Hollywood and Stereotyping By: Joania Gao & Davin Teo

Latino Images In Film (Charles Ramirez Berg) Images in Film Stereotypes: Mental Images Vs Mediated Stereotypes Mental Images: Type of stereotype that exists in the individual mind. (May or may not remain a private image: it may or may not travel far beyond the individual or in group circles; may or may not be the basis for racist tract.) Mediated Stereotypes: Exists on the screen as a public commodity. Operates by gathering a specific set of negative traits and assembling them into a particular image. (Mediated stereotype is always public, and, in the case of Hollywood cinema, has a global reach.)

Poetics of Hollywood Stereotyping The mediated stereotypical image is presented to the viewers in Hollywood films in a full array of stereotypical devices deployed in every cinematic register; from en scene framing, to camera angles, to shot durations, from set decorations to sound effects. This classical Hollywood paradigm, the accepted conventions of “good” professional filming- contributes to stereotyping in the movies.

Stereotypes, Minor Characters, and the Archetype Typical Hollywood story follows the pattern of equilibrium-disequilibrium-equilibrium. Anglo male/female overcoming the threat posed by the Other. Other often bring presented as Minor Characters of color. The bourgeois hero’s inherent contradiction is that he displays and promotes the dominant ideal, and at the same time, demonstrates that only one person in the world can actually achieve that ideal.

Stereotyping as Trianlging Why is it that most of Hollywood’s audiences naturalize the process of stereotyping? Based on Bowen’s family system theory. New conceptualization of Human emotional functioning. Views the family as an emotional unity and individual as part of that unit rather than as an autonomous psychological entity. Major factor affecting the triangle is anxiety. When anxiety level is high enough, two powerful family members, in order to reduce their anxiety and insecurity, pick a defect in a third person and position the third as deficient. Triangling, is a process with two positive side against a negative one, where two parties have reached an agreement without another.

Ideology of Social Triangling.  Sketching the elements of social triangling, whereby two groups become allies against a targeted third group. Ex. Dominant Anglo group pits itself against the scrape goat Black subgroup. Most comfortable choice for the remaining ethical minorities is to position themselves at the other positive corner, siding the Anglo group against the blacks.

Triangled Viewer According to Berg, a viewing watching a Hollywood film is invited to takes sides, and complete the triangle.

Stereotyping Asian Americans: The Dialectic of the Model Minority and the Yellow Peril. By: Yuko Kawai

The Yellow Peril West feared the yellow race as a menace that would threaten the domination of the White race which stemmed from the large population size of East Asia, China’s potential military and economic power, and Japan rise as an imperial power. The Yellow Peril referred to cultural threat as well as economic political and military threats to the White race. Yellow Peril signified the threat of Asian immigration to American identity as the country of the White race and western civilization.

The Yellow Peril White Americans perceived people of Asian descent as inassimilable foreigners who “would eventually overtake the nation and wreak social and economic havoc, by outnumbering and out powering the white race.” An American version of the Yellow peril provided a justification or rationale for excluding Asian Immigrants and continuing U.S. westward expansion beyond the west coast of the United States to the Asia and Pacific region. Japanese Americans in concentration camps.

Portrayal of Yellow Peril in Hollywood movies Obey Fu Manchu Or Every Living Thing Will Die!

The Model Minority The model minority stereotype is constitutive of colorblind ideology in the sense that Asian American’s success is used to deny the existence of institutional racism to “prove” that U.S. society is fair and open for racial minority groups to move up the social ladder. By stressing that Asian Americans were succeeding through making efforts on their own despite their racial background, the model minority stereotype produces a colorblind talk. The most influential racial ideology in the post Civil Rights Movement era.

The Model Minority Depicting Asian Americans as the model minority simultaneously serves downgrading other racial minorities as “problem” minorities. With the spread of communism across China and North Korea, America supported Japan’s economic recovery with massive financial aid. Japan became democratic and experienced high economic growth during this time. Asian Americans were made as the model minority partly because Japan re-demonstrated its willingness and ability to go along with the West. People of Asian descent become the model minority when they are depicted to do better than other racial minority groups, whereas they become the yellow peril when they are described to outdo White Americans.

Model Minority (Hollywood Example) Better Luck Tomorrow is a 2002 drama film directed by Justin Lin. The movie is about Asian American overachievers who become bored with their lives and enter a world of petty crime and material excess.

Discussion Questions What is your perception of Japanese in general without watching the movie? Without the influence of WW2, will Japanese have a different perception of American culture and white males? Which race do you think would be the next Model Minority? And why? Would Hollywood still have the same stereotyping after 30 years? If yes, would there be more or less? If no, what would it become? According to Berg’s theory of triangulation, how would we apply to other forms of media?