I chose the show Jersey Shore for my stereotype paper for the fact that I feel as though there are many negative stereotypes against Italian-Americans surrounding this show. Jersey Shore is a reality television show on the network MTV that follows eight roommates that live on the Jersey Shore in New Jersey. The cast’s names are Ronnie Ortiz , Vinny, Jenni ‘Jwoww’, Nicole ‘Snooki’, Mike ‘The Situation’, Paul ‘Pauly D’, Sammi ‘Sweetheart’, and Deena. The roommates spend their days partying, drinking, and dating; and put very little emphasis on their jobs. One of the largest controversy is that they use the word “Guidos” to describe the male cast members while the girls are referred to as “Guidettes”. This is a very derogatory term that was used referring to Italian-Americans as vain or socially unsophisticated in American society. When the show first aired, the director purposely advertised using the promotion, “Watch Jersey Shore to follow eight of the hottest, …show more content…
Italian-Americans have had on the wrong side of many negative bigotry and stereotypes over many decades, and had braved through them. I am certain that in this day in America, Italian-Americans assumed that all of the racism would end, when in fact shows like Jersey Shore carry on the negative stereotypes that they desired to eliminate. I believe that the director of the show and the network provider needs to take a class or do some research what Italian-Americans have been through throughout the decades, and focus on the negative stereotypes that are very offensive. If they did that, I believe that they will gain more empathy and would cancel not only Jersey Shore from their networks, but also the dozen of other shows that show Italian-Americans in a negative
As a group, we believe that popular culture does in fact perpetuates stereotypes. Television is a main source of information of popular culture. Television has forever changed how humans have interacted with another and introduce a world of diversity and knowledge. But with this profit, television has also harbored negative aspects. As a group, we studied how racial stereotypes are portrayed in television. In the history of television, different racial and ethnic groups have been widely underrepresented and television itself has been overwhelming represented by white figures. And when racial groups are presented on TV, the characters are often played in limited roles based on stereotypes. A stereotype isn’t necessarily untrue, but it is an assumption based on an incomplete and complex ideas that are oversimplified into something that isn’t what it meant to be, and it’s usually negative. For example, African Americans are often depicted as violent or involved in some kind of criminal activity. Their characters often portrays a person who is always sassy and angry or that isn’t intelligent and won’t succeed in life and inferior to whites in some manner. Asian characters are
As showed in the film, Latino American often misrepresented and underrepresented both in front of and under the camera. American Hispanic often portrayed as lazy, unintelligent, greasy and criminal. Hispanic women often pictured comfortable sexuality as prostitution in film production; while Hispanic actors limit to criminal characters such as drug dealers, gangster, and provide the power for the white American. Audiences have less interaction with Latino in their real world might be easily framed by media images regarding the race and ethnicity. The lack of Hispanic history and culture understanding allows these media portrayals to change and form unfavorable behavior and attitude against Latino communities.
The first show we will explore is the MTV show Jersey Shore. The show follows 8 people who are placed in a house together for the summer at the Jersey Shore. On the show each episode consists of the cast going out, partying, drinking excessively coming home and getting into drama. MTV itself has a target demographic of people ages 12-34 (Lankford 35). With other shows on the channel targeted mainly to teenagers, that is the demographic that was viewing Jersey Shore. One of the biggest problems with Jersey Shore aside from the glorification of excessive partying and binge drinking is the fact this it promotes this with no consequences. It shows young viewers that this is okay, by allowing the show to air for six seasons, it promotes this lifestyle as a way of making a living when it the real world its not. When the last season aired in 2012, the average salary was $100,000 per episode, per cast member with some of the cast making over $2 million dollars over the entire season (Salsano).
In the play, “The Philadelphia” by David Ives took place in New York at a Restaurant. The main topic of this play was Stereotypes. The type of stereotypes in this play where not the offensive ones, it is the type where there can be a group of friends and they would laugh if it was to come up in their conversations. The three main characters where Al, Mark and the waitress. All three of these characters had a huge roll in the poem. Al was the laid back one from California, he did not realize that he was not in California till the very end. Mark was Al’s friend. Mark was the frazzled that needed guidance and assurance to where he was at. The Waitress was the one that enforced the “Philadelphia” stereotype. In order to make this a successful poem
Zoom forward around 70 years. My daughter comes homes from school, about the same time The Sopranos was released on HBO, complaining that some kids at school were teasing her and calling her "Mafia Girl." I wish I could say that things have gotten better for Italian Americans and how they are portrayed in popular television and film in the last 70 years, but unfortunately I think it has actually gotten worse. What I call the Mafia Minstrel Show, actors in olive skin face playing mobster for the benefit of those people who lust for violence and racism, is now as insidious as lice. Thanks to our friends at HBO, the Mafia Minstrel Show has been legitimized as a mainstream genre, not unlike westerns or love stories. So why has the Mafia Minstrel Show survived for the past 70 years? It is very simple, IT MAKES MONEY!!!!! I remember reading the obituary for Mario Puzo. It listed the sales of his books, his wonderful novel about Italian American immigrants, The Fortunate Pilgrim, had sold maybe 10,000 copies and The Godfather, a novel that featured the Mafia Minstrel Show, had sold 15 million copies. Mario Puzo, a man who admitted he had never known a gangster before he wrote The Godfather, obviously was given a lot of cash to write a novel about the Mafia Minstrel Show.
My first example is from a TV show that most people know about, “George Lopez” is a show of a Hispanic family living life on a daily basis. There are many stereotypes that are shown in this TV show. One of the episodes show George being mistaken as one of the men that work on the machines in the even though he was the manager of the factory. He was told by his new co manager to move desk because she had no idea George was the manager of the factory. She judged him because of what he was wearing and also he was a Hispanic in a factory. This TV show has a lot of stereotypes that are shown in other episodes. Hispanics are also judged just because they look like a gang member
“Chi la dura la vince.” This soft-spoken Italian proverb sums up the series of events that Italian immigrants endured on their journey in America. Between 1880 and 1920, more than four million Italian-Americans immigrated to the United States of America in hopes of temporarily escaping Southern Italy’s impoverished and overpopulated society. Once in America, these new Italian-American citizens started ‘Little Italys’ or ethnic enclaves of Italians. Some Little Italies were even large enough to support a full economic structure of their own, providing a plethora of job opportunities. These ‘small’ Italian communities shielded themselves from general stereotypes and provided a sense of belonging which helped Italians establish their roots. America’s attitude toward these new Italian-American citizens can be summed up in part by Congressman James McClintic, a Democrat Oklahoman: "I say the class of immigrants [Italians] coming to the shores of the United States at this time are not the kind of people we want as citizens in this country." Inplace of responding by aggressive human nature, America’s new Italian citizens viewed this as an opportunity to enrich family and community bonds. As for Italian traditions, they struggled to be accustomed between the two Italian generations as the already ‘Americanized’ Italian children clashed with their parents, which resulted in altered traditions. One major example is Italian-American food which chain restaurants have come to paint as a type of restaurant that specializes in spaghetti with meatballs, pizza, and has red checked tablecloths.
The Boondocks is an animated cartoon series that premiered November 2005 and ended June 2014. The Boondocks is centered on the lives of two young brothers, Huey and Riley. The two brothers move away from their birth city to live with their grandfather in Woodcrest, a predominantly white upper middle class suburb. Huey, the older brother is very politically and socially motivated and is named for Black Panther Party co-founder, Huey Newton. Huey spends most of his time reading and getting involved with political ventures. He despises all stereotypes associated with his black culture. On the contrary, the younger brother Riley understands the stereotypes around him, yet he indulges himself in the gangsta rap and hip-hop
...d once again of how images of minorities (specifically Spanish and Native Americans) in America have been reduced and simplified to such an inferior ranking. Since the moment that Americans claimed this land, our popular culture has continued to fuel this ranking by producing shows like Devious Maids.
In her essay “The Myth of the Latin Woman”, Judith Ortiz Cofer states that she thinks the media and society in general promotes the stereotype of Hispanic women as “‘sizzling’ and ‘smoldering’”. I agree with her claim, and I also believe that society does this to other groups as well, particularly African American men. African American men are usually portrayed by the film industry and mainstream media as either very rich, fashionable, and athletic, or they’re portrayed as poor and oftentimes dangerous.
Reality TV is becoming more and more popular as the years progress, and the options are endless. You can catch an episode of CMT’s Party Down South or to go to the opposite end of the spectrum with MTV’s Jersey Shore with many other reality shows in between. The problem with these programs seem to be that they categorize and capitalize on particular stereotypes. Without even consciously being aware we are allowing stereotypes to develop through these shows on a regular basis. We don’t usually question what we watch on TV or why we enjoy it may just be something we need for stress relief after a long day at work, so watching reality where “real life” people are closely followed by a camera crew. While watching these shows people fail to realize that these “real” people tend to be a little more dramatized
Negative things are said about African Americans on a daily basis. From the beginning we have had stereotypes built up against us tearing down our image in society. Over the years it would seem that African Americans would want to fix this image of them but instead they have continued to build to this negativity. One of the main reasons why this image is present until this day is reality television. Although it may not be real, portraying these images on television gives both sexes of the African American race a bad name. Even though some of these shows are funny what needs to be realized is that the people watching these shows are not laughing with African Americans, but instead at them.
Since the first influx of Asian immigrants to the United States, Asian Americans were never treated as an integral part of the American population. Accounting for five percent of the US demographic, often times, they are still portrayed by provincial people as outsiders who do not belong in society. Over the years, this negative mentality has transformed into the way Asian Americans are viewed in media. Though there are many attempts of reversing the trend such as diversifying the cast members, stereotypical personalities such as “the human calculator” or “undesirable partner” are still utilized for writers to infuse racial slurs into comedy skits. However, in reality especially now that many Asian Americans are second generation, none of these stereotypes pertains to all them. As a result, directors and script writers have an ethical responsibility to best portray Asian Americans as human beings who can function normally without putting negative stereotypes as the primary focus of Asian characters’ personas.
Viewers of this show believe this information to be completely accurate, for they hold little or no knowledge about that particular group. Though the stereotypes shown on TV are usually misrepresented, they are quite well accepted by the audience as the truth.
The article, “A Snooki Effect? An Exploration of the Surveillance Subgenre of Reality TV and Viewers’ Beliefs About the “Real” Real World” written by Karyn Riddle and J.J De Simone examines and focuses on a main Subgenre called Surveillance or docu-soap. Reality TV shows such as my favorite, Jersey Shore portray ordinary people that go about with their daily routines such as eating, partying, arguing, and falling in and out of intimate relationships. The purpose of this research was conducted to seek further investigations to see if exposure of surveillance contributed to specific effects such as females engaging in