Stereotypes in soaps

[HBK-aholic]

Recently soaps such as Eastenders and Coronation Street have been critisized for stereotyping minorities in their programming. Black and Asian seem to be the targets in these so called stereotypes. For example, Denise, a black female in Eastenders is a single mother. Apparently this is a negative stereotype on black people.

In the same soap, an Asian family are about to start a business as a take away. In Coronation street a corner shop is owned by an Indian man. All these things have been critisized in recent weeks. Is this a negative stereotype or is this an accurate representation?

Personally, I don't have a problem with any of these things. So what, there's a black single mother? In Coronation street a girl had a child at 13, and she was a single mother. She was white.

So what an Indian man owns the corner shop? It's an accurate representation of many parts of the country.

 

[Uncle Sam]

The reason for this is poor writing ability, nothing else. I'd imagine most the writers of these soaps are white, and probably angry at the world that they didn't get anywhere with their mad writing skills.

I mean, the fact is, outside of some of Corrie, soap writers can't write for shit. Are they accurate stereotypes? Well, sort of. But the fact is they are stereotypes. However, this doesn't highlight underlying racism in British society or anything. It just shows a lack of ability on the writers' part; they just can't relate to characters with a vastly different background to them.

If they did try to write a non-stereotypical Indian family for example. Well, they couldn't. Simple as.

Oh, and Chelsea is a shit actress. I find that more negative than Denise being a single mum.

 

[RBH]

I agree Sam, I just did not know until know that British soaps were as bad as American. Let me provide some examples from American soap operas.

Days of our Lives
This show is centered around two white families the Hortons and the Bradys. There are barely any Hortons on the show anymore so it is basically the Brady show. The show has an italian family, the Dimera family with the patriarch being a man named Stefano. Guess what Stefano does for a living? He is a an Italian gangster. He has an entire crime empire and people working for him and you do not cross him. Wow, if that is not a stereotype I don't know what is. And they have always written Stefano this way. There is one black family. The Carvers. Abraham Carver and his wife Lexie Carver, who is the daughter of Stefano (he had an affair with a black woman named Celeste to produce Lexie) Guess how much airtime they get? They get probably 4 days out of 20 days in a month while families like the Bradys get all the airtime. The Bradys are always seen as the good family while the DiMeras are the bad family. Recently, another crime family came to town named the Vitalis...see the pattern? Italians are mobsters according to this show.

One Life to Live
This show prided itself on being the most diverse show ever! What happened? You have the two main families (similar to Days) the original family the Lords, and the newer but still established family the Buchanans.....a black man came to town a few years ago and guess what, he was a drug dealer named RJ Gannon. He has also done many nefarious activities such as frame ppl for murder and shoot ppl. According to this show, black guys are drug dealers and they shoot ppl. There is also a Mexican family. They are the Vegas. They are poor pretty much. They do not have that much money and guess what one of the members started out as a convict. So Hispanic ppl are either convicts or poor according to this show. My point is that this show has not brought a minority character to the canvas without establishing some sort of stererotype. Yesterday, a black guy and a black women who do not get any airtime except once a few months broke up for no reason simply because the writers wanted to write them out. So yes soap writers do suck and they do not know how to portray minorities.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

Depends how you look at it. Hate to sound ''racist'' agin, but how many Asian builders do you see? Not many. How many Asian pub landlords do you see? Not many. But how many Asian shopkeepers do you see? Lots. How many white people do you see running curry houses? It's stereotyping if you want it to be. But for most people it's just realistic.

As for Denise being a black single mother. I don't see what it matters. There are plenty of white single mothers in soaps. This is a case of people not thinking you can show somebody of ethnic oragin as being something other than the norm.