STEREOTYPE, REALISM AND STRUGGLE OVER REPRESENTATION

ethnic/racial and colonial representation in media

corrective > something wrong
questions the social plausibility and mimetic accuracy (representation)
exposition of truth in a community
The Question of Realism
spectators have their own personal and cultural knowledge.
film as representation does not prevent them from having real effects in the world
e.g. Real-life prototypes of characters and situations
struggle over meaning to confirm truth (facts of the events)
Poststructuralist theory
Filmic Fictions-real life spatial and temporal assumptions; and also social and
cultural relationships
e.g. Ignorance of Hollywood films about Native Americans >> falls under one
stereotype
Progressive Realism > unmask and resist hegemony with a vision of themselves and
their reality within
Mikhail Bakhtin-refraction of a refraction (hermeneutic nihilism)
art representations are social not only because they present real, but also because it
constitutes historically situated utterance.
utterance - interlocution of social subjects
delegation of voice (for whom, by whom, with which ideologies)
total realism is impossible then, but the spectators set their own sense of real
rooted from their own experience.
The Burden of Representation
sensitivity about racial stereotypes

 representation has an aesthetic dimension, and art is also a representation

representation is theatrical: represent ethos (character) and ethnos (people)
representation is political: marxist
representation through semiotic principle
representation becomes allegorical mark of the plural -colonized people as all the
same
representation of dominant groups seems natural
stereotypes: hurtful, but the target communities of these stereotype have the social
power to resist them.
media representation: analysis of institutions distributing mass mediated text and
audience that receive them.

Hollywood system: big-budget blockbusters > must have economic power

-often arrive in Third World countries preadvertised (use of multimedia)
Third World Cinema
: to worship an unreachable cinematic civility
: also reinforces hegemony (discrimination)
Other aspects that also discriminate:
film stocks
audience
production processes

Racial Politics of Casting

Film and theatre casting has political overtones.

Dominant: Europeans and Euro-Americans

Supporting Roles: Non-Europeans/Non-whites. OTHERS

Hollywood:
blackface, red face, brown face, yellow face

19th century vaudeville

Al Jolson in Hi Lo Broadway, 1933

Bing Crosby in Dixie, 1943

Sound period:

Whites were called on to play tragic mulattas while real-life mulattas

were cast for Blacks.

Lena Horne in Cabin in the Sky, 1943

Blood definition of Black vs. White

Film must use a universal star

Whites are ideologically seen as people beyond ethnicity

Attempts to ward off accusations of racism

others were allowed to represent their community but it will not be possible if
narrative structure and cinematic strategies remain Eurocentric

Language forms the site where struggles are engaged both collectively and
intimately

Linguistic exchange is shaped by power relations

The issue of linguistic self-representation does not simply entail a return to

authentic languages but rather the orchestration of languages for emancipatory
purposes.

Perspective, Address, Focalization

Perspective

Positive image approach ignores the question of perspective.

From what perspective do we see the film?

Stereotyping from above from below

Address

Who is speaking through a film?

Who is imagined as listening

Who is actually listening?

Who is looking?

What social desires are mobilized by the film?

Focalization

Positive image approach ignores the issues of point-of view or focalization

Focalization refers to the point of view through which the narrative is presented.

From whose character do we see the narrative unfold?

Many Hollywood films about minorities deploy a European or Euro-American

character as a bridge.

The Third World and minoritarian people are implied to be incapable of speaking
for themselves.

Media liberalism does not allow minorities to play prominent self-determining

roles, much like in the political realm.

First World protagonist explains Third World oppression

Ideological point-of-view through the narrator-focalizer

Cinematic and Cultural Mediations

A privileging of social portrayal, plot and character often leads to a slighting of

specifically cinematic dimensions of the films

Mediations refers to the reconciliation of two opposing parties by a third.

In film, this may be the narrative structure, genre conventions or cinematic style.

Mediations in Cinematic Style

Imagery

Lighting And Mise-en-scene

Sound & Music

Mediations In Genre
o Depictions varies according to genre.
o Satirical / parodic Films

Realistic positive portrayals are not the only way to fight racism or to advance
liberatory perspective

Stereotypes can serve to generalize meaning and demystify established power.

Satirical films may be less concerned with constructing positive images than with
challenging the stereotypical expectations an audience may bring them.

But social satire is not an immediate guarantor of multiculturalism.

Priori grid vs cultural specificity

Cultural differentiation of spectatorship

1. Brazilians see Macunaima as a spoof of their national personality rather than a racist
archetype
2. Brazilians are aware that the novels national classic status
3. Brazilian racial portrayal is a less touchy subject. Films are not made to bear strong
burden of representation
4. Difference in filmic and literary cinematic representation. For example in the novel

Macunaima is transformed into a principe lindo with no racial specification. Chosing a

Euro-Brazilian actor to play the principe lindo created the notion that Macunaima turned
Caucasian.
4. Difference in filmic and literary cinematic representation. For example in the novel
Macunaima is transformed into a principe lindo with no racial specification. Chosing a
Euro-Brazilian actor to play the principe lindo created the notion that Macunaima turned
Caucasian.
The Orchestration Of Discourses

Alternative to the stereotypes-and-distortions approach, is to speak less of

images than of voices and discourses

Shift in attention from the visual logic space (perspective, empirical evidence,
domination of the gaze) to space of the vocal (oral ethnography, a peoples
history, slave narratives)

Voice and image should be considered together, dialectically and diacritically.

Emphasis less on a films accuracy to sociological and historical truth, more on

the interplay of voices, discourses and perspectives.

The task of the critic is to call attention to the cultural voices at play, both
prominent and distorted.

Abandon the language of authenticity, in favor of a language of discourses

with its implicit reference to community affiliation and intertextuality.

The notion of voice is open to plurality; a voice is never merely a voice; it also
relays a discourse, since even an individual voice is itself a discursive sum, a
polyphony of voices.

This allows us to compare a films discourses not with an inaccessible real but
with other socially circulated cognate discourses forming part of a continuum.

Discursive analysis would alert us to the dangers of pseudo-polyphonic

Polyphony is not achieved by merely showing a representative of a minority

group, but rather giving voice to that group.

Whose voice are we made to hear?