Mediaculture: Reflections on the effect of media and culture on our faith

While the number of people who see films may be smaller than the number who use other media, films nevertheless affect our cultural conversation. And too often, films present stereotypes that may affect our political and social conversations.

Racial stereotypes are among the most destructive in our society, and these appear too often in the films we watch (not to mention the TV programs we watch).

For example, Charles M. Blow in The New York Times (Feb. 26) reports on a National Survey on Drug Use and Health released in mid-February that found young black adults ages 18 to 25 years old “less likely to use illicit drugs than the national average.”

Further, he writes, “a 2007 study of college undergraduates published in the Journal of Ethnicity and Substance Abuse found that young blacks’ rates of illicit drug use was substantially lower than their counterparts, with black women having the lowest rates of all.”

Unfortunately, the stereotype persists that most African Americans are crack addicts. And the crack-addicted black mother is a particularly pernicious stereotype.

Blow takes African-American filmmaker Tyler Perry to task for promoting this stereotype:”In the last five years, [Perry] has featured a crack-addicted black mother who leaves her children in two of his films and on his very popular sitcom, ‘House of Payne.’ … In another film, a main character is a drug-addicted prostitute. And in yet another, a mother leaves her family for the drug dealer.”

Among the popular and critically acclaimed films from last year was Precious, which was nominated for best film at the Academy Awards and won two Oscars at the March 7 event. (It was also no. 5 on my top 10 list in our February issue.)

This powerful film tells a harrowing story about a young Harlem teenager who is pregnant for the second time by her drug-addicted father and also suffers abuse at the hands of her cruel mother. It goes on to show the courage and fortitude of the title character in overcoming these huge hardships. The film raised much discussion among African-American culture critics; some said it presented a negative stereotype of poor blacks, while others applauded both its realism and its artistic merit.

But at least it presented a serious film made by African Americans about African Americans. That needs to happen more often to make our cultural conversation healthier.

Films can be a good way to expose ourselves to other cultural experiences and thus a way of broadening our awareness of the world around us.

Besides Precious, my top 10 list included Goodbye, Solo, about a Senegalese man who drives a taxi in North Carolina, and Sin Nombre, which follows the journey of a father, daughter and uncle from Honduras toward “el norte.” These films introduce us to a world unfamiliar to us and help us be more empathetic toward people in these situations.

Another stereotype in our society is about Muslims. A Religion News Service story in March by Omar Sacirbey alerts us to My Name Is Khan, “a new Hollywood film that has shattered box office records in India and is now making a respectable showing in the United States,” writes Sacirbey. Khan is one of “a small but growing number of films shown in the U.S. depicting Muslims positively, or at least as something other than a terrorist,” he writes.

We all need to have our horizons broadened and our stereotypes challenged.