Stereotypes & Archetypes

My daughter and I were recently talking about Stereotypes in both the movies and on TV shows and thought I'd try and open a discussion here on the topic.

How do you all feel about Stereotyping? Does it bother you? Are you ok with it? Or does it depend on the type of movie and role and how it's played out? What works for you and what doesn't?

What movies or show's do you end up enjoying the stereotyped characters and which do you hate and make you cringe...and why?

Just curious.

Stereotypes can be entertaining when they are taken as a joke ... I think when you know you are portraying a stereotype and push it to the extreme it can be entertaining .. but when people take them so seriously it takes away from the depth of a character

It's hard for me to think of a particular stereotype in the movie industry in which an actor like Anthony Quinn played everything from Mexican to Spanish, Greek, French, Italian, Native American (including a so-called Eskimo), Arab, South Sea Islander, Indonesian, Anglo-American, in every profession from punch-drunk boxer to famous artist to gunfighter to pope.

However, I think there are definitely stereotypes on TV in that every all black situation comedy seems to be rooted in the streets with all the jive talk. The only exception in which a black TV family seemed like just a family of any color was in the Bill Cosby series. He and his TV family came across as just people of any creed or color.

I wrote a paper about stereotypes in the media.

Here's the very condensed version.

Stereotypes are usually stemmed from fear and/or lack of knowledge. Sometimes they're made to emphasize the differences between two groups so that the similarities aren't as noticeable. Etc., etc., There's different reasons they're created, usually they're bad news.

Because of competition, the media tries to paint their programming with a very large brush that's easy to understand. You can easily laugh at the token black guy in a comedy who's smokin' blunts and bangin' ho's, but trying to understand why he may be like that is a waste of time.

So, the media relies on existing stereotypes that are understood and acknowledged as somewhat accurate.

Minority kids spend more time in front of the television than the majority. People tend to watch TV that they can relate to. If you're a kid, you identify with the basics, like looks.

Now, kids are identifying with someone who looks like them who's acting like a stereotype. Kids aren't the greatest at distinguishing reality from fiction, so they buy it. They're sold.

Another problem, is that "reality" TV also banks on stereotypes and relies on them to make it easier for the audience to understand and absorb.


I don't like em' but I'll watch em'.

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If you want to see how very far this country has come in improving racial relations, take a look at how people were stereotyped and treated in movies of earlier periods. You don't have to go back as far as the silents like Birth of a Nation when the Ku Klux Klan rode to the rescue of southern maidens threatened by blacks. Check out Casablanca when "Sam" the black pianist sings "Shine": "Just because my hair is curly / Just because my teeth are pearly . . ."
There are plenty of movies in the 1930s-1940s-1950s in which white actors nonchalantly refer to black men as "boy," even while being friendly and benovolent. There's one film, made in the late 1950s, early 1960s, in which Sidney Portier and Alan Ladd play Marine sergeants in Korea, trying to decide who takes over a patrol after the officer is killed. The black man has the highest rank and should become leader by military standards, but all of the rest of the patrol is white. Portier did a lot in breaking Hollywood's color barrier, but in most of his roles he couldn't be just a black man, much less just a man. Instead, he had to be a black superman helping nuns build a church in Lillies of the Field or a black Albert Swizer going to Africa to doctor sick children in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Hispanics also were stereotyped, probably none worse than when Bogart played a Mexican bandit with a thin mustache and bad accent in a 1930s western. In the The Right Stuff there's a funny scene when a big Hispanic orderly slows down an astronaut enroute to the toilet (with an enema bag still attached) to compliment the astronaut on his imitation of Jose Jiminez, a comic character popularized on TV by comic Bill Dana back in the 1960s. Dana used to perform that act on the Ed Sullivan Show and we Anglos would laugh our heads off. Now, seeing it in that film, I couldn't help being embarassed.

Interesting thread topic, Anniebelle.
I think stereotypes are sometimes confused with archetypes. I'd define the difference like this: stereotypes don't do anything surprising, don't grow or develop. Archetypes, in the hands of a good writer, do.

I'm currently addicted to the Joss Wheadon series Angel, by way of handy example. Wheadon relys on common stereotypes to establish his characters quickly: she's the stuck-up cheerleader type... he's the awkward, nerdy type... and then <BAMF!!!> Wheadon will do something with a character that you totally don't see coming. THis has two advantages: quick recognition for the audience and a great surprise when the stereotypical goes against type.

In that sort of usage, they're really archetypes (a classical theater tool) in that they provide quick recognition and a great starting point for development. If a stereotype goes nowhere, then it stays a stereotype: predictable and rather 'eh'.

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Thanks for the great responses everyone! I enjoyed reading them.

Angie...Thanks. When we saw The Producers on stage (And on the re-make) we got such a kick from the whole accountant stereotyped scene (when Leo goes back to his accounting office). My brother's an accountant and found it very funny.

I also agree with you that when it's done in a mean or hurtful intent, it's hard to watch and don't like it. Sometimes i tend to look at comedy a bit differenly than drama....but eve in some comedy's there' a fine line between being playful and parodies...vs stepping over a certain line and making something mean.

Pimp...I agree that Reality TV and also the talk shows bank on stereotypes and can help keep a stereotype going. I keep thinking of the ditzy blond image that has always been around. With shows like 'The Girls Next Door", "A Simple Life" and interviews with celeb's like Nicole Riche, they help keep that ditzy blond image alive.

rufnek...thanks for the great posts. I also cringe sometimes when watching an older movie and try to look past it. I usually fast forward in A Day at the Races during the stable scene with Harpo. But I also think it's interesting to see how women were seen. In It's a Wonderful Life we see Mary as this warm, beautiful woman whose the heart of her family...but when the angel takes George to see life as if he'd never lived...we see Mary as this very prim and cold looking Librarian with glasses. Marien the Librarian didn't come around until the 50's and up until then I think alot of woman in careers were seen as Librarian types. Cary Grants fiance in Bringning up Baby is another example. Also...smattered throughout different old movies were the women phone operators who all seemed to have a distinct way of talking....which is why I think Lily Tomlin's old phone operator "One Ring'a Dingy" skits on Rowin and Martin's Laugh-In were so funny.

Sammy...Thank you, thank you, thank you! Archetypes...of course! Thanks so much for the description. Yes, I was confused between stereotypes and archetypes. There are quiet a few shows and movies and characters that we (my daughter and I) like that are the same as you described....where there's a stereotype that we see grow and get attached to them and to the show/movie/story. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Btw...Ulla from the Producer's...would she be considered a stereotype?

stereotyping is pretty annoying when you're one of those being stereotyped. eg scally, robbing scousers

Agreed Christine. I've been there too.

What movie or shows or image have you been irritated with?


Edit: Btw...thanks for responding Christine. I wasn't sure if this topic would be too uncomfortable to talk about. I really wanted to get peoples input on the subject whether in general or in specifics...so thanks again everyone!

Chiming in on Sammy's post. Whedon stuff is a great study on archetypes, and breaking them. I love how he plays with stereotyping and archetypes and then turns the tables.

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Sedai...as a mod...can you change the name of the thread to say 'Stereotypes & Archetypes'? If you can't, that's fine.

The scenes with the Marx brothers and black performers in A Day at the Races is an especially interesting example because here's a group of Jewish brothers, who were themselves subjected to prejudice and stereotyping, in a scene with blacks in a stereotypical dancing, singing, jiving, minstrel performance! I don't think the scene is mean spirited, but it is uncomfortable by today's standards. Even worse is the scene were Bette Davis invites the "pickaninnies" to sing along with her when the black slaves come up to the "big house" to serenade the white folks in Jezabel.

On the other hand, when criticized by some blacks for playing a maid so often in the movies, Hattie McDaniel--the first black to win an Oscar--replied, "I'd rather play a maid than be one!" Same thing with Stepin Fetchit and others who played the white image of shuffling, slow talking, lazy blacks--the man made a good living, dressed well off screen, had a nice home and cars, got featured billing in many films and always held his own on screen with many of the top white actors and actresses of his day. As did Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and the fabulous Nicholas Brothers The brothers never starred in a musical of their own, but Gene Kelly had a tough time keeping up with them in a dance number in The Pirate.

I agree that women were horribly stereotyped in so many movies, but look at what they did to fathers! Seems in most old movies, Dad was either a pillar of wisdom, like Mickey Rooney's father, the judge, in all of those Andy Hardy films, or--more often, it seems--a complete bungling fool from Spencer Tracey in Father of the Bride (and later Steve Martin in the same role) to Jim Backus as James Dean's pop in Rebel Without A Cause. And remember Natalie Wood's "dad" William Hopper in that same film, whe he slaps her for kissing him on the cheek? Talk about your repressed sexual tensions! Which is a third view of dads in more recent years--the too-strict disciplinarian or potential molester.

All set

OMG yes, I had forgotten about that one

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Calm down our Avaline!

We're probably the only two people on this forum who, when someone mentions Bernard Hill, think of Yozza and not Theoden...

As someone who's spent most of their adult life being stereotyped (and mostly, for various reasons, loved every minute of it) it would be two-faced of me to complain too much about stereotyping in today's visual media.


Then again, one of my ambitions was to open a satirical nightclub in London and employ the late Peter Cook as host.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

I watched my old tapes of Boys from the Blackstuff a few weeks back. Stands up to time well, such good writing and as you know me dad was an asphalter, so always found it very moving too.

I think sometimes certain characters become stereotypes after they are copied so often in other movies, when the original wasn't a stereotype at all.

For me the movie that springs to mind is Fargo. There's a scene with an awkward, unattractive and weepy Asian guy making a very pathetic play for Francis McDormand's character. As much as I love the movie and most all of the work of the Cohen Brothers, being Asian I did cringe watching this. Of course I wondered what the point of it was, but more importantly I wonder what the audience takes away from scenes like this one. Hell, I still have to walk out of the theater afterward and I don't really need to navigate a gauntlet of mockery. I suppose it hasn't happened in a long time, though.

I've had to really ponder whether or not I will ever watch the much-lauded Birth of a Nation. I've decided not to go out of my way to watch a movie that praises the Klan, and if I happen to see it all I can say is I don't critique propaganda. Such a decision might make me less of a cineaste, but such is life.