Within the opening of ‘Top Boy’ we see
several positive and negative representations of youthful people portrayed by
the characters. E.g. some of the negatives were the clothing seen in the
scenes, the teenagers had ties hanging down and shirts top buttons undone
therefore portraying a more scruffy look rather than representing themselves
and their school in a more formal and professional matter. Some may argue that
it’s possibly because of the teenagers have just finished a long day at school.
But even if that is the case they are still representing the school and
themselves and obviously not looking professional and formal doesn’t portray a
positive image. However, some representations of the teens were positive e.g.
the teenagers reach home and one was looking for his mother and was worried
about her and therefore stayed in and waited for her along with his friend who
decided to keep his friend company.
According to Gerbner’s cultivation theory,
the more an audience watch or “live” in a TV world the more they are likely to
believe the representations of that world. E.g. in Top Boy there are scenes of
drug dealing and foul language being used by the characters portraying a
negative representation and possibly dangerous representation, the male selling
drugs is a black male, this could therefore make audiences fall into a trap of
falsely believing the stereotypical view portrayed on TV of black males.
Audiences would believe Alvarados four stereotypes of black people in the
media, most likely believing the “dangerous” stereotype, they would believe
that Perkins was correct about how some elements of stereotypes are true. Even
if the stereotypes, according to Medhurst, is purely for quick identification
of characters for audiences. Audiences may end up avoiding certain people
falsely believing the stereotype or may end up finding comfort around a certain
stereotype.
No comments:
Post a Comment