Stereotypes and scripts
Branston and Stafford identify two ways that media induce is to imagine
particular groups, identities and situations:
when these relate to people they are sometimes called stereotypes or
types
when they offer images of situations or processes the term 'script is
sometimes used.
Familiarity and performance
We grow familiar with these scripts and often know how to perform them
in our own lives, to the exclusion of other ways of being.
Representational effects
Both kinds of imaginings can have material effects on how people expect
the world to be, and then experience it, and how they in turn get understood,
or legislated for, or called names, or not given employment
Stereotypes and scripts
Stereotypes are widely circulated ideas or assumptions about particular
groups. They do not exist about all groups. The term is felt to be derogatory.
Characteristics of stereotypes
B&S found 4 characteristics of stereotypes
- Stereotypes involve both a categorizing and an evaluation of the group being stereotypes. - We employ categorizing to make sense of the world. We all employ pre-judgement to navigate our way through it. We all use typification to describe and identify things. All fiction uses a shorthand of types owing to constraints of time and space
- Stereotypes takes easily grasped features presumed to belong to a group. They foreground them and imply that all group members always have these features. They suggest these characteristics are historically the cause of the groups position. - One of the seductions of stereotypes is that they can point to features and apparently have a grain of truth. but they then repeat, across the whole range of media, jokes, ect., that this characteristic is and has always been the central truth about that group. (There is a stereotype that black people are always up to no good and lurk in the shadows, but obviously this is not the case as some individuals may do that but not all do. I repeat this stereotype by showing my black characters hanging out in a dark ally way in Croydon, which creates the thought that maybe it is not the grain of truth but the central truth.)
- The evaluation of the group is often, though not always a negative one - Though historically oppressed groups have been heavily stereotyped, this usually happens through more than one stereotype. Each stereotype itself changes over time, and relates to broader historical discourses, such as those of colonialism or patriarchal values.
- Stereotypes often seem to insist on absolute boundaries, where in reality there exist spectrum's of differences and have discourses. - The idea of spectrums is not usually how arguments against stereotypes are made. More usually, anti-stereotype arguments are made. More usually, anti-stereotype arguments involve one of the dominant values of western culture; that we are all unique individuals, which stereotypes will not allow for. - In some ways this is true (however much it ignores the social structuring where all shaped by.) Yes it is much more helpful to think of differences as involving shared and changing historical structures within social orders. We can then understand many of our experiences as being typical, or held in common. - Our differences are due not to unique essences but to the particular ways in which very big, shared social forces (such as class, gender, ethnicity, regional identity ect.) have intersected and blended in all of our unique instances (+ genetic element and personal histories) - This broadens the opportunities for understanding both other peoples uniqueness and their capacity to act together to challenge unjust social structures
Gill Branston & Roy Stafford said however realistic media
images seem, they never simply present the world direct. I can apply this to my
media intro as the genre I used was social realism and that is realistic it
still does not present the world direct and it is still a construction
The characters in my intro could be seen as being stereotyped as I
catergorised young black males as being up to no good and hanging out in dark
dingy areas which is a stereotyped that is said often by the public. I did this
because as a lot of people know of this stereotype it lets them understand the
characters and the storyline quicker and better as it is some peoples instinct
to think of the stereotype.
