One of the many traps media has set is Stereotypes. It magnifies certain pieces of reality, and neglects the rest.
In the world mass media created, Black people are mostly drug dealers or gangsters; Asian women are all extremely loyal and obedient; Indian men, who by the way only eat curry, always have a secret (sometimes creepy) crash on the white girl next door; blondes are always shallow and stupid; Chinese are either Kong Fu masters or science geeks who never talk to anyone except themselves.
Besides hurting people’s feeling, the real problem is, those unfair portrays have apparently shaped our tastes and perceptions too. Many began to expect certain group to behave in certain way, and wrongfully taking our expectations as their social norm. This further motivates media to produce more cultural products reinforcing that impression. And before we knew, it became a vicious circle that no one knows where to break.
The documentary (Not in Our Town: Light in the Darkness) from last week’s human rights film series tells a story about a neighborhood hate crime. A group of teenage boys stabbed a Latin American man to death for no reason. They confessed it was their routine activity to randomly find and beat a Latino in the nearby neighborhood. This is a real story just happened a two years ago, in a town outside New York City. And there’re other stories like this happening everyday.
For kids not even graduated from high school, what on earth is generating such hatred towards a total stranger? Media definitely helped.
The way media “characterize” us is not only annoying, but also affects the way we see and treat each other, which may lead to serious social issues. Maybe this case is a little bit extreme, but we all more or less have experienced fear or misunderstanding of certain group caused by media stereotyping.
It’s important to include other voices in our media. And it’s even more important for us to start listening.