Prejudices in Media Representations

Many of the prejudices we encounter in media representations may be clearer in a historical context because representations in the past were usually more open about certain prejudices. Mullings points out how women were viewed in traditional Western societies in the nineteenth century. The ideal woman was seen as "incontrovertibly identified with the home: as the ideal wife and mother; as good, passive, delicate, pure, submissive, calm, frail, small, and dependent" (Mullings 257). Saegert echoes this idea as she notes how women have been identified

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the sexually aggressive, provocative woman governed entirely by libido" (Mullings 257), and the "Mammy," or "the religious, loyal, motherly slave devoted to the care of the slaveowner's family" (Mullings 257). These two images persisted in modified form and continue in the present, though the Mammy of today is devoted to the care of her own family rather than that of any owner. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, the mammy character was present in many television shows as the loyal maid on programs like Beulah. In the 1960s, a show called Julia could get on the air because it had a black star with drawing power, Diahann Carroll, and because the message of the show was non-threatening to the audience to whom the business interests wanted to sell their products. The appeal then was directly to the white audience, still the largest audience and still the "buying public." Julia was a widow with a small son, and she worked outside the home in a doctor's office. Glamor was still the norm, and the show had more in common with The Donna Reed Show than with some of the current presentations of black women on television. When it could be proven that there was a large black audience and that this audience would watch and spend money,
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1703
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)