Media Literacy Book Report

Improved Essays
Entertainment industry formula for successful movie making is to provide a story with a major conflict, that comes to a climax, and eventually a resolution. Does this sound like another formula for another form of entertainment that you know? If you said yes, then you were right! This is the same formula authors used to write books. This formula is what we were taught in English class. I learned this formula in my creative writing class. Those students who did not follow this formula were more likely not to get a good grade on their paper. This is because this formula has proven the most successful and is accepted by the masses. Our textbook, Media Literacy by W. James Potter, explains that the entertainment industry uses the general entertainment story formula to hopefully produce movies that are successful and will make huge profits. We as a society are trained to look for these types of movies and books because, they are usually easily understood, and there is usually a well-established protagonist and antagonist. The book goes on to explain the different genres of …show more content…
In our textbook, Media Literacy by W. James Potter, he talks about how African American stereotypes are portrayed on movies and televisions, and how it has changed throughout the decades. My mother told me when she was growing up that most African Americans were usually portrayed as slaves, maids, criminals, or slow. She said she started seeing in change in the different roles they were playing because African Americans began to make their own movies about their own culture. A good example of this is the raise of 70’s Blaxploitation movies. These movies were made for urban black audiences and many of the main characters were portrayed as heroes or characters who were taking down the oppressive white agenda. It came way to showcase African Americans in a different

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Black Women In 1950

    • 1066 Words
    • 5 Pages

    For example, the Mammy archetype was a popular comedy act in 1950. “Mammy” portrayed an African American domestic servant who is generally servile or protective of the interests of the white children she takes care of. This archetype contributed to the stereotypes that African American women being bitter, mean, and violent towards people other than their white bosses. This representation of black women didn’t help them and crushed their pride. Seeing this terrible representation of African American women in the media made them more willing to change themselves just to get away from the stereotype that white people had put upon…

    • 1066 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    With so much production and consumption of a plethora of different forms of media, too many people never need to need for it to be any different than how it is, never have to wish it would change. Too many people, unknowingly, take for granted something another group of people would weep with joy at finding. This is what being represented in the media can feel like. African Americans experience anywhere from negative representation to erasure from television, film, literature, and even the educational curriculum. This lack of active or positive representation stems from a long, complex history of slavery and racism.…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We will also look at how some African Americans are using this representation to their advantage. The first representation that comes to mind when thinking of how African American society is represented in mass media, and how it can sway our perception is the idea that African Americans are only in the poor and working-class. Patricia Hill Collins states, “Some representations of blackness (in mass media) become commonsense “truth.” For example, the experiences of poor and working-class Black men may be established as being more authentically black than those of middle- and upper-middle class African American men” (Collins pg. 151-152).…

    • 763 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Television programs throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s confronted race in the United States. African American’s had always been misrepresented on television, or if portrayed, the characters would embody racial stereotypes. Therefore, in the late 1960’s, African Americans began to receive more prominent roles in popular American television programs on big networks. This era was a major time for a change in race relations in the African American community in the media. The representation of African Americans throughout this era on television was notable and revolutionary in programs such as All in the Family, Julia and Room 222.…

    • 1061 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The impact of stereotypes depicted in the media, still has an effect on individuals in society today. As a young black African American women who often speaks her mind, with a very strong personality, people may very well stereotype me as a “Angry Black Women” commonly depicted on black television shows seen today. “Schemas of how people are likely to behave based simply on the groups to which they belong are known as stereotypes.” (Feist, G. & Rosenberg, E.2012). Stereotypes, form conclusions about people before even interacting with them based on a certain race ethnicity or even how you may look, down to the clothes you wear.…

    • 810 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stereotyping in television and movies is at an all-time high. The media portrayed black men as violent, dangerous and uneducated. Which is not the case at all, more young African…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Even in one of the most highly regarded films in American cinematography and the first film to have an African American win an Oscar, Gone With the Wind, the portrayal of African Americans was extremely offensive and demeaning (Marche). Moving forward, American media began to integrate more diverse opportunities for Black actors, although those opportunities were also plagued with controversial and stereotypical depictions. In conjunction with the Civil Rights Movement, Black actors fought for better representation and more screen time along white actors. Despite this push in the right direction, African Americans still found themselves confined to negative racial stereotypes. These stereotypes are at the forefront of American Media and pop culture…

    • 1537 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    How Media Literacy Affects Children in North America Humans have the capability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in different ways. Nowadays, media literacy is for experts an important and necessary source that people have available every day to learn different subjects in this new technological environment (National Asociation Par1). Media literacy has a huge effect on children because it is used to help them to make a distinction between reality and fantasy, and to distinguish media violence and real-life violence, media heroes and real-life heroes, and media role models and real-life roles and expectations (Media Education 18). Developments in communication have been increasing each day. Children are living in a…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Stereotypes of people of color and minority races have been around for many years, and have proved themselves to dominate the perception of people of color in everyday life. Films portray people of color as they are perceived by white Americans, not how they truly are, unique. Film has only dirtied the minority races’ image over time, though if the movies were not made by other Americans, they were more accurate to their race. Stereotypes of Asians have been around for a long time, ever since Asians were introduced. Stereotypes such as Asian students are smarter, Asian women are more exotic and tend to wait on men, Asian women are submissive, Asian people are all from China, and many others.…

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stereotypes of African American Men in the Media Negative stereotypes of African American men have existed for centuries. They date as far back as folklore, pre mass media, and they exist everywhere today. “They have played a significant role in shaping attitudes towards African American men in American history and in the present (Green, 1999).” “They created the idea that they are racially and socially inferior (Blackface).” Furthermore, they promoted inequality and violence towards them.…

    • 1826 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    John Williams Dr. Fontenot AFR 198/ WRT 120 5 March, 2015 Revising Stereotypes In the early 1900’s we saw the birth of what would plague a race for generations. We saw the beginning of black stereotypes in movies all across America, making a mockery of the entire black population. As the movies gained popularity so did the social unrest of the blacks in America. They hoped for the revision and ultimately the complete destruction of such demeaning stereotypes.…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Representations of African Americans in Media: in the past and now Individuals have been labeling things since the stone ages to entertain or occupy themselves in their free time. The consequences of these classifications are the current cultural stereotypes that highlight the variances between people of unlike nationalities. Based on recent movies and television shows one would believe that the United States is not diverse at all looking from outside American culture into American culture. Media illustrations, each race in certain circumstances blacks shown only when needing an oversexed woman or thuggish man. Media makes sure that blacks are represented in this way allows the others to lower their expectations of African American overshadowing…

    • 1462 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It is clear that America suffers from social inequality and because of this television has been a critical impact on society's views, perspectives, and culture. From time to time, television's hegemonic approach subliminally sends stereotypically negative images of Black people and families. However, shows such as The Cosby Show, and Prince of Bel-Air, went against traditional stereotypes of Black Families by displaying their middle and their upper middle class family lives in distinct ways. Therefore, this paper examines these shows and present ways of how these shows go against the stereotypes and examine marriage, fatherhood, and stability within Black families. Since the beginning, television has not known what to do with black characters.…

    • 2421 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Black women constantly face challenges brought on by the intersectionality of racism and sexism. There is a notable rise in the amount of black women arrested for minor crimes such as parking tickets or minor offences such as cursing. Higher amounts of black women are targets of criminalization and discrimination through the intersection of racism and sexism. This paper will include the targeting of young women, but also the school to prison pipeline and the abuse of black women by sexual partners, schools, and the criminal justice system. (Note: Change thesis to reflect final paper and new ideas)…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Janes Gaines’s, White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory, Gaines wanted to show how a theory of the text and its spectator, based on the psychoanalytic concept of sexual difference, is unequipped to deal with a film which is about racial difference and sexuality. “The Diana Ross star vehicle Mahogany (directed by Berry Gordy, 1975) immediately suggests a psychoanalytic approach because the narrative is organized around the connections between voyeurism and photographic acts, because it exemplifies the classical cinema which has been so fully theorized in Lacanian terms” (Gaines, 12). But as Gaines argued, the psychoanalytic model works to block out considerations which assume a different configuration…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays