Critical Analysis #3 - Isabelle Wong

 RACIAL IDEOLOGIES: 

A common racial ideology is the idea that all immigrants, specifically those who are people of color, are bad and "destroy" America's culture, economics, and society. This is an extremely negative ideology, but it seems to be all over the media, especially with politics being such a large divide between every day Americans. 

People believe in this ideology because it's easier to blame a group of people about some of the more difficult issues surrounding America today than to actually address it. People from the dominant group, maybe people who have been in America their whole lives or have had generations of family live in America, blame immigrants of color because they feel like the change in America's demographic is impacting their lives and they are unhappy about it. There are white people and people of color who hold this idea, with some even believing in it because they feel like they may be superior, whether it be morally or in some any other fashion. 

This ideology perpetuates racism because it is the idea that all immigrants of color are bad and are a negative impact on American society. It can create unwelcome neighbors, harsh depictions of others, and a huge generalization on immigrants of color, when the reality is that everyone is different and unique in their own ways. 

MEDIA REPRESENTATION: 

Positive representation of all racial groups in the media is important for youth in society because it's important for people to see positive role models who they can relate to. Media is a really powerful representation of life and people in the world. I know for myself, I feel like it's hard to see myself in the media because I'm an Asian-American who feels more American than Asian a significant amount of the time. I ended up relating a lot to Eddie Huang in the TV show Fresh Off the Boat because a lot of the same things that he said to his parents sounded like a lot of the things that I said to my parents growing up as well. Children mimic and adapt to everything around them, and if they have a positive representation of their identities, whether that be racial, ethnically, religiously, etc. then they will most likely have positive outlooks and beliefs about what they do and that is an extremely special thing. 

Stereotypical representation in the media affects the lived experiences of everyday people because people often think about people like how they see it in the media. For example, if someone sees in the media that Latina women are often very crazy and loud, they may expect that all Latina women are crazy and loud because their brain has connected "Latina" with "crazy and loud" and that is an extremely harmful way of thinking. Stereotypes often generalize people and while some can have potentially positive intentions, it is really hard for people to disconnect them, which is what leads to so much animosity between people from different cultures and societies. 

One positive representation of a racialized minority group is Kelly Kapur from the TV show, The Office. In the show, Kelly is a character who is very outgoing, loud, excited, obsessed with celebrities, and seen as a "crazy" kind of character. She is ethnically Indian. She is not characterized/stereotyped as a very studious, uptight, strict, character like Angela is, for example, but is rather seen as the fun and exciting character in Dundler-Miflin. She was the first character that came to mind about breaking the barriers of different racial groups. Another example would be Elle Woods from the movie Legally Blonde, because many people assume that she's just a stupid sorority, but she is actually extremely intelligent and wins a court case because of her unique thinking skills. She is positively represented because the writers showed that your hair color does not pertain to your intelligence at all. 

One negative example of a racialized minority group would be Cher in the movie Clueless. Cher is a blonde high school girl who makes a lot of... unique decisions throughout the movie. I mention Cher because a viral clip of her coming up with a government plan for the "Haiti-ans" (she pronounces it Haiti-ins instead of Hay-shins) and she is stereotyped as being stupid and ditzy. I assume the writers did this on purpose for the movie's plot, but they did make her blonde and not a brunette. She is negatively represented as just another dumb blonde in the movie. 

In my two examples, Elle and Cher are both blonde women, but one is seen as smart and the other not. I realize that there has to be a plot in movies, but this one just felt like a bad depiction of blondes.