Because sometimes you just gotta make a long elaborate post.
So, I just now finished reading a book I had been assigned for the American Tv culture class I'm taking this semester. It's a book called "Where the Girls are" and it tracks representations of women in TV since its initial conception.
A bit of history here. Before coming into this, my concept of the Feminist movement, at least of the present day one, was very much so the stereotype. Women who take their cause to the extreme in other words. Of course, I found that terrifying if only because I felt like being around that sort of person would require me to hold my tongue and watch every word I utter'd so that I wouldn't say something I'd regret. Obviously as time went by, I just sort of viewed the movement as all women being in support of women's rights, and the people called feminist being the crazy people who took that protest to the next level (kind of like crazy anti-abortionists who bomb clinics etc). Naive? Sure. But that's what I've been fed all my life on TV (Never talked to my mum much about it).
So having read this book, I find myself just a bit more enlightened as to what reality was/is, and I also find myself drawing many a comparison to the civil rights movement in the 20th century, and also the current state of affairs as far as race is concerned now, be it black, asian, latino, native, a 'non-white' white person, whatever. Nearly every sentence in the book, if replaced with ethnic minority, would still function just as well, because if you look back at history, Mass Media time and time again has done the same sorts of things to both females, and ethnic minorities as well. Susan Douglas, the author of the book notes that Media still doesn't know what to do with women, and I think the same could be said of minorities as well.
For every quota met by putting a female in a role on television, there will be at least one minority character present, with the rest of the cast generally being white men. If you turn on television as a female, you see depictions of women being super sexualized, making out with tons of guys, putting on make up and making sure they're greased up. Wholly unrealistic images that ingrain in little girl's minds, and yes, even boy's minds, that this is how girls should act. This is what you aspire to.
In this same way, one can turn on the radio or the TV, and as an African American child, boy or girl, see these so called gangsta's waving their hands around, speaking like idiots and preaching about how gangsta life is thuggin' etc. At a very young age they grow up believing that this is the correct way to act. And so what you have is a cycle of people who believe what they are fed from a young age, because maybe they never had the education or the parents to teach them what from what. You have asians watching TV and hell, probably feeling alone in the world (The hell if I know), because there isn't anyone on TV for the most part.
It just sort of got me thinking about just how similar these two movements are, and how even now they're going through the same kinds of issues. How to be represented in the mass media and provide an image that isn't so severely biased as to shape another generation's conception of what people SHOULD be like. In a lot of ways it is quite frankly terrifying.
But ironically, I can think of maybe ONE example of television that, as a kid, boys and girls alike fell in love with, and perhaps provided the best argument for gender and race equality that I've probably ever seen on television. Yes folks, that's right, I'm talking about the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
Before you laugh, think about this for a moment. We had an array of ethnicities represented every season, and while yes, the pink and yellow were traditionally female (And the pink wore a skirt thingy), they certainly weren't female characters who needed rescuing. They weren't weak. They were just as important to the team as everyone else, and if they went missing the whole team suffered. No one was made to be more important than anyone else. One season even saw a husband and wife duo as the villains, with the female, while being witch-like, sifnificantly powerful, and less hideous than her husband who looked like he was made of raw meat.
If there was any show that I would gladly have my kids watch, if I ever have them, it'd be Power Rangers. It'd be the show that made everyone feel like they could go out and kick ass, whether they be a dorky bookworm, black guy, hispanic, white, asian, or anything else. The one show that teaches you that everyone is apart of the team, no matter what your background is. Of course it's not perfect, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with a better example.
Damn straight. It's Morphin' time.
-Ryo
A bit of history here. Before coming into this, my concept of the Feminist movement, at least of the present day one, was very much so the stereotype. Women who take their cause to the extreme in other words. Of course, I found that terrifying if only because I felt like being around that sort of person would require me to hold my tongue and watch every word I utter'd so that I wouldn't say something I'd regret. Obviously as time went by, I just sort of viewed the movement as all women being in support of women's rights, and the people called feminist being the crazy people who took that protest to the next level (kind of like crazy anti-abortionists who bomb clinics etc). Naive? Sure. But that's what I've been fed all my life on TV (Never talked to my mum much about it).
So having read this book, I find myself just a bit more enlightened as to what reality was/is, and I also find myself drawing many a comparison to the civil rights movement in the 20th century, and also the current state of affairs as far as race is concerned now, be it black, asian, latino, native, a 'non-white' white person, whatever. Nearly every sentence in the book, if replaced with ethnic minority, would still function just as well, because if you look back at history, Mass Media time and time again has done the same sorts of things to both females, and ethnic minorities as well. Susan Douglas, the author of the book notes that Media still doesn't know what to do with women, and I think the same could be said of minorities as well.
For every quota met by putting a female in a role on television, there will be at least one minority character present, with the rest of the cast generally being white men. If you turn on television as a female, you see depictions of women being super sexualized, making out with tons of guys, putting on make up and making sure they're greased up. Wholly unrealistic images that ingrain in little girl's minds, and yes, even boy's minds, that this is how girls should act. This is what you aspire to.
In this same way, one can turn on the radio or the TV, and as an African American child, boy or girl, see these so called gangsta's waving their hands around, speaking like idiots and preaching about how gangsta life is thuggin' etc. At a very young age they grow up believing that this is the correct way to act. And so what you have is a cycle of people who believe what they are fed from a young age, because maybe they never had the education or the parents to teach them what from what. You have asians watching TV and hell, probably feeling alone in the world (The hell if I know), because there isn't anyone on TV for the most part.
It just sort of got me thinking about just how similar these two movements are, and how even now they're going through the same kinds of issues. How to be represented in the mass media and provide an image that isn't so severely biased as to shape another generation's conception of what people SHOULD be like. In a lot of ways it is quite frankly terrifying.
But ironically, I can think of maybe ONE example of television that, as a kid, boys and girls alike fell in love with, and perhaps provided the best argument for gender and race equality that I've probably ever seen on television. Yes folks, that's right, I'm talking about the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
Before you laugh, think about this for a moment. We had an array of ethnicities represented every season, and while yes, the pink and yellow were traditionally female (And the pink wore a skirt thingy), they certainly weren't female characters who needed rescuing. They weren't weak. They were just as important to the team as everyone else, and if they went missing the whole team suffered. No one was made to be more important than anyone else. One season even saw a husband and wife duo as the villains, with the female, while being witch-like, sifnificantly powerful, and less hideous than her husband who looked like he was made of raw meat.
If there was any show that I would gladly have my kids watch, if I ever have them, it'd be Power Rangers. It'd be the show that made everyone feel like they could go out and kick ass, whether they be a dorky bookworm, black guy, hispanic, white, asian, or anything else. The one show that teaches you that everyone is apart of the team, no matter what your background is. Of course it's not perfect, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with a better example.
Damn straight. It's Morphin' time.
-Ryo