Discussion 2 [Alice Low]

According to my research, media stereotypes are inevitable, especially in the advertising, entertainment and news industries, which need as wide an audience as possible to quickly understand information. Stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people, usually relating to their class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation.

For example,  in the movies shown in Women, Sport and Film class. For instance, in all of the movies we saw how hard the main characters had to practice in order to achieve their own goals. I think that this corresponds very well to such an important value of the capitalist society as competition. In the modern capitalist society it is widely accepted that the way to success lays through competition and only those who work hard enough can reach the sought end. It is beneficial for the hegemonic power to make sure that all people in the society belief in such myth, so that the unequal nature of such competition could be mask behind the mass belief. It might be true that only those who work hard can achieve successful results, but what we fail to realize, that not every one in capitalist society has equal opportunities and conditions for hard work. Not everyone has chance to have a horse (National Velvet), to be able to leave the families in order to play in a team (A League Of Their Own). There are many people who cannot reach what is understood as success only because of not having enough money or authority, and not because of not working hard enough.

Another stereotype that presented in all of the movies was the dependency of women upon men. Male characters always participated in helping a female character to reach the success. Velvet needed young man who would help her to practice her horse riding skills. Monica's love to a basketball player was an important component on her way to glory. The rejection of her love by man was one of the main moments that made her want to practice even harder.  What makes all these examples even more interesting is that one can develop a counter argument, saying that the fact that in these movies men were helping women to achieve the success was instead a break of stereotype, which represents men as those who achieve high goals, and women as those who help to achieve these goals. If we compare the different ways, in which media depicts helping male and helping female characters, we will see that if men help with a wise advice and with their knowledge, then female helps by cooking and taking care of children. This is yet another stereotype, common to all kinds of mass media.

In my view, I think that it is more important that people are able to recognize the stereotypes than knowing how to combat the usage of stereotypes in media. This is because once we get rid of one stereotype another will take its place. Children should be taught from the schools what are the stereotypes that exist in society and how one should understand them. This is to prevent them from reproduce the existing stereotype and did not except everything what they see in movies, press or Internet for the pure truth. I believe that we need to start from elimination of believe in stereotypes within the society.