Contextual Studies - Representation Race

Watched Blackish

Sitcom written by and for pluralistic society: Identity politics.
Radical step - characters on equal or superior social/class status.
Mediation affects audience reception Satire/comedy Provoking empathy


Watched Love Thy Neighbour  

Sitcom Written by and for dominant society. (Hegemony)
Everyone involved in the production was white
Reflects manifestations of "the other" and friends "narcissism of minor differences" Xenophobia
Radical step - characters on equal social/class status
Mediation affects audience reception: satire/comedy provoking empathy.

Objectives

Theory and critical contexts behind issues of representation & identity

Examination of Race and Identity in media

What do we mean by Race?

Skin Colour (Too reductive on spectrum not purely defined by genetics)

Broadly, shared cultural identity, history and experience shaped by marginalisation exclusion.

"The Other" That which is not us or is different to the homogenous group or culture.

Ideology  - A set of opinions, values, beliefs and assumptions constructed and presented by a media text. Influences both the context in which the media is produced and how it is received.

Hegemony - Is a dominant ideology within society. In sitcom traditionally represented by nuclear family. or reflects conventions or attitude of dominant group. (culture identity)

Pluralism -  

Mediation - What we see is not objective reality or truth, but firstly the filmmaker's version of reality what they have mediated. The process of mediation - the editorial decision making process - directly affects. Representation : through judgment and selection editorialises how gender, race and class are presented. We as the audience are also complicit in mediation, through our understanding and reading of media texts.

Reception Theory - How we as the audience mediate texts, and the factors that might influence us. Argues cultural text has no inherent meaning and of itself, instead meaning is created as the viewer watches and processes the film.

Factors include elements of the viewers personal identity, the exhibition environment and preconceived notions of programme's genre and production.


A Very Brief History

Dominant group is superior
Other cultural groupings are 'inferior' by virtue of difference
Defined by crude stereotypes :X are doctors/shopkeepers. X are criminals/natural athletes.

The Other

Establishing identity through opposition to (and sometimes vilification of) a group or individual who display difference.

Psychoanalysts like freud and Jacques Lacan argue "the other" is a primal impulse, "The narcissism of minor differences"

Lacan Theorizes "the other" emerges as the ego (self Identity) is forged in infancy when child sees itself in the mirror.

Issues of representation
is skin colour always a predominant factor?
how significant are class and identity politics - who or what do you identify with?
What role does pluralism play in defining cultural identity?