The Intersection Of Race And Media - 1489 Words

Recent research on the intersection of race and media describes a trend of progressive, even anti-racist, narrative that showcase close inter-racial friendships and camaraderie on the silver screen. (Hughey, 2012) It is certainly true that media content has gotten a lot less discriminatory since the days of blackface, American Indian depictions in old cowboy movies and really any person that was not of white Anglo-Saxon tradition. For much of U.S. history, most white-produced images of other racial groups have been unambiguously racist (Croteau 2012) But even though us as a nation has gotten better since those days, is racism completely gone from American television or is it still being normalized into cinema and television by reproducing†¦show more content†¦These shows include: â€Å"Modern Family†, â€Å"Meet the Browns† and â€Å"Glee†. With all the shows being of different networks, I feel like these shows will give me a wide representation of how r ace is being represented on sitcoms in the 21st century and whether or not media content reflects the realities of the social world. â€Å"Modern Family† premiered on ABC in September of 2009 which shows family life of modern day and their experiences. The main cast is overall white while there are two characters of Latin descent and one of Asian. After reviewing the show, I found there was a sense of racism covered up by a satirical approach throughout the plot. One of the examples I noticed was the Latina main character, Gloria, portrayed by Sophia Vergara, was a very stereotypical spitfire, Latina woman. The show had her character talk in a very think Colombian accent and had her dress in a very sexualized manner with cleavage bearing shirts, tight pants and dresses with loud colors. She even has some lines mentioning her home country of Colombia and representing the country in a negative way. The show portrays Gloria out to be an immigrant, gold-digger that in ways shows that she is naive, lazy and incompetent let alone being extremely sexist. The only thing that is not discriminatory about this show is that they feature a gay couple but they have this gay couple make remarks about their adopted asian daughter being the â€Å"only under-achieving Asian baby in America†. Overall, I