A hegemonic system that mirrored hegemonic patriarchy, only in this system it wasn’t men manipulating meaning and values to subjugate and control women, it was Anglo-European whites manipulating meaning to subjugate and control people of color, and Black people in particular (but not exclusively), to further their own economic and political goals. The concept of race is a product of history, culturally constructed and institutionally affirmed as part of a much larger hegemonic system. But those are physical expressions of allelic differences in our shared, identical DNA.
#1960S TV SERIES SET IN AFRICA SKIN#
There are phenotypical differences across the global human population, eye color, height, hair texture, skin color, etc. There is no biological distinction that correlates with our collective understanding of racial difference. Anyone who has taken middle school biology and/or social science in the last decade should know that “race” is not a biological category. From the early days of moving pictures to the modern entertainment ecosystem of streaming content, film and television, mass media has colluded in a hegemonic, patriarchal manipulation of meaning such that one half the population came to see their own subjugation by the other half as the “natural order of things.” And if it was powerful enough to establish and maintain generations of gender inequality, what do you think it did for racial and ethnic inequality?īefore we get into the representation of people of color in cinema, more specifically, African Americans in American cinema, we need to take a slight detour through the cultural history of race in America. If we learned anything from the previous chapter, it’s that cinema is a powerful tool of hegemony. Which is why Gerbner also argues that “absence means symbolic annihilation.”Īnd not just for any given individual who might benefit from seeing themselves on screen. It can begin to feel as though you’ve been erased. The point is, if you’re not white (and not male) you likely spent those same formative years with very little evidence on screen that you exist at all. (But I won’t, because Dylan Marron already has). How about something a little more modern? Here’s a version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) also edited down to just the words spoken by a person of color:Īt least they did better than E.T. Okay, so that wasn’t fair, there were no people of color in JAWS. Here’s a version that’s been edited down to show every single word spoken by a person of color in the film: the Extraterrestrial (1982)? It was a big hit in the 80s.
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For the rest of you, maybe this will help. Maybe you’re a woman (again, see previous chapter), or maybe you’re a person of color, or maybe both. For some of you, that won’t be hard to imagine. Or if you do, those characters are relegated to minor, negatively stereotyped roles. Now imagine you never see anyone on screen in film or television that looks like you, talks like you or lives like you. Once you do, it will continue to shape that knowledge and that practice (see the previous chapter on how hegemony works).
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Seeing yourself represented in the fictional world of cinema points to (signifies) your social existence long before you have the opportunity to put that knowledge into practice. And that starts at a very young age, often before you’ve formed clear ideas about the world outside your own home and family. It assures you that you do, in fact, exist and have a role to play in society. The idea here is that when you see yourself in cinema, that is, when you see characters in film and television that look like you, talk like you, live like you, it affirms your place in the world. And for many of you, that truth has been verified over and over since you first laid eyes on moving pictures. And it starts with Gerbner’s assertion that “representation in the fictional world signifies social existence.” That’s a bold claim. If you’ve read this far, then you know that last bit is a trick question. But does it really matter who we see up on the screen? But what does that really mean? And why are we still talking about it?Īt the most basic level, it’s a call for greater ethnic and gender diversity in the characters we see in cinema. Nearly 50 years later, we still hear a lot about “representation” in the media, especially film and television.
![1960s tv series set in africa 1960s tv series set in africa](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/hbz-35-best-tv-shows-index-1578338903.jpg)
They were written by George Gerbner, a professor of communication, in 1976, around the same time Laura Mulvey was writing about the Male Gaze. Think about those two lines for a moment. Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence.