Gender, Race, & Class

Gender, Race, and Class are all three major parts in a persons life.  These define who you are.  Within these, there are many different opinions as to what they really mean.  My definition for these terms may be different from the next person.  With that being said, I am going to reflect these to my life. 

Gender to me is the roles and characteristics that everyone holds.  For example, as I was a young girl my mom always taught me act lady like, sit wit my legs closed, I had to do indoor chores as opposed to my brothers cutting grass, and taking the garbage out.  Now that I am a young adult, my gender roles are to be a caregiver, emotional, not suppose to speak loudly.  Through my gender, I have followed a lot of these rules, but I have also interrupted some, and there are some things that I so like that are more towards a more masculine gender.  I can also say that I think because I was taught so strongly to follow my gender roles that it has also handicapped me in some ways. I always had brothers around so I never had to rake leaves, cut the grass, or shovel snow, so now that I am older I still don;t know how to do any of these things.

Race is the traits that I carry from my ancestors such as my culture, and ethnicity.  I am black, and through my race comes a lot of stereotypes.  Growing I had to learn how to accept who I was and know that I was different from most.  Now that i have embraced who I am I can deal with all the stereotypes that comes with it because I know that it isn't the definition of who I am. 

Class, to me the social status in which you are.  Some may look at is as rich, wealthy, and poor.  I don't think that you can really define someones life based off the money they have.  I say this because, if I have to place myself in a category I will say I am from a working class family because of the stereotypes.  Society categorizes my family as middle class.  But I like to say that we a poor, just because I was not always able to afford everything that I wanted, but I did have everything that I needed in life.  I also call myself rich as well, because I am full from Gods blessings so I don't need anything else.  So although we categorize class I think it is really based off of how one feel they are.

Working Class Portrayal

In television, working class is portrayed in a very negative way and does not reflect reality.  In shows such as "Simpsons", "Family Guy", and "American Dad", which are all very popular adult cartoon series, really show how the working class is portrayed through television.  These three shows are centered on families with both the mother and the father around.  One, if not both of the parents are working.  After viewing the film in class "Class Dismissed", it really made me pay attention to the stereotypes that put out about working class families.  In the video it talks about how in television working class is viewed as dysfunctional families with no class, and a poor work ethic. "They are dumb, immature, irresponsible, or lacking in common sense (Dines, G., & Humez, J.).  This is very true within all three of these shows.  In Family guy, the fathers role is very dumb with no common sense, and so forth with the other two shows as well.
The working class in television really distracts us from the reality of working classes.  This is true because in real working class families, they really do care about their family a lot, and its to the point where they have to work harder to provide for their family.  I know this because I come from a working class family and my parents did everything to make sure their family was okay and that took both of my parents to work full time jobs all day.

References

Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media. (second edition) Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.

"Class Dismissed: How TV Frames working class" (2005).  The media education foundation.

Final Wrap Up

Before taking this class I had a general idea/ opinion of each key terms of Gender, Race, Class, and Media.  After taking this class, I now have different understandings on these three terms and how they all tie into media.  I looked at all of the ideas as just broad terms that affect our everyday life in some way.  Gender was just what we were born into, race is what you live by, and class is the status in which you associate yourself with.  Through this class I now see how media takes each of these to the extreme and it makes you think even harder on what they really mean to you as a person.  Both my gender and race are affected tremendously through media seeing that I am a black female.  In this class the two topics that stuck with me the most were advertising and pornography, and in these two being a female it is portrayed very negative.  In advertising women are sexualized as objects.  In porn, women are treated negative, and black women even more so are treated as animals.  Before I learned this from this class I took my gender and my race both lightly because these things were not brought to my attention.  What I learned from class is that classes are treated differently in media depending on the race.  From one of the activities that we did during the first week of class it was an eye opener to me to see how people view class differently.  What may be working class for someone may not be for another.
I have learned a lot from this class of how media portrays life in a very negative way.  There really isn't anything positive that is pulled from media which I don;t necessarily feel is a bad things but I think pointing out positives could be useful at times as well.  I say useful because learning everything in this class has given me a outlook on life which makes me a lot more cautious to the media that I am consuming.

. Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media. (second edition) Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.

Princess and Frog

The Princess and Frog is Disney's first black princess.  In 2009 this movie was released and it made a lot of people proud to see that Disney had finally made a movie centered on a black princess.  I can speak for myself, that I was happy to see this as well.  However, through all of the excitement there are still some downfalls and stereotypes to this movie.
In this section in class of Race and T.V. I choose to focus on the movie the princess and frog.  From the documentary "Color Adjustments", and the book from this class, I was able to still pull out the negativity that is portrayed amongst blacks from this movie that was so exciting.  First from color adjustments, it talks about how there are three stereotypes that are portrayed which are, slave/maid, native, and clown.  From these three two were used in the movie Princess and Frog.  I am going to start with the obvious first which is the struggle to survive.  In the book Gender, Race , and Class they state how blacks work for middle working class whites.  In this movie, the mother does work for a white family as a seamstress.  This family that she works for, they are really close as families, but never the less she is still working for them.  The father also worked, until he died in the beginning of the movie, which is another way they portray blacks which is not having both parents around.  From the little time that he was in the movie, he was hardworking man that helped to provide for his family, but he still was absent for majority of the movie.  So from her tween years on up, Princess Tiana was raised by only her mother who worked for the white man which is stereotype number one, maid.  The other stereotype that they use is the clown image.  One of the old ladies that is helping them through voodoo has this clown appearance.
So, as I watch this movie, I can still see how they are not pulling away from the stereotypes of blacks in television, but still find a way to incorporate it in a lot of things.

Refrences

Riggs, M. "Color Adjustments". (1991).

Coleman, R. (2003). Black Sitcom Portrayals. Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media 2(79-88). Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.

Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation is one topic that has always been hard for me to speak on.  Through my religious background I was always taught that homosexuality is against God.  That does not make me dislike or hate homosexuals, I just have a different opinion on it.  Being at UWP has shaped my understanding of this and so has media.  From viewing the video "Further off the Straight & Narrow" (2006), I was able to make a connection to my life and the movie "Holiday Heart".
From  "Further off the Straight & Narrow" (2006) they talk about how back then, people were not as open with their sexual orientation as they are now. Even in television it was the same.  Back then the only way that homosexuality appeared in television or movies was through HIV/AIDS.  It was almost as if it was being hidden, and used the stereotype that homosexuals have AIDS.  In media now, it is okay to express who you are, and instead of hiding it, it is just shown. 
In this scene from the movie Holiday Heart, the young girl is questioning Holiday on his sexuality.  She had been living with him for a while but had never known the truth.  Her mom and dad did not agree with it, so she did not know what to think about it, but after talking to him she let him know that she still loves him regardless.  Holiday talks on how he is from the old days and they don;t let everyone in their personal business, but the new school people let everything hang out.  That is what they were speaking about in this documentary.
The documentary also talks about how men and women were portrayed differently in television, but this movie is a little different from the general category, because this movie focuses only on gay men, and how one of the men raises a mother and daughter.
I may not agree with homosexuality, but I have learned a lot about it, which has opened my eyes to new things, and it has also made me pay more attention to how it is portrayed in media.

Refrences

"Further off the Straight & Narrow: New Gay Visibility on Television" (2006) .Media Education Foundation.
 
Fejes, F(2003). Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay identity. Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media (212-222). Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.