Media including movies, advertisements, music, and even cartoons are not clean of racism. Our sources of news, information, and entertainment have a hand in shaping our culture by adding to the expectations we have of certain groups.
José de la Garza is a post-doctoral researcher in the department of Latino and Latina Studies at the University of Illinois. His research is on queerness, sexuality, and immigration in the context of the law. He says a prominent part of the conversation about race is pop culture.
“We start thinking of identity not just as something we are but as something we can like sell, something we can, you know, pitch to someone,” de la Garza says, “Sometimes making money cuts off what, kind of, social impact can do.”
The institutions that guide what stories are being told are made of people like advertisers, producers, artists and many more. They craft characters to represent the ideas of a culture that people already have from stereotypes, historical context, and past representation. Sometimes giving the audience what they want to see is a priority in making money.
Sometimes there are offenses so blatant that they get called out. Audiences even in the U.S. were outraged by this Chinese commercial for laundry detergent. It shows an Asian woman putting a Black man in a washing machine and when he comes back out, he is an Asian man.
The expanding number of television stations available in the U.S. along with the internet have made it possible for Americans to watch programming from other countries. For some it is a way to stay connected to their home culture. Art and media from other countries may not play into the same stereotypes as are present in the U.S.
Kristi Lin is a junior studying electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois. She is a fourth generation Japanese American on her mother’s side of the family and a second generation Taiwanese American on her father’s side. She says there are stereotypes in American media in the sexualization of Asian men and women.
“It’s like very twisted in American culture like very highly sexualized women and very low sexualized men,” says Lin, “Which is why I liked watching a lot of Asian dramas growing up because there was a lot less of the stereotypes in that type of way when you’re looking at romcoms and stuff like that.”
In terms of art and media representation, there can be a thin line between breaking barriers and overshadowing differences that exist. De la Garza says, “What conversations are black artists having about race? Because Macklemore is not having those right he’s trying to say like we’re all the same. When we forget about what differences we’re dealing with, it’s just erasing the problems we’re having instead of critiquing them.”
José de la Garza is a post-doctoral researcher in the department of Latino and Latina Studies at the University of Illinois. His research is on queerness, sexuality, and immigration in the context of the law. He says a prominent part of the conversation about race is pop culture.
“We start thinking of identity not just as something we are but as something we can like sell, something we can, you know, pitch to someone,” de la Garza says, “Sometimes making money cuts off what, kind of, social impact can do.”
The institutions that guide what stories are being told are made of people like advertisers, producers, artists and many more. They craft characters to represent the ideas of a culture that people already have from stereotypes, historical context, and past representation. Sometimes giving the audience what they want to see is a priority in making money.
Sometimes there are offenses so blatant that they get called out. Audiences even in the U.S. were outraged by this Chinese commercial for laundry detergent. It shows an Asian woman putting a Black man in a washing machine and when he comes back out, he is an Asian man.
The expanding number of television stations available in the U.S. along with the internet have made it possible for Americans to watch programming from other countries. For some it is a way to stay connected to their home culture. Art and media from other countries may not play into the same stereotypes as are present in the U.S.
Kristi Lin is a junior studying electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois. She is a fourth generation Japanese American on her mother’s side of the family and a second generation Taiwanese American on her father’s side. She says there are stereotypes in American media in the sexualization of Asian men and women.
“It’s like very twisted in American culture like very highly sexualized women and very low sexualized men,” says Lin, “Which is why I liked watching a lot of Asian dramas growing up because there was a lot less of the stereotypes in that type of way when you’re looking at romcoms and stuff like that.”
In terms of art and media representation, there can be a thin line between breaking barriers and overshadowing differences that exist. De la Garza says, “What conversations are black artists having about race? Because Macklemore is not having those right he’s trying to say like we’re all the same. When we forget about what differences we’re dealing with, it’s just erasing the problems we’re having instead of critiquing them.”