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How Popular Culture Affects Race

Essay by   •  May 9, 2011  •  1,362 Words (6 Pages)  •  1,955 Views

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HOW POPULAR CULTURE AFFECTS RACE

The popular culture particularly visual media affects our opions and attitude towards race and racial minorities group. our assumptions about race and racial minorities are both successeded and reflected in the streotypes presented by the visual media. i strongly believe in the George Gebners scientific examintaiton of televison that how we perceive ourselves and how we view those around us are affected by what we see on television. Visual media has such a heavy impact on us that even though they present a grossly distorted picture of the real world. people tend to accept more readily than reality itslef. the popular culture deals with symbolic realm of social life, the image which it creates, represents and disseminates contributes to the overall racial climate. the racial discrimintaion is not only restricted to the visual media, it can be very well seen in the music industry also. racial symbols and images are omnipresent in the popular culture. The Cosby and the The Chappelles show uses television as their means to present a black culture. they uses televison and humor because both of these are readily accepted by the mass viewers.Since televison affects our life styles and our thinking so they uses one of the means to make the invisible racisim visible to everyone and they used humor because racism , drugs and sex all of these are serious issues and could be offensive too. the basic idea was to expose human streotype without making anyone offensive and at the same time making their point visible to everyone. so , that we can think about these serious issues.

Despite of knowing the visual media represents a grossly distorted pictures of the real world but then also we perceive ourselves acccording to what we see on telveison. there are few examples which proved that what televison present is a mere a entertainment . it is far away from a reality . for example less than 20 % of the televisoin married women with children work outside the home as compared with more than 50% in real life. he also founded that people believe elders make up a smaller proportions of the population of today , in fact they found the nations most rapidly expanding age group. the other was the imbalances created in the televison between black and white community. it teaches young black to accept minority status as noticebely inevietable and even deserved. television also overrepresent and glamourize the elite occupation that sets up unrealistic expectations and largely neglects portraying the occupation such as farmers, factory workers and small businessman. On television 55% of characters are involved in the violent conforontation once a week in reality figure is less than 1 % creating a fear of crime. the way the race and the racial minority groups are represented in television they contribute to the overall racial climate.The historical results have been distinct and different groups have encountered unique forms of racial opression. Native american faced genocide , blacks were subjected to slavery, mexicans were invaded and asians faced exclusions. Films and televsions have been notorious in dissementing images of racial minorities which establish for audiences what these groups look like, how they behave and in essence who they are. Another important perhaps central dimensions of racial minority streotype is sex gender differentiation. women of color were sometimes treated as erotic sex objects. such a comment revelas an interesting aspects about myths and reality in american culture. the imporatance of race in popular culture is not restricted to the visual media, the can be very well seen in music also. racial symbols and images are omnipresent in popular culture.so , i would like to say that despite of knowing that visual media is far away from reality but then also the assumptions about race and racial minorities are affected by the visual media.

the cosby show used the above facts about the reality that how popular culture affects race and racial minorites group and how people perceive what they see on televison to represent a black culture, the way they are and the way they should be. the cosby show basically promotes the black culture through the means of humor which is acceptable to everyone in this world. the cosby want to give blacks aspiration about life. the show do influence the life styles of blacks. cosby represent a life style of blacks.cosby always uses humor to do parentings, to make her daughter aware of what she was wearing and even about her boyfriend, to teach the importance of good education to his son . he even becomes firm when he has to . so cosby and his wife emphasized on discipline in raising children. the show depicts the importance of music and dance in their life. it emphasizes on the joy of family eating together in this fast and busy

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