Sheila H. Troppe
Discussion questions:
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1. Why are there so many violent shows on TV?
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2. Are most of these shows an accurate portrayal of real life?
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3. Do these shows ever demonstrate the consequences of violent actions?
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4. Do the stars who portray these characters actually suffer any ill effects when they are “hurt”?
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5. What are other ways in which people can resolve difficulties without resorting to violence?
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6. How do you feel after watching a particularly violent show?
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7. Has a TV show ever affected the way you reacted to a situation?
Activities
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1. Count the number of prime time shows that are chiefly action shows.
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2. Count the number of violent episodes in a show. Construct a worksheet or chart that graphically shows the number of killings, crimes, physical assaults, car crashes, and disasters that appeared on the show.
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3. Display pictures of people in threatening or frustrating circumstances and discuss different methods of solving the problems.
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4. Write a short story in which someone solves a problem with violence. Rewrite the story using a peaceful alternative.
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5. View a popular series like the
A-Team
and contrast it with real life.
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6. Compare today’s viewing schedule with TV programming twenty years ago. What are some of the differences?
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7. Watch a cartoon program and count the number of violent episodes. What effects do you think this kind of show has on young children?
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8. Write and illustrate a cartoon for children that doesn’t contain any violence.
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9. Pretend that you are the head of children’s programming on a major TV network. Design a schedule of more positive programming than now exists.
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10. Interview a policeman/woman. Contrast the reality of the interviewee with the fictionalized portrait usually painted on TV.
Stereotyping on TV
Objective: To recognize and identify stereotyping as portrayed on TV.
Television is an unrealistic world inhabited by young, healthy, middle-class, white people. While it is true that Blacks, the elderly, foreigners, the handicapped, and teens appear on television more than ever before, they are often cast in stereotypic and negative roles. These misrepresentations create problems because most children assume that TV depicts life as it is or as it should be.
Parents are a child’s first role model for developing a sense of identity. The process of identification and a search for self begins in early childhood, continues through adolescence, and as some psychologists believe, goes on throughout one’s life. Erik Erikson, a prominent psychologist, suggests that most children go through two stages of identification: one when they are about four to six years old and another during adolescence. During adolescence, young people must not only reaffirm their sexual identities, but begin to form mature sexual relationships and think about questions relating to ideologies, ethics, and occupational choices.
Television suggests different occupational models for children and certainly the heroes and heroines in any program offer a young person physical and psychological models beyond the immediate family. In order to finally achieve a sense of self, a child must be aware of his own physical make-up, his strong points as well as his inadequacies; and he must develop a feeling of consistency in lifestyle which would include his own particular way of growing, thinking, dressing, acting, and achieving. The search for self-identity is frequently impeded by the profusion of supermen and superwomen who race across the screen, performing humanly impossible feats in a way that causes young people to feel inadequate. The result is a lower self-esteem, which sets the stage for the ingestion of mindless commercials showing all the latest methods for becoming beautiful, smart, and popular by eating and drinking particular products and engaging in exciting activities while dressing in just the right clothes.
Experiments have been designed to test the sex-role impact of TV advertising portrayals. One researcher looked at advertisements that are intended to influence sex-role attitudes: commercials featuring beauty products using sex appeal or physical attractiveness themes. Teenage girls in an experimental group were shown fifteen such commercials and a control group was exposed to neutral commercials. When asked what characteristics a woman should have to be popular with men, the exposed girls were significantly more likely to cite sex appeal, youthful appearance, glamour, and a slim body.
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TV also distorts reality by selecting certain kinds of images and omitting others. Black children see mostly whites on TV; Jewish children see only Christmas on TV and never a Jewish holiday; the handicapped child sees mainly very active, attractive children, and the elderly see youth.
Exposure to stereotyped representations can easily influence viewers’ behavior toward unfamiliar people. The child in the suburb, the small midwestern town, the urban ghetto exists within his own limited reality. His experience with social problems or people of different races, religions, or nationalities is probably somewhat limited. To the extent that television exposes him to diversity of people and ideas, it surely expands the boundary of his world.
A quartet of researchers video-taped and analyzed 1,600 prime time programs involving more than 15,000 characters. They then drew up multiple choice questionnaires that offered correct answers about the world at large along with answers that reflected the biases and misrepresentations of the world according to TV. In every survey, the scientists discovered heavy viewers (those who watched more than four hours a day) who account for thirty percent of the population almost invariably chose the TV—influenced answers while the light viewers (less than two hours a day) selected the answers more corresponding to real life.
TV has replaced the socializing role of the church and family. It creates a “cultural mythology” that establishes the norms of approved behavior and belief.
According to TV, this is how the world looks:
Race:
Even though a tiny percentage of Black characters come across the screen as unrealistically romanticized, the majority of Black characters are in subservient roles. Nonwhite characters are more likely to be victims or criminals than white characters. Although there are now more programs than ever with Black characters, shows very often perpetuate harmful stereotypes of Black people as fun-loving, lazy, and unsuccessful. Very few are depicted as serious, intelligent, or hard-working because most Blacks on television are in comedy programs. There are no American Indians, Asians, or Hispanics in starring or major roles on TV.
Women:
Male prime time characters outnumber female three to one. Less than twenty percent of TV’s married women work outside the home as compared with fifty percent in real life. The research on female TV characters has shown that there have been improvements in recent years. Women on TV are no longer limited exclusively to lower status tasks and silly or incompetent behavior. However, new stereotypes are developing. The new, more liberated female television character is usually young, beautiful, and competent. She is almost never married and has an exciting life and glamorous job. Ads featuring young, slender, attractive young women reflect the idea that beauty and youth are the most important characteristics women can possess. TV does depict working women, but rarely are they either mothers with families or older women.
Elderly:
People over sixty-five (who represent a large share of the viewing audience) are grossly underrepresented. Again, there have been recent changes, but in general, the elderly are cast as silly, stubborn, sickly, sexually inactive, and often eccentric. No retired people are shown as main characters or as living full and interesting lives.
Handicapped:
According to TV, there are no handicapped.
Teenagers/Families:
Most teens have been placed in silly, frivolous roles that bear little relevance to real life. Almost all are attractive, slim, and athletic. Most of the family situations depicted are unrealistic showing family situations that are either ideal or wracked with problems.
Work:
According to television, the majority of Americans are employed as physicians, attorneys, athletes, entertainers, or involved in some sort of law enforcement. Only about 6 to 10 percent of all television characters hold blue collar jobs or service related occupations versus about 60 percent in the real world. TV glamorizes and distorts the occupations that are shown and ignores jobs that most teenagers will have to enter.
There are some fine programs on television; shows that depict real-life people, complete with flaws and assets, facing real-life situations. Problems, heretofore hidden from public viewing, such as alcoholism, child abuse, and incest, have been aired and examined. Unfortunately, these programs are not the general fare and so we must teach our students to evaluate what is presented with a critical eye. We must develop an awareness of stereotyping effects, so we can develop a new consciousness about justice and fairness in TV portrayals.