Bond “Equals” ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature
=player_embedded&v=gkp4t5NYzVM
Week 9 – Race – Looking at
“the Other”
Said’s “Covering Islam” – Looking at
European and American Coverage of the
Protests
• Introduce a basic critical vocabulary to students’ discussions of
the media.
• Understand criticisms of media through frameworks of race,
Orientalism and others.
• Three examples of looking at the Other…
– Look at some common stereotypes in our favorite
movies.
– How the Western media reports on the rest of the world,
– Look at Said’s idea of Orientalism Covering Islam to look
at European and American coverage of the protests in
the Middle East,
What do we mean by “Other”
• “the act of emphasizing the perceived weaknesses of
marginalized groups as a way of stressing the alleged
strength of those in positions of power.” (MartinJones, paraprasing Said)
• Othering can be done with any racial, ethnic,
religious, or geographically-defined category of
people.
Stereotypes about “the Other’ in
Media
• Similar to the gender
stereotypes we discussed
• Possibly MORE dangerous, as
sometimes people might only
get exposure to another race
through media (whereas
presumably they will meet
other genders every day).
• Racial Stereotypes can thus be
perpetuated very rigidly over
time.
Why do we care? Isn’t this the
“hypodermic model” again?
– Why important?
CNN piece on Children and Colour Stereotypes:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/05/1
8/ac.pkg.cooper.doll.test.part.2.cnn
Hegemony
• Theory of how power operates in society in
relationship to culture
• “particular attention should be given to 'everyday'
routine structures and 'common sense' values in
trying to locate mechanisms of domination” (Gitlin,
1994:517).
Mistry, Reena. Gramsci’s Theory of Hegemony http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol6.htm
In Entertainment…
•
•
•
•
Hall’s “Three Images” of the other in popular media
1.The Slave Figure – servile, loyal
2.The Native – primitive, cunning, dangerous
3. The Clown or Entertainer – “inherent” funniness
of the other
Mistry, Reena. Gramsci’s Theory of Hegemony http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol6.htm
…Disney!
• Crows in Dumbo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjJMcJG9z8
• Siamese Cats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpPGE_SKtA
4&feature=related
• Peter Pan – “Indian” sequence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_at9dOElQ
k&feature=player_embedded#at=82
• “Tony Freeth (producer, director and active member of
the Campaign Against Racism in the Media, CARM)
adeptly puts this concept into the context of his
experience of the BBC: ’…No one in TV shouts
racist abuse at black people… No one in TV
physically assaults black people, they simply
feed us on a diet of "Blacks are the problem"'
(Freeth, 1985:26-7).”
• (Could be Blacks, Muslims, poor Whites,
Chinese…depends on who is creating the media! The
“Other” is the problem).
Mistry, Reena. Gramsci’s Theory of Hegemony http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol6.htm
In News: How “the West” reports on
“the Rest”
• Dahlgreen and Chakrapani (1979) looked at how
network TV news covered the Rest of the World.
• Found “three major motifs”
• Used Levi Strauss’ theory of “binary opposition” to
say that for each motif, the opposite is invoked.
• These oppositions “situate the audience in a
particular manner toward the [Rest of the] World”.
Dahlgreen and Chakrapani (1979)
How “the West” reports on “the
Rest”
Motif (How the “Other” is portrayed in
the news)
Binary Opposition (the implication,
how the “West” is).
Social Disorder and Violence
Order and Stability
Flawed Development
Successful Development
Primitivism
Modernism
Dahlgreen and Chakrapani (1979)
These binaries create irony
• As in literature or theater theory,
• Irony: “a relationship between the audience of a
drama and the main protagonist in that drama,
where the audience is situated in a position of
superior knowledge” to the protagonist.
• Western news puts the viewer in a position of
“knowing better” than the people they are watching.
1. Violence
• “Disorder looms eternal in the Third World, according
to the cumulative imagery that emerges from news
reports.”
• Violent stories are never presented in context.
• Violence is shown in the foreground – longer term
social and political aspects of the story are put in the
background.
• Example: Fox News, (From 4:20 after Fox reporters
report,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqhhgc5AWtI )
2. Flawed Development
• “Reforms” and “elections” signal a “positive step”.
• “NEWS STORIES usually make it clear that the road to
development along Western models is a difficult one.
Chief among the obstacles which may flaw this march of
progress is...[violence] and the corruption of local
officials…human rights abuses.”
• Example: Kenya Elections
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMI3D1Tg
6uk
– The point is not that this story isn’t true, but the
point is we don’t get much context. Just that there
was violence, and now things are a bit better.
3. Primitivism
• Idealization of “the primitive”
• Europeans – and many cultures- have always
idealized the idea of an earlier, pre-modern culture
that is somehow more free.
• Stories about the West are historically situated.
• Stories about the rest are historical, stress
“eternal and recurring features of the
human condition.”
• *Of course the opposite may be true in nonWestern media.
Which of these, if any, can we see in
this clip?
• 1940s Cairo travel film, made by Americans for an
American Audience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxzCH2hw
WKk
– No violence.
– Possibly flawed development.
– Possibly “primitivism.”
– A-historical or historical?
Edward Said on “Covering Islam”
• Covering Islam: How the Media and Experts Determine
HowWe See the Rest of theWorld (1997)
Said- “Orientalism”
• “Unlike the Americans, the French and British--less
so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portugese,
Italians, and Swiss--have had a long tradition of what
I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to
terms with the Orient that is based on the
Orient's special place in European Western
Experience…”
Said
• “ The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place
of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the
source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural
contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring
images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to
define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea,
personality, experience.Yet none of this Orient is merely
imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European
material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and
represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a a
mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary,
scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies
and colonial styles. . . .”
Said on Portrayal of Middle East in
European and American Media
• Examples of “Word Politics”
• Even News is never “objective” • “Objectivity is assumed to [be part of] learned
discourse about other societies, despite the long
history of political moral, and religious concern felt
in all societies, Western or Islamic, about he alien,
the strange and different.” (Ivii)
“Experts on the Islamic World”
• “Pontificate on
formulaic ideas
about Islam on
news
programmes or
talk shows.”
(Said xvi)
• Experts and journalists
“associate…Islam and
fundamentalism…ensur[i
ng] that the average reader
comes to see Islam and
fundamentalism as
essentially the same thing.”
(Said xvi)
• “The Red Menace is
Gone. But Here’s Islam”
(New York Times, January
21 1996)
A German youth carried a national flag and
an anti-Islamic sign during a march in
opposition to the building of a mosque in
Cologne, Germany, in 2009.Wolfgang
Rattay/Reuters
• “I am not saying Muslims have not attacked and
injured Israelis and Westerners in the name of Islam.
But I am saying that much of what one reads and
sees in the media about Islam represents the
aggression as coming from Islam because that is
what “Islam” is.” (Said, xxvi)
• Fox News: About “Islam: What the West Needs to
Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ndfid_UuQ
Generalization
• Said writes “Malicious generalizations about Islam have
become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign
culture in the West, what is said about the Muslim mind, or
character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be
said in mainstream discussion about [other groups.]” (xii)
• What about Africans, Jews, poor people?
• Even MSM sometimes generalizes about these groups…
• But Said’s general point about representation is important:
– Always be alert to generalizations in news media.
– Always remember that news media operates under certain
constraints and cannot provide the whole story.
Is all this less relevant today?
• Where do people get these kinds of ideas – if not
the media?
• Orange County, CA, last week… (March 2011)
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6t6d9YBuFM
Short Break
Activity On the Media “Protest” or
“Rebellion”
• Together, listen to this (6 minutes):
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/03
/04/01
• How language frames the news.
• To help prepare for exam section that deals with
this.
Story
How Each Side Is
Described
Source
Cote D’Ivoire
“confrontations between
security forces loyal to the
country's incumbent president
Laurent Gbagbo and the exrebel New Forces (FN),”
Xinhua.cn
Libya
“government forces” versus NYTimes
“rebels”
Over in A1…Find 5 articles or clips online from any non-middle eastern source (could be American,
African, Chinese, whatever…) about what is happening in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, or Bahrain, Cote
d’Ivoire.
Take note what kind of words are used to describe the the conflict.
Input data into chart >> (on next slide)… you’ll have 30-40 mins, then we will discuss.
• Listen to this podcast: On The Media,The Arab
Street.http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2011/02/0
4/segments/158942
• Gameology. “The Orientalist Perspective: Cultural Imperialism in
Gaming”. <http://www.gameology.org/essays/the_orientalist_p
erspective_cultural_imperialism_in_gaming >
• Culler, Jonathan, “Literary Theory: A Very Short
Introduction.” (2000) (Copies to be provided)
• Said, Edward. “Introductions(s),” Covering Islam, Vintage, 1997
and 1981. (Copies to be provided)
•