Consider the following trailer for Not Another Teen Movie, a spoof on the typical teen movies of the 80s and 90s. Pay close attention at around the 1:12 minute mark.
Think about it, token black guys are everywhere! There is always one black comedian in the cast of SNL (right now it's Kenan Thompson), one sexy black twenty-something in MTV's The Real World, the list goes on. It doesn't surprise me that the only black kid in the show South Park is named Token. Seriously, that's his name.
The following scene from Not Another Teen Movie pokes fun at how there is only supposed to be one black guy at the party in a mainstream teen film like this one.
In yesterday's presentation, we discussed the fact that although minority representation in media has increased, it has come with the reinforcement of stereotypes. In this case, the "token black guy" says things like "Damn!" and "That is whack!" - it is a manifestation of how upper-class white men view black people. (The upper-class white men, of course, being the head honchos at the media production companies).
Also, with the role of the token black guy comes the responsibility of representing an entire race of people with one character - a difficult task. How can one person represent an entire race? Surely stereotypes will emerge, and surely there will be groups of people who are still vastly underrepresented, creating a false image of African American culture.
It makes me wonder: is having increased representation via the "token black guy" really better than no black guy at all?
Morgan -- your post literally brings me right back to the section of our presentation where I talked about tokenism. In many programs, there seems to be the one "token" black character in an effort to indicate that the program is inclusive (the word for this is tokenism). Although I guess it's better than having no black characters in the program, it does put a heavy burden on the single black individual. All of the sudden, everything they do and say represents not just their character or themselves, but their whole ethnicity or race.
ReplyDeleteI think it's very interesting that South Park has named their one black character Token. I have never seen the show, but I am incredibly intrigued by their willingness to basically poke fun at under-representation of ethnic minorities in the media.
It's amazing to me how little I paid attention to such obvious aspects/flaws of the media before this class.