The Whites of Their Eyes

In Stuart Hall's article, "The Whites of Their Eyes", he dives into exploring ideologies in the media about race. He breaks it into three parts, saying "First, ideologies do not consist of isolated and separate concepts, but in the articulation of different elements into a distinctive set or chain of meanings" (89). "Second, ideological statements are made by individuals but ideologies are not the produc of individual conciousness or intention. Rather, we formulate our intentions within ideology" (90). "Third, ideologies "work" by constructing for their subjects (individual and collective) positions of identification and knowledge which allows them to "utter" ideological truths as if they were their authentic authors" (90). He talks about media creating and recreating the ideas we have about race, and then mentions two types of racisim: overt and inferential". "Overt is "those many occasions when open and favorable coverage is given to arguments, positions and spokespersons who are in the business of elaborating an openly racist argument or advancing a racist policy or view" (91). Inferential is "those apparently naturalizeds representations of events and situations relating to race, whether factual or fictional which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions" (91). He explores the portrayals of blacks in the media, specifically in movies and TV saying that "one noticeable fact about all these images is their deep ambivalence-the double vision of the white eye through which they are seen. The primitive nobility of the aging tribesman or chief and the native's rhythmic grace, always contain both a nostalgia for an innocence lost forever to the civilized and the threat of civilization being over-run or determined by the reccurrence of savagery, which is always lurking just below the surface; or by an untutored sexuality, threatning to "break out"...."Is all this so far away as we sometimes suppose from the representation of race which fill the screens today? These particular versions may have faded. But their traces are still to be observed, re-worked in many of the modern and up to date images" (92).

Slavery may be a thing of the past, but we still have a long way to go. In the article, The Racial Chameleon, authors Entman and Rojecki talk about the difficulty blacks have in moving their way up, past all racist attitudes and attempts to keep them down. They say that whites see blacks as inferior still to this day and undeserving. BUT they do not think that the whites are not "incurably racist". They talk about the different situations in which whites feel animosity towards blacks and how that hinders any improvements that are necessary to take to help our world.

I'll admit it, I love the "Love Come Softly" series. I know they are so cheesy, but I can't help it. When I read this article about the stereotypical black characters, I thought immediately of a similar character in this story. If anyone has not heard/seen these movies, they are about the Davis family living in the 1800s, and the joys and trials the family faces on the frontier. It starts with Marty, Clark and daughter Missy and the series continues, following Missy as she grows, gets married and has children. The movie I am specifically thinking of is 4th in the series, Love's Abiding Joy. In this movie, Missy and husband Wille are settled into a new home, starting a cattle ranch and Willie hires 5 men to assist him on the ranch. There is Joe, Frank, and Henry who help with the cattle and then there's Cookie who is hired to help Missy in the home. Cookie fits the "slave-figure" within Hall's article, which is described as " dependable, loving in a simple, childlike way--the devoted "Mammy" with the rolling eyes, or the faithful fieldhand or retainer, attached and devoted to "his" master" (92). Cookie is that, completely. Cookie also happens to be my favorite character in the series because he is so happy and loving to the family. I know that the movie producers had to keep the characters and story line accurate to the time period but still. Cookie applied for the job, he was not kept as a slave which is an improvement but continues to enforce the stereotypes that we need to overcome.