Art & Architecture
Cultural diversity has been one of the social and anthropological traits of human civilization. Many anthropologists define culture as the collection of traits. While defining the term culture Keesing (1974) says that culture is the heritage of learned symbolic behavior that makes humans human. Geographical factors and natural surroundings are majorly responsible in shaping the cultures and civilizations of the world. The conception behind the variety in civilization is to survive by tuning ourselves with the surrounding. Hence one cannot conclude that a particular culture is superior and a particular culture is inferior. Imitating any culture blindly is also not practical as it consists of several environmental factors. The racist attitude was not there till the colonialism.
“In the sixteen and seventeen centuries most Europeans believed all people to be God’s children”(Taylor, 2007)
For last couple of decades the ethnocentrism has developed all over the world which is the result of colonization. Western culture; i.e. Occident has been supposed as a superior race in the world whereas Oriental and other people have been regarded as inferior. It is because the oriental regions were the colonies of Europeans. Being the rulers of their colonies, they were superior, as was their culture. This propaganda was carried forward in post-colonial period by the dominating Western media. It is not wrong to state that Western Media is ruling the world, so as Western culture which is always propagated as the most superior culture in the world. This is definitely a very wrong conception but unfortunately such racial conceptions are being propagated by media. In literature, fashion industry, advertisements, movies, any other forms of media, the racial and gender discrimination is directly or indirectly exhibited. The paper tries to put forward the arguments about the excessive importance given to the outward appearance of the person which is based on race and ethnicity of the person. Moreover the ethnic stereotypical presentation and misconceptions about orient culture is spread by Western Media. For this paper some examples are taken from popular culture, fashion industry and media as well. The paper focuses on various cultural theories of media and applies it in context of racial and ethnic representation in media and fashion industry.
There are various media theories which are as follows:
Cultivation Analysis Theory
Gratification theory
Social Action Theory
Cultivation Analysis Theory and racial and ethnic representation
Cultivation theory was developed by George Gerbner. The theory is based on the long term effects of media. The theory was propounded with reference to TV and its influence on people. According to the theory, if people spend more time in watching the television world, they are likely to be influenced by the world portrayed by television. They start assuming that the television world is the real world. Though Gerbner has presumed in context of television the cultivation theory is applicable in the context of other media as well. According to Durkin (1985) children obtain racial information from television. Of course, it’s not just television but other forms of media also shape the racial views of the children since their childhood. The commercials hit the television and other media influence the people. The advertisements for example, aim at attracting the target audience and motivating them to buy the product or service promoted by the advertisements. Though the direct message is related to promote the product, the indirect message sometimes is something else. See two advertisements below that can be called racist ads. The ads of toy and a cream are related to children. They will come in contact with these ads some or other ways.
Figure 1 Figure 2: Source: (Racism Ruins Lives)
The dolls are depicted in various colors. The dolls present in the picture belong to the diverse race and ethnicity. The skin color and hair color differ. Thus it is media which introduces the difference in colors to the children since the very tender age of their life. The racist representation is not new to media at all. The racism has been propagating since the beginning of the last century. The advertisement of fairy soap, made in 1940 also has conveyed the same message of racism. The small children are conveyed a wrong message that dark complexion is not good complexion and the people with dark complexion are dirty. They need to wash themselves for removing the dirt and blackness from their body.
Gratification theory and Racism
The major question asked in gratification theory is why people use media. According to the gratification theory, people use media to satisfy their need and it helps to enhance the knowledge, social interaction to get relaxation or entertainment from media. When there is a question of entertainment, anything can be shown on the name of entertainment. Through entertainment, the audience also gets some hidden message, which is associated with race and ethnicity. One of the purposes of media according to Gratification Theory is to enhance knowledge, but what about the authenticity of the knowledge? From the advertisement, do they get real knowledge about the world? The answer is no. The dolls in the pictures are made of different ethnicity and race. But we cannot say that the intension behind making the toys in such way is to spreading racism. Sometimes the consumers are closely associated with the things which they can relate to their community and culture. If there are two dolls in a shop of any African country; one is fair doll with blond hair as shown at the right side of the doll’s group, and the other is black which is at the left side; the African customer will prefer to buy the black doll with black hair. It is because the customer can relate the dark doll with his/her overall upbringing and cultural elements. In such situation the toys are advertised according to the demand of the customer. The main purpose is the customer satisfaction. It cannot be said that it is a deliberate racial discrimination.
Social Action Theory and Racism
Social Action Theory of mass communication was developed by Anderson and Mayor. According to them, the content of media penetrates the audience mind as a silver bullet shot from media gun. They call the audience as hapless when the content is penetrated in the minds of the people. The start accepting whatever is shown in media. Hence the typical image of particular races shown by the media is accepted by the audience, thus leading to stereotypes. Apart from the fact that the content shown by the media is in a positive or negative manner, the power of media in motivating or demotivating racism is certainly noteworthy.
Race and Ethnicity is still dominating in the art form such as painting, drawing as well as in media, fashion and popular culture. The fashion industry since its emergence has always been dominated by Western and especially white people. In fact fashion first started in the white dominating countries such as France and Italy and it spread in Europe and America. Race has become the trend in fashion industry according to Naomi. While expressing her plea against racism in fashion and media industry, she lamented that the Western culture still does not ready to change their conventional parameters of beauty, which are associated with the color. Naomi states, “There is still an issue of ignorance in our fashion world I don’t even like to use the word racism — [they’re] ignorant. They just don’t want to budge. They just don’t want to change their idea or be more open-minded, to just [book] a beautiful girl regardless of creed or color.” (Carlos, 2015).
The artists while using their creativity seldom think of cultural and social norms. Sometimes they are completely unaware about the foreign culture. As a result, they may face strong oppositions if they try to experiment something out of curiosity from the foreign culture. Sometimes some cultural symbols, signs are used by the artists from different culture and while using them, unintentionally sometimes, they are likely to present the culture in a wrong and unaccepted way. At that time they have to encounter strong protest against the people. The cultural factors play a very crucial role in ethnic and racial depiction in art, fashion industry and media industry as well.
Cultural Appropriation, Race and Ethnicity
When the artists adopt something from the other culture, the term is known as cultural appropriation. The cultural appropriation is the process in which the dominating culture adopts some cultural elements of the minority cultures or less influential culture. The beautiful Beyonce is looking extremely gorgeous in Indian costumes and beautiful henna on her palms (Stokes, 2016)
Figure 4 Figure 5: Source: Stokes (2016)
Cultural appropriation should be taken positively. It is because it is a very good attempt to amalgamate two different cultures together. In the wave of globalization, not a single culture and race should be dominating. The global culture should be the mixture of different cultures from all over the world. This is the positive view conveyed by the cultural appropriation theory. The examples of cultural appropriation are the above two pictures in which the elements of Indian culture have been adopted by the foreign people.
In cultural appropriation, the artists should be aware that they are imitating a foreign culture and that is why they have to be aware of the cultural and social norms and they should be aware that they are not defaming the cultural norms and thus hurting the emotions of the people of the respective culture. The cultural appropriation should have positive intension. Moreover, it should have the feeling of cultural relativism where the individual beliefs and overall activities of the culture should be understood by the others in a positive and matured way. The biased approach should not be there in cultural appropriation. Unfortunately, today’s media sometimes incline towards cultural appropriation in a negative manner.
Racism and Exoticism
Exoticism is a trend in art, design, media and fashion industry. Exoticism is called as the “charm of the unfamiliar”, that means the curiosity to know the culture that is completely alien to the Western people. The Europeans influenced by non-European cultural elements and thus the exoticism is brought by the artists in the main stream of fashion, art and media. The exoticism is the result of the colonialism. Exoticism is the term sometimes associated with racism. While discussing these two terms along with primitivism, McBride, Hopkins and Blackshire-Belay (1998) argue that racism, exoticism, and primitivism are the terms treated by occident as “other” and they do not belong to them. In the period of colonialism, the racist feeling started developing among Europeans. The major thrust concerned with the new conception of self and others (Taylor, 2007). Here self means the Europeans and the others, means non-Europeans. The exoticism was the curiosity of the Occident to know the Oriental world; the African and Asian cultures. Though there is a thin line between exoticism and racism, both of these terms are used by Occident to show how the other cultures on the planet were inferior to them. While comparing the two terms, Grant (1993) argues that exoticism is decorative and superfluous. It does not exterminate and hurt like racism. Exoticism aims at amusing people whereas racism is associated with hatred and superiority complex. As discussed in the paper earlier the various theories of Mass media, it can be said that exoticism can be related to the theory of gratification where media is used to satisfy the needs of the people. In the picture, the Occident model is accompanied by the people who do not belong to European culture but they are either from Africa or a similar primitive culture. The make-over of the model is similar to that of primitive culture. This is the fine example of exoticism.
The mass media, being the most influential tool to disseminate message certainly influence the overall mass opinion and approach. The gender, race and ethnicity are spread by mass media sometimes directly sometimes indirectly; sometimes intentionally sometimes unintentionally. The various theories of mass media are some or other ways related to racism and other discriminations. Being the most influential social entity, mass media should take initiative towards changing the stereotypical opinions of the people and thus promote equality in real sense.
References
Carlos, M. (2015). Naomi Campbell won't stop talking about diversity in fashion. [online] Fusion. Available at: http://fusion.net/story/163764/naomi-campbell-i-wont-stop-talking-about-diversity-in-fashion-until-i-see-improvement/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2016].
Keesing, R. (1974). Theories of Culture. Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 3(1), pp.73-97.
McBride, D., Hopkins, L. and Blackshire-Belay, C. (1998). Crosscurrents. Columbia, SC: Camden House.
Racism Ruins Lives. (2016). [image] Available at: http://neatdesigns.net/22-shockingly-racist-ads/ [Accessed 13 Mar. 2016].
Stokes, J. (2016). Is Beyoncé Guilty Of Cultural Appropriation? A Few Indian Writers Weigh In. [image] Available at: http://xonecole.com/coldplays-new-hymn-weekend-video-teeters-cultural-appropriation-line/ [Accessed 13 Mar. 2016].
Taylor, T. (2007). Beyond Exoticism, Durham: Duke University Press.
