Race has no biological meaning but raced is filled with cultural meaning. Race is not a set of physical characteristics. Rather it is the various CULTURAL MEANINGS that have been assigned to those physical characteristics. Racial Formation = the sociohistorical process by which racial meanings are created, altered and destroyed.
Television as Race TV has moved away from depicting “race as problem” TV now identifies “raced bodies” as potential new consumer groups. TV also appeals to white, progressive audience members who associate cultural codes of “blackness” with something “hip” or “stylish”
“Country Hicks & Urban Clicks” Whiteness- “coded as a visible system of privilege and an invisible regime of power” –Dyer “white people tend to see themselves as unmarked” whiteness is “the norm” from which non-white racial groups are “Othered” TV producers construct a “seven people living together” situation in a way that will accentuate potential racial conflict.
Inferential Racism – racist statements that are not intended as racist. The people who make the comments do not realize they are speaking from a racists perspective. Example: “Why do you have a beeper? Do you sell drugs?” The Real World operates to cleanse rural conservatives of their racism. Yet perpetuates the stereotype of black male sexual violence.
By accentuating racial conflict MTV’s The Real World further perpetuates racial stereotypes and racism.