Visual Culture

Diversity on Telivision

As I was researching “code switching” in the media, I came across this article published on the website of NPR’s show, which is awesome and aptly called, “Code Switch.” While this article doesn’t directly talk about the phenomenon of code switching, it does talk about visual culture having an effect on the lives of young people. He talks about the phenomenon that psychologists call, parasocial relationships, which can happen when you consider a character on a TV show your friend. He writes, “it turns out that as we grow emotionally attached to characters who are part of a minority group, our prejudices tend to recede.”

The work of Edward Shiappa, a media studies researcher at MIT conducted studies to find out whether shows like Will & Grace changed the way people thought about the LGBTQ community. Shiappa and his colleagues conducted two studies where a large group of college students took a pre and post-test assessing their attitudes toward the LGBTQ community. In between these tests, students watched Six Feet Under, or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and found that, “it’s pretty unequivocal finding that TV can affect how people feel and think about others.”

This study and Shiappa’s findings support other studies about stereotypes. Stereotypes can be overcome by having people directly interact with people from those groups. This is called “Intergroup Contact Theory; When majority and minority groups mingle-under the right circumstances-negative feelings about each other tend to dissipate.” In 1954, psychologist Gordon Allport found that this theory only works when everyone feels safe, comfortable and respected.

The author of this article argues suggests that through the safety and convenience of our television, the world can mingle with people that are not like us and begin to relate to them. This connection can increase people’s empathy, which may not happen organically in their own life.

Associate professor of communication at Texas A&M University, Srividya Ramasubramanian argues, “it’s not enough to just have diversity of characters portrayed on TV. How the minority characters are portrayed really matters. When minority characters are written one-dimensionally they can actually reinforce prejudice and stereotypes.

With an increasing variety of TV shows available, on Netflix, Amazon Prime and on Cable, we are seeing diversity like never before, shows like Transparent are exposing people to a world they never even considered and winning awards while they’re at it. Shows like Blackish, Jane the Virgin, Dr. Ken and a bunch of other shows I don’t have time to watch are depicting minorities in a more culturally sensitive way. These shows in the popular visual culture are great ways to start the dialogue about race, culture and stereotypes. Especially if teachers are concerned with bringing too much contraversy into the classroom, shows on network TV seem to be a relatively safe place to start.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/08/31/432294253/how-shows-like-will-grace-and-black-ish-can-change-your-brain