On stereotypes
Woke up at half six and scrambled for my laptop, after having a nightmare about getting my dates wrong and missing my two exams and hence failing the year. Checked and thankfully found that indeed my exams are tomorrow and not today and went back to sleep.
Have now gone through one old Data Structure paper and will do a second one soon, as well as having read a chapter on portrayal of foreigners in Japan, which was actually incredibly interesting. Hollie had recommended it to me ^_^ and she was right about it being relevant. I'm not too sure how much of it I can use in the exam though. Basically the chapter analyses the way foreigners are seen in Japan through advertisements, which is really an incredibly good idea, though I would have never come up with it on my own. Naturally ads are specifically designed to feed into peoples well established opinions - I don't think there is such a thing as an educational ad - and hence one can easily analyse people’s attitudes towards other races through this medium.
I was rather disturbed by the author’s findings on black people though. Basically they are normally portrayed as clumsy, rather unintelligent and uncivilized - a rather embarrassing attitude for a modern country like Japan, though scarily enough most Japanese can't find anything offending in it. The author traces this racism back to the fact that most Japanese people have actually never seen a black person, much less had an intelligent conversation with one to counteract the stereotype. I found it shocking none the less.
Anyway, I need to get back to work now; otherwise I shall fail miserably tomorrow...
Have now gone through one old Data Structure paper and will do a second one soon, as well as having read a chapter on portrayal of foreigners in Japan, which was actually incredibly interesting. Hollie had recommended it to me ^_^ and she was right about it being relevant. I'm not too sure how much of it I can use in the exam though. Basically the chapter analyses the way foreigners are seen in Japan through advertisements, which is really an incredibly good idea, though I would have never come up with it on my own. Naturally ads are specifically designed to feed into peoples well established opinions - I don't think there is such a thing as an educational ad - and hence one can easily analyse people’s attitudes towards other races through this medium.
I was rather disturbed by the author’s findings on black people though. Basically they are normally portrayed as clumsy, rather unintelligent and uncivilized - a rather embarrassing attitude for a modern country like Japan, though scarily enough most Japanese can't find anything offending in it. The author traces this racism back to the fact that most Japanese people have actually never seen a black person, much less had an intelligent conversation with one to counteract the stereotype. I found it shocking none the less.
Anyway, I need to get back to work now; otherwise I shall fail miserably tomorrow...