of race” (p. 205). In general, they show that the media reflect the “polarizing tendencies of racial prototypes” (p. 152). Prototypes (which are distinct from stereotypes) “encode habitual ways of thinking that help people make sense of a complicated and uncertain world” (p. 60). Prototypes are specific examples typical of a category, as a robin is an example typical of the category, birds. When two categories are invoked (such as black and white people), prototypes of each tend to embody stark contrasts. In television drama, for instance, Entman and Rojecki find that black and white characters are portrayed in hierarchical relationships, but “in utopian reversal: over 70 percent of Black characters have professional or management positions” (p. 152, emphasis original). Although this is a positive development over earlier portrayals of blacks as subservient to whites, it reflects a continuation of prototypes of black and white Americans as polar opposites, industrious and responsible on the one hand, and lazy and irresponsible, on the other. Further, depicting black and white characters in hierarchical relationships limits the degree of contact between characters of different races. Television dramas display close interpersonal relationships only between characters of the same race, a portrayal that does not promote racial comity.
A similar, mixed picture emerges from Entman and Rojecki’s examination of Hollywood movies. Movies are more racially progressive than television, in that they often include black stars in the top billing. Many minor characters and extras are black. And yet, black actors play a more limited range of roles, and black characters are often portrayed in stereotypical ways. For instance, Entman and Rojecki found that all of the black women in their sample were sexualized, that is, “associated with an implicitly animal or biological sexuality” (p. 198), as opposed to a romantic sexuality or a non‐sexualized portrayal. White women were portrayed sexually more often than men, who were portrayed sexually at the same rate for both black and white characters, but white women were portrayed this way much less often than black women. They conclude that “traditional gender roles, the use of women as sexual objects, continues in Hollywood’s top films—but especially so for Black women” (p. 199). The contrast of language use (swearing and speaking ungrammatically) by black and white characters is striking, as well:
Black males were more profane than White males, though a majority of both used profanity in this sample of movies. All but one of the Black females swore, 89 percent, compared with 17 percent of White females. The disparities in ungrammatical usage were even greater—in fact barely any White characters spoke ungrammatically compared with around half the Blacks. Part of this finding may be due to Blacks tending to portray less‐educated characters. Still…we found examples of Blacks with high education using ungrammatical, perhaps stereotypically “ghetto” speaking styles. And even if occupational differences partially explain the differences in language use, this pattern nonetheless constructs African Americans as occupying a different, quite separate cultural universe from Euro‐Americans. (p. 199–200)
Television commercials tell a more dismal story of the image of blacks.6 Though blacks appear in commercials in roughly the proportion of their population in the wider society, they often appear in token positions. Moreover, blacks are disproportionately portrayed in commercials for necessities, and rarely appear in those for luxury goods—or for pet food. As Entman and Rojecki put it, “only Whites have pets” in TV advertising (p. xv). In other words, “Whites are the ones that occupy the realm of ideal humanity, of human warmth and connection, as symbolized occasionally by their love for their pets” (p. xvi). Their content analysis of 1620 advertisements demonstrates that whites were shown in “contact” with the audience (e.g. speaking to the audience or appearing in a close‐up) or interacting with each other (e.g. speaking to or touching other characters) three times as often as blacks, and that when hands appeared on the screen (e.g. holding the product) the hand models were five times more likely to be white than black. More chillingly, in a smaller, follow‐up study, they find that 55 white children appeared facing the camera for one second or longer, but only four black children do so. This implicit devaluing of black children was highlighted by their finding that white children appeared in advertisements with adults (e.g. as parents) much more often than black children, and the white children’s parents were more likely to touch or kiss them than the adults shown with black children. Entman and Rojecki also found almost no interracial contact in television commercials.
In general, Entman and Rojecki’s work demonstrates what they term the “liminality” of black people in American society. Liminality describes “Blacks’ transition from rejection toward acceptance” (p. 206).7 Though the portrayal of black Americans has progressed beyond “old‐fashioned racism,” an era of complete acceptance of different racial groups with full integration in society has not yet been reached.
Critique
The reflection approach refers to diverse scholarship within the sociology of art that shares the core assumption that art is a mirror held up to society. Albrecht (1954) identified six types of reflection in the analysis of literary fiction: (1) the notion that literature embodies norms and values of a society, (2) the psychoanalytic variant that it fulfills shared emotional needs and fantasies, (3) a Jungian view that literature arises from the collective unconscious and thus is similar to dreams, (4) the belief that literature reflects a Hegelian “essential spirit” of society, (5) the Marxian view that forms of literature are a result of the economic conditions of the elite or of the rising classes, and (6) literature reflects demographic trends. Peterson (1979) suggests a different way of dividing reflection: (1) those that focus on how art reflects the whole society and (2) more modest studies claiming that art reflects only the local milieu of the subculture that consumes it. If we combine Peterson’s and Albrecht’s schemes, we have at least twelve ways in which art might reflect society, and we could probably think of many more. But which is correct? A major problem with the reflection approach, then, is that its underlying metaphor is defined so broadly that we cannot specify which aspects of society are reflected or which groups.
Laslett (1976) cautions historical sociologists who would draw conclusions about real life on the basis of literary evidence. Literature, after all, is fiction. There is no way to know whether situations in literature were contrived because they were common in the society or precisely because they were uncommon. Laslett cites several examples where literature and society do not mesh. For instance, literature from the pre‐industrial age portrayed British households as large, when in fact they contained, on average, fewer than five people. In essence, Laslett argues that any reflection of society in literature is mediated by literary practices and conventions. The fiction of large households, with many people from servants to the patriarch living under one roof, creates more dramatic possibilities than the reality of small ones, which explains why so many novels depicted large households. Similar difficulties arise with most other art forms. To overcome them, Albrecht has suggested comparing art to other indices of the “essential spirit” of a society. Using a variety of sources is essentially what Helsinger does in her well‐researched and convincing study. Such comparisons help researchers avoid the literary fallacy, which is “deducing the ‘spirit of the age’ from its art and then rediscovering it is its art” (Albrecht, 1954: 431).
This point may be well taken, but if it is advisable to look at other data one might ask: Why study cultural artifacts at all? Why not study society itself? For instance, Goffman did not need to look at advertisements to learn that unequal relationships exist between men and women. The answer is that most researchers are looking for information more interesting than just the number of people in a household, and that supplemental evidence does not have to come from direct observation of the society. Goffman clearly demonstrated that sexism is reflected in advertisements. But he also uncovered a variety of pictorial styles that portray the unequal relationship between the sexes, which also, he argues, tell us about real‐life rituals.
Often the evidence we seek is not directly available, either because it has been lost through the passage of time or because there is
