Literature Review of Cultural Stereotypes

Stereotyping is ubiquitous, something that can have big or small effects, something that often has negative consequences even when given in positivity. Stereotyping reveals a person's prejudice towards others, generally because they hold characteristics of a certain group. Stereotypes are commonly directed towards gender, social class, and race. Sometimes we are even unaware of how these categorizations create beliefs through our unconscious bias, which forms behaviours. Themes of stereotyping can be found throughout the books, texts and films I have looked at such as ‘Brown Brother’ (speech/poem) by Joshua Iosefo, The Hills (short story) by Patricia Grace, Stand by Me (film) and Bred in South Auckland (poem) by Glenn Colquhoun. All of these texts fit into my connecting theme of stereotypes. They fit because they all have characters where assumptions have been made about who they are before we gain enough information to really understand them.

Brown brother is a speech written at the time by high school student Joshua Iosefo.  Just by the title “brown brother” the reader is given a sense of what the speech/poem is about.  Brown, meaning the colour of a person's skin, a colour that is rejected by white society, an experience of racial discrimination that a person shares with their family, their sisters and brothers.

The speech is based upon the issue of racism and outlines negative stereotypes about Pacific Islanders.  The text “my demographic is high school cleaning ladies, fast food, burger making etc … and living off the pension joy riders” shows examples of disreputable low pay jobs.  Another example is the reference to “burgers and fries” suggesting Pasifika people have poor diets and the reference that they don’t like academic subjects, suggesting Pasifika people are unintelligent.

The speech shows that stereotyping can be damaging because if we believe what people say about us, we sometimes fit ourselves into these negative stereotypes and it becomes our identity.  At the end of his speech, with the world as his audience, Joshua Iosefo makes an effort to encourage listeners to break free from the negative stereotypes “do not be afraid to be the first”.

The Hills is a short story by Patricia Grace that gives an example of how brown children are perceived and stereotyped. It also gives us a glimpse of the dangers of being different whilst living under a white man's rule and how one experience can take away one's innocence.

In this story, a brown teenage boy is confronted by police and receives unfair treatment.  the boy approaches a police car asking if they have his friend in the car.  Although the boy has done nothing wrong, he is slammed in the head by the police car door, taken in by police, charged and then searched internally. Stereotyping is shown when the cop says to the boy “shut your black face” and “you’ve got a black face haven't you? You’re black aren’t you” without giving any other reason for his arrest and treatment. His experiences have taken away the light and humour in his vision of society and racism has left him traumatised. The long term negative effect of this event is shown when he says “Then something can happen to you that’s too much for a boy. You can’t be a boy again afterwards”’  

In this story, the hills are a symbol of his innocence and when he looks upon them he is in a state of contentment after this innocence has been damaged he was no longer able to look at the hills,  the hills then became a symbol of once was.  His youthful innocence and optimism became his own delicate naivety,  severed by those set to protect him.

This text shows the theme of ‘stereotypes’ because the brown boy is a victim of racial profiling which leads to unfair treatment by police. This text is one of many that exposes the society we live in, a society where being different is punished as if it were a crime.

Stand by me is a book and film by Stephen King where the main character, Gordy,  flashes back to when he was a boy and he and his three friends Chris, Teddy and Vern go on an adventure to find the dead body of a boy named Ray Brower. Along the way, we discover that the boys deal with their own different day to day stereotypes and experiences caused by these stereotypes.  The biggest example of prejudice and stereotypes in this film is Chris Chambers, Chris is a smart, kind-hearted kid who shows great potential and maturity for his age, however, being a victim of circumstance, Chris deals with his day-to-day life viewed by his community as an inferior person because he was born into a dysfunctional family. This leads to Chris's reputation being taken advantage of by people he should be able to trust, like his teacher who lets Chris take the blame for missing money.  

Teddy's father is stereotyped as a psycho because of his mental health issues — likely caused by  PTSD. It is unfair because he should be considered a hero for his efforts in storming the beach in Normandy back in World War II, instead he is known as a looney for his behaviours consequently triggered by his experiences as a soldier fighting for his country. That stereotype affects Teddy because he is left to defend his father, who he sees as a hero when people in his community often comment on his lunacy. Then there is our main character Gordy who struggles with the fact he's a sensitive, shy male in the late 1950s and finds himself embarrassed by his writing talents. He’s often compared, by his father especially, to his older brother Denny who was a popular star football player that had died a few months back.

The film shows how society is quick to judge us by gender and social class and the challenges this can create.

Bred in South Auckland by Glenn Colquhoun is a poem about some common stereotypes found in South Auckland. It first points to his traits which would be common Maori stereotypes for example “I eat too much fried bread” and “I say Raw-taw-loo-ah” “some people think I'm a bloody Maori”. It then points out traits that would be Pakeha stereotypes “I have been to university” “I have a student loan” “some people think I am a typical pakeha”. Then he points out traits that would are considered stereotypical to Asians for example “last week I drove into a red light” “some people think I’m a blasted Asian”. “When it is summer I wear a lavalava” “I drink pineapple juice”, these are common examples of how the Pasifika race is perceived, “some people think I must be a flaming coconut”. The writer uses negative connotations in his sentences such as ‘flaming’, ‘blasted’, ‘typical’ and ‘bloody’ to add emphasis on the kind of judgement groups of people give to those who differ from themselves. The writer is trying to raise awareness of how we stereotype and then point out that we can all fit into categories of other stereotypes.

These examples show us how stereotypes exist in our society. That we believe generalisations we hear about groups of people, we judge them and our judgement is often wrong.

That stereotyping can have long term effects and show us how stereotypes can be challenged.