Since the making of the television, this invention has helped the American public become more accepting of diversity. To the first African American on a prime time tv show, to the first interracial couples shown, television has normalized and celebrated diversity and differences. Cartoons are doing the same for children, and helping them become accepting at childhood. Steven Universe a show on Cartoon Network is a frontrunner in cartoons that show diverse sexualtes. Steven Universe is a coming-to-age story about a preteen half Gem half human boy named Steven fighting monsters and internal issues with his three Crystal Gem guardians. In Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe, specifically the episode “Jailbreak”, LGBT relationships are shown having …show more content…
healthy relationships, being normalized, and effectively handling conflict to which help children become more accepting of the diverse LGBT community. In the episode “Jailbreak”, Rebecca Sugar showcases diverse sexualities in healthy relationships with the characters Ruby and Sapphire, furthermore showing adolescence that LGBT couples are healthy and understanding like straight couples.
The episode starts with Steven and Ruby frantically looking for Ruby’s other half after they escape their cell. She becomes erratic because she can not find Sapphire. Ruby worries about Sapphire because she is in danger like any other caring couple would. They eventually find each other and worries for each other’s safety. The audience and the couple share this same compassion that if a loved one is hurt they worry; this shared compassion makes the characters likable. Most children are taught that LGBT do not have the same compassion through conditioning. Rebecca sugar is “trying to fight this conditioning by introducing children to LGBT characters who are both 'normal' and likeable”.(Crasta) Ruby says immediately,” Did they hurt you?’(Steven Universe,March 12, 2015) and then finding out Sapphire is safe she …show more content…
breaks into tears. The audience sympathizes with Ruby because it’s normal to cry in joy to find a missing love one. As they embrace something that happens that surprises Steven and the audience; they fuse into Steven’s guardian Garnet. Before Steven can process the information, their capturer Jasper catches up to them. Garnet yells to Steven that he needs to run as she prepares to fight Jasper. As Garnet fights Jasper she sings the song “Stronger than you”. With lyrics like “Can’t you see my relationship is stable?” and “I am made of love” encompasses what their relationship means to them and how understanding they are to fuse.(Steven Universe,March 12, 2015) Due to their fusion out of love, they defeat Jasper and crash their way back home. As it can be seen, “Jailbreak” by Rebecca Sugar is assisting kids in becoming more accepting by showing the healthy relationship of Ruby and Sapphire. Rebecca Sugar helps normalize the LGBT community in “Jailbreak” and episodes like it, which further causes children to become more tolerant to diverse sexualities.
When Steven first finds out that Ruby and Sapphire are a couple he doesn’t question it or act surprised. The lack of surprise or questioning shows that the relationship is completely normal and should not cause uproar. These and other normalized portrayals of LGBT can “...help children who identify as gay or bi or trans understand that there is nothing wrong with them.”(Crasta) Furthermore the glossing over of their sexuality shows that it's nothing out of the ordinary. Episodes after “Jailbreak” never point out their gender or sexuality further normalizing LGBT relationships. Their sexuality is not,”...their defining characteristic”; it’s their powers and personalities that are put on spotlight for the viewers.(Crasta) In conclusion, “Jailbreak” by Rebecca Sugar puts light on Ruby and Sappphire’s personalities, not sexualitiy to further normalize LGBT for
children. Rebecca Sugar perfectly portrays a LGBT couple managing conflict effectively in the episode”Jailbreak”. The episode “Jailbreak”is a continuation from the previous episode, where Garnet stops trusting herself resulting in her being cracked. This leads to the Crystal Gems to become captured. Sapphire and Ruby lose confidence in themselves, which caused their fusion to fail. This disharmonization causes discord in their relationship that allowed for their capture. Rebecca Sugar shows the audience LGBT couples go through conflicts just like other couples. She does not show the stereotypical LGBT couple like other television shows. Ranjan Castra reinforces the idea that television shows typically stereotype LGBT by writing,” ...LGBT (or stereotypically LGBT) characters are usually treated either as comic relief or as strange”.(Crasta) Once they break out from their jail and find each other, they realize their deep concern for each other is the reason they trust each other to fuse. The resolution comes through the song “Stronger than You” which they sang after they fuse to fight Jasper. At the beginning of the song she declares, “This is Garnet. Back together. And I’m never going down by the likes of you because I’m so much better.”(Steven Universe,March 12, 2015) Ruby and Sapphire resolves their relationships conflict thus allowing them to have the trust and confidence to re-fuse into Garnet. To conclude, Rebecca Sugar shows Ruby and Sapphire resolving conflict successfully and healthily, which helps children see LGBT couples like hetrosexual couples solve problems with understanding.
We don't see many people in the world who express individuality. However, we see popularity and amount of followers we have on our Instagram to represent our reputation in the public. In the novel, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, we can see that individuality can still be expressed even if the whole school despises you. The main character, Stargirl, demonstrates how to be yourself and how it's better to be yourself than to become someone else.
This show lacks diversity. The majority of characters are heterosexual, white, and middle class. The only exception is Fez, an immigrant and the only coloured person on the show. Throughout the show, Fez is depicted as stupid, and as something to laugh at; the backing track laughs after almost everything he says. As far as I could tell, there are no queer characters, or any mention of queer issues, in these episodes.
Self proclaimed philosopher, english writer, and novelist Aldous Huxley wrote the book Brave New World. One of the issues in the novel is how uniform the society is. There is no diversity in the in Brave New World. Huxley carefully examined on why society is the way it is. He wants the audience to understand the philosophy of a unique society different from a normal society.
“Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” South Park is a adult cartoon that circles around the abnormal life of four boys living in Colorado. This hilarious animated television series strives to be the most controversial show on air. The series has been on air since August 13, 1997 and while the show seems ridiculous, it is commonly known for incorporating high and low culture within the show. South Park has been known to take current issues from today’s society and convert them to a more simplified version while transforming it into a satire. One episode that stood out from the rest was an episode called “The Cissy” which focused on gender relations and transgender issues. This episode reflected on how today’s society see gender and transgender.
By the time Cheryl Boulden penned her letter to President William Clinton it was much too late to save her job or her career. The fifty-two year African American woman’s recruitment provided diversity to a department in much need of it. Boulden says that “emphasis was made on the fact that not only were my employment credentials impeccable, but the USFS would benefit in their diversity program because I am a black female with a permanent handicap” (Reeves, 2006, p. 70). Her race, age, gender and disability brought several elements of diversity to the United States Forest Service and her performance had been well enough to warrant an upgrade from a GS-9 to GS-11which required a transfer to Indiana. Although she found her new town of Bedford to be profoundly racist she also “found the forest supervisor, a white male, easy to work with and very supportive of diversity” (Reeves, 2006, p.
Alison’s story is the perfect example of what many families must go through when faced with the possibility of having a child diagnosed with a learning disability. Alison was not diagnosed with visual and auditory dyslexia until the summer before entering college. However, while still a toddler, her symptoms had been brought to her mother’s attention by her sister’s teacher. Alison’s mother then noticed her habits in repeating words incorrectly and how Alison would need tactile clues to follow directions. At the recommendation of her kindergarten teacher, Alison was tested for learning disabilities and the results from the school psychologists were that she was acting stubborn or disobedient. Her family did not stop with the school’s diagnosis. They had private testing completed that confirmed Alison did not have a specific learning disability. The final word came from a relative that happened to be a psychologist. He insisted Alison would grow out of her difficulties. So Alison continued on with her entire elementary, middle and high school journey as a student and daughter with an undiagnosed learning disability.
In the latest Disney film, a live action rendition of Beauty and the Beast, there will be a character who is gay. I personally am excited for this, I think that starting to include a diverse range of characters to show to younger children and create new ways of teaching open-mindedness to children when they are young is very important. However, I am just curious and wondering if, given Disney’s track-record, a statement like this is actually true:
There has been a pressing issue of the lack of diversity in mainstream media in front and behind the camera. For many years the face of Hollywood was white, occupying roles as actors, directors, screenwriters and other prominent positions in the industry.
The world of television can either completely hit or miss the mark when it comes to providing its audience a diverse cast/actors. "Girls" is a new HBO show about young, prosperous, and white New Yorkers in their twenties struggling to find their footing in the post-collegiate world. It is a poor example of representation of race, but the show in itself cannot be held responsible for the whole problem of racial diversity of media and popular culture. There has been a lot of controversy about the show's diversity since the first episode, seeing how it is set in the melting pot of NYC and Brooklyn, yet it is prominently white. The shocking part is that despite its meting pot nature, it is very easy to live a segregated social life in New York City, especially if you are a rich white person. The fact that the show is so white should not come off as unusual, yet it does because this generation is more willing to see that change happen in pop culture. Not everyone sees it that way and pop culture still does not represent races equally or at times even accurately. For example, when show do add in minorities they often make them extremely stereotypical to their race. The recurrence in the lack of realistic representation in the show highlights the “whiteness” of stereotypical roles that overshadows real life representation.
Many people will be keen to tell you how television and film show off all types of race, gender and sexuality evenly. They will shout and scream about how everyone is equal and racism and sexism are a thing of the past (clearly the media shows this). A film has one queer side character and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to praise the film to the heavens for representation. This is not representation. Think about it. The last show you watched, the main characters were probably straight and white, and if you were lucky, there may have been one person of colour or queer side character thrown in. We have been brought up in a society with such embedded white supremacy and heteronormativity that we don’t even notice the lack of representation;
Today television shows are widely praised for their portrayal of different characters sexuality. On Modern Family a same-sex couple’s life is shown through their relations with their family and raising a child. There’s also shows aimed at young adults that are receiving attention for their depiction of gay or lesbian characters such as Glee and Pretty Little Liars. Even the Disney Channel has shown a same-sex couple on the show Good Luck Charlie (with some backlash claiming that since Disney is intended for children that they should seek merely to entertain and not to push an agenda). On the contrary to this argument is the idea, that same-sex couples are becoming more and more normal thus they should make it recognizable to children.
The depiction of transgender women characters in mainstream television has been offensive, insulting and derogatory. An article from GLADD called “Victims or Villains: Examining Ten Years of Transgender Images on Television”, examines 102 episodes and storylines on mainstream television that contained transgender characters since 2002. Of these, more than half were characterized as containing negative representations of transgender. In 2007 only 1% of television series had a recurring transgender character, which has slowly increased to 4% in 2013. Negative portrayal of transgender TV characters.
Racial and ethnic diversity on television is not something that I have ever really noticed as a problem, but sitting down, and paying very close attention to the people, their roles in the show, I was able to see that there was a lack of diversity on TV. I chose a random TV channel, one that I probably would not watch, and studied the characters in the show and in the commercials for over two hours, I realized that I had never paid that much attention to the people in the show. I noticed after I was done that the largest group of people in the show and on the commercials, were white people, although there was some diversity, maybe one or two people of a different nationality, gender, or race, that overall the lack of diversity was minimal compared
In the book, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, there exist a big emphasis on social class and position during the time of this story. When we are introduced to the main character of the story, the narrator, we are right away exposed to a society in which different privileges are bestowed upon various groups. Social place, along with the ever present factor of power and money are evident throughout the story to show how lower to middle class groups were treated and mislead by people on a higher level in society. When we are introduced to the narrator, we are told that she is traveling with an old American woman; vulgar, gossipy, and wealthy, Mrs. Van Hopper travels across Europe, but her travels are lonely and require an employee that gives her warm company. This simple companion (the narrator) is shy and self-conscious, and comes from a lower-middle class background which sets up perfect for a rich man to sweep her off her feet. The narrator faced difficulties adapting to first, the Monte Carlo aristocratic environment, and second, to her new found position as Mrs. De Winter, the new found mistress of Manderley.
Diversity in classrooms can open student’s minds to all the world has to offer. At times diversity and understanding of culture, deviant experiences and perspectives can be difficult to fulfill, but with appropriate strategies and resources, it can lead students gaining a high level of respect for those unlike them, preferably than a judgmental and prejudiced view.