Stereotyping

In the world of Media there is a lot of stereotyping...

...For example in crime dramas there are;

• Criminals are represented as black or white, middle age men with a lot of pride and power, often drug dealers and gangsters. Some stereotypes of criminals are in CSI, Luther and Sherlock, most of the criminals are probably wearing hoods.

• The victims are represented as either men or women, depending on the crime (e.g. murder – both), with either a high or middle class, and they are not from a particular background, due to it again depending on the crime. The victims can be in some way stereotypical, but to some existent, they are not because there is a wide range in the type of victim and the type of crime they are involved in.

Here is an essay on Black police officers in the media;

Black police officers

Stereotyping is when you prejudge a person based on their appearance; an example in the media would be black police officers, in the film Lethal Weapon, one of the main protagonists Roger Murtaugh, played by Danny Glover, during the first film he “got the wrong end of the stick” when he first meet ( the other main protagonists) Martin Riggs, played by Mel Gibson, when he saw Mel Gibson, pulling out a gun in the police station and he ran over to apprehend him and Mel Gibson turns out to be his new partner in the force, in the later films he is portrayed a bit of an idiot and easily manipulated. Another example would be, from the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Warwick Brown, played by Gary Dourdan, the character of Warwick is stereotyped in some ways good, however in some episodes he has been stereotyped as a drunk, a gambler and a bad police officer, mostly in the last episode he appeared in due to the story line. In a way the Lethal Weapon films in general do stereotype black officers in a bad way and as the audience we do not realise this we just find it humours to watch. Compared to the TV series of CSI, Warwick is almost deliberately placed as a bad cop in some, but not all of the episodes of the time he was on the show, towards the end of the series when it was his last episodes I became a position that he was going to become this type of person an if he had continued he would have gotten worse and worse until something bad did happen. But this is due to the plot of the last series that he would appear in because is supposed to play this type of person when in real fact this out of character for Warwick. Both of these examples do not relate to real life, because no normal cop would be easily manipulated as Roger Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon, but there is a bit of truth with Warwick from CSI, for all we know some of our everyday police officers could be gamblers.

This concludes the pointers on Stereotyping in the media. Thanks for reading.