What do we mean by 'race'?
- Skin colour? (too reductive on spectrum. Not purely defined by genetics).
- Broadly, shared cultural identity, history & experience shaped by marginalisation/exclusion.
- 'The other' - that which is alien/different to homogenous group or culture.
Critical contextsIdeology
A set of opinions, values, beliefs and assumptions constructed and presented by a media text. Influences both the context in which media is produced and how it is received.
Hegemony
A dominant ideology within society. In sitcoms, traditionally reflected in the 'nuclear family', or reflects conventions/attitudes of dominant group (culture, identity).
Mediation & Representation
What we see is not objective reality or truth, but firstly the filmmaker's version of reality: what they have mediated. The process of mediation, the editorial decision-making process, directly affects representation: through judgement and selection editorialises how gender, race and class are presented. We as the audience are also complicit in mediation, through our understanding and reading of media texts (semiotics, ideology).
Reception Theory
How we as an audience mediate texts and the factors that might influence us. Argues cultural text has no inherent meaning in and of itself. Instead, meaning is created as the viewer watches and processes the film. Factors include elements of the viewer's personal identity, the exhibition environment, and preconceived notions of programme's genre and production.
History
- Dominant grouping is superior.
- Other cultural groupings are 'inferior' by virtue of difference.
- Defined by crude stereotypes: X are doctors/shopkeepers, X are criminals/natural athletes.
'The Other'
- Establishing identity through opposition to (and sometimes vilification of) a group or individual who display difference.
- Psychoanalysts like Freud and Jacques Lacan argue 'the other' is a primal impulse: "the narcissism of minor differences".
- Lacan theorises 'the other' emerges as the ego (self-identity) is forged in infancy when a child sees itself in a mirror.
'Love Thy Neighbour' (1972-1976)- Sitcom written by and for dominant society (hegemony).
- Reflects manifestations of 'the other' and Freud's "narcissism of minor differences", xenophobia.
- Radical step - characters on equal social/class status.
- Mediation affects audience reception: satire/comedy provoking empathy.
Black-ish (contemporary US sitcom)- Sitcom written by and for pluralistic society: Identity politics.
- Radical step - characters on equal or superior social/class status.
- Mediation affects audience reception: Satire/comedy provoking empathy,
//All images from Google.com\\
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