Media has been stereotyping people for a long time, especially Hollywood movies. Arabians most probably have gotten the worst stereotyping, that they are all terrorists, violent, filthy rich and have no morals, but that is not the case at all.
Some of other stereotyping of other races are:
Chinese and Japanese: Hollywood somehow relate them together and call us Asians, and they all have small slanted eyes, talk in a weird slang, nerdy and knows some form of martial arts.
African American: Violent, has guns, love to pick and get into fights, speak in a weird way, dumb, sells and consume drugs and is sexually active.
Thais: Men are gays, if they are not then they are in some kind of gang, women are prostitutes, sexually active and bitchy.
Indians: Violent, lazy, drunk, beats their family, love to fight and talk in a weird slang while shaking their heads.
French: Snobbish, flirty, romantic and a wuss.
Blond white female: Dumb, stupid, mean and sexually active.
The above are just some the common stereotyping. I hope that movies will stop stereotyping people so that everyone will not assume a certain race is like that.
*The pictures above are print screens of the movie Mean Girls.
Yes, racist stereotypes has been exist for long time since the movie industry started. It's quite common even in cartoon. For instance, the famous Disney cartoon Mickey Mouse back in 1948. There are plenty more which can be viewed in this link http://www.cracked.com/article_15677_the-9-most-racist-disney-characters.html
ReplyDeleteIn the past old day, movie maker can have the excuse that they didn't know well about other races because the communication system is not that convenient yet. But this phenomena keeps appearing in the recent globalize world. Is there any other excuse?
Sometimes, it's unavoidable as stereotype is a good way to present the characteristics of a race easily. Of course sometimes I even feel a little bit of anger when they portrait Chinese as a bit dumb, nerdy and weaker than white man, but it's true that Chinese was once much inferior than white man when they intrude China in year 1900 due to the weak emperor. The internal conflicts in China make other countries feel that Chinese are weak and unable to fight back, so Chinese might be a weak figure till now. What I trying to say is these stereotyping happen because everything really happen.
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