Because we don't have class on Thursday, I think that we should use this space to clarify certain concepts, ask questions, and cite examples of representations of nation/race/gender/sexuality in the media.Feel free to answer the guide questions below.
1. Give an example of a recent tv show/movie/advert/etc and how it constructs stories about nation/race/gender/sexuality. How does your chosen media text enable and/or disable, empower and/or oppress?
2. What assumptions do we have about what it means to be a Filipino? How "must" a Filipino act, according to discourses in the media and in everyday life? How do these assumptions become naturalized or taken for granted?
3. In class, I cited the show Ugly Betty as a show that has 'progressive' representations in the sense that it makes available different narratives about nation/race/gender/sexuality. Rather than rely on existing stereotypes, Ugly Betty, I argue, puts forth alternative ideas about what it means to be American, male or female, homosexual, transsexual, etc. and is therefore more inclusive and democratic in its representations. Do you have a media text that you admire for its challenging representations?
4. In class, I also cited the film 300 for its negative representations of non-Western people as being villainous/hideous/barbaric/exotic/homosexual/etc. What media text do you find has restrictive and simplistic representations of nation/race/gender/sexuality?
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This is KitKat Pecson. :D
1. Give an example of a recent tv show/movie/advert/etc and how it constructs stories about nation/race/gender/sexuality. How does your chosen media text enable and/or disable, empower and/or oppress?
Although I enjoyed the movie Sex and the City, I think it has equal proportions of empowerment and oppression. I like that the movie enables us to view different angles of womanhood in the modern day. It also has equal parts of feminist values and scenes feminists would cringe at. On one hand, there are women who are career-driven and who seek to provide for their families and themselves. They are independent and don't fit into the cookie-cutter Stepford-wife mold. On the other hand, there is the woman who falls into a year of despair after having her heart-broken, along with the other women who can't seem to get over sexual/love problems. These same women seem to focus so much on sex and physical appearances that it becomes a main part of their identity. However, that's also empowerment because it lends to the idea that women can do whatever they want, but it can construct negative stories/concepts that all independent and headstrong women are sex-crazed types obsessed with shopping and boyfriends.
2. What assumptions do we have about what it means to be a Filipino? How "must" a Filipino act, according to discourses in the media and in everyday life? How do these assumptions become naturalized or taken for granted? Filipinos, according to our own shows, ads, and movies, are all about family and relationships. Filipinos are really 'excellent' at groupthink and have values like crab mentality, pakikisama, and the bahala na syndrome. They are expected to comply with the values of the community, respect their elders, and essentially follow Asian traditions. If these are shown in the media, it only serves as a way to reinforce the Filipino's support for the cultural status quo. I personally believe that the only reason the media would highlight such traits in Filipinos is that Filipinos can resonate with these values and actually enjoy/empathize with them. Even values perceived to be 'negative' like bahala na achieve a sense of belonging in the culture because after all, it's 'Filipino'.
3. Do you have a media text that you admire for its challenging representations?
I enjoy watching House because each episode tackles different aspects of varying cultures, clashing personal beliefs, and personal prejudices. The character of Dr. House is already a challenge to preconceived notions of doctors being benevolent, lollipop-bestowing, and kind. Dr. House is certainly the opposite - he doesn't even meet most of his patients - but he's still the best diagnostician. The doctors also come into conflict with unique issues like two (straight) BFFs deciding to have a child with the same sperm donor, a teenage girl - perceived to be material and indifferent - refusing to have an animal heart transplant, a child pressured into plastic surgery by an overbearing mother, an intelligent boy giving up higher education because his parents believe modern society is evil, a doctor refusing medicine to support a cause, and many other examples. House provides viewers with many facets of identities/roles which break down or challenge their stereotypes. It also places such characters under the microscope to view not just the disease but the mind battling it.
4. In class, I also cited the film 300 for its negative representations of non-Western people as being villainous/hideous/barbaric/exotic/homosexual/etc. What media text do you find has restrictive and simplistic representations of nation/race/gender/sexuality? I think a lot of the new-generation (I feel old now.) Disney hits, such as The Sweet Life of... and Hannah Montana have narrow representations of gender roles and societal standards. For examples, the young kids in these shows always seem to be preoccupied to the point of obsession with shopping, material happiness, dating, and physical appearances. A lot of the short stories done in these episodes are based on stereotyped 'American' encounters, such as London Tipton freaking out over her lack of pocket money or a girl forcing her best friend to give his date a kiss because 'that's how it's done'. The representation here is that young adults are focused on immediate and perhaps irrelevant pleasures. There are also representations of beautiful kids being dumb (think Mean Girls) and awkward/smart children being 'ugly' or 'not cool'. I think children can be more multi-dimensional than that.
EXCELLENT opening post, KitKat. You raise so many interesting points.
1. I get what you mean about Sex and the City both enabling and disabling towards women. That's why I loved this episode of 30 Rock called "Cougar". In the episode, 37 y/o Liz Lemon (played by the fabulous Tina Fey) went on a few dates with the 20 y/o coffee guy name Jamie. And instead of being the "empowered New Yorker woman" (a la SATC), she was portrayed as totally uncomfortable and insecure about the whole situation. She expressed total surprise when Jamie invited her out on a date at 10 ("At night?"), she kept mistaking pop culture references, etc. And this is a different, challenging narrative of femininity in the age of "Sex and the City".
2. I love you, KitKat, for saying 'Filipino' and not Filipino. May you take this with you until senior year. I think 'Filipino' stresses how Filipino-ness is a construct, is a narrative, is a story that is never fixed or natural or given or biological. Filipino-ness (nation/race) is always-already in translation, in motion, in construction, forever contested and challenged. And the dominant story about what it means to be Filipino (the traits that you mention) does not and can never fully capture the diversity of meanings of Filipino-ness and functions to both include AND exclude.
1. Give an example of a recent tv show/movie/advert/etc and how it constructs stories about nation/race/gender/sexuality. How does your chosen media text enable and/or disable, empower and/or oppress?
Ok, I hate me for not watching enough television of late. Well, today I watched the first episode of Project Runway: Philippines and it struck me how both very similar and very different it is from the original. Starting off with similarities, majority of the designers are homosexuals with a few fashionista girls and an older woman (ala Wendy from Project Runway Season 1) thrown in. Note that we don't have any straight male designers though. Also, the older woman was the first to be eliminated despite her dress being more wearable than the tacky one her competitor served up. Does this say something about the Pinoy audience favoring the young?
It also struck me that the critiques on the runway weren't all that harsh unless the dress was damn fugly. No, the real criticism happened when they were judging, away from the contestants, This shows the Pinoy "Brand X" mentality. An inability to be face on with tearing people down. The judges may think they are empowering the contestants by not breaking their spirits but, in the end, they are disempowering them by not letting them hear important critique.
2. What assumptions do we have about what it means to be a Filipino? How "must" a Filipino act, according to discourses in the media and in everyday life? How do these assumptions become naturalized or taken for granted?
Well, the Pinoy is always shown as humble, friendly, hospitable...kindness stereotypes, bayanihan and whatnot. That's not so bad...
What is bad is that of late, the Pinoy woman has been more sexed up. She's in condom commercials, riding horses in liquor ads... This is definitely not the way to go. Why is it that Pinoy women in ads can be classified mostly as: family woman, maid, sexpot, bitchy and corporate? Aren't we more diverse than that?
And I already mentioned in class the whole problem with the "natives" thing. We have got to stop advertising our country as this land full of indigenous tribes. We do have forest people but that doesn't mean all of us walk around in bahags. Why don't we try to sell the metropolitan side of our country? Show that we're civilized too? That we're not just another one of America's "brown little brothers?"
3. In class, I cited the show Ugly Betty as a show that has 'progressive' representations in the sense that it makes available different narratives about nation/race/gender/sexuality. Rather than rely on existing stereotypes, Ugly Betty, I argue, puts forth alternative ideas about what it means to be American, male or female, homosexual, transsexual, etc. and is therefore more inclusive and democratic in its representations. Do you have a media text that you admire for its challenging representations?
Ok, here we go again with Star Trek: Voyager. :p I admired it because it was willing to step out of its own norms with regard to women in power. I haven't seen the original Star Trek but I've read about it at length. The original was supposed to have a woman as second-in-command but they dropped it because it was too radical for that time. And so the original was mostly William Shatner and the dudes exploring and having their fill of alien babes.
Voyager had a female captain and I loved that. To boot, she wasn't a sexpot of a woman. No, Kate Mulgrew was 38 when she took the role but she proved she could be sexy without being vulgar and she could still command respect. How difficult is that? And this was 1995! The show was way ahead of its time. *fangasm*
This is why I'm kind of disappointed in TV today. Why are do the female leads all have to be hot? Can't they be smart and draw sexiness from there?
4. In class, I also cited the film 300 for its negative representations of non-Western people as being villainous/hideous/barbaric/exotic/homosexual/etc. What media text do you find has restrictive and simplistic representations of nation/race/gender/sexuality?
I seriously want to clobber my younger sister over the head for watching so much Disney. Their sitcoms are garbage. Got to agree with Kitkat on the whole Hannah Montana and Suite Life thing. my sister has even adapted the stupid "Valley Girl" accent which should be reserved for bad 80's movies and not tween programming.
I also dislike how they stereotype Hispanics. Esteban the bellhop? Why is he a bellhop? Why do they have to exaggerate his accent? Why do they give him a ridiculously long name? Why do they make him look stupid? So the white kids (Disney's target demographic) can laugh? I don't think that's fair.
I just cannot stand the hypocrisy in it all. Don't get me started on HSM and Vanessa Hudgens and her nude pictures. *sighs*
3. i enjoy the tv show "heroes" for i think it destabilizes certain stereotypes and offers audiences a new social perspective. yet i think this is only to some extent, for its portrayal of asians, african americans, and latin americans are still quite stereotypical. (asians are obsessed with anime/comic books, african americans live in slum areas, latin americans with very heavy accents try to illegally cross the american-mexican border.)
regardless of this, i will give the show credit for somehow changing the way we think about gender stereotypes. a case in point is claire bennet. she may be blonde like most cheerleaders we've seen portrayed in american films and television, but she challenges this stereotype because of her special ability to regenerate even after her limbs have been broken or severed. not to mention, she has brains as well as heart. niki sanders also destabilizes the stereotype of highly sexualized blonde bombshells. although she does provide some eye candy and tantalizing scenes (she is portrayed as a stripper in the first episode), viewers are given an alternative perspective of her when they see that she is actually a single mother. her split personality and superhuman strength further challenge the bombshell and the weak, helpless single mother stereotypes, yet as a downside she is portrayed as highly emotionally unstable and needy. there is also mrs. petrelli, the sly and conniving widow who functions as one of the plot's prime movers.
as for the men in "heroes", they aren't your average macho, emotionally-distant characters. most of them are tortured souls who deal with a lot of inner and outer conflict, yet are still sensitive and emotionally-involved fathers, husbands, and sons.
as a whole, the program, just like "ugly betty", shows that it is okay to be different, to go against what society dictates as "normal", and to have unique abilities.
4. i think a lot of disney classics we've enjoyed watching as children have a lot of these very narrow representations.
in terms of gender, they show a certain degree of passiveness on the part of females. the heroinesdo a lot of daydreaming--picturing themselves living lives other than their own and not necessarily taking sufficient action to fulfill these dreams. (snow white and sleeping beauty wistfully long for a prince charming to sweep them off their feet, cinderella wishes to go to the ball, the little mermaid longs to live on land.)
they are also portrayed as helpless in the face of destiny, or they must give up a part of themselves in order to change what their destiny is. (sleeping beauty eventually falls to the curse placed on her during her christening, the little mermaid gives up her voice for a pair of legs, mulan gives up her identity as a woman to serve in the army, belle endures an abusive relationship with the beast.)
and when misfortune falls, they must wait until an outside force (usually a male protagonist) comes in to save the helpless princesses from misfortune. (only true love's kiss from the men of their dreams wake up snow white and sleeping beauty from their deep slumber, the little mermaid becomes fully human only upon her father's consent, mulan is pardoned for her crimes only upon consent by the emperor, and returns home--in a rather anticlimactic ending--only to be romanced by her captain.)
sometimes, females who possess supernatural powers do the rescuing, as seen in the presence of fairy godmothers.
apart from being helpless, females are also very much sexualized, as seen in their body proportions and costumes.
i've also noticed narrow representations in terms of race. the film "pocahontas" contains racist lyrics from the song "savages". the native americans are described as "filthy little heathens", "vermin", "dirty redskin devils", a "disgusting race" who are "barely even human". in "peter pan", they are referred to as "injuns", and are teased for their skin color ("the very first injun prince / ... kissed a maid and [started] to blush / and we've all been blushin' since"). in aladdin, some arabs are referred to as barbaric in the song "arabian nights" ("...they cut off your ear if they don't like your face / it's barbaric, but hey, it's home").
i wouldn't blame disney alone for these representations, however. many of these are based on fairy tales that have somehow become deeply-rooted in our cultural psyche.
* i got the lyrics from the following websites, just to give credit:
arabian nights
what made the red man red?
savages
2. What assumptions do we have about what it means to be a Filipino? How "must" a Filipino act, according to discourses in the media and in everyday life? How do these assumptions become naturalized or taken for granted?
Most news articles I've read glorify the success stories of underpriveleged people excelling in school. I know such an achievement is worth noting. It is admirable especially when they come from public schools, and then enter and eventaully succeed in top colleges and universities, with aceademic distinctions. But the media seems to assume that the public school students, in general, are not intellligent. That their knowledge is limited compared to their well-off classmates. It also reinforces the notion that poor cannot rise above their condition, only a select few.
Such type of representation of course may appear empowering, but it belittles the poor's capabilities. This assumption is just constricting, simplistic even.
4. In class, I also cited the film 300 for its negative representations of non-Western people as being villainous/hideous/barbaric/exotic/homosexual/etc. What media text do you find has restrictive and simplistic representations of nation/race/gender/sexuality?
A few months back, I recall this Axe ad that had a skewed representation of women. (Well, all Axe ads have the like effect.) The setting of the ad was on the shore, with a guy spraying Axe all over his bare chest and tummy. Then, out of nowhere, hordes of women emerged from the sea and above the mountain, and began attacking the guy. The background music had a grand, booming feel - almost tribal.
The women were seen as wild, sex-traved creatures who want to fling themselves to, uhm, a sweet-smelling guy. The ad seemed to think that women easily give in to seduction.
-Andrew Ilagan :)
Andrew, good point with regard to the representation of public school students. Smart public school students are spotlighted and are presented as exceptional--literally, exceptions to the norm. This is very unfortunate indeed. We also have academic studies published by Queena Lee-Chua that sound "surprised" by the fact that public school students do well in maths and sciences.
The Wow Philippines ad in class really caught my attention. No wonder foreign men always say Filipinas are beautiful and exotic. Maybe this idea came before the ad itself, but the ad strengthened, and is constantly constructing our country as a haven of exotic women. Where does that put men? The ad did not contain hardworking fathers and husbands and brothers, who largely make up our society. But then again the ad also not included mothers, lolas, and little girls. Oh well, the ad did not contain many things (much important things in my opinion, like our close family ties, rich traditions)—does that mean, then, that exotic women and beaches are all we could boast about? The ad, for me, constrains the image of the country, limiting it to only a few of its physical attributes—exotic women, beaches—and fails to actually paint a more-or-less-close-to-real picture of what the Philippines actually is.
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