An old extract from an exam...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5EDzss4-Q&safe=active
It’s also important to recognise that representation of ethnicity is characterised by unity and conflict. Conflict is often the binary opposition of ethnic groups and the wider society, even when ethnic groups are assimilated into wider society difference and diversity is emphasised through representation. You can see this in the
Spooks extract.
Unity is often an element of the representation of ethnicity, this hits a stereotype of ethnicity, that of close families and tight communities.
The Life on Mars extract illustrates this cliche. Ethnic minorities in the extract are shown united by religious beliefs, games and work as well as ethnicity and culture. In contrast the white mainstream argue and are shown in conflict, with themselves and the minority group. From a deconstructionist point of view the representation of illegal immigrants in the media is definitely ‘Us vs Them’ with ‘us’ as the dominant wider mainstream group and illegal immigrants a clandestine, secretive group distanced economically, culturally and possibly linguistically. These differences support the idea of the exotic but also create mistrust. First of all think of the term, just the word ‘illegal’ creates a division from the wider mainstream. The word denotes criminality, a distance from the morality of wider mainstream society. This is maybe why immigration has become the cause of yet another moral panic. Ethnicity and moral panic go way back though, Enoch Powell’s
‘Rivers of blood’ was one of the first, then right up to date with the coverage of the
Bradford Riots and the tendency of the tabloid press to link
knife crime and gang culture with working class black males. Take a look here, The Sun’s list of
‘Britains Most Wanted Crims’ If you look at the profiles it’s interesting to note how many of the criminals in the list are white British. Not many? Now think of the paper’s readership, the Sun is Britain’s biggest selling daily paper so it has a lot of influence, so much influence that Tony Blair’s courting of the paper’s favour was a major factor in Labour’s 1997 election win. The common view of the Sun’s readership is that they are largely male, working class and white. This is an example of the stereotype that ethnic minorities can be viewed as dangerous, both a physical threat but also as a threat to the mainstream British Ideology. If we look at this
report in the Daily Mail (Britain’s second most read daily paper) the choice of language, ‘gangsters’, ‘epidemic’ and ‘smuggled’ appears to be aimed at creating a moral panic. The representation of illegal immigrants has featured in several tv dramas now and it’s notable that at least two shows,
The Bill and
Prime Suspect have portrayed the police as sympathetic to but still in opposition to the immigrants portrayed. This could be that the police are representing the interests of, and trying to protect, wider mainstream society. Anyone sought by the police could be considered a threat to wider society and therefore in opposition to it. However in both of these shows illegal immigrants are shown to be ultimately in need of protection and therefore sympathy. In dramas that look to represent illegal immigrants sympathetically we often see that the protectors are British and often white.
Finally, rely on the Sun to use the issue of
immigration to create humour, although perhaps unintentionally.
