any thoughts????

Dyer
Discrimination is apart of the way that groups are stereotyped and represented. What is being represented in stereotypes though is not reality but just other representations. But, in saying this, representations can have an effect non reality. Furthermore, social backgrounds and different perceptions are important factors that contribute to what audiences see in stereotypes

Stereotypes have both social and aesthetic constructs. The audience, in a sense, defines the stereotypes. An example of this is the effeminate character in bro town. In Samoan society he may be considered a normal part of society or a Fa Fa Fini. On the contrary, in New Zealand culture he may be considered a homosexual.

Aesthetically, stereotypes have a strong connection to convention, narrative and genre.

Hall
The media is an important place for the production and reproduction of stereotypes. The media is considered a place where racial ideas are articulated, worked on, transformed and elaborated. Hall argues that the media uses base images which get transformed over time and through retransformation stay in our conscience. An example of this is the way that indigenous peoples of colonised countries are considered to have a closer relation to nature. Though it must be noted that this representation is rather ambivalent and the viewer could take different understandings for it. Evolutionary, the Natives could be considered to be closer to monkeys and therefore uncivilised and animalistic. Contrastingly, a Christian view may consider the natives to be closer to paradise and untouched by the amoral disposition of the colonising white man.


O’Shaughnessy

O’Shaughnessy furthers Hall’s argument by stating that indigenous people are shown not only as savage and animalistic but also as a sexual threat to white woman. Furthermore, western films popularise the notion of the “white man’s burden”. The idea that it is the whit mans duty to spread civilisation and Christianity.

O’Shaughnessy also goes onto state the several different base-images of the black American. There are the noble savage, the childlike primitive, Uncle Tom, the entertainer, the sexually erotic alluring woman, the Tyrannical Leader and the clever and devious trickster. Essentially, what O’Shaughnessy argues is that though some of these representations may not be negative they all seem to put non-white people in subordinate rolls and places to white men.