CONTEXTUAL STUDIES: Representation & Race (Lecture)

In this weeks contextual studies lecture we looked at representation and race. To start with we watched the pilot episode of two different sitcoms - Love Thy Neighbour and Black-ish. 

Love Thy Neighbour 
- Was from 1972-76. This was written by and for dominant society (HEGEMONY) and it reflects manifestations of 'the other' and Freud's "narcissism of minor differences" (XENOPHOBIA).

- Radical Step - characters on equal class/social status.

- Mediation affects audience reception: satire/comedy provoking empathy.

Black-ish 
- Is a contemporary US sitcom, written by and for pluralistic society: DIVERSITY

- Progressive representation - characters on equal OR superior social/class status.

- Mediation affects audience reception: satire/comedy provoking empathy.

What do we mean by 'race'?
- Skin colour? (too reductive. We can share genetic radical traits but be a spectrum of colour)
- Broadly, 'race' can be a shared cultural identity, history & experience shaped by marginalisation/exclusion
- 'The Other' - that which is alien/different to homogenous group or culture

Critical contexts
- Ideology                                            Contexts inform:
- Hegemony                                        Representation
- Pluralism                ------------>     Stereotyping
- Mediation                                         'Otherness'
- Reception Theory

Ideology
- A set of opinions, values, beliefs and assumptions constructed and presented by a media text
- Ideology influences both the context in which media is produced and how it is received.

Ideology and hegemony
- Hegemony is a dominant ideology within society
- In sitcom traditionally reflected in the 'nuclear family' (Outnumbered - cultural hegemony)
- Or reflects conventions/attitudes of dominant group (cultural identity)

Mediation and representation
- What we see is not objective reality or truth, but firstly the filmmaker's version of reality: what they have mediated
- The process of mediation - the editorial decision-making process - directly affects representation: through judgement and selection editorialises how gender, race and class are presented 
- We as the audience are also complicit in mediation, through our understanding and reading of media texts (semiotics, ideology)

Reception Theory
- How we as the audience mediate texts, and the factors that might influence us
- Argues cultural text has no inherent meaning in and of itself. Instead, meaning is created as the viewer watches and processes the f
ilm
- Factors include elements of the viewer's personal identity, the exhibition environment, and preconceived notions of programme's genre and production

A (very brief) history of race representation
- Dominant grouping is 'superior'
- Other cultural groupings are 'inferior' by virtue of difference 
- Defined by crude stereotypes: X are doctors/shopkeepers, X are criminals/ natural athletes

'The Other'
- Establishing identity through opposition to (and sometimes vilification of) a group or individual who display difference
- Psychoanalysts like Freud and Jacques Lacan argue 'the other' is a primal impulse: "the narcissism of minor differences."
- Lacan theorises 'the other' emerges as the ego (self-identity) is forged in infancy when child sees itself in a mirror

Issues of representation
- Is skin colour always predominant factor, or even necessary for consideration?
- How significant are class and identity politics? - who or what you identity with
- What role does pluralism (diversity, multiculturalism) play in defining cultural identity?