Black Women's Portrayals on Reality Television

Black Women's Portrayals on Reality Television PDF Author: Donnetrice C. Allison
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498519334
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This book critically analyzes the portrayals of Black women in current reality television. Audiences are presented with a multitude of images of Black women fighting, arguing, and cursing at one another in this manufactured world of reality television. This perpetuation of negative, insidious racial and gender stereotypes influences how the U.S. views Black women. This stereotyping disrupts the process in which people are able to appreciate cultural and gender difference. Instead of celebrating the diverse symbols and meaning making that accompanies Black women's discourse and identities, reality television scripts an artificial or plastic image of Black women that reinforces extant stereotypes. This collection's contributors seek to uncover examples in reality television shows where instantiations of Black women's gendered, racial, and cultural difference is signified and made sinister.

Black Women's Portrayals on Reality Television

Black Women's Portrayals on Reality Television PDF Author: Donnetrice C. Allison
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498519334
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book critically analyzes the portrayals of Black women in current reality television. Audiences are presented with a multitude of images of Black women fighting, arguing, and cursing at one another in this manufactured world of reality television. This perpetuation of negative, insidious racial and gender stereotypes influences how the U.S. views Black women. This stereotyping disrupts the process in which people are able to appreciate cultural and gender difference. Instead of celebrating the diverse symbols and meaning making that accompanies Black women's discourse and identities, reality television scripts an artificial or plastic image of Black women that reinforces extant stereotypes. This collection's contributors seek to uncover examples in reality television shows where instantiations of Black women's gendered, racial, and cultural difference is signified and made sinister.

Real Sister

Real Sister PDF Author: Jervette R. Ward
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813575087
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
From The Real Housewives of Atlanta to Flavor of Love, reality shows with predominantly black casts have often been criticized for their negative representation of African American women as loud, angry, and violent. Yet even as these programs appear to be rehashing old stereotypes of black women, the critiques of them are arguably problematic in their own way, as the notion of “respectability” has historically been used to police black women’s behaviors. The first book of scholarship devoted to the issue of how black women are depicted on reality television, Real Sister offers an even-handed consideration of the genre. The book’s ten contributors—black female scholars from a variety of disciplines—provide a wide range of perspectives, while considering everything from Basketball Wives to Say Yes to the Dress. As regular viewers of reality television, these scholars are able to note ways in which the genre presents positive images of black womanhood, even as they catalog a litany of stereotypes about race, class, and gender that it tends to reinforce. Rather than simply dismissing reality television as “trash,” this collection takes the genre seriously, as an important touchstone in ongoing cultural debates about what constitutes “trashiness” and “respectability.” Written in an accessible style that will appeal to reality TV fans both inside and outside of academia, Real Sister thus seeks to inspire a more nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the genre’s representations and their effects on the black community.

Representations of Black Women in the Media

Representations of Black Women in the Media PDF Author: Marquita Marie Gammage
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317370473
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
In 1920 W.E.B. Du Bois cited the damnation of women as linked to the devaluation of motherhood. This dilemma, he argues, had a crushing blow on Black women as they were forced into slavery. Black womanhood, portrayed as hypersexual by nature, became an enduring stereotype which did not coincide with the dignity of mother and wife. This portrayal continues to reinforce negative stereotypes of Black women in the media today. This book highlights how Black women have been negatively portrayed in the media, focusing on the export nature of media and its ability to convey notions of Blackness to the public. It argues that media such as rap music videos, television dramas, reality television shows, and newscasts create and affect expectations of Black women. Exploring the role that racism, misogyny and media play in the representation of Black womanhood, it provides a foundation for challenging contemporary media’s portrayal of Black women.

Reality Bites Back

Reality Bites Back PDF Author: Jennifer L. Pozner
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 1580053750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Nearly every night on every major network,"unscripted" (but carefully crafted) "reality" TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago. In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV's twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple "guilty pleasures," these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation's young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we're valued for, and what we should view as "our place" in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.

Double Negative

Double Negative PDF Author: Racquel J. Gates
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002239
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
From the antics of Flavor Flav on Flavor of Love to the brazen behavior of the women on Love & Hip Hop, so-called negative images of African Americans are a recurrent mainstay of contemporary American media representations. In Double Negative Racquel J. Gates examines the generative potential of such images, showing how some of the most disreputable representations of black people in popular media can strategically pose questions about blackness, black culture, and American society in ways that more respectable ones cannot. Rather than falling back on claims that negative portrayals hinder black progress, Gates demonstrates how reality shows such as Basketball Wives, comedians like Katt Williams, and movies like Coming to America play on "negative" images to take up questions of assimilation and upward mobility, provide a respite from the demands of respectability, and explore subversive ideas. By using negativity as a framework to illustrate these texts' social and political work as they reverberate across black culture, Gates opens up new lines of inquiry for black cultural studies.

Working While Black

Working While Black PDF Author: LaToya T. Brackett
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147667521X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
In recent years, there has been a rise in diverse racial representation on television. In particular, Black characters have become more actualized and have started extending beyond racial stereotypes. In this collection of essays, the representation of Black characters in professionally defined careers is examined. Commentary is also provided on the portrayal of Black people in relation to stereotypes alongside the importance of Black representation on screen. This work also introduces the idea of Black-collar, a category which highlights the Black experience in white-collar jobs. The essays are divided into six parts based on themes, including profession, and focuses on a select number of Black characters on TV since the 1990s.

Reality Gendervision

Reality Gendervision PDF Author: Brenda R. Weber
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376644
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This essay collection focuses on the gendered dimensions of reality television in both the United States and Great Britain. Through close readings of a wide range of reality programming, from Finding Sarah and Sister Wives to Ghost Adventures and Deadliest Warrior, the contributors think through questions of femininity and masculinity, as they relate to the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. They connect the genre's combination of real people and surreal experiences, of authenticity and artifice, to the production of identity and norms of citizenship, the commodification of selfhood, and the naturalization of regimes of power. Whether assessing the Kardashian family brand, portrayals of hoarders, or big-family programs such as 19 Kids and Counting, the contributors analyze reality television as a relevant site for the production and performance of gender. In the process, they illuminate the larger neoliberal and postfeminist contexts in which reality TV is produced, promoted, watched, and experienced. Contributors. David Greven, Dana Heller, Su Holmes, Deborah Jermyn, Misha Kavka, Amanda Ann Klein, Susan Lepselter, Diane Negra, Laurie Ouellette, Gareth Palmer, Kirsten Pike, Maria Pramaggiore, Kimberly Springer, Rebecca Stephens, Lindsay Steenberg, Brenda R. Weber

Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before

Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before PDF Author: Diana Adesola Mafe
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477315233
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
When Lieutenant Uhura took her place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek, the actress Nichelle Nichols went where no African American woman had ever gone before. Yet several decades passed before many other black women began playing significant roles in speculative (i.e., science fiction, fantasy, and horror) film and television—a troubling omission, given that these genres offer significant opportunities for reinventing social constructs such as race, gender, and class. Challenging cinema’s history of stereotyping or erasing black women on-screen, Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before showcases twenty-first-century examples that portray them as central figures of action and agency. Writing for fans as well as scholars, Diana Adesola Mafe looks at representations of black womanhood and girlhood in American and British speculative film and television, including 28 Days Later, AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Children of Men, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Firefly, and Doctor Who: Series 3. Each of these has a subversive black female character in its main cast, and Mafe draws on critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories to explore each film and show, placing the black female characters at the center of the analysis and demonstrating their agency. The first full study of black female characters in speculative film and television, Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before shows why heroines such as Lex in AVP and Zoë in Firefly are inspiring a generation of fans, just as Uhura did.

US Media and Diversity

US Media and Diversity PDF Author: Travis L. Dixon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040085083
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This volume fully illuminates the role of diversity in media representation, dissemination, and effects across various platforms, including social media. Against a backdrop of shifting demographics and increasing diversity, the book highlights the implications for media consumption patterns and explores the simultaneous rise in online hate. Organized into three thematic sections, the book first centers people of color in the discussion of media stereotypes and identity, considering the impact of technology on such identities. This volume then moves to analyze the news media, and how stereotypes are presented and perpetuated, before focusing on paradigm shifts brought on by critical media effects and counter-stereotyping research. The empirical studies and theoretical analyses push readers to imagine better how Communication scholars can advance this essential work at a precarious time in history. Budding and senior scholars interested in understanding stereotypical media representations and effects will gain insights from this critical and timely book, and it will interest those working in the areas of media and communication, media representation, social justice, diversity and inclusion, media sociology, social media, and journalism.

Real Sister

Real Sister PDF Author: Jervette R. Ward
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813575095
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
From The Real Housewives of Atlanta to Flavor of Love, reality shows with predominantly black casts have often been criticized for their negative representation of African American women as loud, angry, and violent. Yet even as these programs appear to be rehashing old stereotypes of black women, the critiques of them are arguably problematic in their own way, as the notion of “respectability” has historically been used to police black women’s behaviors. The first book of scholarship devoted to the issue of how black women are depicted on reality television, Real Sister offers an even-handed consideration of the genre. The book’s ten contributors—black female scholars from a variety of disciplines—provide a wide range of perspectives, while considering everything from Basketball Wives to Say Yes to the Dress. As regular viewers of reality television, these scholars are able to note ways in which the genre presents positive images of black womanhood, even as they catalog a litany of stereotypes about race, class, and gender that it tends to reinforce. Rather than simply dismissing reality television as “trash,” this collection takes the genre seriously, as an important touchstone in ongoing cultural debates about what constitutes “trashiness” and “respectability.” Written in an accessible style that will appeal to reality TV fans both inside and outside of academia, Real Sister thus seeks to inspire a more nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the genre’s representations and their effects on the black community.