Stereotypes Of Africa
Africa
In Hollywood movies, Africa is not depicted to be a safe or pleasant place to live and the people are stereotyped to be uncivilized or a warlord. In one of the scenes at the end of Independence Day, when we see that the invading army of aliens has finally been defeated by a collaborative effort by the entire world (but the film mostly focusses on the US), and we get a montage of the wreckage on different continents. America gets a high-tech military base, Australia gets a modern city scape and Africa gets naked dudes with spears. This plays into the stereotype that we as white westerners are more advanced and civilized than are African counterpart. This relates to the expression of values the Dyer categorized. In this, he says that “Who …show more content…
This is what Dyer was talking about with the “order (stereotypes) perceived as absolute and rigid, order (stereotypes) as grounded in social power.” (Dyer, 2002, p.12) The stereotype of Africa embodies both of these. It is seen as absolute and rigid by those unquestioning, as the authority (i.e. Hollywood) has presented it so many time that the stereotype of Africans has become a story stereotype like boy meets girl. And it’s grounded in social power as the stereotype is mainly used to identify the good and evil in the story and normally the people who make the films are white men from America. Now to say Africa and its people do not have problems is just a lie, after all, “partial knowledge is not false knowledge, it is simply not absolute knowledge.” (Dyer, 2002, p.12). This stereotype comes from the fact that Africa is a continent not a country and the countries in Africa are not all like we see in the films. But to have the stereotype reinforced so many time without any type of alterations only harms Africans as there is only this stereotype and the charity image that people see if they don’t spend the time you look up the information themselves. This is where stereotypes can be oppressive, by accepting it to be true, we actually make it true for others as well. Dyer iterates that it is the one with the most influence that causes a single thought to become a socially accepted
In Hollywood movies, Africa is not depicted to be a safe or pleasant place to live and the people are stereotyped to be uncivilized or a warlord. In one of the scenes at the end of Independence Day, when we see that the invading army of aliens has finally been defeated by a collaborative effort by the entire world (but the film mostly focusses on the US), and we get a montage of the wreckage on different continents. America gets a high-tech military base, Australia gets a modern city scape and Africa gets naked dudes with spears. This plays into the stereotype that we as white westerners are more advanced and civilized than are African counterpart. This relates to the expression of values the Dyer categorized. In this, he says that “Who …show more content…
This is what Dyer was talking about with the “order (stereotypes) perceived as absolute and rigid, order (stereotypes) as grounded in social power.” (Dyer, 2002, p.12) The stereotype of Africa embodies both of these. It is seen as absolute and rigid by those unquestioning, as the authority (i.e. Hollywood) has presented it so many time that the stereotype of Africans has become a story stereotype like boy meets girl. And it’s grounded in social power as the stereotype is mainly used to identify the good and evil in the story and normally the people who make the films are white men from America. Now to say Africa and its people do not have problems is just a lie, after all, “partial knowledge is not false knowledge, it is simply not absolute knowledge.” (Dyer, 2002, p.12). This stereotype comes from the fact that Africa is a continent not a country and the countries in Africa are not all like we see in the films. But to have the stereotype reinforced so many time without any type of alterations only harms Africans as there is only this stereotype and the charity image that people see if they don’t spend the time you look up the information themselves. This is where stereotypes can be oppressive, by accepting it to be true, we actually make it true for others as well. Dyer iterates that it is the one with the most influence that causes a single thought to become a socially accepted