Ethnicity in the media

Many ethnic groups a represented in the media. Usually these groups are portrayed with a stereotype to go with them. I will be looking at a few examples that explore these stereotypes and negative and positive representations of ethnicity in the media.

The first thing ill be looking at is an australian KFC advert. It depicts a white man in a small crowd of black and brown people. He is very clearly the odd one out. He is wearing an australian shirt and sticks out. Although the point of the ad is that because he supports the loosing team he is the odd one out, but in the add, as all of the other fans are black, it makes what happens later on in the advert seem very racist and stereotypical. He proceeds to hand out a bucket of chicken. This is very racist as black people are stereotypically defined as eating fried chicken only. As a result it gives the impression that black people only eat chicken.

One of the adverts we looked at in class is the skittles advert. The advert depicts a Jamaican man milky a giraffe. The advert shows the happy Jamaican man milking the giraffe and laughing. Although this representation of the man isn't too bad as it shows he's happy this can also be seen as something not so great for the representation of Caribbean people. It shows he is is doing low payed labour and he seems to be happy. This representation shows black people as being poor but happy with what they've got.