Heteronormativity in the Media

One topic I wanted to talk more about in class on Thursday was the underrepresentation of homosexual relationships in the media. I think the media has a big responsibility to portray a wide spectrum of kinds of people and relationships. As we have discussed in the past, the media is both a spreader and shaper of ideas and beliefs. Whether they know it or not, media consumers use TV, movies, video games, magazines, etc. to gauge the normativity of race, gender, and the appropriate social behaviors associated with these identities. Therefore, if all we see in the media is hetero relationships between white people, a huge percent of the American population is ostracized from fitting into society's small box of "normalness."

As we discussed in class, when we do see minority races and sexualities portrayed in the media they are often caricatures that teach audience members to always expect a certain type of behavior from a certain kind of person. The media teaches us that gay men are flamboyant, loud, and stylish. They teach us that black men are dangerous criminals, not to be trusted. And that lesbian women are tomboyish, opinionated feminists. It is important that we see minorities represented in the media, but resorting to using a stereotypical stock character based on someone's race or sexuality is cheap. It does a disservice to the incredibly wide variety of people who identify with these minority statuses. 

I was pleased to see this clip back in January of 2014 of the first openly gay couple portrayed on a Disney Channel show called, "Good Luck Charlie." A Disney Channel spokesperson said that the episode was, "developed to be relevant to kids and families around the world and to reflect themes of diversity and inclusiveness." What a great message to send, and I was somewhat surprised to see it come from Disney who, as a company, is generally known to be more conservative. The lesbian moms are introduced without much fanfare as they should be. This isn't something that anyone should be making a big deal about because gay parent households are becoming normative in America, and they should be represented as such on the screen: just another kind of loving family. 

While many parent viewers of the network had pestered Disney for years to portray a more diverse kind of family on their channel, when Disney finally acquiesced, they received a great deal of blowback from conservative parents and religious organizations. One Million Moms, in particular, had a lot to say: they said that Disney should, "avoid controversial topics that children are far too young to comprehend." They also stated that, “Disney has decided to be politically correct instead of providing family-friendly programming." But my big question in response to that statement is, why is "politically correct" not "family-friendly"? Are these two concepts really mutually exclusive? If they do believe that portraying gay relationships is politically correct, what is wrong with showing our children something that is politically correct? 

Also, claiming that children can't possibly comprehend what a gay relationship is, is truly underestimating the incredible capacity children have to learn new things. Most children understand love in a conventional sense; their families teach them that much. The fact that same sex couples can love each other just like heterosexual couples do isn't a difficult concept for a child or an adult to understand. While some adults may willfully deny it, that is their own prerogative. But children are never too young to comprehend that love knows no boundaries, regardless of sexuality; what an easy and beautiful thing to understand. 

If the media took it upon themselves to portray a wider array of what is "normal" without generalizing and stereotyping, we might see future generations who are more accepting of people who are different from themselves. It might be easy to be racist if you only see white people on the TV, and it might be easy to be homophobic if you only see straight couples represented in the media. Consuming media that portrays minorities in a fair way would be a huge step toward embracing diversity; it would challenge viewers who don't confront minorities on a daily basis, but it would also affirm the normativity of minority groups, helping them to feel less ostracized within this society. 

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/disney-channel-debuts-lesbian-couple-good-luck-charlie-article-1.1603673#ixzz2zvdyLkMr

Fast Food Media

A quote from The Young And The Digital really stood out to me. In chapter seven, author S. Craig Watkins describes his fascinating perspective on how Americans like to consume media. He says, "No matter where we are, fast entertainment is generally just a click away. I liken the efficient delivery of digital media content to another staple in the daily American diet: fast food. Like fast food, fast entertainment is easy to get, all around us, and typically cheap, but not always good for you." His description intrigues me. Americans like their food and their media fast, but I think we are becoming more and more entitled to getting everything quickly. We want our internet connection to be faster, we want people to communicate with us instantly, and we want successful, high-earning careers right after graduating from college.

Is delayed gratification becoming a thing of the past? It seems to be less popular, particularly in media related realms. This reading made me think of an episode of the Colbert Report in which Stephen Colbert discusses how the news website, Slate, is now telling readers how many minutes it will take them to read an article so they can choose whether or not they want to commit that amount of time to reading it. The idea of not wanting to read something because it would take two minutes longer than you were originally planning seems ridiculous, but it is just proof of the fast tracked, impatient culture we live in.

Slate journalist Farhad Manjoo actually posted an interesting article titled "You Won't Finish This Article: Why people online don't read to the end." After doing some research, Manjoo found that 38% percent of readers leave an article after just mere seconds of viewing it. In fact, on average, readers only stay on the page of an article long enough to read 50-60% of it. Manjoo also writes about his concerns that many "readers" will share an article on Twitter or Facebook without reading even half of it. "There’s a very weak relationship between scroll depth and sharing. Both at Slate and across the Web, articles that get a lot of tweets don’t necessarily get read very deeply. Articles that get read deeply aren’t necessarily generating a lot of tweets." (Manjoo) It seems that more and more consumers of media are getting their information through a title they read on their Facebook account; maybe a few sentences of an article here and there. You couldn't even call it skimming though-- we've left the page before we've even scrolled half way down it.

Americans want their media and they want it now. But what happens when we're so impatient to "get to the point" that we don't even stick around to read all of the information the journalist or author intended us to read? We may be missing out on important information, but equally concerning is the fact that our attention spans are becoming so small that we're bored with an article before we've finished reading the first paragraph. If we don't have the discipline to plow through an article online, what else does that say about Americans and our obsession with fast everything?