Social Stereotypes

Look deep down and try and remember where social stereotypes started. Personally I cannot think that far back. It could be the very dummied down versions of Disney films or it could be that it was a long time ago i started watching other films. Either way its a social reality that today's society has brought about terrible stereotypes that you and I have both in one way or another impersonated or used as fact just because it is what we have been brought up with.

This past week we watch two movies both of which I believe portrayed the same message, "Reel Bad Arabs" and "Crossing Boarders," however used different ways. These different ways also show two different realities. One reality is that in today's society we live and abide by stereotypes. The other is that stereotypes are far from the truth and that we just have no idea and never will unless we go find out for ourselves.
Although these movies both use different methods of portraying the point, I found a video that summerises a lot of what these movies are getting at.



Here we see that the short video points out what Islam is straight up. Crossing Boarders did a good job at showing this, however it was not as blatant they did it in a more interactive way. I like how this movie points out over and over again how that stereotypical character we see over and over cannot be the real Islamic character that exists in reality. This is similar to what the guy in "Reel Bad Arabs" does, he just does it on a case by case basis with Hollywood Media. In an indirect way "Crossing Boarders" shows a lot of these characteristics, it just does it through situational cultural comparison between kids our age interacting in certain situations.

I have personally done a one week trip where i worked with homeless and lived with another church group from Rhode Island, and its amazing how you can see a huge difference. In this case the huge difference was how even just day to day i could form and hold conversation with homeless and connect with them on extremely similar levels. This is another stereotype people make and when you really get to know their story and interact with them you automatically think there intoxicated druggies who beg. Not to say there are not some but there are always some stereotype met characters in life. My point being, its a great experience to meet and interact with other cultures and people of different situations before letting a stereotype take over the image because usually its wrong or not speaking to that group of people but a separate group of people all together.

There are some efforts trying to be done about this subject and here is a link to the efforts if you want to get more information. This site gives some great information in picking out stereotypes. Where they come from and why they might be rendered. It also gives some pretty good information on the many types of stereotypes. Hopefully this site can give you some info on stereotypes and help be more aware of them so when one comes up its not the image we see when we think of a certain group, but really see them for who they are or find out who they are.