SPCM 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Exaggeration, Antisemitism, Tokenism

• School: CSU
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: SPCM 100
• Professor: Kurtis L North

Document Summary

Impact of caricatures: exaggeration and simplification in media, persistent stereotypes & caricatures, notions of beauty & character. Impact of representation: whites and blacks are overrepresented, blacks: by quanitity, at least, everyone else is underrepresented, whiteness: america"s default identity. Invisible: viewers do not perceive white characters as having ethnic/racial designations: unless: given ethnic names, accents or reference to heritage. Representation: whiteness & film: white normativity: all spectators encouraged to identify with white protagonist, othering: "the way a dominant culture ascribes an undesirable trait onto one specific group of people" (ones shared by all humans, bad driving. Loud: big families, gestures, violence, sexuality, strange language/accent, food, religion, arts, sports, tokenism: placing *non-white character to deflate charges of racism, or female, lgbtq+, disabled, foreign, elderly, jewish, etc. Irish: comparable to (historical) treatment of african americans: apelike creatures, violent, drunk, sexually prolific, terrorist, fighting; irish twins; gingers, red-headed step child; freckles, "assimilate": go from (species) -> race -> ethnicity -> nationality -> white.