CI5472 Teaching Film, Television, and Media
Module 5: Studying Media Representations
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In studying various representations of social groups or types, students are examining how people construct generalizations about categories of people—that scientists are nerds or Native Americans are alcoholics. This analysis involves more than simply noting the stereotyping of these groups. It also involves examining reasons for these representations as constructions of beliefs about people, leading to questions such as “Where do these representations come from?” “Who produces these representations,” “Why are their producing these representations,” “How is complexity limited by these representations,” and “What is missing or how is silenced in these representations?” (Hall, 1997). Representations of groups often serves to fix the meanings of perceptions of groups. For example, media representations of black men affect how the society perceives black men in the “real world.” (Hall, 1997): Media Education Foundation |
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Groups are also often represented in highly essentialized ways by promoting generalizations according to gender, class, and race group categories—that “all boys always do X, and all girls always do Y,” or “all working-class people are like X and all upper-middle-class people are like Y.” |
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This essentializing fails to consider variations in identities, contexts, and cultures—the fact that, for example gender differences in one culture may be entirely different in another culture. Such essentialist categories are based on biological or behaviorist perspectives, rather than cultural perspectives. For example, essentializing males versus females as biological concepts fails to recognize that gender is a cultural construction evident in how people adopt or performs certain gendered social practices. People who are biological “males” may adopt “feminine” cultural practices, while people who are biological “females” may adopt “masculine” cultural practices. Gendered media representations are important in that they are central to adolescents defining their identities, as explored in the book, Media, Gender, and Identity. |
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| Studying Representations of Social Types or Groups |
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