Stereotypical Representations Research Articles

Representation of Terror and Terrorism in Two Arab Films: <em>Paradise Now</em> (2005) by Hany Abu-Assad and <em>Horses of God</em> (2012) by Nabil Ayouch

Middle Eastern violence and terrorism are not novel subjects in world cinema, especially American cinema. The Arab or Muslim other in these films is always presented as someone who epitomises a culture of violence, directed mostly against innocent civilians. Against the backdrop of Hollywood’s stereotypical representation of Middle-Easterners as advocate of indiscriminate terror and terrorism, Arab filmmakers have turned in recent years to the representation of terror and religious extremism. Paradise Now (Abu Assad 2005) and Horses of God (Ayouch 2012) address the controversial issue of suicide bombing with the same motivation: to examine the choice of suicide bombing within its immediate socio-economic and politico-religious milieu. Both works have raised eyebrows in the Arab world as well as in the West as to their unorthodox cinematographic representation of terrorism. For a reason. Both films tend to demystify the idea of martyrdom while still granting the suicide bombers their humanity.

Gender-sensitive Portrayal in Cartoon Shows for Preschoolers: A Critical Analysis of Masha and the Bear

Most of the studies on children’s programming conducted in America or India, indicating an unbalanced and stereotypical gender representation, remain limited to those on older children. The present study explores if cartoon shows for preschoolers resort to the counter-hegemonic portrayal of male/female characters, and if thereby have any scope for representation of gender fluidity within it. Consequently, it also attempts to discern the ways in which interpersonal relationships between the protagonists, and between the protagonist(s) and the secondary character(s) portray any ‘dominant/submissive’ dichotomies. Drawing on Bandura’s ‘Social Learning Theory’ and de Beauvoir’s notion of the social construction of women as the ‘other’, this study presents the results of textual analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis of a popular Russian cartoon show ‘Masha and the Bear’ (M&TB) telecast on Nick Jr. The study findings indicate more gender-sensitive representation in the show for preschoolers than those for the older children. Bearing the tropes of Soviet Russian egalitarian and cultural traits, the characters of M&TB portray non-binary gender roles compared to their American or Indian counterparts.

Representation of Female Superhero and Gender Roles in the Avengers: Endgame

This paper aims to present the study about the representation of female superhero characters and gender roles in Avenger: Endgame. This study is justified to be important as females usually have their stereotypical representation in mass media, including film. Thus, it is crucial to explore and analyze whether or not female superheroes are depicted similarly. There are three main characters analyzed in this movie, namely Gamora, Black Widow, and Nebula. This study applies the semiotics method with a qualitative approach whereby Roland Barthes Semiotics is employed as the theoretical foundation of the analysis and strategy in this study. The research has focused on the representation of gender roles and physical manifestations of the characters in the film. The study has shown that (i) each of the characters plays several roles based on the context of the story, (ii) the balance of power between male and female are not equally distributed, and lastly (iii) Gamora and Nebula being different species than Black Widow which is human, had their appearance interpreted to possess a human-like body, yet the pattern of body size among these three-female superheroes sends a message that this body shape is the “ideal and desirable” body type.

Media Representations of Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals on Dutch Television and People\u2019s Stereotypes and Attitudes About LGBs

This study investigates stereotypical portrayals of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (LGBs) on Dutch television and whether these portrayals relate to people’s attitudes towards LGBs. Previous research shows that television programs in the U.S. contain many stereotypical portrayals of LGBs. These portrayals are both negatively and positively related to people’s attitude towards LGBs. Because the Dutch culture is relatively accepting of LGBs it is interesting to see if they are portrayed differently than in the U.S. A content analysis showed that there are stereotypical representations on Dutch television but there are also people who ‘just happen to be gay’. A survey among 272 participants showed that people who more frequently watch programs with stereotypical portrayals of LGBs do not have a more positive or negative attitude than people who do not. A mediation analysis showed that people who watch more television in general have a more stereotypical view of gay men, which is related to more negative attitudes towards LGBs.

Mi china juventud: Childhood and Hybrid acts in Cuéntame cómo pasó

Abstract Since 1990, Spain has taken in over 200,000 Chinese immigrants. With these citizens often the targets of racist attacks and stereotypes, several filmic and televisual texts offer stereotypical representations of Chinese immigrants either as violent or as a model minority. Nevertheless, texts are emerging that offer more nuanced representations of this migrant body and construct complex characters whose identity struggles form part of Spain’s socio-cultural fabric. Cuéntame cómo pasó (La1, 2001 – present) is one of the first Spanish television programmes to represent a Spanish-Chinese immigrant child this way. This article analyses the Spanish-Chinese immigrant child’s construction within public service broadcasting, arguing that her character’s representation is informed by the channel’s public service responsibility. The analysis considers the notion that her character is the generator of ‘hybrid acts’ and is an agent of cross-cultural contact in her friendship group.

Annotating Colonialism

This exhibition review essay compares three recent interventions into historic cultural representations at the American Museum of Natural History: the Digital Totem that was placed in the Northwest Coast Hall in 2016 to partially modernize its content, the 2018 reconsideration of the Old New York Diorama, which attempts to correct its stereotypical representations of Native North American peoples, and the 2019 exhibition Addressing the Statue providing context for the Theodore Roosevelt statue. Paying attention to visual and textual strategies, I characterize these three interventions as temporary annotations to what have been remarkably static, long-term cultural representations. I argue that, through these annotations, the museum acknowledges the misrepresentations but does not resolve them. The case studies show varying degrees of critical historical reflection expressing the complexities of negotiating different approaches and agendas to engaging with the museum’s past. I also comment on the pervasiveness of a digital aesthetics in all three projects, even though only the Digital Totem was produced as a digital, interactive intervention into the museum space. The invocation of a digital design vocabulary enhances the impression of annotation.

Seemingly innocent pictures. Visual representations of migrants and refugees circulating through the Czech Facebook nationalistic universe

In recent years, a growing academic interest in both the theoretical and empirical examination of visual representations of migrants has become visible in the social sciences. Scholars coming from diverse disciplines have significantly contributed to our critical knowledge of the processes (e.g. depersonalisation, dehistorisation or orientalisation) and stereotypical representations through which migrants are depicted. The article expands on this research field and it examines the practices of visual communication among Facebook users, who actively contribute to online discussions on the issue of migration by creating and sharing topical visual material drawing upon the local and the international anti-immigrant content and context. In particular, it focuses on the visuals, which actively use the figures of humour, satire or parody in order to diminish the representatives of migration. The content of Facebook posts is approached in a complex way, and therefore visual as well as textual elements are analysed and their rhetorical strategies and intertextual references are also taken into consideration.

"LUCAS, O SALTEADOR": :

The objective of the article is to examine the construction of a unique memory about Lucas da Feira, between the years 1923-1924, in the journalistic chronicle entitled, Chronicas Feirenses, published in the Folha do Norte newspaper, by journalist, Arnold Silva. Paths are opened for understanding how the act of remembering enabled the construction of stereotyped representations about Lucas da Feira in the city, while the discourse produced expressed aspects of Western consciousness about blacks and the project to silence and erase the slave past. For that, we use the reflections proposed by Le Goff, Stuart Hall, Achille Mbembe

Arab American Feminism: The Political and the Literary Strategies of Re-writing between Borders in Contemporary Post-9/11 Fiction by Women Writers

Undeniably, Arab American women occupy a debatable position in mainstream culture and politics. Because of their former invisibility, they started to claim their presence and to fight for their rights in post-9/11 America. They ardently become aware of their submission to both Arab patriarchy and sexism and the necessity to fight against this denigrating position. Likewise, they realise that they were silenced in discourses against Arab and Muslim discrimination in the United States. This paper focuses on the ways they have been challenging these discriminatory and invisibilizing discourses against Arab women through shedding light on their Transnational Feminist concerns in their writings, in which they have created a site to communicate anti-discrimination discourses, and to oppose the stereotypical monolithic portrayals of Arab men that are mainly due to the hypervisibility and the demonization of Arabs in post- 9/11 America. Additionally, it highlights how the Shehrazadian narrative strategy in contemporary Arab American women’s writing engulfs several features and illustrations of confrontation and resistance to the stereotypical representations of Arab women, mainly in the American popular culture. Indeed, Shehrazade and her narrative strategies become in this context a collective means for re-writing, reviving and redefining grandmother figures from the past. Shehrazed’s storytelling, as a life-serving strategy, becomes a metaphor for the urgency of exploring why and how figures like Shehrazade are translated across cultures and how Orientalism shapes such translation.

Reppin’ and Rice: How Asian and Pacific Islander American Hip Hop Fans Negotiate Their Racial Identities and Make Meaning of Their Experiences in the US Hip Hop Community

The US hip hop fan community maintains stereotypical representations of Asian American and Pacific Islander American (AAPI) communities that were created from the Yellow Peril and Model Minority discourses (2017, Sociological Inquiry 87(4):634). AAPI rap and hip hop fans present an image that is in opposition to the stereotypes of what fans learned and believe about AAPI communities (2017, Sociological Inquiry 87(4):634). My experiences have inspired me to seek answers to the pressing research questions: (1) how do Asian American and Pacific Islander American hip hop fans negotiate their racial identities in the hip hop community when it is an artform and culture that is historically and socially tied to Black and Brown communities? and (2) how do AAPI hip hop fans make meaning of their experiences in the multi‐racial U.S. hip hop community?

Female Stereotypes in Romanian Advertising: An Interpretative Content Analysis

Abstract Advertising, by its accessibility, is incredibly powerful in spreading stereotypical representations. The way women are portrayed in advertising in different countries and cultures has been a subject of research for more decades. The paper aims to examine the way women are portrayed in advertising campaigns in Romania. The study focuses on finding the stereotypes used and their characteristics by qualitatively analyzing ads from brands’ YouTube channels. We identified seven stereotypes and the analysis shows that women portrayals are idealized in Romanian advertising. Although there are some modern approaches to the representations, ads do not reflect contemporary female roles. The most frequent stereotype is the Next-Door Woman, a stereotype that emphasis on the cuteness of the woman, not on her intelligence. Romanian brands’ advertising lacks campaigns promoting women empowerment.

Skewed Allegiances: Recalibrating Humanitarian Accountability towards Gender

Abstract Humanitarian actors often face competing accountabilities that may skew “upwards” in favour of donors. With increasing requirements on humanitarian actors to demonstrate efficiency and impact, accountability has often become depoliticised, reduced to technical frameworks and bureaucratic processes. Within humanitarian work focused on promoting gender equality, the problems in how accountability is framed have particular ramifications, affecting how gender issues are positioned, how gender-related data are presented and the assumptions underlying interventions that seek to address gender inequality. This article is based on ethnographic research in Jordan, specifically interviews with humanitarian practitioners and Syrian refugees. It explores how accountability for gender issues is positioned within the humanitarian sector. The article challenges the fixation on collecting quantitative data on gender-based violence and suggests that humanitarian assumptions about refugee populations may lead to stereotypical and homogenous representations about refugees that fail to recognise complexity. It provides examples of gaps in humanitarian assistance experienced by Syrian refugees in Jordan. The article also suggests that accountability for social transformation and change may be shifting from humanitarian actors towards refugees themselves. The article recommends that approaches to humanitarian accountability should prioritise listening, and being honest about failures and gaps in knowledge.

Image, nation and Cuban identity in the Hollywood discourse

Cuban Cinema is said to date back to the first moving images shot by Americans in Cuba during the Spanish-Cuban-American War (1898) an era that precedes the rise of Hollywood and its global hegemony. Today, we would call these pioneering films ‘political propaganda’ - that historian Román Gubern has argued reveal the eternally manipulative nature of cinematographic language. In the long history of Hollywood cinema, there are many films that have addressed aspects of Cuban identity, and we cannot diminish their influence - or at least the effort - in building a credible and truthful image of Cuba.However, since its early days, Hollywood has also often projected an exotic and stereotyped representation of Cuban identity-based on many films that were actually shot in spaces and locations outside the island. I argue that in this process, not only the nation’s historical memory has been distorted, but it is a phenomenon that continues to the present day. This essay takes a panoramic view of the representation of Cuban identity, culture, and history in Hollywood, from the times of the Spanish-Cuban-American War until the recent administration of President Barack Obama, a period marked by the famous Cuban Thaw. At stake, are the issues of ethics of representation of the “other” amid power differentials in cinema about Cuba, but also across Latin America.

Key issues in the field of macro‐sociolinguistics of the Maghreb: Societal debates and contentious discourse

AbstractSociolinguistic debates and controversies in the Maghreb can be explained as a function of the complexity of the linguistic facts on the ground, their stereotypical representations and their essentialization in political, everyday and also academic discourses. This contribution aims to produce a critical synthesis of the important issues linked to the status of the official languages, namely institutional Arabic and school Tamazight, which some social actors oppose to the first languages of the people of the Maghreb, namely Maghrebi Arabic and Berber languages. Current debates also concern the question of the replacement of French by English in academia, English being defended by the Arabist elite in order to reduce the field of influence of the francophone elite.

Sociocultural stereotypes in different genres of American media discourse in the middle of the last century

The article provides the analysis of the means that represent sociocultural stereotypes in radio and television genres of American media discourse in the middle of the 20th century. In a cognitive-linguistic perspective, the definition of a sociocultural stereotype has been specified as a verbalized mental construct of an ethnically and culturally marked, idealized image of a person, a social group or a phenomenon. The research results prove that the analyzed sociocultural stereotypes evoke feelings to a social group or an individual, reflected in verbal and nonverbal codes. Emotional and evaluative perception of sociocultural stereotypes is dependent on the historical and cultural context. Positively evaluated stereotypes embody American cultural values. Aimed at describing the linguistic means of representation of sociocultural stereotypes, the research methodology is based on a discursive analysis and involves interpretation of media texts within the thematic and historical contexts. It has been revealed that the analyzed means that represent sociocultural stereotypes in media discourse manifest in lexical units, thematic selection of syntactic constructions, rhetorical and stylistic devices. Represented by audio-visual means in media discourse, sociocultural stereotypes are considered as complex semantic units of speech, visual, behavioral, and ethical characteristics of individuals or social groups. It has been proved that behavioral characteristics of sociocultural stereotypes are based on a speech specificity of social groups, which demonstrates their origin and social status manifested in prosodic means, lexical and grammatical forms of the utterances.

The ‘Freicha’ as an Interruption in/of Westernized Israeli Theatre

The term Mizrahi Jews, or Mizrahim, refers to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent who make up nearly half of Israel’s Jewish population. Over the years, Mizrahi Jews were excluded from Israel’s social and cultural centres of power in all spheres of life, including the Israeli theatre. The history of the Western base of Israeli theatre has grown from three different directions: the dominant Eastern European-Russian tradition, the German theatre tradition and the influence of American Broadway. The article focuses on ‘Freicha’ as Mizrahi female stereotype that interrupts in/of Westernized Israeli theatre. The poetry performance by Hannah Vazana Greenwald, who creates a Mizrahi-feminist alternative on the Israeli stage, called ‘Freicha is a Beautiful Name’, is a protest against stereotypical representation. Instead of moving away from the stereotype, as do the traditional approaches of Mizrahi theatre, this poetry performance actually reinforces the stereotype, in an ironic, parodic, audacious and antagonistic style to the point where the stereotype becomes completely subverted and emptied of its negative content. It becomes a source of protest for Mizrahi women. Instead of seeking distance from the negative imaging that is threatening them, the performers on the stage adopt it as their own and transform it into a source of empowerment. The re-appropriation of the freicha stereotype turns her into a critical figure who gives the audience a new perspective on the Mizrahi identity that undermines the hegemonic discourse; she has become the stranger entering the stage as described by Benjamin with regard to Brecht’s epic theatre creating a possibility for recalibration. This re-appropriation creates a utopian performative moment that temporarily anticipates, in the theatrical event, the transformation of the freicha to a positive and empowering image in the social reality.

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE RIVER BETWEEN BY NGUGI WA THIANG’O: STUDY OF GENDER OTHERING

The present research is a Critical Discourse Analysis of single postcolonial text The River Between by Ngugi (1965). It focuses to explore the discursive techniques employed in the selected text to propagate the concept of gendered Othering. Aim of the researcher is to find how the colonizers other the Kenyans by presenting their stereotypical representations in their discourse and how Ngugi unmasks the Whiteman’s self constructed ideologies about them. The researcher employs Van Dijk’s (2004) analytical model to decode the text critically at words, phrases, sentences and discourse levels. The analytical devices adopted for the present research from this model are:' Actor description', 'categorization', ‘lexicalization', 'authority', ‘polarization' and ‘metaphor'. Further linguistic devices included in the model are: ‘repetition’ and ‘Absolute Term’. All these discursive techniques have been employed to decode the randomly selected data from the given text. The findings show that the theme of gendered othering is very dominant in the selected text and all the mentioned analytical devices have been frequently employed in the selected text to propagate the ideological representations of culture, gender and race.

Ahmed's Journey into Islam: A Critical Response to the Stereotypical Representation of Muslim Women and Islamic Attires in Western Discourse

Muslim women in western literary and non-literary discourse have been portrayed stereo typically as uneducated, submissive, family-bound, segregated, confined to the harem, doubly marginalized and a threat for western ideology. Akbar Ahmed's Journey into Islam demonstrates Muslim women and their roles in Muslim societies based on different geographical contexts. This article attempts to highlight and challenge the stereotypical representation of Muslim women and the distortion of their social attire,such as the veil in media and academic representations. The veil is interpreted as a fundamentalist practice which is, from a Muslim perspective, a defensive mechanism and an empowering gesture. This article explores the true picture of Muslim women and their active roles in various walks of life.

Rethinking Gender Roles: Perception of Female Viewers of Pakistani Television Dramas

Television drama is always an attraction for women. It has considerably contributed in defining gender roles to its viewers. This study was aimed to investigate that how females from different socioeconomic backgrounds perceive and interpret gender roles shown in Pakistani television drama. For data collection qualitative research strategy was applied. Data was collected by conducting eight focus groups. Each group consisted of eight participants (females) aged 20-40 years. Emergent themes from the data were non stereotypic representation of gender roles in Pakistani Television drama. This study concluded that tendency of Pakistani TV drama to redefine gender roles have contributed in conformity with the change in perception of female viewers interpreting gender roles shown in these dramas.

Representations of Girlhood and Girl Stereotypes in Victoria Aveyards’ The Red Queen Collection

Given the fact that girlhood studies is a new area of investigation which intriguingly demonstrates various ways through which girlhood is structured by different social and cultural codes, we intend to examine girl characters in The Red Queen collection as it was the New York Times Best Selling series. This investigation reveals the way cultural and social norms prescribe specific gender roles and shape different versions of girl characters in this series. To find girl stereotypes in The Red Queen collection, such girlhood theories as Girl Power, Reviving Ophelia, #LIKEAGIRL, Girl Effect and Girl Up have been taken into consideration. Various depictions of girlhood in The Red Queen collection are represented through characters who have different ethnic backgrounds and come from different social classes. This implies that the formation of girl identity has a lot to do with social, economic, political and cultural structures. However, identity formation, as we see in the collection, is an ongoing process and can change in the course of an individual’s self-development.