I choose “The Westwater Family” by Tina Barney along with “24 People for Whom I Have Been Mistaken” by Roger Simomura because I feel like both photographs try and portray popular stereotypes of the different cultures. The definition of stereotype is oversimplified images of a person or a group.
In Tina Barney’s “ The Westwater Family” the subjects are a family who are all dressed in black and are standing in a kind of circle. The family members seem to be grandparents, father, mother, and then daughter. The black clothes and the surrounding furniture give off a sense of wealth. The colors of the walls are an off white with a big black piece of art on the right wall. The black painting has a strange eerie white face that is positioned over the woman who looks to be the mother figure in the photograph. The three center figures are all staring down wards towards a little sculpture. The eldest man is off center and to the back is wearing a bow tie. "To its devotees the bow tie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrariness point of view. The bow tie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. Bow ties are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think."[i] In the left side of the photograph is a man in brown suit that is out of focus and seems to be less important then the figures in black.
“ The Westwater Family” portrays the typical white upper class family. Benshoff and Griffin state “ the most common designation of whiteness in the United States is the term WASP, which stands for White Anglo-Saxon European”.
“24 People for Whom I have Been Mistaken” uses 24 images of men all very different but all connected threw the “Oriental” stereotype. The images are all different snap shots in all different settings.
“ 24 People for Whom I Have Been Mistaken” by Roger Simomura is exactly what Benshoff and Griffin state in Chapter 6. For most of the twentieth century American film has reduced the hundreds of different Asian cultures into this “Oriental” character. The “Oriental” character is most commonly shown with shifty behavior, broken English, and slanted eyes. Yellowface became popular in 1960’s- 1970’s when blackface was no longer considered acceptable.
I myself use this stereotype, the other day we had an Asian manager at my store and I automatically started calling him Jackie Chan. I also see every person with “slanted eyes” as being Chinese, which is ignorant to the fact that they could be anything from American to Tai.
Both of the Images I have looked at show typical stereotypes of different cultures.
The Westwater family being a good stereotype of wealth and power that the white race shares while the stereotype that all Asians are the same is a negative and false stereotype. Stereotypes can be conceived from a bad personal experiences with different races but more times then not the media plays a big part.
[i] ^ St John, Warren (June 26,2005). "A Red Flag That Comes in Many Colors". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/fashion/sundaystyles/26BOWTIE.html. Retrieved 2009-10-15.
