Week 6 Review: Stereotypes

Topic: From your personal experiences and research, what other media stereotypes (besides the example from the documentary) have you seen either on TV, magazines or in the movies?




Stereotyping is very common nowadays thanks to the influence of social media. From the example given, we can see that Hollywood labelled Arabians as thiefs and robbers. As for the real life Arabians, not all of them are thiefs and roobers, they are just ordinary people like us. Hollywood uses social media as a form of labelling many types of people.

As you and I can see from our university life, we have friends from around the world. For example, Africa. Many people have a mindset that people in Africa doesn't wear much clothes, live in tribes, go hunting for food and live outside in the open near the jungle in a tent they built. If that is true, then how come that people from Africa can come to Malaysia and study? The way they dress is no different from us. The own a laptop, a phone, etc. What makes us think that they live near the jungle in their own tribe? Well, this is because Hollywood produce movies that shows the African living in that way and because we have never seen or experience their lifestyle, media affects our thinking. It input us with that kind of mentality.

Let's talk about something more common, they way we dress, here, in Malaysia. The Chinese people, for example. How many of them have you seen wearing Cheongsam or Samfu on normal days? You may have seen people wearing Cheongsam to work but isn't it very rare? Same goes with the Indians and their Saree. Normally, you'll see the old people wearing it alot because that's their tradition. They're used to wearing it unlike the teenagers nowadays who wears t-shirt and jeans. The big question here is, why don't people especially young people, wear their traditional clothes to go out? Why?

That's because, the trend has already been set. Hollywood had been influencing many people through media, that wearing t-shirt and jeans are the not so abnormal way of dressing. People follow their culture because they had already conquered the minds of people, setting their mind how they want it to be. Only in some countries that you can see people still wear their traditional custom out but most countries would be following the western culture.

There are many different stereotypes, people will just label them as what they think other people are. While in the real world, not all cases are the same. Only certain, a small minority of the group.