Representation of Ethnicity

Four Key Themes in Racial Representations

*exotic
*dangerous
*humorous
*pitied
(Alvarado et al. 1987: 153)

Key Questions about Specific Representations
*What is being represented?
*How is it represented? Using what codes? Within what genre?
*How is the representation made to seem 'true', 'commonsense' or 'natural'?
*What is foregrounded and what is backgrounded? Are there any notable absences?
*Whose representation is it? Whose interests does it reflect? How do you know?
*At whom is this representation targeted? How do you know?
*What does the representation mean to you? What does the representation mean to others? *How do you account for the differences?
*How do people make sense of it? According to what codes?
*With what alternative representations could it be compared? How does it differ?

Some of these questions may be useful when analysing moving image or print based texts in your AS course.

The following information is taken from an the notes of a lecturer at York University. Although you do not need to know or understand all the points or ideas raised, it would be a good idea to have some knowledge of different representations:

Ideology and Hegemony
The term "hegemony" is derived from the Greek hegemon which means leader, ruler or guide. Historically, this term referred to the control or influence of one nation over another and was adopted, in twentieth century Marxism, to explain the control of the dominant class within a capitalism economic framework. Simply put, hegemony is the social practice, other than the use of force or intimidation and coercion, by a dominant group seeking to aggressively expand its influence and control over other less powerful groups in the collective; this practice, or series of interrelated practices, is often "invisible" or naturalized and presented in terms of adherence or compliance to the normative values and belief systems which reinforce and maintain the dominant ideological apparatus of the social or cultural formation. Hegemony is thus concerned with the maintenance of social privilege and power and refers specifically to the institutional practices, by the mass media and other social institutions such as the church, school and family, which seek to present a coherent justification for the domination of one group over others in order to elicit political and economic consent from those in positions of social subordination.

Of course, the ideas of the ruling class will never be fully accepted in a passive manner and they will need to be modified according to the needs and interests of the subordinate classes in a series of negotiations which allow these ideas to be adapted to the realities of everyday existence. Finally, it is possible for individuals to maintain contradictory ideological positions, some grounded in hegemonic practices and the others conforming to everyday life. An understanding of this contradictory positions allows the critical analysis of how subordinate groups actively respond to and resist economic and political domination.

Representations of Race in the Mass Media
Following Grey's argument, we can divide representations of race in the mass media into two major approaches, namely the "dystopian vision" and the "utopian vision" which become articulated through texts and other forms of mediated representations, such as images, advertisements and so forth.

The Utopian Vision of Race in the Mass Media
This vision is based on the capitalist assumption of limitless social progress or mobility and transformation which is said to provide the individual or group within the collective with ever-increasing freedom from previous forms of alienation, strife and adversity. This vision is based, in part, on an "idealized" version of collective life and constantly refers the reader or viewer to this "ideal" in terms of how things "might be" or "will be" given adherence and compliance to the normative principles of collective life. Most often, this utopian vision finds its expression in some form of consumerist fantasy grounded in the commodification of human activity and behaviour. In other words, by orienting the interpellated individual to lifestyle proposed as a desirable and attainable representation of the social self, the mass media industries serve as the ideological filters which promote and illustrate the narrow range of desired and condoned social practices and values.

Grey argues that, within this "utopian" framework, representations of African-American life can be understood in terms of the struggle to overcome various forms of adversity, racial, economic, political and otherwise. These narrative of achievement and overcoming therefore present the dominant values of the ruling class, in this case, those of middle-class white Americans, as the normative social order that should be aspired to and might be attained through hard work and effort, values that are intended to be internalized by viewers. In the creation of such narratives, any trace of the specificity and historical basis of these struggles is often marginalized if not completely forgotten in favor of a universalizing myth whose ideological function is to reframe economic and political debates surrounding race and ethnicity. By moving these away from any discussion regarding the historical grounds for social inequities, the mass media can thus present to its audience singular narratives of transcendence which bear little if any connection with the lived realities of everyday life but which, nonetheless, conform to the dominant ideological imperatives of those in positions of social, economic and political power. Finally, by identifying particular cases where individuals from the disenfranchised minorities have succeeded in crossing the barriers of class and social status and making them the focus of "utopian" narratives, the producers of mass mediated texts propose a move from the particularity of individual existence to some form of social universality, obscuring, in the process, those elements in the social sphere which continue to undermine and negate the possibility of such social movements, simply stating, in other words, that if one individual can overcome the limitations of their socioeconomic environment and background, all members of such a group can do the same thing.

The Dystopian Vision of Race in the Mass Media
This approach is used to identify and characterize minorities as the sources of existing social problems, a process known as "scapegoating." The solutions to these perceived and identified social problems are then presented in terms of a politics of hegemonic assimilation or further radical marginalization of the alien threatening "other." These narratives of social paranoia and fear are expressed in the media through persistent representation of minorities as shiftless or criminal elements who pose a threat to the status quo of civil society and the social order. This social logic is replicated, therefore, in commercial productions which, in turn, fuel public discourse on the social problems posed by so-called threatening minority groups, a point made by Gerbner et al. in his famous studies of media "acculturation." Contingently, the need for the mass media to maximize profits by appealing to the largest and most lucrative demographic sector, namely, white American middle-class consumers, allows these forms of negative representation to persist since they encounter little if any resistance from their viewing audience that might be considered economically meaningful.