Media stereotypes

With only few seconds to deliver, they spoon feed the viewer with a standard protocol in order for them to understand the information quickly. Watching it for the first few times, we may still be conscious and doubt that its true, however, when it is repeated many times again we will subconsciously apply this knowledge towards those we meet in real-life.

One of the most common stereotypes is the gender issue. Not too long ago, the media used to portray female as a housewife that cooks and take care of the family while the husband’s job is to earn hard to make end meets and so they live happily ever after. Now, as the situation change where women yearns for equal rights with the men, the media now portray female as successful working women, earning too along with her husband for the house BUT when the children have attitude problems, they blame the mother not the father; when the husband is having an affair, is because the wife is too busy and not attentive to him (not the other way around!).

The story usually end where 1.the wife quit her job in order to maintain the ‘equilibrium of the society’ or 2.the partner separate in their own way— 3.the women end up being a helpless loner/ desperate housewife.

The media may have portray a women as competitive as a men, BUT they are usually women that are fierce, rude, careless about the family. In real life, there are many successful working mother who have a happy family.

Another common stereotypes found is in the tourism advertisement. An example from daily life on how these ads affect us:When we think about Sabah and Sarawak, we will think of undeveloped place with the native living on the rumah panjang in the middle of the forest. In fact, they are quite as developed as us now. When we think of Middle East country we tend to think of camels as they main transportation. Infact, when I told this to one of my friend from Saudi Arabia, he told me that ‘camels are only for tourists, we have cars and trains’

Although these stereotype do exist in society but we must bear in mind not to be prejudices and justify them base on that as not all of them act in that way. Everyone is special in their own way!