The Plague in Stereotypes and Its Acknowledgement

Art, specifically visual arts, has long since been one of the greatest sources of self expressionism since its inception. As a method of expressing oneself, it naturally possess the ability to incorporate human upbringings, political and social views, and collectively present the ideas present in each time period. With this in mind, one of the major topics worth analyzing is the racial dynamics in the United States. Now, during the second decade of the twenty-first century, the term visual art ceases to remain limited to paintings and sculptures. The term is now extremely inclusive, with television shows, films, and even video games on the list, while also being very controversial over what it includes. However, this essay will serve to present that while the legitimacy of these media forms as art forms has been a target of constant debate, video games, along with films and TV shows, serves the purpose of eloquently representing racial dynamics in modern America. Humans find entertainment interesting and entertaining because they can relate to them, in this case, the application and acknowledgement of racial stereotypes. Through the presented ideas leading to racial stereotypes, it can be seen that while the media is without doubt predominantly white while being racist against any other minorities, it can also be concluded that modern America’s oversensitivity of race only serves to further spread the plague of racism.

    To start off, the most accessible form of modern visual arts is television shows, something families with old and young can access in a push of a button with little regard to financial situation. Whether it’s movies or shows, America has definitely seen an increase in equality on screen, examples of such being Will Smith’s Detective Spooner character in I, Robot and the beloved Glenn, portrayed by Korean-American Steven Yeun, in The Walking Dead. These characters fit perfectly into their respective societies in a way that their ethnicities were not ignored but at the same time they didn’t have to “act white” to fit in.

However, despite this, minorities, Asians, African Americans, and Hispanics, still tend to only play as minor, static character archetypes for the sake of other characters, tend to be lacking in representation, or play a role that white audiences would be familiar with: the stereotyped version of their race. As an example, The Vampire Diaries is a supernatural action and suspense show taking place in the modern era, however, in the first four seasons (a total of 89 episodes), only three Asians has had time on screen, all of which are currently dead. Annabelle Zhu was first portrayed as a cunning and strong teenage vampire. The longer a vampire has lived for, the stronger their physical strength is, and Anna was turned during the American Civil War period. However, this image was quickly shattered when it’s revealed that she was no match for the Salvatore brothers (the series protagonists who are of the same age as Anna) and when she ended up holding a cute, weak girl image throughout the rest of the show, especially towards her love interest Jeremy Gilbert, a human. At the same time, the second Asian introduced, Pearl Zhu, Anna’s mother, plays directly into the typical strict Asian parent but in the end loves her child stereotype. From this example, the image of the weak little Asian girl and her strict but family oriented mother is further propagated.

The lack of representation, besides the low count of on-screen-Asians, can be seen in the third Asian character introduced in the show: Nate. Nate isn’t a prominent character in the show (he appears in only two episodes), he’s one of the villain’s lackeys. However, he’s a hybrid, a combination of a werewolf and a vampire, supposedly one of the strongest species created as they don’t burn in the sun or die from wooden objects like vampires, and are also not subject to the curse of uncontrollably turning during a full moon like a werewolf, all the while possessing the strength and speed of both species. Regardless of this, Nate easily gets his head ripped off with a chain by an African American vampire hunter, Connor Jordan (a human that simply possesses slightly more strength than any other humans), and his head held up like a trophy. Nate’s entire role was to act as a foil to demonstrate Connor’s strength. The lack of representation leads to a general misconception that what’s shown on screen represents an entire race, and the use of characters as foils simply results in the entire race to slide down the racial hierarchy.

Nate’s death scene in The Vampire Diaries