Television is a consistent presence in everyone’s life. With its ability to be visually-pleasing and highly entertaining, it commands the attention of millions for several hours each day. Sometimes, television competes and takes the place of other sources of basic human interaction- communicating, studying, and being active. Television also influences the attitudes and beliefs of viewers towards themselves, as well as other people from different ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. During this passive activity, viewers tend to pay little to no attention to this influence or how little diversity in television is linked to racial stereotypes in American culture.
Since the 1940s and early 2000s, television had a vast and profound effect on…
Being white in TV programs, advertisements, news, and entertainment was conveyed as being normal. If a television show did feature someone from a minority, particularly someone of an African-American background, they were given a limited, stereotypical role. Negative depictions of African-Americans, specifically women of color appears twice as often as positive imagery does. Even with a plethora of ground-breaking films, incredible performances, and award-nominations in film and TV that many black actresses have received in recent years, the usual archetypes that black women fit into in television representation still remains.
The archetype of black women in TV and film include the following: the tireless, hardworking, devoted mother, the Jezebel who is very sexually promiscuous with many children attached to her hip, and the finger-snapping, neck-twisting, always angry black woman. These are the stereotypes that penetrate the American woman of color experience….
The main character, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) along with the diverse cast of the show is presented in a way that illustrates race is unimportant to the show. Ms. Pope does not embody the classic negative stereotype of women of color in TV. She has attended the best boarding schools and Ivy League colleges, a media relations consultant, and a former director of communications for the White House. She’s a major player in DC politics, a crisis manager, while running the consulting firm Olivia Pope and Associates. (Scandal Netflix…
