Exaggerating minorities in mass media.

The issue this week pertaining to sexuality and gender in mass media is one that has been discussed many times before and that no matter what is said it is also one subject that never gets closer to a resolution. It appears that, while it is an interesting and compelling issue, it is also one that is always seen as unchangeable and often unnecessarily brought forth to suit the whims of a minority. I think this is both wrong and disregarding of whole subpopulations of our society.

It just goes to show that no matter how many people preach about equality and how things are getting better for minorities within our society, it is really only a cover over the real problems that still exist. We like to say that we are no longer discriminatory against minorities within our society but we have really just become more covert in our discrimination. This can be seen in the portrayal of these individuals in the most connecting of all our resources; mass media.

Gay people are overly gay while still showing little sign of ‘actual’ homosexual qualities, whatever those might be. African Americans are shown in over the top gestures that seem absurd but also propagate this exact type of gesturing in essence creating a reality through the presentation of an illusion. When it comes to minority groups in media programming they are either exaggerated in their form or underused and dispensable to the subject matter altogether.

Why is it when we are supposed to be so much more enlightened than people of past generations are we still giving into this obvious stereotyping of individuals that we know do not and would not act like this in real life? Why also are we still making it possible for this type of stereotyping to take real form by continuously subjecting our impressionable youth to this hyper-discriminatory behavior that we use for comedy or drama entertainment? We are only, once again, distorting reality for a generation that already has enough problems discerning fantasy from reality.

We are raising a generation that will still have the idea of homosexuals as either ‘flaming’ gay or asexual and that still believe in the separation of races primarily due to the depiction of different ethnicities as exaggerated in all their behavior as to simply show segregation through behavior differences and that is just not honki dori in my eyes

I know I don’t want my children to think of a gangster every time he sees an African American walking down the street, nor do I want him to have such a narrow view of what homosexuality is about. The truth is that if we don’t stop looking at people through the eyes of the writers and producers of the shows that give us more interaction with different types of people we are never going to be able to get past our difference to see our similarities.