The Hypodermic Needle Theory and Cultivation Theory

Cultivation theory is a social theory which examined the long-term effects of television on American audiences of all ages.
Developed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of Pennsylvania, cultivation theory derived from several large-scale research projects as part of an overall research project entitled 'Cultural Indicators'. The purpose of the Cultural Indicators project was to identify and track the 'cultivated' effects of television on viewers. They were "concerned with the effects of television programming (particularly violent programming) on the attitudes and behaviors of the American public" (Miller, 2005, p. 281).
Gerbner and Stephen Mirirai 1976) assert that the overall concern about the effects of television on audiences stemmed from the unprecedented centrality of television in American culture. They posited that television as a mass medium of communication had formed in to a common symbolic environment that bound diverse communities together, socializing people in to standardized roles and behaviours. They compared the power of television to the power of religion, saying that television was to modern society what religion once was in earlier times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivation_theory

The hypodermic needle model (also known as the hypodermic-syringe model) is a model of communications also referred to as the "magic bullet" perspective, or the transmission-belt model. Essentially, this model holds that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The model is rooted in 1930s behaviorism and is largely considered obsolete today.
The "Magic Bullet" or "Hypodermic Needle Theory" of direct influence effects was not as widely accepted by scholars as many books on mass communication indicate. The magic bullet theory was not based on empirical findings from research but rather on assumptions of the time about human nature. People were assumed to be "uniformly controlled by their biologically based 'instincts' and that they react more or less uniformly to whatever 'stimuli' came along" (Lowery & DefFleur, 1995, p. 400). The "Magic Bullet" theory graphically assumes that the media's message is a bullet fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's "head" (Berger 1995). Similarly, the "Hypodermic Needle Model" uses the same idea of the "shooting" paradigm. It suggests that the media injects its messages straight into the passive audience (Croteau, Hoynes 1997). This passive audience is immediately affected by these messages. The public essentially cannot escape from the media's influence, and is therefore considered a "sitting duck" (Croteau, Hoynes 1997). Both models suggests that the media is vulnerable to the messages shot at them because of the limited communication tools and the studies of the media's effects on the masses at the time (Davis, Baron 1981).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodermic_needle_model

C I Is the token black guy still prevalent in contemporary horror films such as dead set and the final destination franchise.

LP Create a narrative moment in a horror film which goes against the stereotypes of horror.

Related links

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokenMinority

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_African_Americans

http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Race-and-Ethnicity-HOLLYWOOD-WHITENESS-AND-STEREOTYPES.html

http://www.newsinfilm.com/2009/06/24/bay-defends-the-racial-stereotypes-in-transformers-2/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2402358/the_pervasiveness_of_racial_stereotypes.html?cat=40

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Destination_(film_series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Set_(TV_series)

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/English/idioms_maxims_sayings/3566918-token.html

http://www.jstor.org/pss/257757

http://smr.sagepub.com/content/6/4/493.abstract

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4999370.ece

Synonyms = Black: ethnic, racial, cultural, national

Horror: slasher,

Issues/Debates/Theories

Representation and Stereotyping

This is the method in which the media constructs ideas of people, places and events through the use of images, words or sound all this is Broadcasted through media texts to an audience. Representations basically provide the framework of how and audience may view gender, ethnic or social groups. They are ideological as they are usually based on values or beliefs. No representation is ever real just a version of the real.    

Representation is key to many media debates and is usually described as being either positive or negative which depends on the view of the group being represented. Achieving positive representations (versions of themselves with they agree with and approve of) has a goal of minority groups who have criticised the perceived negativity of media stereotypes, e.g. gays, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, disability groups and women.   

A Stereotype is a commonly held belief about specific social groups or types of individuals, which may involve the way they behave, speak etc. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some former assumptions.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/represent.html

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/

Media Effects Theory

This theory tends to see the audience as passive and measures hoe exposure to particular aspects of media content can influence the behaviour of the reader or viewer.  In this theory the audience is negatively influenced by the media which may result in effects regarded as problematic in terms of threating social stability. This theory helps to explain moral panic responses to media content, particularly in relation to representations of sex, violence and defiant behaviour and its supposed effects on the youth otherwise known as the hypodermic needle theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence

Audience theory    

If you scream during a scary movie you are undoubtedly reacting to the text, but how deep do these feelings run, and are they damaging? What exactly is it that attracts people to watch or read media texts? Individual behaviour needs to be linked to mass movements in order to achieve a significant audience size.

Media providers want big audiences to buy their products. A big audience needs to be targeted and constructed in order to pay for the development, manufacture and distribution of a media product. Media institutions have sophisticated ways of enticing their audiences to ‘come in and buy’, because ultimately those institutions need that audience to spend its money. http://www.northallertoncoll.org.uk/media/audience.htm

The Token Black Guy

Token Minority is a character designed to get more minority groups into the plot. This serves several purposes:

• Allows the producers of the show to broaden the appeal of the show by giving more viewers protagonists they can identify with.
• Is useful for bringing in discussions of racial issues, gender issues or homophobia into the plot.
• Helps the producers feel a little better about using a Scary Minority Suspect in every other case.
• Allows the producers to make race jokes related to minority without any shame.
• Allows the producers to avoid criticism from minority groups.
• Fulfills the executives' desire for the show to be more ethnically respectful.

Sometimes, the Token Minority will be glaringly out of place for their locale (i.e. seemingly the only black person in Vermont, the only gay person in the construction yard).

Often, the producers will go out of their way to avoid racial issues regarding their Token Minority. For example, Warrick Brown in CSI rarely or ever discusses race issues, and the producers chose a Fatal Flaw which was more emblematic of Las Vegas in general than of blacks — gambling addiction. In this case, the Token Minority may either be in the show to broaden its appeal without risking angering any media watchdogs with stereotypical depictions of minorities... or it may be an example of race-blind casting, and not tokenism at all.

If a character is of two minority groups, this is referred to cynically in the industry as a Twofer (see Twofer Token Minority). This is quite common on news programs, which often have one white male and one black or Asian female newscaster - note that for the purposes of this trope women are a "minority", when in fact they make up a small majority in the population of most industrial countries. This logical inconsistency is usually attributed either to the historically male-dominated society in which women are often still perceived (by both sexes) to be newcomers, or to a general feminist hypersensitivity in areas where little sexism still remains, or both. Although it's hard not to snicker at the concept that there's "little sexism" in the news when female anchors are regularly fired at the first sign that they're aging, while male newscasters seemingly live forever. Sexism in the news industry is rampant.

If the opposite gender of this minority appears in an episode, they're almost always a love interest.

In Britain, the Token Minority is just as likely to be South Asian as Afro-Caribbean. With the increasing number of Central and Eastern Europeans in the UK, they're slowly starting to turn up as characters other than The Illegal and criminals (Coronation Street now has a Polish character). It may take a while before we start seeing them in as police officers, though.

The Super Hero equivalent is Captain Ethnic.

To look on the bright side, at least he isn't an Ethnic Scrappy.

A common subversion seen with many minority-laden casts of late is a Token White guy/girl. If the cast is that way for the wrong reasons, it's a Five Token Band.

The cheapest version of this trope is Informed Judaism: You get to feel like the character is a minority, but there's absolutely no difference between her and her white, presumably Jesus-loving friends.

In historical fiction they will often be Black Vikings.

Black Best Friend (But Not Too Black) is probably the most common (US) subtrope.

In terms of film, equally well parodied/referenced by the "Token Black Guy" in Not Another Teen Movie. Named Malik Token, the Genre Savvy token helpfully explains the joke to the audience by introducing himself as the person that stays out of conversations and says "Damn!", "Shit!", and "That is whack!" At a party later in the film, he sees another black guy, played by Sean Patrick Thomas, Token Minority from Cruel Intentions, and tells him that he was at the party first and the other man apologizes and leaves the party.

• Arguably, Malik's Crowning Moment Of Awesome was when he got to say, "Damn, that shit is whack!"

After Star Wars Episode IV became a blockbuster, numerous people noticed that an entire galaxy of humans were all white. (Which was not entirely true; it was just that the main characters were all white.) Episode V introduced Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, the Token Minority Black.

• Samuel L. Jackson in the prequels may also be a example of this, as his character serves as little more than a background character until Revenge of the Sith (excluding his excellent use in the Clone Wars shorts)
• He got a little screen time for Bad Ass purposes in Attack of the Clones. A little, but it was there.
• The fact that he gets little screen time in the first film is hardly surprising given that he's only in it because he said on TV that he'd "play third stormtrooper from the left" if it meant he could be in Star Wars and was thus cast rather late.
• One might argue that casting Temuera Morrison, who is a Maori, as Jango Fett and by retroactive consequence, his clone Boba Fett and every single stormtrooper in every Star Wars movie reduces all other characters in the series (black, white or green) to token minorities by sheer weight of numbers.

While the 2006 historical film Flyboys was already heavily criticised for its historical inaccuracies relating to its World War I setting, one of the more amusing ones came from the film's fictional Token Minority, Eugene Skinner, a black boxer who joined the squadron to 'pay back' his adopted homeland. Mainly because the end of the movie showed a picture of the real-life squadron which was composed of exactly zero minorities. A rare moment where a film actually seems proud to reveal when it Did Not Do The Research. The Other  points out that the film confuses the Lafayette Escadrille with the Lafayette Flying Corps with whom Eugene Bullard (the real person Skinner was based on) actually flew.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokenMinority

Media Effects

Media Effects

Defining Media Effects

Most people accept the idea that the media can influence people. But the degree of that influence, as well as who is most-impacted, when, how and why, have been the subjects of great debate among communication scholars for nearly a century. Media effects refers to the many ways individuals and society may be influenced by both news and entertainment mass media, including film, television, radio, newspapers, books, magazines, websites, video games, and music.

Searching for Evidence of the Media’s Impact

Media effects have been studied by scholars in communication, psychology, sociology, political science,anthropology, and education, among other fields. Many early communication models designed to explainthe process of message dissemination were simple, one-way, and linear (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), positioning the medium or message as the cause and the behavioral, emotional, or psychological response as the effect (Bryant & Thompson, 2002, pp. 4–5). Modern conceptualizations, however, typically illustrate a two-way process that is more transactional or interactive in nature, in which the message or the medium affects the recipient(s), but the audience, in turn, influences and shapes the sender(s).In the early part of the 20th century, concerns about political propaganda, manipulation by the elite and the rising popularity of electronic media led to the so-called “hypodermic needle” or “bullet” theories, which envisaged media messages as strong drugs or potent weapons that would have powerful effects on a helpless audience (Lasswell, 1927; Lippmann, 1922). However, while these theories explained some

behavior, they did not account for the different responses individuals may have to the same media source. In the 1950’s and 60’s, empirical research began to uncover the moderating power of predispositions and peer groups, concluding that the media’s impact was small – often referred to as “limited effects” theory(Klapper, 1960; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944). In the 1970’s and 80’s, prominent scholars began to look more closely again at the media’s relationship to knowledge, opinion, attitudes, and levels of violence, concluding that media effects could be significant in some cases, even if not “all powerful.” Scholars also came to agree that some vulnerable groups, such as children, may be more heavily influenced by media than others (Bryant & Thompson, 2002; McCombs & Shaw, 1972; McLuhan, 1964). One great difficulty for researchers is how to measure media effects. Media consumption may affect a person’s thoughts, emotions, or behaviors in ways that could be direct or indirect, immediate or delayed, fleeting or lasting. It is impossible for scientists to control for all of the mediating factors, from levels of media consumption to demographics such as age, race, and socioeconomic status to harder-to-measure

variables like environment, upbringing, values and previous experience. A researcher would not be able to prove, for example, that playing a violent video game caused a person to commit a violent crime, even if an association existed between the two behaviors. Did playing the game lead to the violent behavior, or did a propensity toward violence encourage use of the game? Why didn’t all individuals who played the game commit acts of violence? Traditional methods of research such as surveys, experiments, and panel studies cannot adequately solve this cause-and-effect dilemma.

Passive Versus Active Media Consumption

To understand media effects, it is first critical to consider how media are used and for what purposes. Communication scholars have traditionally fallen into two camps – functionalists, who believe the media audience tends to be in control and active, and critical/culturalists who believe the audience has less control and is therefore more passive. The balance may lie somewhere in the middle and may vary from country to country. Rather than concerning itself with what the media does to people, Uses and Gratifications Theory looks at what people do with media (its functions), positing that individuals actively choose the media they use and do so with specific goals in mind (Blumler & Katz, 1974). These goals or gratifications may be different for different people and can include entertainment, information, relief of boredom or escapism, introspection or insight, finding models for behavior, seeking reinforcement for beliefs or values, serving as a basis

for conversation and social interaction, helping to either identify with others or to avoid interactions with them, and so on (McQuail, 2005). Functionalists emphasize the audience’s cognitions and choices. Critical/cultural scholars believe Uses and Gratifications Theory fails to account for socio-cultural factors. First, they take issue with the assumption that open and active media choices are available to all individuals. Secondly, they believe the functionalist approach may minimize the impact of the dominant cultural or transnational power(s) in presenting “choices” that serve to reinforce existing elites. An additional concern is that if we accept the idea that people are neither coerced nor manipulated and have full control over their media consumption choices, policy makers may tend to be less attentive to and critical of media content and power (Morley, 2006).

Media Effects and Our View of the World

While discussion of media effects often centers on dramatic issues such as violence or propaganda, scholars have identified a number of more subtle potential effects:

• Priming – Media messages may stimulate recall of stored ideas, knowledge, opinions, or experience associated in some way with the message content. For example, a news story about the French presidential election might trigger thoughts about the French economy, memories of a trip to Paris during college, or remind a person to put brie on their grocery list (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).

• Agenda-Setting – The media may not affect what people think, but may affect what they think

about, through the choice of which topics to cover and what to emphasize. Control of the flow of information is often referred to as “gatekeeping,” and is based not only on media professionals’ perceptions of what is important, but also on time and space limitations (Cohen, 1963; Lippmann, 1922).

• Framing – Frames are the particular treatment or “spin” an individual or organization gives to a message (Gitlin, 1980). While agenda-setting is choosing which stories to tell, framing is choosing how to tell them. Frames may “promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (Entman, 1993, p. 54).

• Cultivation – Over time, heavy viewers of television may come to believe that the real world is similar to the television world – heavy exposure to the media cultivates this belief (Gerbner, Gross, Signorielli, & Morgan, 1980). For example, based on the proportion among television characters, a heavy user of television might estimate that more than one in ten males hold jobs in law enforcement, when in reality only 1 in 100 do (Dominick, 2005, p. 471). Researchers have been particularly concerned with cultivation’s impact on racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes as well as attitudes about violence. Related to cultivation, there are several other important terms in the media effects vocabulary:

• Mainstreaming – Heavy television viewers may lose the attitudes, beliefs or customs of their cultures in favor of those they see repetitively on television (Bryant & Thompson, 2002).

• Disinhibitory effect – Media’s ability to desensitize people to socially unacceptable behavior, making it either acceptable or desirable. The disinhibitory effect may enable people to rationalize or justify actions that conflict with their internal code of conduct or morality (Bryant & Thompson, 2002). Early research on this effect exposed preschoolers to a film in which adults took out their aggression on an inflatable punching bag clown (“Bobo”); children who saw the film later imitated it and also engaged in other violent behavior not seen on the film (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963).

• Mean World Syndrome – Media consumers may become so overwhelmed by negative portrayals of

crime and violence that they may begin—either cynically or despondently—to believe the real world is a mean and harsh place (Gerbner, Gross, Jackson-Beeck, Jeffries-Fox, & Signorielli, 1978; Wilkinson & Fletcher, 1995).

How the Media Change Attitudes and Opinions

Persuasion is one of the effects usually sought on purpose by the media and lies at the heart of advertising and public information campaigns. Several models have been developed to explain the process (Petty & Cacioppo, 1996):

• Cognitive Response Theory argues that in order to experience attitude change a person receiving

a persuasive message must think about the message, and their thoughts about it are more important than the message itself.

• The Elaboration Likelihood Model further explains that this thinking or cognitive processing can

either happen centrally and consciously, or peripherally and subconsciously. Central processing of a message takes far more effort for the recipient and has been shown to have longer-lasting effects, while peripheral processing requires little effort and may have more fleeting results. Being persuaded about a political issue covered in the news would likely require more central processing than viewing a soft drink ad that persuades viewers by showing happy people drinking the product. Factors that increase the likelihood of central processing include personal relevance, likeability, credibility of attractiveness of the source, the number of arguments used and the number of people who seem to agree with them. Even the simple use of the word “you” rather than the third person can have a significant impact on the persuasiveness of a message by making it seem more relevant (Burnkrant & Unnava, 1989).

• Persuading people to adopt a new idea or technology typically follows a predictable pattern. According to the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, people fall into one of five groups: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%), and the laggards (16%). Often the media first spreads the word about a new idea, but ever-widening interpersonal networks persuade individuals to make the change. Over time, family, friends, social leaders, peers and the community at large adopt the innovation. If it is something the individual feels confident in doing—referred to as self-efficacy—that does not conflict with that individual’s deeply held values, they join one of the adoption groups. Finally, adoption of the innovation reaches a critical mass (Rogers, 2003 [1962]).

Negative Outcomes Often Attributed to Media Exposure

Concerns about exposure to violence and sexual content often dominate discussion of media effects, but a key challenge for researchers is determining what constitutes violence and sexual content. For example: Must violence include physical contact or could it be verbal? Is a news report about violence the same as seeing the incident in a film? Is cartoon violence the same as other violence? In some studies, as many as 80% of U.S. network programs contained violent content and as many as 60% of the characters were involved. Measuring the effects of media violence can also be difficult: researchers have identified catharsis, arousal, disinhibition, imitation, and desensitization as possible outcomes (Bryant & Thompson, 2002), but proving a causal relationship is still an elusive goal. While cultural standards of inappropriate sexual content differ greatly, researchers have shown that repeated exposure to explicit sex may decrease an individual’s fulfillment with real life partners or family situations (Zillmann & Bryant, 1988a, , 1988b), shift a person’s attitudes about morality, decrease inhibitions, leading to risky or violent sexual behavior (Court, 1984), and generally cause individuals to demonstrate greater aggression (Zillmann, 1978). The most important predictor is the prevailing tone, such as whether the scene is treated seriously or trivially, has artistic value or intent, and how necessary the sex

scene is to the plot and the context of viewing (Harris, 1994). Media may also have the negative impact of promoting cultural, racial or gender biases, either through stereotyping roles and behaviors or the under- or over-representation of minority characters. However,

some research has also shown that by familiarizing individuals with groups other than themselves, the media may also provide positive learning opportunities that help overcome stereotypes and prejudices (Bryant & Thompson, 2002).

Learning from Media

While the media are often criticized for their harmful effects, media can also be a positive avenue for learning and persuasion. Historically, the influence of publications such as Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species has changed the way people view the world. Numerous studies from around the world have shown the positive effects programming such as “Sesame Street” can have on children’s cognitive and social skills. And every day, public health and safety campaigns save lives.

Some of the factors shown to be associated with effective mass media campaigns include (Bryant & Thompson, 2002):

• Reasonable goals for the campaign

• Understanding the audience’s habits, attitudes, and other characteristics

• Selecting the correct media for the audience and the issue (for example, using broadcast media for a target audience with low literacy rates)

• Using a mix of media when possible

• Emphasizing the benefits of the behavior change

• Modeling the desired behavior

• Increasing the audience’s self-efficacy through education

• Continual research, evaluation, and modification before and during the campaign, if necessary

Digital Media Effects

Studies on the effect of new media technologies are only just beginning to emerge, but here are some of the most important findings and/or developments (Bryant & Thompson, 2002):

• Media consumers are no longer simply an “audience,” but are now “users” – heralding a new era of active consumption

• Communication and media impact are now multi-directional; two-way sender-receiver models are too linear and orderly to represent these interactions

• While some scholars have found high levels of Internet usage correlate with higher levels of loneliness, anxiety and depression, there may also be social benefits for shy or shut-in individuals who go online

• Media fragmentation (the development of many highly-specialized media outlets) makes targeting audiences easier, but may also make mass communication more challenging

• The increased number of media choices may expose children to adult material before they are preparedfor it

Media Conference notes

David Buckingham: Why do people talk rubbish about Media studies?

<!·         Angry parent accused school of ‘dumbing down’ English by teaching about the Simpsons in class.

>·    ‘Tories to tackle media studies menace ‘– The Independent.

<!·        Independent schools shun subjects like media studies and prefer their studies to take harder academic subject like maths or science. Similarly Elite universities black list media studies as they see it as a ‘mickey mouse‘ subject .

<!·        Mathew Arnold thought that the idea of giving the lower class the opportunity to vote as a threat.

<!·         Frank Leavis thought that studying literature will save the civilistation.

<!·         The U.S media is seen as saving kids from, sex, violence and drugs etc. 

Dan Gillmor – We the media:  David Gauntlett, Sonia Livingstone, David Buckingham, Annette Hill, Micheal Wesch, Dan Gilmor, Henry Jenkingm, Graeme Turner.

Ideas – Keep ideas simple, have a workable concept.

Get Feedback – People, places, props and costumes – check them out, get it done early, rehearse and prepare, share contact details for those involved.

Equipment – Practice using it.  

Ethnic Minorities in the media

Asian women and Latinas are often portrayed

in the media as the exotic, sexualized

“other as well. According to Tajima (1989),

“Asian women in film are either passive

figures who exist to serve men as love interests

for White men (lotus blossom) or as a

partner in crime of men of their own kind

(dragon ladies)” (p. 309). Pursuing this lotus

blossom/dragon lady dichotomy, Hagedorn

(1997) argues that most Hollywood movies

either trivialize or exoticize Asian women:

“If we are ‘good,’ we are childlike, submissive,

silent and eager for sex. And if we are

not silent, suffering doormats, we are demonized

. . . cunning, deceitful, sexual provocateurs”

(pp. 33–34).

Much academic writing surrounding

Asian female representation in the media

is steeped in postcolonial theory and

Orientalist discourse, both of which are

concerned with otherness. The global other,

in media terms, is always paired with the

West as its binary companion (Furguson,

1998). Shome (1996) explains that when

whiteness is comfortable in its hegemony, it

constructs the other as strange or different

and itself as the norm. Drawing from Said’s

study of Orientalism, Heung (1995) says,

“The power of the colonizer is fundamentally

constituted by the power to speak for

and to represent” (p. 83). Furthering the

discussion of an East/West binary, the West

is portrayed in the media as active and masculine

while the East is passive and feminine

(Wilkinson, 1990).

Though the number of female Asian

characters represented in the media, especially

television, is miniscule, the way they

are portrayed in the media is crucial

because stereotypes of underrepresented

people produce socialization in audiences

that unconsciously take this misinformation

as truth (Heung, 1995; Holtzman,

2000). Thus, the portrayal of Ling Woo,

Lucy Liu’s character in the television series

Ally McBeal, garnered much scholarly

attention. Although Woo breaks the submissive                              

china doll stereotype, she is the epitome

of the stereotypical dragon lady when

she growls like an animal or enters a scene

to music associated with the Wicked Witch

of the West in The Wizard of Oz (Sun,

2003). She is knowledgeable in the art of

sexual pleasure, which is unknown to her

Westernized law firm colleagues, with

the exception of Richard Fish, her white

boyfriend who experiences it first hand.

Patton (2001) explains that the Woo character

is particularly detrimental to Asian

and Asian American women not because

the oversexed seductress reifies existing

stereotypes, but because “she is the only

representative of Asian women on television

(besides news anchors and reporters),

leaving no one else to counteract this prominent

mediated stereotype” (p. 252).

While it is difficult to propose more

work on Asian female representation when

the number of females in the media are

sparse, an obvious place to begin would be

 to look into production studies to find out

what producers are looking for in casting

an Asian female. Can she not play a detective

or attorney on one of the three Law

and Order series? Can she be a strong and

funny mom on an Asian American sitcom?

And is she just as discontented with her

suburban life as white women such that

she could be considered for Desperate

Housewives? That popular program has a

Latina and has added an African American

character for the fall 2006 season, but it

features no Asian women as of this writing.

Although most of the academic literature

regarding black and Asian media representation

focuses on historically situated

stereotypes, this does not hold true for

Latinas. While there has been some reference

to Latinas being portrayed as exotic

seductresses (Holtzman, 2000), as tacky

and overly emotional (Valdivia, 1995), and

as the hypersexualized spitfire (Molina

Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004), the majority

of literature on Latino/a representation has

focused on men. Jennifer Lopez has made

her mark in Hollywood, but her films have

both reified stereotypes of Latinas as

domestic workers (Maid in America, 2003)

and broken them when she has played

roles that are not ethnically marked (The

Wedding Planner, 2001; Gigli, 2003;

Monster in Law, 2005). In these roles, however,

Lopez is always paired with a white

male love interest and, because she rarely

plays characters true to her ethnicity

(except of course when she played a maid,

a role that emphasized it), she becomes an

assimilated character who does nothing to

negate Latina stereotypes. Molina Guzmán

and Valdivia assert that Lopez is most often

allowed to perform whiteness, which renders

her seemingly raceless and cultureless.

García Canclini (1995) contends that

“the contemporary experience of Latinas,

which also holds true of other populations

shaped by colonialism, globalization, and

transnationalism, is informed by the complex

dynamics of hybridity as a cultural

practice and expression” (as cited in

Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004, p. 214).

Hill Collins (2004) calls this color-blind

racism and explains that the significance

attached to skin color, especially for

women, is changing. She argues that “in

response to the growing visibility of biracial,

multiracial, Latino, Asian, and racially

ambiguous Americans, skin color no longer

serves as a definitive mark of racial categorization”

(p. 194). This notion of hybridity

or Latinidad, defined as the state and

process of being, becoming, or appearing

Latino/a (Martinez, 2004; Molina Guzmán

& Valdivia, 2004; Rojas, 2004), is gaining

scholarly attention. However, as a social

construct it lends itself to an essentialist

group identity, instead of acknowledging

difference between Dominicans, Mexicans,

Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, all of whom

epitomize Latinidad (Estill, 2000).

Latinas are also finding a place within

the music world and, as with black women,

their sex appeal is played up heavily in

their music videos. Shakira and Jennifer

Lopez are some of the most visible who

have enjoyed music/acting crossover fame.

One of the most common tropes surrounding

these and other mediated Latina hypersexualized

bodies within popular culture is

tropicalism (Aparicio & Chavez-Silverman,

1997; Martinez, 2004). According to Molina

Guzmán & Valdivia (2004), bright colors,

rhythmic music, and olive skin fall under

the trope of tropicalism, and sexuality plays

a central role. Dominant representations of

Latinas in music videos place emphasis on

the breasts, hips, and buttocks (Gilman,

1985; Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004;

Negrón-Muntaner, 1991). Desmond (1997)

calls the Latina body “an urbane corporeal

site with sexualized overdetermination” (as

cited in Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004,

p. 211).

While not enough academic research is

conducted on Native American media representation,

we would be remiss if we did

not mention two studies that examine how

Native American women are portrayed.

Portman and Herring (2001) discuss the

“Pocahontas paradox,” a historical movement

that persists in romanticizing and

vilifying Native American women. They

argue that Native American women are

viewed in the media as either strong and

powerful or beautiful, exotic, and lustful

and that both images have merged together

into one representation through the stereotype

of Pocahontas. While Ono and

Buescher’s (2001) study on Pocahontas

examines the commodification of products

and cultural discourses surrounding the

popular Disney film, they also assert that

new meanings have been ascribed to the animated

figure, thus recasting the Native

American woman in a Western, capitalist

frame (p. 25). Ultimately, Pocahantas is no

more than a sexualized Native American

Barbie. Both Portman and Herring (2001)

and Ono and Buescher (2001) agree that the

Pocahontas mythos is particularly harmful

to Native women because of the way this

historical figure has been exoticized by

media discourses that emphasize her relationship

with her white lover, John Smith.