Stereotypes In Manhattan Media Analysis

Throughout this semester we came across different types of media that portrayed what being black, white and a person of color in American society. All of these notions of class and gender stereotypes within races are rendered in the media in a stereotypical way that allows the audience to believe that it is accurate. In most media minorities are represented less intelligent than Whites and to live in lower class neighborhoods or lack money. This is represented because the media has lead audiences to believe that this is how black and Latino bodies are in all types of nature. Furthermore, it will divulge on how we as an audience take stereotypes and apply it to all beings. To demonstrate these complexities one could see the evidence in the film Maid in Manhattan and articles from Elizabeth Monk Turner, Toni Morrison and Chris Miller that speak on the issue of negative media portrayals.

Maid in Manhattan is a movie about a Latina woman who works as a housekeeping maid in Manhattan, New York and is a single mother to her ten year old son Ty. She meets Chris Marshall, a white older politician who is currently campaigning to be a …show more content…
In Morrison’s article Black Matters she touches on the ideal of the white man is the ideal representation of America. He is seen as the embodiment of what it is to be an American. She would say that it is W.A.S.P, White, Angelo, Saxon and Protestant and these are the ideals in American literature. “I have begun to wonder whether the major, much celebrated themes of American literature-individualism, masculinity, the conflict between social engagement and historical isolation, an acute and ambiguous moral problematic, the juxtaposition of innocence with figures representing death and hell-are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanistic presence” (Morrison 206). Morrison