Week 8: Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation

You can easily find out stereotypes through characters in comics and films. Stereotypes help communicate who a character is without needing too much explanation. The common examples of stereotype characters are nerds who put on huge round glasses and braces, martial arts masters who grow long white beards, or pirates who put on coats with one leg and a parrot. Likewise, stereotypes pull out the most common features in each character and this easily gives visual information to the audience. Even today it is common that artists use these as visual clues to bring across a point to the audience.

Although many artists tackle the same stereotypes, the level of creativity brought to it can affect the outcome. The examples of films that use stereotypes successfully are Disney animated films like “Frozen”. In Frozen, the Duke of Weselton is visually represented as a stereotype of someone who has a selfish and malicious personality which we can see through his appearances and gestures. Also the storyline is filled with cliché, so we can expect what will happen next. However, the films are entertaining because they contain fluent actions and solid storytelling techniques. I feel they pull out the best advantages of stereotypes; we know the characters and story plots but enjoy watching because we are already familiar with the stereotypes. Lack of stereotypes can confuse the audience and make it more difficult for them to follow stories and characters.

In my experience taking a traditional animation course in college, I realized that visual information must easily be read to the audience with a short time. I was assigned to design a character and animate him. At first, I considered creating a unique piece that excluded stereotypes or cliché. However, as I learned more details about animation, it became clear the usefulness of stereotypes. This is why animations or movies still go with stereotypes especially in a large industry such as Hollywood. Since then, I started to more focus on the stereotypes of my characters to give a foundation of their features. Ethically as long as you apply stereotypes responsibly, I believe they can be utilized as good tools. It will be bad if you use them too much or only rely on stereotypes and cliché in your work. Creativity should definitely be included to entertain the audience since their expectation levels are much higher than before. However, you cannot ignore the stereotype for communicating information simply and clearly.