“Till it happens to you, you won’t know how I feel.” Lady Gaga released a music video “Til It Happens To You”. It describes how men’s violence against women ruin people’s life, makes victims feel worthless and helpless. Yet, 97 of every 100 rapists receive no punishment (Reporting Rates, 2012). African Americans kept being shot by police. There are 8 states in US where same-sex marriage is illegal (Same-sex marriage in the United States, n.d.). As a citizen, people should learn about the history of media, how media manipulate people, and then use media to fight against injustice.
Sambo, coon, and Mammy were three stereotypes against African Americans. These stereotypes were created during slavery era, and got popular after Civil War. According to Hegemony Theory, in a cultural diverse society, the ruling class who manipulate the culture dominants the others. And these stereotypes help whites take advantage of African Americans. For example, as Patricia Turner stated, before the Civil War, only extremely rich whites could afford housekeepers, who were usually mixed raced, skinny, and young (Clinton, 1982). The popularized stereotype mammy made it affordable for white middle class to hire ‘mammies’. According to Ethnic Notions, there are few show which presented African American families’ life. African American actors were only allowed to play ‘coons’ and ‘mammies’. Black jazz musicians were not allowed to publish music even though most important jazz musicians were black. There are also stereotypes such as Greaser and Latino lover against Latinos during the gold rush. These stereotypes were created because whites considered Latinos as threat to their success. For a long period of time, Latino actors were only allowed to play greasers and sluts, which has big negative effects on Latino community. Discrimination against African Americans and Latinos are disappearing, but still exists. For example, it’s still extremely difficult for African Americans and Latinos with dark skin and accent to get into Hollywood.
People still believe that being homosexual is mental illness even though it is genetic and cannot be cured. In Family Guy, a doctor does an experiment Peter Griffin to find out whether being homosexual is a genetic problem or a mental illness. After Peter Griffin becomes homosexual, Stewie Griffin takes Peter Griffin to straight camp which has been proved non-effective. Lois Griffin accept her husband as gay and rescues him from the camp. It is ridiculous that a little kid who is supposed to know nothing about sex hate Peter Griffin the most. It makes people question what media and school have taught the kids. In early Hollywood, it was illegal to tell the audience that the characters are gay. They used bizarre production code to encrypt the information. For example, people could tell whether the characters were homosexual by looking at characters’ outfits. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, male dancers did not even look at Jane Russell. All ‘gay’ characters committed suicide or killed brutally. Those production code made gay people watch movies with hope. They hoped there were more people like them in the movie. The production code also made gay people believe that they are worthless. Recent years, LGBA community has grown stronger than ever. Many YouTubers and celebrities started to come out. There are more and more same-sex proposal and marriage on YouTube. To fight for human right, people developed Queer Theory, which focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire and challenged the validity and consistency of heteronormative discourse. People’s effort gets rewarded. In 2015, supreme court declared that gay marriage is a constitutional right. In California, gay marriage became legal.
This world has changed a lot for women. On August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. In 2016, Hillary, the most feminist figure, may become the president of United States. However, objectification against women in media is getting worse. Advertisements use female models to sell cars, food, house, everything. Objectification is the first step before a group of people perform violence behaviors against another group of people. One in five women (Black, M. C., Basile, K. C., Breiding, M. J., Smith, S .G., Walters, M. L., Merrick, M., 2010) will be raped at some point in their lives. Most rapists will get away with their crimes. Even more, the advertisements tell young girls how they should look, what is beauty. Young women compare themselves with the perfect images that commercials provided. There pictures are processed by dedicated graphic designers. No one can look like the model on magazine covers. Young women spent a lot of money on their “beauty” and they always fail. Supermodel Cindy Crawford once said I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford. When young women fail, they will feel bad about themselves and decrease their self-esteem. It is even more difficult for women of color to “achieve” this beauty because they may not have light skin and straight hair. Research suggests that women are about 40% more likely than men to develop depression, which means that half of the US female population suffer from mental illness (M.D., 2015). We, as society, failed to provide necessary support for women, protect women’s rights. At the same time, our society teaches our boys to be tough and eliminate their feminine side. It created lots of potential rapists and makes the situation worse.
As an IT professional and student, I will not say that learning all these theories helps me to be successful since I already have great mentors like vlogbrothers on the internet. But as individuals, we can contribute to solve these problems. In a Ted talk (I forgot the title and failed to find the video), the presenter brought up an idea to help decrease sexual violence. She said that a rapist who gets away with his crime is more likely to sexual assault women again and again, until he is punished. She created a platform online for women to report rapist “anonymously”. If the same person is reported twice, police can confirm that this person is guilty. A Chinese hacker and blogger xiaolan set up a similar wiki-website called ZhaoJiaBaiKe for people to submit profiles anonymously, in which there are criminal evidence and personal information about professional criminals (police and officials) who work for CCP. People hope that this website will raise awareness for CCP’s crimes.
In China, if you are ignorant of violence against minority, you will become minority. People should not media to be successful. People should learn media to protect themselves, help others, and contribute to their well-being.
References
Black, M. C., Basile, K. C., Breiding, M. J., Smith, S .G., Walters, M. L., Merrick, M. ( 2010). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence.
Clinton, C. (1982). The plantation mistress: Woman’s world in the old South. In C. Clinton. New York: Pantheon Books.
M.D., J. L. (2015, Apr 22). Women and Mental Illness. Retrieved from psychologytoday: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-your-adult-child-breaks-your-heart/201504/women-and-mental-illness
Reporting Rates. (2012). Retrieved from RAINN: https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
Same-sex marriage in the United States. (n.d.). Retrieved from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States
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