On stereotyping

The readings by Dyer, Modlesky, and McRobbie and the screening of Orange is the New Black and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs give good elements to start a conversation about sexuality and its portrayal in the media, but they also take us back to the discussion of race and ethnicity, and the stereotyping that occurs for these classifications, adding to the equation a social class factor.

In the screening of Orange is the new Black, we can see the differentiations between prisiones in a jail. The differences are marked not only by their race, but also by their sexual orientation, and in occasions, by both. We see the clear stereotyping of a white female that seems to be helpless in an unknown environment, not only because of the fact that they are imprisoned, but also because she has to socialize with women from different racial, economic, and sexual backgrounds. Something very significative during this episode is when the white woman is told that she will be soon relocated to a jail where all the white women are.

In the meantime, she has to deal with the presumably "old-lady-Latina-witch" who seems to have some kind of ancient magic and for which she is respected. The low class afroamerican women who are "used" to the toughness of jail, the homosexual women who is physically butchy and mentally crazy. And of course, the white male characters of the police, who abuse their power to get sexual favors from the convicts in exchange of "luxury" items like cigarets. Finally, we have the secondary characters of the family of the main character. High class white women who try to continue with their lives.

All these characters follow a clear stereotype that categorizes them. Still, in this particular series, I wonder how much of it is superficial stereotyping and how much of it is just a portrayal of reality. Jail in the United States is mostly populated by the minorities (Afroamerican and Latinos) and the abuse of power is not something new, neither to women's prison nor to American prisons. 

To move on to the screening of Cloudy... The female role of the Weather Girl is something that has always been a stereotype of the good looking woman, being sometimes the looks what sells the character. I think the importance of her role is the fact that she realizes that she doesn't have to seem uneducated or not a nerd in order to be taken into account. She represents the self-acceptance of your likes, even if they are "too nerdy". My worry with this character is that, even though she recognizes in the end that she can be both pretty and nerd, she discovers it thanks to a male role that tells her "it's OK to be nerd". It is a reaction in order to be liked by the opposite sex, who happened to be a nerd. Would her choices had been different in a different situation?