To see things, there is always another way

Everyday we consume media. Media is newspaper, media is magazines. Media is music, media is movies. And let’s not forget about social media.

The want of communicating with each other is so strong that we have so many kinds of media approaches and platforms to convey our thoughts to other people, for purpose of either raising public awareness, provide information or entertaining. Yes, the purpose is really important. When you produce media text, you must have your own intention. What does this media text serve for? Who will be the target audience? Those are basic questions that you should be clear about before releasing any sort of media.

From user’s perspective, we are not in the early to mid 20th century when media is the “magic bullet” anymore. We consume media to satisfy our own needs. What we see when we are exposed to media does not have to be the same with the intentional purpose that has been set up for us from the producers.

Let’s take an example. In my favourite sitcom “How I Met Your Mother?“, there is a character called Barney. He always wear suits, enjoys playing laser tag though he is in 30s. He is also a true playboy who even writes a book called “Playbook” about ways to manipulate girls into bed. But at the same time, he is also very emotional and extremely naive. Barney sees things different from others. One of the most unforgettable impression I have about him is from the way he perceives the movie “The Karate Kid 1984“. Instead of seeing Johnny Lawrence (played by William Zabka) as a villain, Barney think about Johnny as the “real karate kid” and a wonderful protagonist character.

This is just like seeing Toms as the good pathetic guy and Jerry is just an insidious evil (b)rat.

Or seeing Cinderella as a silly passive woman that does not do anything to fight for her own happiness but crying.

Or, (this is a big Or), seeing Michael Brown as a real victim of police misconduct and racial inequality.

According to Stuart Hall, mainstream media tends to lead us to think in only one “preferred” way in order to best serves for their intention. He also claimed that, in television, one sign is polysemic and several meanings are delivered but just one layer of meanings is chosen to offer to the audience and is considered as the “appropriate” way of perceiving things. Obviously, that “way” does not necessarily reflect the truth. In his work “Encoding/Decoding”, Hall also states that the viewer “detotalizes the message in the preferred code in order to retotalize the message within some alternative framework of reference”. In other words, the audience might clearly understand all the connotation that is implied by a media text but choose to decode the message in a different way, which happens to be totally contrary with the producer’s purpose. This is the idea of Oppositional Decoding. Whereas, Negotiated Readings refer to the idea that keeping privileges dominant definitions while allowing for deviant applications.

Thanks to this, the audience can point out other meanings embedded under the media text, spread out their opinion through alternative press. In our society, the “audience” here is often from the marginalized groups who are treated unfairly in the dominant media and desire their voices to be heard. Well, in full flourish of the digital age, social media stands by their side. They don’t have to go outside to trigger protests or demonstrations. They can just sit with their PC or smartphones to type out their thought on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. They can be online activists to show their reactionary to mainstream ideology and narratives. From the instances of #iftheygunnedmedown and #Ferguson, it is shown that hashtags on Twitter can be a very powerful tool.

Nevertheless, it does not make any sense if everyone that they are sharing their thought is from the same group with them. It is just like I am talking with all of you about a topic that we are all agree with. I don’t need to persuade you, I don’t need to convince you to see things in another way. Because the way you see is the way I see. The contrary opinion just can be magnified once it reached to the dominant group.

Though talking about a topic that different from racism, Linda Steiner, in her work of “Oppositional Decoding as an Act of Resistance”, brings about a beautiful example about Ms. Magazine. As a feminist press, Ms. Magazine released its “No Comment” section firstly in 1972. Basically, it is a section where readers can submit media text that carrying ideological and stereotypical meaning about the role and depictions of women to the magazine so as to critique them in silent but visible way. The forms of excavated media varies from journals, newspapers, textbooks, letters and memos, to print ads and photographs of billboards, signs and posters. They are the kind of media that we often come across but never consider it as problematic but tend to comprehend it in a natural way, the way that “it’s supposed to be”. However, there is no need to insert any caption below the “evidence” but instantly all other viewers are expected to understand it in the contrary way, to realize that this is not right, this is not okay. For instance, a notice (August 1979, p. 100) hang on a hotel room bar announces: “This Servi Bar is sealed and virginal. But you don’t have to marry it – just break seal and enjoy”. It illustrates the way media treats women as nothing more than an object and implies that getting married to women is something that men ought to do but not want to do. It reinforces the dehumanizing idea that possessing women without any commitment is a pleasure. There are also a lot of media examples that extremely violating women’s dignity and integrity featuring on Ms. Magazine, which really makes you doubt what you see. It is hard to believe that, this kind of things are ubiquitous in the media around us.

Making jokes on the idea of objectifying women

So online activism and alternative media as Ms. Magazine are different paths that people can use as a weapon to surpass the heavily constructed hegemony and ideology in this world, as a giant loudspeaker to raise their voices about social injustice. Using either Oppositional or Negotiated Decoding is what renegades are doing to ironically mock on the mass media hence emphasize the defect and deceit of media messages.

Virtual space, real pennies

This week, let’s talk about one of the largest social networks: Facebook. Yeah, I know, we young people are all experts in Facebook. But I pretty sure that you still can learn something new after reading my blog post. In case when I make you bored because you actually know more, please leave me some comments. I’d appreciate.

Facebook certainly is a big name. You can take a look at the infographic below to see its keystats and demographics.

For personal purpose, we use it to maintain our own friendships and family relationships. You got to be YOU when you sign up for a Facebook account. I mean, it requires you to provide your email and real name and in-depth portfolio. If you start with only basic information, it would keep sending you reminders of updating your profile.

For advertiser, Facebook is a “benign land”. No one can deny that it is just a virtual environment. But is it making real money.

Setting up a Facebook page can’t be easier. Advertising on Facebook is similar to advertising anywhere else online: create an ad, enter your bid amount for the ad, and specify desired target. Ads will be placed within the news feed or on the right side of the news feed. And you can promote your page, posts on your page, actions users took, or your website itself. About the costs, it is much cheaper than Google Adwords but it is absolutely not less effective. As a matter of fact, Facebook allows for a variety of targeting options that are not available on platforms like Google Ads. With existing data about users’ s profile, on Facebook, you can target customers by: Location, Age, Gender, Interests, Connections, Relationship Status, Languages, Education, and Workplaces. If you don’t realize, that is A LOT! By this function, imagine you are running a local fashion business for young ladies in Colorado, you can totally make your ads show up on news feed of every single woman who is between 20-35 years old, living in CO and loves shopping but not a man who is 60, enjoys Bingo and staying with his children in Florida.

Moreover, advertisements can come with a friend’s endorsement. It is said that we are much more easier to be persuaded by our friends’s recommendations because we know our friends in real life and we trust them. That also contributes to the Bandwagon effect when you want to buy things which are purchased by most of your peers. Normally, it would pop up with suggestions when you scrolling down your news feed with the motif like “ABC, DEF and XYZ like this page” (with ABC, DEF and XYZ are facebook names of your friends). The stronger link between you and that “Facebook friend”, the more likely you are changing your behaviors. Weak links might influence your emotions though. The Facebook ads might not lead you to buy things directly and immediately. But it is a long-term process that little by little influences your mind. In the marketing funnel, firstly you are at the stage “Awareness” – at least you know about this brand. Then you’ll come to “Consider” it, make “Preference” it to other products and turn it into “Behavior” by really buying it.

Although it might sounds like a breeze, it is not always smooth sailing. If you target to customers from a marginalized group, you should be careful. First of all, you have to think about their affordances of platform and their access. Do they use Facebook? (yes, billions of people all over the world are using it does not mean that every one uses it). Think about “divide”. It is not true that people are now equal and everybody have access to the Internet. So do they have access to log in their Facebook account everyday? If not, what is their frequency? If they are unable to get access from home, where do they get it? And when?

Besides, Facebook could be under surveillance in some countries. Since the speed of spreading information on Facebook is too quickly and unable to control, citizens in some nations like China are banned from using it. As far as I know, Chinese people use WeChat instead. If you want to reach Chinese people by pouring money into Facebook ads, that obviously not an wise choice. Hence, the manipulation of governments can be a big factor that you should take into account when choosing platform to place your ads. You should understand that public spheres is not the idea anymore.

In addition, since Facebook is a personal site, people are not really in the mood to buy things there. They might feel annoyed when ads constantly come up on their news feed. Especially for people from marginalized groups, when being forced to see those ads, they could have very bad impression about your brand from the very beginning, thus bring about negative attitude towards it. Once you lose them, it’d be hard to get them back. Remember that “brand awareness” is only a good thing when they are good awareness. As always, deep insights about the culture of your targeted customers is needed to enter the market. Take a simple example, if you are running a product for family planning, you cannot show explicit ads to customers who have conservative view towards sex. In a similar fashion, it doesn’t make sense if you show an ads of swimming suits to Islamic women.

Know your customers, listen to the “groundswell” and talk to them. Make sure that your effort will bring good results. As Prof. Jef I. Richards once said, “Creative without strategy is called art, creative with strategy is called advertising”.

 

 

 

It’s U.S., it’s us

As Asian, I found a lot of American food not really tasty. So I thought the same thing would happen for American people towards Asian food. But when I came to the U.S., I was surprised to see how much people love Chinese food. In my college Colorado State University, when you walked in the Lory Student Center Catering by lunchtime, you’ll find the most crowded place and the longest lines are at Panda Express.

Panda Express (PE) is a Chinese food brand, which was founded since 1983 and now there are more than 1,700 locations throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam, Canada and Mexico. To become successful as a Chinese food brand in United States could be very tricky since they “need to cater to the American palate, but still be authentic enough to be considered as a reputable Chinese joint” (Clarissa Wei, 2012).

This May, PE launched a new brand campaign “Panda anda you” with the tagline “The best of both woks” with the idea of combining Chinese recipes with American ingredients in order to offer a same-plate variety of food for their customers. This limited special menu came up with two main dishes which are Orange Chicken with Bacon and Shiitake Kale Chicken Breast. Not only look delicious, it indeed tastes good.

After watching the commercial above, we can clearly see five points as following:

1. There is a cast diversity in races of actors and actresses. We have Black, White, and Asian people eating and chatting.

2. Chatting while eating is a normal behavior of American households. This is such a classic scene that all the American people will feel familiar to watch. But actually, it is not encouraged in Asian culture though. It could be considered as impolite in some traditional families.

3. They talk in English and also the language of the voice over is English.

4. The music background does not sound Chinese at all. There is nothing like a “gong sound” as it usually happens in the end of Chinese ads.

5. Finally, Panda Express itself is following the fast food model, which is not commonplace in Asia for their traditional food. I mean, most of the fast food brand in Asia are franchises from America like McDonald’s or KFC. The underlying reason might be that the Asian people put emphasis on their meals. They always love to gather around the table with family, have a hot meal cooked by the mother. (Talking to this, I feel missing home already!) I believe that is a part of Asian culture. Even if they want to eat out, they would like to come to a restaurant where they can book a table, sit down and wait for the food which is carefully prepared and made while enjoying the calm and cosy atmosphere. I am not saying that they do not go to fast food restaurants at all. Because as the pace of life is getting faster, we all have to save time, and fast food is a good choice for that purpose. However, deep down, many Asian people like me are still thrive for a full, hot, and non-fast food meal. There should be noted that this idea might not totally true for Asian younger generations since they are exposed and heavily influenced by Western culture.

The question is WHY? Why do Panda Express have to “adjust” their menu, put some details from American behaviors into their commercials and adapt to the eating habits of the United States?

I’ll tell you a part of Multicultural Marketing and Advertising, which is indicated that among minority groups, brand loyalty is very high. In other words, people from marginalized groups tend to have connection to companies that acknowledge their groups in the advertising. The reasons are easy to comprehend. According to Uses and Gratifications theory (Blumler and Katz), people are not passive audience but active users that seek out and pick up media to fulfill and satisfy their needs. Non-dominant groups are not excluded. When seeing themselves in a company’s commercial, they will develop a preference towards that brand, which is completely plausible. You cannot expect that they like you if you are treating them as non-existent. Moreover, once the marginalized groups are aware that they are recognized by this brand, they will be more likely to think that the products are “especially designed” just for them, or at least, their wants and needs are considered in the producing process. They will feel more respected. “Our voices are heard, I love this guys” – that’s the idea.

But I found that it would be harder if your brand itself is from THAT underrepresented group and you have to win the heart of the dominant group. It is exactly the case of Panda Express. When Panda Express entered to a market which the majority of customers are American, they have to put priority in that segmentation. This mission is much more difficult to complete. “Hey, we are a bunch of Asian people who are serving food for other Asian ones” – this will be the last thing Panda Express want to convey to their consumers. From American perspective, it is possible that they see themselves at first is not the targeted customers of Panda Express. This dominant group could feel non-dominant with this brand when surrounded by Asian employees and other Asian buyers. From the very beginning, the Americans might hesitate to try Panda Express, with dozens of excuses like “I am not comfortable there with a lot of people who are different from me, talking in a language that I don’t understand and have ingredients that I don’t even know how to call to make order”.

That’s WHY. That’s the reason Panda Express have to do all those things in order to portray themselves as a friendly friend who can cook well, extremely helpful, even blend and mix our original flavours to your favourites. Obviously, let’s not forget about the point of being able to speak English. There is no such thing as uncertainty. We are just like you!

Through their commercials, media messages are crafted based on level of acculturation, assimilation and integration. When comparing to the five points that I presented above, it is about the language (point 3), cultural awareness in advertising (point 2,4 and 5), and the adaptation of business practices (point 5). Point 1 is included to paint the beauty of diversity races in the United States. Obviously not excluded that this is an image of a “Global Panda Express” which can pleased customers from all over the world.

The success of Panda Express doesn’t happen by good luck. It is a long-term progress that they really put efforts in. In this market, if you can see the multicultural opportunities, you can gain great fame and profits.

In this flat world, it is not about “us” versus “them”. It’s all about US.

 

Not an entertainment

Nowadays, it is hard for women to walk down the street without being catcalled. Although they do not need any stranger to appraise their physical and sexual value for them, it happens as a daily problem to deal with.

According to Stop Street Harassment (SSH), street harassment is any action or comment between strangers in public places that is disrespectful, unwelcome, threatening and/or harassing and is motivated by gender or sexual orientation or gender expression. 

Recently, a video called “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” was released and received more than 35 million views on Youtube. As recorded, the woman in the video was harassed more than 100 times overall. Despite the fact that the filming and editing progress remains unclear, it triggers many concerns and conversations around.

Most of women do not like catcalls. This is the fact that can’t be denied. But it is really shocking for me when reading all the comments below the video on Youtube. Harassment motivated by gender and sexism is portrayed as complimentary, joke, or “only” a trivial annoyance. People tend to blame women and LGBTQ persons for its occurrence based on what they are wearing or what time or day they are in public. A LOT of men showing their hatred towards the film producers, blaming for the clothes that the actress was wearing (which means crewneck T-shirt and jeans!) to be provoking for harassment and/or saying that this is not a bad thing at all. Countless comments are intentionally humiliating and insulting women. Some addresses feminism as a crime that inflates everything and make it sounds more serious than it actually is.

Not only these “anonymous” people wandering and typing ridiculous comments on Youtube, there are famous people show the same attitude on mainstream media. Mike Gallagher in his show also claimed that “women like getting compliments that way” and “only unhappy women complain about street harassment” (listen here). In Fox News’s The Five, conservative media responses to the problem with disbelief, trying to defend that all the men depicted in the video were “simply being polite” and all the things they said were “nothing disrespectful” and just complimentary. Bob Beckel even impudently added one more “compliment” for her: “Damn, baby you’re a piece of woman” on air.

I don’t understand what’s wrong with this world!

The ideological construct and the patriarchy was deeply routed in people’s mind, made them believe that this is the way life should be. The sexism promotes prejudice and gender discrimination while privilege fosters entitlement, excuses behavior and denies responsibility.

Why and how can these “gentlemen” grant themselves the right to say how women really feel?

As a young woman, I am scared and feel uncomfortable to face with this kind of “complimentary” and “greetings”. Just because I’m walking in the public places doesn’t mean that my body is public space! Comments men make to women on streets are not merely being nice but threatening and giving women a freight of being raped. If anyone doubt this, question yourself: why men never “greet” or say things like “God bless you, daddy!”, “If I give you my number, will you talk to me?” to other men when they pass?

Women can do nothing about that. If women replies, worse things can happen. Strangers might call them “uptight b****” and may use it as a reason to attack them. Women are disgusted and humiliated by that, and at the same time, we feel powerless!

On the other hand, I believe that harassment come from men from all the backgrounds and definitely not just African American people (as it is usually portrayed in the media). It is just about the “sphere” where they have power in. Women might not be abused by white men on street but they completely can be attacked by whites in offices, in restaurants or other in-door places. The harassment in these spaces probably are harder to be filmed than on streets and it could happen less frequently. The important thing is the location where women are harassed does not matter but any sort of harassment is serious. Catcalls, leers, groping, stalking are all unacceptable and must be stopped!

Poverty Porn (part II)

As Darwin once said, “sympathy is our strongest instinct”. It’s good that we can commiserate with others. And that feeling is even better when we actually give them a leg up.

However, according to Unite for Sight, poverty porn is harmful because it “exploits the poor’s condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers or increasing charitable donations or support for a given cause.”

Even, different organizations have to compete with each other in order to persuade the audience that they are dealing with the “most needy” people. Obviously, the only way to compete is by producing images and running ads which can exploit the poor condition most excessively, hence elicit the emotional sympathy from the viewers as much as possible.

In the era of social media, it is not the story of only the press or the NGOs. Everybody now can easily own a personal channel on the social network. A lot of them are aware that the content which generates great compassion are also good at drawing attention.

The blindness of charity

This is one of the most important aspect of poverty porn “products”. It makes us misunderstand about the poorness.

According to Emily Roenigk (World Relief), there are 5 reasons that povery porn empowers the wrong person.

It misrepresents poverty and the poor, leads to charity but not activism, deceives the helpers and the helped, and it perpetuates stereotypes.

When seeing people suffering, we often have a feeling that the best solution is charity. Yet it is not. With social media as a tool, users even comment and share those touching stories. We indirectly help them go viral without questioned. “Who is this child?”, “Why is he poor?”, “What does he need?”, “What we can do for him?”. Media never paint the whole picture. They just choose the most tragic “slice” of the story and spread it out.

Unite for Sight also pointed out that poverty porn is “damaging to those it is trying to aid because it evokes the idea that the poor are helpless and incapable of helping themselves, thereby cultivating a culture of paternalism. Poverty porn is also detrimental because it is degrading, dishonoring, and robs people of their dignity.”

You may feel ambiguous, “so what is paternalism?”. In this scenario, paternalism is a behavior regardless of the will and desire of the person. Put differently, the media and the donors make the decisions themselves FOR the poor. We think we know what the best way to improve their life standards and grant us the right to donate and practice charity. As I mentioned above, we NEVER ask, as if we WERE them.

Given this amount of money, the poor could become dependent and reliant. Instead of showing them ways to earn money and make their life better themselves, we directly put money into their hands. We thought that they are unable of helping themselves. But the fact is we are debilitating them. For the poor, it is just like winning lotteries constantly. Why they have to work if there are people providing them money?

This “lottery prize” could be huge if the poor individual is put in the public eye, when the media is trying to represent him as miserable as possible. However, will he spend that money wisely? If money makes him blind and he loses his dignity, will the donors get disappointed and feel betrayed? Do they want to take their money back?

The poor is not to blame. From the very first, people “know” about these poor victims merely and only through their poverty, not their own personality. What we see about them is just a part of the story, the part that the media makes us to see.

After being “fooled” by the media, how sadly we lose faith in humanity.

 

Poverty porn (part I)

I spent a lot of time working on other topics, but soon I decided to write another post about framing. Do you ever think that sympathy can generate money, and, not a little, it costs a lot? Today I’ll talk about that.

“A camera pans onto a young black girl from a perspective slightly above her. She stands alone in a field in an unnamed, unidentifiable location, looking away with a forlorn look on her face, never meeting the camera’s gaze. The more miserable she looks, the better. The voice-over starts to talk: “This is Daniella. She’s nine. And her body is racked with pain from parasites; the same kind that killed her sister. Without help, Daniella could be next.” A single tear falls down Daniella’s face…”

This is a typical aid organization’s commercial, which, according to Lina Srivastava, is the kind of advertising that every one in North America has grown up seeing every night.

Srivastava is a social innovation strategist in New York. Lina has provided project design consultation to many social impact organizations, including UNESCO, the World Bank and UNICEF. And she calls such kind of ads is “poverty porn”, which is becoming more and more ubiquitous in the modern media.

It is not easy to give the precise definition for “porn poverty”. Some sociologist define poverty porn as “words and images that elicit an emotional response by their sheer shock value. Images like starving, skeletal children covered in flies…” that exploit “the poor’s condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers or increasing charitable donations or support for a given cause.”

When talking about “porn”, people tend to think about sexual porn. But it’s not always true. We can have other desires. Desire to sympathize with others is one of them.

People tend to have strong emotions towards the poor and the miserable. We may feel sorry watching gloomy faces of penniless and starving children. We may feel angry if we cannot do anything to help them. If sex desire has a particular line of product serving for itself, so does the sympathy.

In the memoirs of the journalist Edward Samuel Behr (who worked for many years for Reuters, Time and Newsweek) there is a story which becomes very famous later. It happened in a refugee camp in the Congo – 1960s. In front of the war reporter, there were men holding jungle knives, women leaving their breast naked and children weeping away the time. Pretty classy, even too normal scene in the Africa.

The reporter knew that if he wanted his story to be incredible and extraordinary, he should do something. And he raised his voice to ask: “Anyone here been raped and speaks English?”. This question then became the title of a book of Edward Behr about poverty porn.

An African woman who had been raped is a “good” story to arouse the heartfelt sympathy in the audience. If there was a women who actually died because of that, it’s even “better”.

Another journalist, Jo Chandler, who has filed news and features from assignments across sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea and witnessed many deaths from serious infectious diseases in poor countries, admits that “In the warped currency of what we do as journalists, worst is best”, and “the bleaker the better”.

They need to find the most wretched life, to take the photos that are most likely to break your heart, but not necessarily to be fairly representative for the problem.

Eventually, poverty porn became a trend. It is applied in every situation, when people want to attract the attention, when they need to sell their media products, to raise funds, or simply to be famous for great humanity.

For African children, media even uses the normal stereotype of them as poor, orphan and AIDS victims to “frame” their lives intentionally. There are tons of ads airing to call to action for these kids with very moving scenes. And the reality, in fact, is not that bad.

(to be continued)

 

Good luck, Cosby

It’s hard to tell the difference among TV drama, series, sitcom and soap opera, I myself can never distinguish them too. But if I need something comedic but not too long, I’ll go for sitcom. Especially when it’s finite, it doesn’t seduce me to sit there for hours and hours watching from this episode to another to satisfy my curiosity.

As I showed my taste for TV reality shows in the last post, you can easily understand why I love sitcom. Mostly it is about normal people, like a family or a gang of friends. The status quo of the situation is often maintained from episode to episode. An episode may feature a disruption to the real situation and the character interactions, but this will usually be settled by the episode’s end and the situation returned to how it was prior to the disruption. These episodes are then linked by the overarching storyline, driving the show forward. Audience don’t have to think much when watching sitcom since they will be made to laugh every 20 seconds.

A lot of people enjoy it.

I was born in the 90s, when the sitcom had been existing for about 50 years. But sadly, I had never been exposed to it until I turned 15. Because it was not released to my country then. So when I came to U.S., and hearing people talked about “The Cosby Show” (1984) as a legendary sitcom, I was totally lost. I have no idea of what is it. I googled it and luckily there are some episodes still left on Youtube. When I watched it, somehow it reminds me of the sitcom “Good luck, Charlie” (2010).

It’s interesting to see how they depict about the same real situation: Their kid’s birthday party.

Despite the fact that there are a lot of differences in the background information between the two shows, such as “The Cosby Show” is about a black family and “Good luck, Charlie” portrays an white one or one show was in the 80s and the other was aired 3 decades later, they do convey similar messages. On the occasion of birthday, they taught children about healthy food, about the reasons why they should respect their parents and that family is a precious thing. In both sitcoms, the adults will held a birthday party for their kids, friends will be invited. Even the producers have the same way to describe how a birthday party looks like: children yelling, running around and throwing things; plenty of cakes and cookies; beautiful presents and gifts will await the birthday kid. It’s quite classy.

Two families look just the same. But how?

Back in the 80s, actually, not everyone can afford such a birthday party, especially the blacks who are mostly still in working classes. Although it might be common now (as in the “Good luck, Charlie”), it used to be the joy that only children from middle- or upper-middle-class can have. Well, I guess the Huxtables (in The Cosby Show) is vividly illustrated as one of those “rich” families. The parents have successful career, making a lot of money, the children are well-educated. It’s all about loving and caring. In the end of each episode, another important lesson is learned. However, let’s take a look at the graph below to see the real big picture. (You can read the whole article here)

As clearly shown in the line chart, the Blacks had the lowest household income among races. Easy to understand why media about the African-American in those days often refers to poor and violent people. So how come the Huxtables has a life that look exactly like the Duncans (in “Good luck, Charlie” show) 30 years later? The reason is: being aware that it is not a positive image to be presented, and it will not match with the audience’s taste, the producers of The Cosby Show decided to build a completely opposite representation, as I mentioned above: a wealthy and highly respected black family. The Blacks may like it, as it is such a sweet praise for them. It appears that the Black people tried so hard to “blend in”. Also in the mid-1980s, if you still remembered, Micheal Jackson King of Pop had his skin dramatically changed. It was widely speculated that the change was due to skin bleaching as he wanted to be white! Maybe they hope that other folks will see them different, African-American people could be one of “them”, instead of “us”. I do not judge them, as I’m a big fan of MJ, but deep down I really prefer him as black instead.

Come back to The Cosby Show, not unexpectedly, the mainstream white audience loves The Cosby Show since this family has so many things in common with (most of) them and they are delightfully humorous! There is not a single detail discussing about race or justice in the content. It is just not appropriate because the dominant group will feel uncomfortable. And look as though the dominance’s taste is more important.

Is it?

By producing content like this, maybe they are not aware that they are contributing to a tendency called “enlightened racism” (Sut Jhally). The first fallacy is that blacks who don’t “make it” have only themselves to blame and there is nothing to do with the long history of struggling with race and class issues. “The Cosby can earn such a life because they’ve been working hard for it. So if you are black and you are poor, it must be because you are lazy!”. Moreover, it totally hides and distorts how most blacks REALLY live (as depicted on the line chart above). What’s on the show is not an honest reflection but an intentionally arranged representation instead. It creates a dangerous illusion about a luxury life of the African-American people and hence, relieve white viewers of responsibility for inequalities (because looks like there is no more inequalities). Moreover, this misleading content also blur the connection between race and class, make it more ambiguous and complicated.

In the 1980s, when The Huxtable family is having a great comfort and extravagant way of living on T.V., millions of people from their race out there in reality are desperately striving for making enough to live on. Well, Cosby, hope that your move can help your race achieve a better life. It must be harder than Charlie having to go through her teenage years later on. And I guess you may need a good luck wish more than this white baby.

The real reality

I love watching T.V. One of my favorites is reality shows. They’re filming about people just like me, like us. What else could be better and more real? The experience is very much like real life. When I’m getting bored with movies, I’ll go with T.V. shows for a change. The contestants are not actors or actresses, they share their real thoughts, they react in the most honest way and they do not cry with crocodiles tears.

At least that’s what I thought.

In 2004, The Biggest Loser debuted on NBC. This American show features obese people competing to win prize by losing the highest percentage of weight relative to their initial weight. This year, the Grand prize costs $250,000 and Rachel Frederickson was the champion. 

As you can see, it was such a dramatic weight loss for Rachel, from 260 pounds down to 105 pounds, which means she lost about 60% of her total body weight. With this amazing transformation, she also won the title of the tiniest US Biggest Loser winner in history. Looking at her, I just can’t believe in my eyes! About myself, I’m not a skinny model nor overweight. But my younger sister and some of my siblings are, kind of, chubby and flabby. They called me and cried “Did you see that? She made it!”. For them, that is hope! They totally got inspired by the show. They were bound and determined to get out of the couch and sign up for gym courses. In The Biggest Loser, on average, the contestants lose around 26 pounds within one single week. So my sister was looking forward to seeing such positive outcome for herself. However, not so surprised, she lost only 6 pounds after one month and a half. She was so disappointed. And quit.

Why is that? Why the result was so great on the show but not so sweet in the reality? Not so long after Rachel’s victory, Andrew “Cosi” Costello, who was one of the contestants of The Biggest Loser 2008, revealed some shocking truth about the show. According to Andrew’s speech, I will sum up the main points in order to emphasize the differences between “what we see” and the “reality” from the show.

What we see: “People were spending all day everyday working out in the Biggest Loser house! Look at their red sweaty faces, look at their tears! They even fell down!”
Reality: No one ever worked out for more than two and a half hours a day. It’s the limit, you will be too tired by that and just can’t do more. By using the scenes of many different people working out, the producers are implementing some specific ideas in our brain. They want us to believe that we have to earn our way to look fit and beautiful. It’s a long term process and it requires real effort. And a lot of people are trying over there on the show! We should feel motivated by them! We cannot just hang around and magically turn into slim.

What we see: “The contestants were struggling so hard, they were sharing stories in tears. It looked so moving, so…real!”
Reality: That’s exactly what the producers want the show to be: dramatic, impressive and touching. They want to evoke the empathy in the audience. So when they’re filming, they kept asking the contestants questions like “Do you miss your kids?”. And that always work. As they’re far from their family, not allowed to step outside for months, people just bursted into tears when being attacked by those questions. Producers were so satisfied then. The audience will feel so connected, hence they want to watch every move of the contestants. The more loyal the audience are, the higher watching rates the show is.

What we see: “They lost 12 kilos in a single week! There’s a scale there, it can’t be fake!”
Reality: It was NOT a single week, actually. In 2008 series, a weekly weigh-in was never filmed after just one week of working out. In fact, the gap from one weigh-in to the next was 16 – 25 days, not 7! Andrew himself had to stand on the scales and was asked to say the line, “wow, it’s a great result, I’ve worked really hard this week”. So after seeing the contestants were making so much effort before, this is the time when the viewers should see how blood, sweat and tears pay off. That’s the whole idea. If the producers report the real number, like “after 25 days, this man lost 9 kilos”, it may not sound noticeable or mind-blowing! This “one week – 12 kilos” is deceitful, but it’s stunning. The producers will go with that.

What we see: “Wow, this is really a make-over! They look fantastic in the finale!”
Reality: The Biggest Loser finale, in fact, was similar to giving birth: long, drawn out and painful. It took approximately 12 hours. Before going on stage, the contestants would have their tummies and arms wrapped tight by gaffer tape, just to make sure there would be no flabby bits of skin.

Once again, it is nothing more than to highlight that “this is what we got if we really try!”. Showing the number of weight lost is not enough, they have to look noticeably thinner! It did a good job in impressing the audience. Except for the part that it was completely misleading. Take my sister as an example, as I said, she tried hard for a period of time but quickly gave up as the result came poorer than expected. If The Biggest Loser’s goal is to inspire people to keep fit, it totally fails. In fact, it is counterproductive.

Besides, after the contest, about 75 per cent of the contestants from the 2008 series are back to their starting weight. So isn’t it superficial? Of course the show’s producers will not love the idea of talking about contestants in the previous series, to see how are they now, how do they keep in shape.

What I’m trying to say is, what we see is just one side of the issue, it’s just a half of truth. And not as a bread, (which is still a bread if it’s just a half) a half of truth is a whole lie. The media is framing the reality by selecting some aspects of a perceived actuality and making them more salient in a communicating text, it forces us to pay attention to some certain things in order to serve for their own good. What we see today is not really what we actively and willing to see but it is what the media and the press want us to see. It is said that audience are active users now, we can choose what to believe and what to doubt. But I suppose, that thinking quite underestimates the media’s power. We, the “modern and active audience” are maybe receiving a particular problem definition, interpreting the causes, assessing the moral values and giving recommendation only based on what is framed in the press.

Here in The Biggest Loser, the media is taking advantage of the stout and miserable people, producing a show “seems” to help them and to “entertain” audience, generate the sympathy in the viewers just for one purpose: to make profits. If we think a little bit, we could see that the show does not mention anything about the root of the problem, for instance, what is the reason that they’re so obsessed with food, how to have a healthy diet plans, or how to maintain their shape in the long run. People are given no solution or clue about this lifelong battle with losing weight. They get nothing! Well, except for the cash prize of the winner, of course.

The media taught me a lesson: Never trust anything if you do not experience it yourself. Also, thanks to that, I’m afraid that I’m losing my hobby of watching T.V. and reading newspapers everyday.

Be fair!

People are more skeptical about media, though they are influenced by and aware of it or not. Many of us know that the press and the media do not reflect reality: they just filter and shape it. Also, media put concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. These two assumptions could be discussed in everyday conversation but we never learn about their name. In fact, it is called Agenda Setting Function of the Press.

As an Asian girl, being born in Asia, not reading American newspapers everyday, it is not a familiar thing for me to see black people portrayed as criminals. So when I came to U.S. and heard my American friends talking about this topic, I decided to go discover about it myself, with the position of a totally new-comer. In the progress of “poisoning citizens” by American media, from the early time until now (could be considered as 20 years since my friends and I were born), I was excluded. The Agenda Setting Function of American Press did not have a chance to work on me. In addition, it would be great for me to look at the issues as the third person, who is neither White nor Black.

So let’s see how my journey goes.

I started by checking up on my brain whether the image of Black people exists. In other words, I checked my “schema” about Black people. And here is all I have: black juvenile gangs, on streets, graffiti, hip hop, basketball. I don’t know from when and where I got this impression about them. Probably it’s from the movies. But the thing is, I do not have the mindset that black people are criminals, not at all. There is a term called “selective exposure”, which means that the way you see things will have an impact on the way you perceive things. People are tend to accept things that they are agree and more reluctant to things that they found disagree. As I don’t shape the idea that black people means delinquency in my brain, I can feel comfortable studying about them without being affected by the subjective point of view.

Google is the first thing I came to. I typed “black criminals” in the search bar in one tab and “white criminals” in another to see How Google suggests me about black and white criminals?, hence to know What are media published about the delinquency between the two races? The result could be seen clearly in the screenshot below, which is pretty interesting.

“BLACK CRIMINALS” RESULT

WHITE CRIMINALS RESULT

After 0.23 seconds, there’s about 31,900,000 results for Black criminals. And only about 25,200,000 results (in 0.21 seconds) for the White outlaws.

Google sometimes can easily bring to us the big picture of the world opinion towards a specific group of people.

As the term Agenda Setting and Multiculturalism suggests, the local news prioritizes stories of crime and violence. It over-represent of Black and Latino as criminals on local news and over-represent white as victims on news and entertainment. It seems to be exactly like what we have in the Google results.

So I went to check this assumption. In other words, I want to clarify whether the Blacks really commit more crime than the Whites. The answer may be surprising for us. According to National Gang Center, there’re 46 percent Hispanic/Latino gang members, 35 percent African-American/black gang members, only more than 11 percent white gang members, and 7 percent other race/ethnicity of gang members. You could take a look at the report here. As far as I know, the National Gang Center (NGC) is a coordinated project of three federal agencies, the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Hence the data reported is official and could be reliable (somehow). As it stated, the proportion of black gangs and latino is far more than the whites. It means that, black teenagers in some angles, ARE involved in more crime than the white. It may not the overrepresentation at all!

Not satisfied with these figures, I kept looking for more evidence from the Whites side. And that was the time when I found this article by Lisa Bloom: White People Commit the Most Heinous Crimes, So Why Is America Terrified of Black Men? The article got a new angle on the way we look at “crime”. Are violent criminals worse or serial killer worse? The author comes up with a list of white madmen who kill dozens of people, again and again, such as Ted Bundy, who called himself “the most coldhearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet,” confessed to thirty murders in the 1970s or the Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who dressed as a clown and performed at children’s hospitals, murdered thirty-three teenaged boys and young men in the 1970s, burying twenty-seven in the crawl space under his house. Lisa also points out that “In our nation’s history, so many of the sickest, most appalling crimes have been committed by whites”. These crimes has cast shadow of fear on citizens. But eventually, there is neither panic nor defense to white criminals emerged.

On the other hand, about the proportion that Black crimes reported, she claims that there are flaws because they do not reflect who’s committing the crime, but merely who has been apprehended and locked up. However, until now there is no report or study conducted to officially proved this point.

Overall, it could be said that the Blacks committing more crimes, but White people carrying out more serious crimes. But in reality, we don’t look at the qualitative factor but just mention the quantitative one. We ignore how bad white people are and stay focus in how often black people are bad.

Walking home late, when we see a teenager, we’re scared of being robbed if that’s a black boy and feel relieved if he is white. If anyone is taking black boys as thieves, so who is going to accept them, talk to them, understand them, respect them? How can they struggle to make their dreams come true in this society? Our prejudice, which is enhanced and amplified by the media and the press, is stealing away the opportunities to have a better life of millions of black children.

We do not involve any conceptual thinking when making judgement. In that case, we are just like children under 7 years old, who insist one character is bad just because he looks ugly, and the other is nice because she looks beautiful (according to the Old Hag study). Please understand that I’m not using this study result to imply that black is ugly and white is beautiful. I just want to emphasize that our prejudice (which is influenced and reinforced by media) is dragging us down to the early perceptual thinking period of human beings. We, mature adults, with grownup brain, in seconds are turning into preschoolers who just can be able to handle non-cognitive situations. Are we really still evolving? I doubt that.

“Guilty should be punished” is not enough, it also should be reflected and reported in the media by the most objective way, in order not to mislead people that only black people are bad and violent. If I was asked where to begin, I’d say “Stop using images of the blacks and latinos to illustrate criminals!”

Not yet the end

It is hard to see something that automatically applied to you since you were born to be a privilege. It is hard to know how good being white if you’re never be nonwhite; well, unless you can be the second Griffin, darkened your skin with dye, medicine and intense UV rays in order to experience what life was like to be an African-Americans in the 1950s.

And he found out that people will do a complete 180!

Peggy McIntosh, with her work White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack, points out 26 things that she herself can be benefited from in daily life, but most of African-American people cannot. According to McIntosh, whites are not taught to see themselves as “oppressors or unfairly advantaged” people. But in fact, having white skin color is “an asset” as whiteness will protect you “from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence”. And it is something that Blacks, Asians or Latinos do not own. In the society, people may not treat nonwhites badly (maybe they do), but they treat whites better, much much better.

In the 21st century, people are aware that racism is bad. And it is can’t be denied that there are a lot of efforts trying to completely abolish racism.

They’re making posters to enhance the Colorblind Ideology. It is created to serve the goal of Martin Luther King that someday people would be judged by “the content of their character” rather than “the color of their skin”. And here is how it is applied.

So the first sentence printed here is nice: “Everybody deserves to be treated equally!”. Well, it can’t be more true. But when reading the second one, you’ll see the problem. Is it nothing more than implying that black, yellow or brown is NOT normal, isn’t it?

Professor Bonilla-Silva of Duke University is one of the colorblindness critics, and according to her, the poster above is one of four salient frames in which color blind ideology operates. It is called Abstract liberalism. It is assumed that all American people should have equal opportunities and equal access to everything. The idea is good but it turns out to be something insulted for non-whites when people make comparisons between them and the non-whites. I seems that the more they try not to act as racist, the more they are.

Minimization of racism is another frame. Because whites think that they did and they are making efforts, they always believe that racism is something just from the past. They believe that they gave a lot, helped a lot and changed a lot. Therefore, government programs targeting race is now unnecessary and wasting money.

Since Barack Obama became the President of the United States, people even celebrate for a post racial era in America as they think (or comfort themselves) that racism now no longer exist.

But they are celebrating for something unreal. Racism is not gone. The new racism is Denying racism. It is now very common to hear people say “I’m not racist, but…”. And after that “but”, there will be something extremely racist. It is ridiculous when people are acting racist and telling that they are not at the same time.

“Don’t think racism matters? You’re probably racist” – said Jamelle Bouie.

This year, six black kids from Ferguson, MO teamed up with FCKH8 to educate white America about the racist reality by sarcastic and uncomfortable humour. And what they did is amazing to me.

But it’s also sad to see such young children to stand up and protect for a whole race.

If we are failed to help these children, will we give up in future kids, again and again? Sometimes I wish if only all the media about racism could ever be gone by the time our children are born; for a 6-year-old boy, in the list of what he hates, there would be only homework and naps, end. The world could be just like a box of crayons. Blue is not better than yellow, orange is not better than red. Crayons are always friends.

If adults can think this way, it would be much easier. Life would be much better.