CMCstudent, 4/22

I agree with Kuloco who says “America is known as a melting-pot of different cultures. However, the media produces images of only a portion of these different ethnicities.” This is very true, American media is selective about what they choose to show us regarding other ethnicities and how they depict them. When minorities are shown they are shown as the media wants them to, as our seasoning to our wonderful world. Ya right, America just wants to bank of them, which is all they care about, big media really does not care if we are a happy bowl of soup. Instead they want to depict these people as spicy and exotic. The media does not depict the minorities as they truly are. Americans would find out they are just like them, how boring would that be! Instead, America takes this “seasoning” and uses it where they like leaving an absence of reality. Companies put in their own myth about the product and why it is exotic. So instead of contributing the exotic to where it really comes from, they show examples of where it should be in American culture. A good example of this was from CMC100 there was an ad for a pair of Indian Moccasins. The back drop was in elegant fall colors, and there was a picture of one brown leather moccasin with exotic beadwork. These were clearly for a sophisticated lady. What the ad didn’t mention was that these are the same moccasins you can find any Indian wearing if you were to travel to India. Or that in India you could get them for a fraction of the cost. The ad worked with the myth, made up by the company, that sophisticated women could be one with nature this fall by purchasing a pair of these leather moccasins. This shows that media needs such control that they must make up their own myths about things, taking true ethnicity and turning into something they can have power over. It seems to be the only time the dominant want to acknowledge spice and exoticism is when they have control over it and are profiting from it. Otherwise they see it as a threat, and want nothing to do with it. This is what happens when the culture or society believes itself to be number one, they use everyone who is not them to look better, classy.