viernes, 27 de febrero de 2009

Personal reflection#3 - Tracking race and gender stereotypes in the media

Ocurrence 1:
- 02/17/09 – rfi.fr (radiofranceinternationale) – 3 pm
- Online french newspaper
- Black Guinean soccer player suffers verbal racial attacks during a game, agressor faces nocharges because he claims he was drunk.
- Racism.
-
http://www.rfi.fr/actues/articles/110/article_10839.asp

Ocurrence 2:
- 02/23/09 – JMC 4853 – Race, gender and the media – 6 pm
- Bell Cort Room, OU Law School
- Class experience - Dean Evans
- Interesting lecture on the history of OU’s first African-American student and the history of the black people of America which I’m learning so much about and as a foreign student I was aware but not involved in.
- Evolution of american society within racism.

Ocurrence 3:
- 02/24/09 – Governor’s room OMU – 12 pm
- PAN AMERICAN Student Association officers meeting and tasting
- Discussion about the typical hispanic dinner that will be served next Friday at our cultural night, some basic ingredients such as beer or jelly cannot be used because we are expecting arab guests who by are by their religion unable to eat these. Dilema arouses when we have to choose between having this idea in mind despite the fact that it unables us to really allow guests to “taste” our culture. Solution is to adapt the menu but that means it is no longer Latin American. Will people notice?
- Cultural assumptions about people unaware of Latin American culture/ gastronomy.

Ocurrence 4:
- 02/25/09 – ENG 3423 – Film and other expressive forms – 7-9 pm
- Gittinger 0317 (T, W, TR)
- Film screening – Professor Joanna E. Rapf
- A Raisin in the Sun, Daniel Petrie (1961) – Based on a play by Lorraine Hansberry.
- African-American racial and gender stereotypes. Discrimination, segregation and asimilation during the 60’s. It is very important that a late version for TV was shot last year, this means that this issues are still recurring themes in society.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUHoClv9eFA&feature=related

Ocurrence 5:
- 02/26/09 – ENG 3423 – Film and other expressive forms – 1.30-3 pm
- Jakobson 102
- Extra lecture – Professor James Ragan
- Discussion and comparison between the adaptations and meanings of A Raisin in the Sun, Daniel Petrie (1961) and The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola (1972) within their historical contexts and its relationship with present US history regarding Obama.
- Breaking apart the stereotype. Family values from Americans (and inmigrants) point of view and their process of integration/ segregation in society and asimilation of their cultural roots.
- African-American racial and gender stereotypes. Discrimination, segregation and asimilation during the 60’s.

Ocurrence 6:
- 02/26/09 – Campus – 3 pm
- Personal conversation/debate with classmates after the lecture.
- Discussion about why is Obama’s whiteness not aknowledged when he’s portrayed by the media.
- Racial assumptions.

Ocurrence 7:
- 02/27/09 - latercera.com - 10.04 am
- Online chilean newspaper (conversation with a Chilean exchange student whose friend died)
- Shocking news about a racial attack in Miami against Chilean exchange workers.
- A 60 year old American shot a group of young chileans in their home killing two of them and leaving three more seriously injured. The guys had come to the US to work for four months in the company Win USA. The neighbours decribed the agressor as a “racist”.
- Racial discrimination
-
http://www.latercera.com/contenido/654_105104_9.shtml

Ocurrence 8:
- 02/27/09 – youtube.com – 4 pm
- Mexican advertisement for Verizon Wireless
- Scandalous use of machism used as a joke to advertise a cell phone company offer. Directed especifically towards Hispanic communities.
- Gender assumptions and community stereotyping.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYb0ij2iCs4&NR=1

Personal reflection:

As a media student I’m totally aware on the amount of stereotyping there is in the advertising and information bussinesses. However, what mostly shocks me is how “well accepted” or integrated is this issue in nowadays society. The fact that advertisements and incidents which degrade the image of women or racial minorities certainly shows that society is not only used to being exposed to these ideas on a regular basis, but that they’re unreactive towards them being broadcasted. However, there are still unfortunate and uncomprehensible crimes against equality going on in the world such as the news about Miami that a friend of mine came over to tell me this morning. I can't understand how there are people insane enough to kill others just because they belong to different nationalities, there is so much left to do in the world that I fear that makind will never have time enough to eliminate prejudices.

Nontheless, I believe that education and interaction of cultures is the way to solve this problem, as so far in my personal and daily experience I have just found myself with friends, teachers and situations which involve a prosperous view worldwide human intearction. This is experience has come to me as an opportunity to break down stereotypes that the media had put into my mind during my life and enabled me to make extremely important friendships based on tolerance and understanding. Surrounding myself with international people gives me hope whenever I find myself watching a racist advert. It is a fact that we conceive certain ethnic groups with a certain perspective dependeing on where we come from. For example, while American society is way more concerned about racism towards African-American people, Europe takes this issue to a different level. In fact gender discrimination is the biggest cause for concern lately in countries such as Spain, where violence against woman is so present in he news that they no longer cause an impact on the reader or viewer as they used to do.

And so, by living this year in the United States I believe that I’m getting to understand better how America’s mind works and I really appreciate how lately most of my classes have been spinning around a similar axis because there’s no way I could have learned about all of this from a first hand experience in my home country. It is probably for this reason that I get so emotionally altered during screenings of movies such as A Raisin in the Sun or lectures such as Dean Evans’ or Professor James Ragan’s. It is then when I consider myself as a privileged woman for being able to witness Obama’s triumph over racial discrimination and the evolution of mankind towards a fairer social world. I am witnessing the construction of history from the first row of the world’s theatre.

3 comentarios:

  1. Great that you did some of your occurrences on international media.

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  2. As Ms. Flippin-Wynn said, I find it interesting that you offer an international viewpoint that I wasn’t even aware was offered in our class. I was a little bit surprised that gender is more of an issue in Europe rather than race. But, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Europe is a tight-nit area with many different races within a short distance. I’m not saying that there probably isn’t racism over there, but because they’ve been living in each other’s backyard for so long, they might have grown accustomed to each other. Gender, on the other hand, is something that is inescapable, even within a certain country.

    I agree with you that interaction with a wide-variety of races is paramount to understanding. Tolerance is something that certainly does not come overnight, but it is undoubtedly attainable if there is an initiative to understand these stereotypes; if there is an initiative to challenge these stereotypes.

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