I come from a family where if you can get the same thing with a different name for a cheaper price, you bought the generic version instead of the brand name. In seventh grade, I wanted the Adidas striped shoes and I got the K-Mart version that was exactly the same, except they had an extra stripe and were half the price. I had the bottom shelf Lucky Charms or the store brand orange juice. Sure, we’d sometimes get brand name items, but it didn’t need to be in our house. Living on a budget, it was just the same to my 12 year old self to have something that looked like the original without it having to be. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting the brand name version, I’ve always been a believer in if it looks the same, and tastes the same, it is the same; no need to pay an extra couple dollars so the company can plaster its logo on what I’m buying.
My favorite example was at my church’s fellowship hour. We always advertised cookies and punch for Fellowship Hour. We put out “Oreos” but everyone knew they weren’t. We had the bulk brand that no one actually knew the real name of, but looked just like Oreos. Ok they didn’t taste exactly the same, but they were close enough for a snack between worship and lunch.
When Walter Lippmann coined the idea of stereotype, his originally did not intend to have it result in a projection based concept that would later result in thousands of blonde jokes. He noted that in order to handle the multitude of incoming messages that our brain had to process, we needed some way to organize them in a way that could make it manageable. He said that stereotypes were “an ordering process, a ‘shortcut’, referring to ‘the world,’ and expressing ‘our’ values and beliefs” (Dyer 11).
In our church, that would be the way we understood the cookies at Fellowship Hour. We knew there were a huge selection of cookies on the table, but when my parents would ask, I could easily describe that on that table there were Oreos, even though that’s not really what they really were. By indicating that Oreos were on the table, my parents can get an easy idea of what type of cookie is on the table without me having to describe them as chocolate cookies with a vanilla cream on the inside. Lippmann’s explanation of a stereotype as a way to take a short cut and refer to the world is how I would stereotype the cookies on the table as Oreos.
Later, the idea of a stereotype began to change into social typing. Now, when we think of a stereotype, we think of a negative projection on a person based on their connection with a group of people who have been stereotyped with a particular quality or trait. We can begin to figure out not what category they fit into our minds as stereotyping originally would state, but we can begin to figure out the function as well (13). Dyer says that “we surely only have to be told that we are going to see a film about an alcoholic to know that it will be a tale either of sordid decline or of inspiring redemption” (15). We can assume a great deal about a person based on the simple first impression that we get because we have grown to associate certain traits and qualities. Most times these associations are not positive in any way.
In the case of the generic cookies, these assumptions would be a positive. If I describe the cookies as Oreos to my mother, an Oreo lover, a lot of positive associations will be made and the likelihood of her now wanting a cookie will go up. She will know what to expect when she goes to that table because she has an assumption of what an Oreo looks like and won’t be remotely nervous about it eating it because, although this individual cookie is different, the Oreo concept is not. Also, she might be a little more forgiving on the generic cookie’s taste because she is finding all the links between the cookie and an Oreo instead of the differences.
In Dyer’s article it is also noted that when we think about someone or something, we don’t necessarily think of them in the form of a stereotype. It is always “the individual over the collective or the mass” (13). Although a stereotype may come to mind about someone or something, once we have experienced it, our opinion of it may change. We still may hold the same stereotype about different forms of what we’ve experienced, ironically enough, but we can now decide for ourselves if what we’ve experienced fits the stereotype or is completely different.
When my mom eats the generic cookie she can either think “Wow, this is an Oreo,” “Hmm , this Oreo tastes a little weird. It’s either really stale or not really an Oreo,” “This is definitely not an Oreo, but it will do,” or “Ew, this is not remotely like an Oreo.” Depending on her thought process she will either continue to eat the cookie or simply throw it away. This, however, does not change her idea of an Oreo. Just because this cookie does not fit the mold of an Oreo does not mean that she changes her entire concept of a cookie made of two chocolate cookies held together with a vanilla cream. After experiencing one generic Oreo she will make a judgment about that one cookie based on her experience with that cookie, not on all generic cookies.
In the end, I believe we all have stereotypes, probably and hopefully a lot more complex than the stereotype of what constitutes a good Oreo, but they do exist. They appear in television shows, movies, books, and permeate into real life. In the media world, being a point of comparison is a mark of importance in pop culture. If a television show character can create slang, start a movement, or end up as the punch line to endless jokes, that show has succeeded. These characters and their traits become the new stereotypes that we judge people. Blondes could have brains thanks to Elle Woods, teenage pregnancy didn’t have to be a terrible experience thanks to Juno, and cops didn’t have to be the mean guys as McLovin found out with Officers Slater and Michaels. By being able to reach this standard in pop culture, these movies have shown that stereotypes exist not from nowhere, but from media texts in our culture. In the same way that my mother has an idea of what an Oreo is because she’s experienced it, we come to have stereotypes because we’ve seen or heard enough times that a particular trait should be associated with a particular type of person. Yet, the degree to which we look at a person as a stereotype that we have or an individual with particular traits depends on how much we care to get to know them. As the receiver’s of the media’s stereotyped images, we need to be aware of what we see and more importantly, what we accept.
Text Reference:
The role of stereotypes from Jim Cook and Mike Lewington (eds) Images of Alcoholism, London: British Film Institute (1979)
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