"Give us a black Superman!"

I have certainly enjoyed the first 80 pages of this text. There is a little bit of reiteration of the items we've spoken about in class up to this point, but it's nice to solidify my understanding of the critical lens and dominant discourses.

I couldn't help but think of my love of the comic book world and how authors and artists are always trying to "reboot" a series or a popular comic book icon. In "reboots" they try to stray from the past discourses and, instead, employ today's conventions and discourses on a character that has only known the 1940s American ideal for example. What's cool about these reboots is that, when they are done right, they show how it doesn't actually matter what gender or race or background a hero has, the outcome is the same—they're just a symbolic representation of the heroic journey philosophy that so many of us participate in, knowingly or unknowingly.

I'm not trying to say that the comic book world has it figured out, because they most obviously don't (an evaluation of even the present-day hyper-sexualization of comics is a prime example). But, the characters we see in media are just hollow characters that actors come and fill. Yes, they have important backstories and the plot is dependent upon them and so on. But, the cast of a film is just a hollow turnstile that actors move in and out of. Take any American film and "reboot it" in Africa or Asia and you'll likely see the same discourses we see in America, just adjusted and turned to fit the prevailing worldviews of that culture.

Notes:

• It might be nice if this book had "American" written into the title somewhere because it is predominantly about American media. But, maybe that is a "for granted" fact for its audience.

• I hope I'm not the only one who asked over and over again "How would [insert another country/race/ethnicity here] portray their leading and supporting actors in film and television?" 
• This question is especially intriguing because the dominant discourses of a place are probably likely to represent its people's worldview much like the discourses outlined in the opening chapters of this text. It's obviously not within Larson's scope to discuss the portrayal of media and minorities in other places, nor is it her prerogative. That doesn't mean it's not an interesting question to ask.
• My familiarity with both Hong Kong-produced Kung Fu movies and animated Japanese movies is admittedly greater than it should be—I spent a heap of my adolescent Alaskan years avoiding the frozen terrors of the tundra and seeking solace in the hyper-action of Hong Kong kung fu and Japanime. Occasionally, in both genres, you'll find an American (almost always male, and almost always white—which says something in and of itself, I suppose) represented in a sort of American reduction of stupidity and wealth or brashness and overbearance. 
• This is just to emphasize that 1) stereotyping or discrimination of minorities seems to happen to minorities in other places where white isn't at the top of the media hierarchy and 2) media everywhere is exactly what the word implies: the medium through which a certain person/people distributes a portrayal of their own (often a subconscious worldview) artistic perspective.

• The portrayal of Native Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans heretofore in media is undeniably shameful. I've seen so many of the examples mentioned within the text. Interestingly, so many of the films and shows mentioned in those three chapters serve as sort of time capsules for evaluating how Americans inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) felt about minority races. I say "interestingly" because there are still problems with the prevailing American media discourse, but the same people who can look back upon past eras as distinct dioramas are often not capable of taking a lens to the current state of media. Also, and most importantly, it is a lot harder to distinguish racism in today's era when compared to the treatment of minorities in American media of the past. Today, it is often subtle.Which leads me to my next point...

• Much of the criticism I've read about gender, media, and minorities approaches the overall argument in such a way that it sets up a lose-lose situation for anyone who wants to argue against it or offer any kind of defense (even for the sake of discussion). Though, activists and proponents of minority representation in media argue that the discriminations in the discourse are glaringly obvious, some arguments that I have read are drastically overreaching in their assessment of films or shows just to make a point. I say "lose-lose situation" because our last author, Karen Ross, would argue that any type of defense for the way someone talks or acts that is contrary to how that CDA analyst perceives a situation is just resorting to a "reactionary discourse"  (an example would be a person trying to defend their situation with phrases such as "I grew up in the hood, and all my friends are black. Why would I be racist?" or "I am the only boy in a home of six sisters and I value women profusely, so don't call me sexist").  While I invariably agree with Larson's approach to media and minorities in our text so far, there is still a part of me that is trying to work out the offensive notion that CDA has to be primarily about what media is doing WRONG instead of an occasional evaluation of how minority, gender, et al. has been treated fairly or maybe even "honestly"in a film or other form of media. 
• That word, "honestly", is dangerous because even when a minority (or, hell, even a majority) artist or director seeks to represent a particular societal situation as honestly and "true-to-life" as possible, there is inevitably room to make the argument that they are just projecting or perpetuating a prevailing discourse; that, if they are a minority, they are just trying to please the majority and are subdued by the discourse. What other options are there? When someone has set out to make a production that is true to life, they're not trying to depict a utopia, an idea, or the paradisiacal—they're trying to show things as they are. That doesn't mean they are intentionally or overtly making an argument that things should stay that way. 

• The reality is that there are real issues in America (and, as I noted, in other places I'm sure) with regard to representative discourses. But, if much of our media is a litmus test for the status quo, should we be trying to change the media discourse, or should we be trying to change something bigger than that?  I suppose that is the niche for CDA though. It's viable to argue that a certain discourse is recycled and perpetuated through media consumption; that we can't make bigger changes when media is always undermining those changes with "-ist" discourses. 

In the least, I have come to appreciate the lenses of CDA because it is most definitely dangerous to only know one point of view your whole life, incapable of understanding another angle.