Response to Douglas Ch.4-5

One repeated complaint that I have found in Douglas’ book is that the media doesn’t portray women as having “ideas”.  Even the strong leading females on television falter in the fact that they often have inner monologues about relatively superficial things.  I’d argue that the reasoning for this is partially for two reasons. One is that as a society we are often superficial and we don’t have “deep” conversations all the time.  I’ll be the first one to admit that my friends and I have more inane conversations that meaningful ones. I definitely think more about how I look on a daily basis than ways that I view the world and how it could be better; not to say that I don’t think about those as well. The second and more likely reasoning is that television shows and movies are made to make money. Advertisers will pay more if they think that more people are watching the show. The producers will pressure the writers not to put too much controversial material in a show to avoid isolating viewers. The controversial material is what comes with the more in depth discussions and less superficial yammering. If I don’t like what characters are saying because I don’t agree with their views I am less likely to watch. The business end of television starts affecting the enjoyment side. Both of these reasons may not be entirely true and there are certainly more things that I’m not considering, but I don’t think that it is a straight forward reasoning to why dialogues and inner monologues are the way the Douglas portrays them.

                One flaw I found with Douglas’ chapter, “You Go, Girl” was that it seemed to ignore the Asian American and Hispanic female communities.  Just as there are stereotypes of black women, there are stereotypes of those women as well. I can think of more shows that have black women than those that have Hispanic or Asian Americans. Even the ones that do still have many stereotypes, I think of the smart and shy Asian girl or “feisty Latina”. The issues of not giving black women work on television without making them play cookie-cutter roles can also apply to all races, men included.  I think that Douglas should have extended her discussion to include all minorities and not just the African-American community.