Cortés

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

Like a leaking faucet, the news and entertainment media slowly saturate their audiences with a “drip torture” of repeated images, sounds and words, says Carlos Cortés, professor emeritus of history at the University of California Riverside. Cortés has spent decades studying how viewers and listeners have come to accept certain mental “constructs” about diverse cultures, enforced by media repetition. “The media’s power to teach is not in its accuracy but in frequency,” he said.

To demonstrate such constructs during a fall seminar at IU Kokomo, Cortés had students listen to a movie soundtrack with their eyes closed. He asked them to describe the movie’s action from what they heard. The thrumming tom-tom beat, followed by a mournful Taps could mean just one thing, students concluded: “Savage Indians” had attacked “innocent white settlers” in a Western wilderness. Yet, the movie clip showed only actor James Stewart walking through a canyon in the aftermath of a battle.

The associations the students drew “are not accidents,” Cortés said. “These are ideas deep in your mind, waiting to be tapped by external forces. Moviemakers consciously decide to manipulate viewers. The ‘gaze’ (point of view) of the camera gets you to identify with (Stewart’s) character.”

In another example, Cortés noted that we accept the idea that a romantic couple in a movie can be a man and woman decades apart in age—if the man is the older of the two. “There are no Ben Affleck–and–Angela Lansbury pairings,” Cortés said, drawing chuckles from the students. “You laugh because you know it would not happen. The gender bias is entrenched.”

Choice of language is another way that media ingrains stereotypes, Cortés said. “Pick out a racial or social group and notice for two weeks how they are mentioned in the media,” he challenged the students. “Is there a repeated adjective associated with that group?”

Cortés’ own research turned up more than 110 newspaper and magazine articles and ads that referred to small towns in Latin American countries—and by association, their residents—as “sleepy.” Sources ranged from Atlantic Monthly to a James Mitchner novel and a ski report out of New Mexico. A Sports Illustrated profile of a Brazilian basketball player used “somnolent”—“the three-syllable ‘sleepy,’ ” Cortés observed. He showed examples of locations with Hispanic heritage trying to beat the “sleepy” rap, describing themselves as “not-so-sleepy” or “once sleepy.”

“Imagine calling New York City ‘not-so-sleepy,’ ” he suggested. “But, it’s okay to use that term for heavily Latino San Antonio.”

Villages in other parts of the globe get their own media labels, Cortés said. European villages are routinely “quaint” or “picturesque.” Asian villages are “ancient,” “traditional” or “exotic.” (“There’s no good or bad value here; these words can have dual meanings,” Cortés said.) African villages are “remote,” “primitive” and “warring.”

News stories often describe African nations as mired in “black-on-black violence,” Cortés said. “Has there ever been any ‘white-on-white’ violence? Sure, but it’s never depicted in the media as racial violence. That’s media bias, when you treat two racial groups differently.”

Cortés believes that most media use of stereotypical labels is not intended as bias. “It’s more likely, they’re just lazy,” he said. Headline writers are especially guilty of simplifying complex issues by relying on stereotypical language, according to Cortés. “They don’t want to stop and think in multi-racial terms.”

He showed magazine coverage of the riots in Los Angeles responding to Rodney King’s first trial. “This was America’s first ‘equal opportunity’ riot,” Cortés said. “African Americans, whites, Latinos, Asians all took part. But, on its cover, U.S. World and News Report ‘framed’ the riot as ‘Black vs. White.’ ”

Similarly, readers and media viewers “don’t always analyze” what media teach about diverse people, Cortés said. “If others aren’t part of my group… I don’t have to think about the consequences for those others, of how it’s distorting their image.”

“In the learning communities, we’ve been teaching that speech is symbolic action, and that you can make changes with what you say.”

—Susan Sciame-Giesecke, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, IU Kokomo

Cortés has worked for changes in media from the inside. He has written film and television documentaries, has hosted the Public Broadcasting Service television series Why in the World? and currently is a consultant to the Nickelodeon preschool cartoon series Dora the Explorer. Dora is a young girl who speaks both Spanish and English. In each Dora script, she solves problems by bridging the language barrier between people who only speak Spanish and others who only speak English. Cortés proposed this format. “We’re intentionally sending the message that it’s good to be bilingual and to move across cultures,” he said.

Susan Sciame-Giesecke, dean of IU Kokomo’s School of Arts and Sciences, applauded Cortés’ call for students to be critical of media messages. Several freshmen learning communities heard Cortés, she noted. “In the learning communities, we’ve been teaching that speech is symbolic action, and that you can make changes with what you say,” Sciame-Giesecke said. A man of 70, Cortés is inspiring as “a person who has a passion for something,” she added. “It makes you wonder, what difference will you be making when you’re 70?”