Well, this would qualify as a random post. This is a quickie paper for my English 102 class and I thought I would post it. The primary reason is I wanted to share and the secondary reason being that I want the plagirism filter they use at my college to choke on my own work. In other words, lord help me I just don't believe those things are right so I'm gonna spam this and f@kk with the system.
So without further ado:
http://realgar.hopto.org/OtherStuff/Prejudice.html
(*tell me if the link is broken please*)
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Primetime Prejudice
With close to 1000 channels now available on cable television, the medium seems to have something for everyone. But this medley of prime time shows and pay-per-view movies has an interesting lack of fat characters. In fact their under representation in any show can be confirmed by even the most casual observer when compared to real world statistics showing 65% of America’s adult population to be overweight (“Health United States 2003”). Is this indicative of a prejudice against fat actors in Hollywood? It is impossible for there to be a bias against fat characters in a society that consists predominantly of overweight individuals.
The movie and television industries are controlled almost entirely by the audiences that watch them. Audiences are routinely polled, or monitored, for information regarding what they watch and when. This information is turned into ratings for television shows, which in turn determine the amount of money a television station will charge for airtime for commercials during the show. And since profitability is critical to the companies that produce TV shows and movies, they will not create anything outside of what the audience craves. This means that the characters in a show and the cast of a show are both controlled by the audience.
But TV viewers are not prejudiced against fat characters. Considering the fact that more than half of Americans are overweight, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would be unfamiliar with obesity. Therefore it is impossible for anyone to have a negative predisposition against fat people due to a lack of knowledge about said fat people. Even more impossible is the concept of someone having a prejudice against themselves.
The lack of positions for overweight actors cannot be equated to a prejudice in the entertainment industry. It simply is a fact of life that audiences like to see athletic and petite actors and actresses, making this a matter of qualification. Although it would be nice to accommodate everyone’s wishes, it would be fiscally impossible to create extra positions just to accommodate out of work overweight actors.
It is true that at times TV shows and movies pull out all the stops when portraying fat characters and these jokes will inevitably offend some viewers. But since these jokes are a projection directed by the audience, which is overweight itself, it’s all in good fun. That is not to say that the movie industry is entirely without prejudice. When the audience is not familiar with a foreign culture or character, negative stereotypes tend to infect a show with lowbrow, offensive humor. In general, however, the audience serves as a great regulating mechanism for avoiding any kind of prejudice in movies and television shows and movie critics need to re-evaluate the situation.
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If you've got a free minute:
