What Can the Media Do About Prejudice?
The media, as we all know, is one of the most — if not the most — influential parts of our society and culture. One way to understand where we stood as a society at a certain point in history would be to watch movies that were created in that particular time in history. For instance, older movies typically portrayed women as fragile and in need of a love interest. They also hardly included people of color in lead roles. The woman who played Maria in West Side Story, for example, was actually white and simply wore dark makeup and spoke with a Puerto Rican accent for the role. Even today, brown face and other skin-altered portrayals of different races still happens despite there being perfectly appropriate actors of color who could play those roles.
In addition, when minorities are cast in leading roles, they are most often in movies that focus specifically on those minority groups. A good example of this would be the portrayal of women of color in Disney movies. While I will not deny being a fan of Disney, I also will not deny that it has its issues. One of those issues would be the representations of princesses like Pocahontas, Jasmine, Mulan, Tiana, and Moana. While it’s fantastic that princesses of different ethnicities are represented in these movies, and that they are portrayed as independent and strong, there is still a problem: these characters are in movies that focus highly on the cultural aspects of the characters’ lives. Mulan clearly takes place in ancient China and the plot revolves around Chinese history and traditions, for instance. Sleeping Beauty, however, could take place anywhere, at any time, yet the title character is white, even though an African-American Sleeping Beauty would not change the story at all. It’s certainly important for children to learn to love and celebrate their own cultural backgrounds, of course. Bell Hooks discusses the importance of self-love in “Love as the Practice of Freedom,” but she also makes clear that love for our culture and background is not the only type of love that is important. We must love all people the same, as Martin Luther King Junior encouraged in his speeches. To focus on our similarities is more effective than focusing on our differences. Unfortunately, those involved in the media tend to forget this, whether or not they do so intentionally.
No wonder, then, are minorities considered to be “other” people when the default image of a “normal” human is typically a heterosexual white person. In order for society to normalize the existence of minorities, the media must represent these people as what they are — people. People who do not have to fall under a particular category of film and plot. What would be wrong with a trans Romeo? What difference would it make if the ghost of Christmas past were gay, or if Hermione Granger were black? In fact, the woman cast as Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is black, and she plays the role perfectly, according to J.K Rowling. When some Harry Potter fans argued that Hermione was white and should be cast as such, J.K Rowling responded that she never mentioned what race Hermione was. This is proof that privileged groups are typically the default representation. This relates to what Sarah Ahmed suggests in “The Phenomenology of Whiteness.” She recommends we make others view whiteness as its own separate entity, the same way people see other identities as separate from the norm. We need to eliminate the idea that there are such things as normal and abnormal groups.
If movies, books, and other forms of popular entertainment made stories about minorities that didn’t have to focus on what makes minority groups different, then the world would not view them as such. In addition, if there were representations of privileged groups in popular culture that made these groups stand out as different, people would begin to understand that there is no such thing as “normal.”
