Questions for teachers: How have you defined racism up until now? Which levels of racism (personal, interpersonal, cultural or institutional) do you feel most able to identify? Which are more difficult? What feelings do you notice as you discuss these aspects of racism?

 

“Old-fashioned” Racism

“Old-fashioned” racism refers to overt acts of racism at the personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels:

Personal racism (Example: believing that blacks and other people of color are inferior) Interpersonal racism (calling people racist names) Cultural racism (seeing black culture as “less than” or impoverished) Institutional racism (Jim Crow laws)

 

Such types of racism were the “law of the land” in many parts of the United States throughout our history and remained in the Southern region until the passage of the l964 Civil Rights Act. Institutional racism results in the targeting of certain groups to receive fewer of society’s resources. This means that the chances for their success are less, and the chances of success for the privileged group are better.

In advertising, examples of old-fashioned racism include symbols of black women such as Aunt Jemima or the lack of black women in ads altogether. Aunt Jemima was a television commercial and advertisement character that represented a stereotypical image of black women who served as domestic workers for whites. She was a typically loved character who was not supposed to be smart, beautiful or powerful, but sweet, lacking in sensuality and loving at all times. Women of color from Asian, Latina and Native American communities were virtually non-existent in advertising but, when included, were uniformly stereotypical.

As an African American woman growing up in the South in the l950’s, I experienced old-fashioned racism in its interpersonal, cultural and institutional dimensions. By the time I was in graduate school in l975 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, the social psychology literature was suggesting that racism had all but disappeared in this country. What was disappearing was old-fashioned racism (although studies show that 25% of people still hold oldfashioned racist views), and something new and harder to pin down was taking its place.

Questions for teachers: What feelings and images does the word “racist” conjure up for you first? As you reflect on this question and the section above, do you tend to think first about racism in terms of its “old-fashioned” form?

It assumes that white consumers will not find beauty in a particular black woman’s style. It does not provide them an opportunity to stretch their perspectives about what is “right and beautiful.” It assumes that consumers from all backgrounds share this bias. For too long women and men of color have been trained to disregard the standards of beauty traditional to our group or cultural heritage and to feel a need to strive for white images. It defines what is beautiful in European “ethnic” terms. This is as damaging to people of color as is the stereotypical image of the “mammy” and to whites as is the stereotypical image of the “china doll”. And finally, it begins to create an image of what is beautiful that is so narrow that very few can see themselves, unless they strive to be white-looking Asians, Blacks, Latinas or Native Americans.

 

As Gail Dines points out in the video, the media is controlled by a few U.S. corporations who make profits globally from the marketing of this narrow perspective of beauty. All of us become victims of this media imaging and, over time, lose touch with the fact that very few people of any racial or cultural group look like what is on the television or movie screen. This distortion of reality for economic gain is cultural and institutional racism at its most extreme...and it is happening all over the world.

Question for teachers: If you are European- American in heritage, have you ever thought of yourself as looking “ethnic”? How does this alter your perspective? If you are a person of color, what are images of beauty in your culture?

 

Questions for teachers of color: What are some examples of the misinformation we have been taught about ourselves as people of color? What are some of our behaviors that limit our success that we need to address? What are some personal reflections on the concept of internalized oppression?

 

 

Questions for white teachers: Think about an area where you may be a “target” of oppression — due to gender (female), class (working class or poor), language (English as a second language), age (youth or elderly), physical ability (disabled), sexual orientation (gay/ lesbian) etc. What are some behaviors or beliefs that limit your success that might relate to internalized oppression?

 

 

You are now the first image-based generation to come of age....Today the major form of communication is the image. What does that mean to move from print to image?....Let’s talk about how this affects you, how this affects the way you think about yourselves, the way you think about your bodies, the way women think about femininity, the way men think about masculinity and the connections between the two. -Gail Dines, "The Strength to Resist."

 

Issues to Consider: While many of the images we see are stills, increasingly we are bombarded with moving images from television, film, video and the internet. These images move at the speed of the producer, not the consumer. This takes the power away from consumer to process at his or her own speed. The pace of the images today makes it impossible to critically analyze the messages. We see them but do not have enough time to deconstruct the meaning within the images. Print allows us to go back to the text and analyze it at our own pace. We can put the text down and come back to it. Moving images are here one second and gone the next. Ultimately, they all just collapse together into a confusing, but often disturbing, mush. To produce print, you need literacy, access to writing materials and the printing press. This was always political in that only some people (elite classes) had access to main stream distribution. But print based culture did allow for a range of ideas to be disseminated since the technology needed was relatively inexpensive. To produce the moving image, you need expensive equipment and skills that few have. Producing this type of image media is much more complex and requires sophisticated technology that few can afford. Images are more seductive than any other kind of communication. They draw us in and speak to us in ways that short circuit critical analysis. They have the appearance of always telling the truth because we are seeing it with our eyes. Moving images require less energy than print. We become much more passive when consuming the image since we really do not need to use our imagination. All the work is done for us. (Example: Think about reading a book and then seeing the film. The characters rarely look like they do in our mind’s eye. We often are disappointed with the film and can never really go back to our own images that we have constructed from the book.) Images surround us everywhere. The visual landscape has been taken over by corporate produced images designed to sell us products. It is impossible to ignore images. They are on buses, on billboards, at bus stops, in the supermarket, checkout, in stores, on the television, in magazines, and over the Internet. We are now in an image-cluttered environment where the producers are competing for our eyes. The staple of the image-based culture is the sexualized body of young, thin, white women. Whereas print allowedfor a diversity of women’s bodies, the image culture has narrowed the diversity to an almost single body shape. As women, we constantly compare ourselves to the image of the “perfect” body. We can never actually meet the standard since it is a constructed image that has little connection to real women’s bodies.

Ask students to: Keep a log of the number of the advertising images they see each day as they go about their normal daily routine. Write down what the image was selling and what clues helped them understand what the image was selling, both overtly and covertly. Watch television to research how often the screen changes from one scene to the next. It is useful to separate the genres so that students can time screen changes for advertisements, drama shows, news, MTV and children’s shows, especially cartoons. Which genre has the most screen changes? What do screen changes do to/for the viewer? Read a book and then watch the movie version. Require them to write a description of the visual aspects of two or three characters as they imagine them from reading the book. After seeing the movie, they can discuss in class how they now see the characters. The next project could be to reverse the process whereby students watch the film first and then read the book. One issue to explore here is to examine which genre was more powerful. Watch an old movie and keep a log of how often the screen changes. Also, explore how the dialogue, the camera techniques and the development of the story are different from present day movies.

 

II. Images and Ideology

Issues to Consider All images are encoded with ideological messages. There is no such thing as an innocent image since it has been carefully constructed to meet a particular standard in order to sell a product. Images rarely, if ever reflect reality. All images are a distorted view of reality since they are highly stylized. They are not a slice of life but a constructed version of reality. Many theorists argue that the version of reality encoded in images is that which serves the interests of the dominant group such as corporations and wealthy, white, heterosexual men. This process has been termed “hegemony” and is defined by Michelle Barrett as “the organization of popular consent to the ideology of the dominant group and for ‘hegemony’ to be secured everyone must accept, at the level of ‘common sense’ knowledge, the view of the dominant class.”

Ask Students to: Watch the evening news on the same channel every day for one week. Who actually gets to speak? What do they speak about? Are they “subject matter experts” or do they have another role? Which groups do these people represent? Observe how often during the week the stories of racial or cultural groups other than white European- Americans are featured. Examine how minority groups are represented, how they are depicted. Are they shown as experts in a field or as examples of people who do not conform to the American dream through choice rather than lack of opportunity? Watch several sit-coms, police dramas and talk shows to see whether minority groups are “symbolically annihilated”. Find examples of alternative media. Discuss in class what makes the text and images challenge the prevailing, mainstream media Explore how consumerism is promoted as a way of life and as a solution to problems that are created as a result of the unequal distribution of money and power. Design an advertising campaign for a product which students find useless. Their job is to sell the product to the class in a way that makes it appealing. Consider what goes into a “real” advertising campaign: target audience(s), geographics, profit potential, creating a need for products that may have little use or value, etc.

Issues to Consider How can we, as women, appreciate our own bodies on their own terms when we are “symbolically annihilated” in the media? Why have media images of women become so limited in their standard of beauty? How does this tie in with the massive growth in plastic surgery, the dieting industry, and the sales of cosmetics? What does it mean to walk around in a body we are at war with? How does this affect the way we feel about ourselves and our rights to demand equality? In what ways do such images impact on our relationship to food? Having a healthy appetite is often seen as a sign of gluttony and lack of self-control. The problem here is that we need food to live and that healthy eating is a sensuous experience that should fill us with pleasure. In many developing countries, women are the last to be fed. They are denied food because of its scarcity and their political standing in society. In this country, where most women do have access to enough food, we are now starving ourselves rather than being purposely starved. What is the relationship between the images of women and eating disorders? Eating disorders in the extreme are anorexia and bulimia, but many women have a difficult relationship to food, one fraught with guilt, shame, and secrecy. This could be seen on a continuum of eating disorders, not as a rare, deviant behavior exhibited by a few anorexics and bulimics. In the past, women with large hips and sturdy thighs were seen as sexual and desirable. Why have we now moved to a culture where these traits are seen as “fat and ugly” and it is only extremely thin women who are viewed as the most desirable? Do standards of beauty differ between various ethnic and racial groups? If so, what are some of those differences?

 

Ask Students to: Think aloud how they feel about their bodies. Write the responses on the board so they can get a sense of what others think and the commonalties and differences between the feelings. (Or, you could hand out 3X5 index cards and ask each student to write down 5 phrases which indicate how the student feels about her or his body. Then you could write the comments up on the board, putting checkmarks by the duplicate answers.) Bring in advertisements of women in order to explore how these images construct particular notions of femininity. What do they say about what it means to be feminine in our culture? What are the dominant ways of representing women in advertisements? Look at facial expressions, body poses, the point of view of the camera and the story encoded in the image. Develop a list of the themes that run through the ads. Compare the images of women and men in the ads. Explore how the images differ in terms of the messages of what constitutes the “perfect female” and the “perfect male”. Examine ads for their racial diversity. Are there any common themes of how women of different ethnic groups are represented? Compare images in magazines geared to white audiences versus those geared to black audiences. How are femininity and masculinity constructed in the magazines? Examine magazines geared to “larger women” to see if these models are portrayed differently than those in the regular magazines. And importantly, how large are these women really, who represent the “larger women”? Explore the placements of food ads in the magazines. Are they located near an image of a thin model or any ad or article on diets? Look for alternative images of women. What makes these images challenge the predominant, mainstream images?

 

NOTE: This is a difficult subject to teach in class. Some students may be very upset by seeing pornographic images, especially videos. There are usually students in class who have histories of sexual abuse and the topic could trigger memories. Students should not be forced to look at pornography; other options should be discussed in class.

Issues to Consider Pornography is not just fantasy, rather it is a multi-billion dollar a year industry that is produced in a capitalist, patriarchal system. This means that we need to explore the conditions of its production in terms of who controls the industry and the lives of the women who are used in the industry. Some of the women who work in the industry have written about their experiences. It would be useful to examine the range of experiences these women discuss. There is a growing body of literature on the relationship between the trafficking of poor women and the production of pornography. Since pornography is a multinational industry, it is important to examine how women from developing countries are increasingly being exploited and abused by a global sex industry. Pornography uses specific codes and conventions (the “come get me” look, bondage, women enjoying rape, etc.) to represent the female body. Exploring these codes and conventions facilitates a development of a definition of what pornography actually is. The pornographic codes and conventions filter down to mainstream images of women, especially in advertising. This means that we are often viewing pornographic images without consciously recognizing it. What impact may this have on our acceptance as pornography as mainstream media? Pornography is now a major part of the Internet. To gain a full understanding of pornography, we need to explore the accessibility and nature of Internet pornography. The video pornography industry has grown over the last 10 years to the point that the industry magazine (Adult Video News) has reported that approximately 10,000 new videos were released last year, compared to about 3,000 in 1994. Clearly, the Internet has played a role in the marketing of pornography, but this does not completely explain the growth. What could be the long and short-term effects of this increas?

Ask Students to: (These suggestions should be discussed with students first. Some may decide they do not want to participate.) Discuss their experience with pornography. When did they first see it and what affect did it have on them? Visit an adult bookstore (if students feel okay about this, do not go alone but go in groups). Take notes on the titles of the movies and the different genres on sale. Observe the social interactions of consumers in the store. Can they discern patterns of interaction that are different to those in other stores? Explore the themes in pornography. Analyze from whose point of view is the image? Does it take on the position of the female or the male? Examine how the female body is portrayed, what are the facial expressions, does she look like she is enjoying the sex, are there suggestions of violence and coercion? How are men portrayed, are their bodies scrutinized by the camera in the same way as women’s bodies? Are there any connections between the participants other than sexual? Consider what the image would look like if women made it? Would sex be portrayed in the same way? Think about what is actually missing from the image/ story? Does the images seem like a realistic representation of sex in this culture? Develop ideas on how sexual representation could be constructed differently to show an egalitarian relationship between the participants. Explain why the majority of pornography is still bought by men. While there is a tendency in the media to say that women are now buying pornography in greater numbers, the empirical evidence suggests that this is industry hype. Examine if there are any differences between erotica and pornography? For those who see differences, ask them to find images of erotica and to explore how these images differ from mainstream pornography. Consider what is sexual liberation for women and men? What type of images would provide illustrations of this liberation? Explore what sexual images might look like if penetration was not the main theme. Research how pornography is linked to major corporations who own pornographic web sites. How have pornographers adopted business models to develop the industry? What is the estimated size of the industry? (This material can be found in the business magazines such as Forbes and computer magazines.)

Issues to Consider: How does capitalism as an economic system shape media production and distribution? The last few years has seen the incredible growth in mergers of multinational corporations that have resulted in six major corporations controlling a vast amount of the media worldwide. Thus the question: How can free speech really exist in capitalism? The international nature of these conglomerates has enormous implications for the authentic culture of countries. If the United States is exporting its media across the world, what happens to the culture industries of poorer countries? Corporations have political interests in creating and sustaining ideologies that legitimize consumerism as a way of life. What does this mean for democracy since to flourish, it needs a range of ideas and information? What role can the Internet play in opening up debates and allowing access to ideas that are not found in the corporate controlled media? Groups that are excluded from the mainstream have tended to produce their own media, often in the forms of magazines and newspapers. The aim of this media is often to create a community among the minority group and to provide a forum for discussion of issues that directly impact on the lives of their members.

Ask Students to: Decode the mainstream media to see how hegemonic ideas are encoded in mainstream genres such as news, shows, sit-coms, etc. (You might have students get into small groups and each group analyze one genre.) Examples of hegemonic (dominant) ideas might be that America is a meritocracy, that women exist to be looked at, that capitalism is the only economic system that works, that African-Americans are violent by nature, that the poor are poor because they are less intelligent and not because we live in a society that has poverty built into the economic system. Examine how texts can be polysemic. One useful method is for all the class to see a movie and discuss how they interpreted the text. Often, there will be a range of interpretations and this highlights how the text is not a closed meaning system. Find examples of progressive and conservative alternative media and examine how they differ from mainstream media owned by corporations. A good example is to compare mainstream teen magazines with “Teen Voices,” a pro-feminist, multicultural magazine aimed at teenage girls. “Ms. Magazine” is another good source. For the conservative magazines, students could use right-wing religious magazines aimed at youth. Another way would be through internet sites. Watch some independent movies see how they differ from mainstream movies in content, narrative structure and ideology. Take a particular event in the news and examine how progressive alternative magazines such as “The Nation,” “Mother Jones” or “Utne Reader” approach the issue. What kind of points do these magazines explore and how do they frame these issues within a progressive paradigm. Compare the coverage of the event to that of a conservative magazine such as “New Republic” or even mainstream media such as “The Wall Street Journal.” Find magazines that are more conservative than mainstream media and explore the “taken for granted assumptions” in the stories. A good example would be the magazines of the N.R.A. or the right to life movement. Write an article on a topic of interest and submit to a progressive magazine/newspaper or produce a video and submit it to community television in your area. Interview the editors, writers or owners of some alternative magazines to explore how they perceive their role in providing a different way of thinking about events and issues. Search the Web to see how alternative organizations are using this technology to organize their supporters and plan events such as protests, letter writing, boycotts, conferences and local meetings Choose at least one area where you can take a personal activist stance: Write letters to protest images, advertisements or stories that you find offensive; Boycott corporations/products that have sexist or racist ads; Organize a protest, start a petition or letter writing campaign; or Join an organization that promotes group activism around a media issue that concerns you.