Rush Hour. (1998). IMDb. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120812/
Rush Hour 2. (2001). IMDb. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266915/
Rush Hour 3. (2007). IMDb. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293564/
Sanders, M., & Ramasubramanian, S. (2012). An examination of African Americans’ stereotyped perceptions of fictional media characters. Howard Journal of Communications, 23(1), 17–39.
←23 | 24→
Sands, Z. (2018). Film comedy and the American dream. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.
Sanford and Son. (1972–1977). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068128/
Saturday Night Live. (1998). Eddie Murphy as Buckwheat. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274795/
Showtime. (2002). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284490/
Shrek. (2001). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/
Smith, R., & Lux, D. (1993). Historic method in consumer research: Developing causal explanations of change. Journal of Consumer Research, 19(4), 595–610.
Svetkey, B., Watson, M., & Wheat, A. (2009, March 20). How do you solve a problem like Madea? Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=35916b79-15b3-4761-b9b185d31eef21c5%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=#AN=37005658&db=f5h
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Tan, A., Tan, G., Audeyena, T., Crandall, H., Fukushi, Y., Nyandwi, A., . . . Wu, C. (2001, July–September). Changing negative stereotypes: The influence of normative peer information. Howard Journal of Communication, 12, 171–180.
Trading Places. (1983). IMDb. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/
A Trickster and a Foxx Website. (2010). Retrieved from https://ignitiontoremix.wordpress.com/more-best-of/a-trickster-and-a-foxx/
Turner, P. (1994). Ceramic uncles and celluloid mammies: Black images and their influence on culture. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Watkins, M. (1991). What was it about ‘Amos and Andy’? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/books/what-was-it-about-amos-n-andy.html
←24 | 25→
Ghettofabulous: How Low Can You Go?
Not all African Americans live in poverty or in the inner city, yet somehow American society seems to believe that black equals ghetto. In her book Ghetto Nation, Cora Daniels (2007) argues that in the twenty first century ghetto no longer refers to where you live but how you live.
It is a mindset, and not limited to a class or a race. Some things are worth repeating: ghetto is not limited to a class or a race. Ghetto is found in the heart of the nation’s inner cities as well as the heart of the nation’s most cherished suburbs; among those too young to understand (we hope) and those old enough to know better; in little white houses, and all the way to the White House; in corporate corridors, Ivy League havens, and, of course, Hollywood. (p. 8)
Ghettofabulous is a problematic pop culture frame that refers predominantly to a bias about black culture displaying extreme tendencies like loud talking, garish dressing, bling blinging, fighting, and certain levels of ignorance. It has become a repetitive image in pop culture where white college students throw ghettofabulous parties (Wise, 2010), Miley Cyrus’s twerks at a VMA performance (Hare, 2013), Cardi B holds a $500K ghettofabulous baby shower (Heller, 2018), average women flaunt long nails with extreme manicures like Niecy Nash in Claws (Penrice, 2018), and a California yoga studio gives out do-rags for their booty-shaking, ghettofabulous classes (Baker, 2013).
←25 | 26→
Domonoske (2014) said, in a NPR interview, the word “ghetto” has evolved from meaning a segregated, restricted neighborhood to an individual context such as acting, dressing or talking.
[It is] Being ghetto, or behaving in a low-class manner (see also ratchet). Ghettofabulous, flashy glamour without the wealth. Ghetto as an adjective, roughly synonymous with jury-rigged, for anything cobbled together out of subpar materials.
Daniels (2007) adds that ghetto as a state of mind is hard to describe but easy to recognize. For example, she spots an ice cream truck rolling down the streets of Brooklyn blasting Lil John’s “Okaaaaay,” she watches a contest on VH1 where they are searching for Nelly’s Miss Apple Bottom (a regular girl with an irregular waist to butt ratio), she lambasts the Oscar nominated film Hustle and Flow when the pimp-wanna-be-rapper sings “Beat that Bitch,” she complains about young people who are calling each other baby daddies or baby mammas (a term she sees as dismissive), she admits frustration concerning the number of youth living in today’s depressing culture of nihilism and self-destruction, and she wonders why in school if a black child is not ghetto then they are seen as “acting white.” Because the popularity of ghetto in American society is based on a lack of self-respect, Daniels worries most of all that too many of these biased frames embrace the worst instead of the best of black culture.
Giles (2010) defines media framing as the process by which a topic is presented from a particular angle (or a variety of angles), inviting audiences to draw particular conclusions, and to make particular allusions to other topics. Entman (2007) describes the process of biased framing as introducing or raising the salience and importance of certain ideas, to some extent getting audiences to think, feel or decide in a particular way.
The text contains frames, which are manifested by the presence or absence of certain key words, stock phrases, stereotypical images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements. (p. 52)
In this chapter, the biased framing of black culture as ghettofabulous on television, in film, through rap music, for news, and as urban fiction is explored. According to Mukherjee (2006), ghettofabulous offers new standards of cool and the spectacle within popular media emerges less as subcultural resistance and more as hegemonic cooptation through capitalism.
←26 | 27→
Ghettofabulous in Television
Reality
