I would like to follow a theme about children and families for my artifacts—I would like to include Modern Family (the show), a Cheerios commercial feedback (Facebook), and a summer reading list for a middle or high school.
-Modern family hits on some key topics that are integral in the current societal norms featuring very disparate families that are currently becoming more prevalent. This contains a gay couple with very different demeanors, a biracial couple with a contrasting age difference and a couple that interchanges their normative gender roles. The show also paved the road for other family sitcoms centered on minority families.
-General Mills was one of the first companies to air a commercial featuring a biracial couple to have a child. The amount of press this commercial received was alarming—especially since much of it was negative. Others noted that they don’t see color… but they realize what the upset of the commercial is about—so color blind is not a thing. This can also bring into question what people are comfortable writing online, but wouldn’t consider articulating.
– I would like to find a summer reading list of a school where the majority of the students are minorities. I imagine the books will hold the typical cannon literature. However, maybe I’ll be surprised. I think this could provide some interesting rhetoric to why the mismatched texts are chosen for students who will struggle to make connections to the works that they probably won’t find interesting. These lists are often dreaded by both parents and children.
The idea of a using a reading list from a school is excellent. Some schools might incorporate multicultural texts involving immigration or slavery. Others might focus on a female heroine to teach girls that women can be represented in a strong role. Some might just involve western European literature focusing on the white male perspective. Either way the text has a lot to say about the school and it’s values.
Modern Family shows how alternate families are becoming more mainstream. Instead of the typical nuclear families, you get families from all types of backgrounds. You could also mention other shows that focus on asian, black or hispanic families. Sometimes these shows work with stereotypes of minorities and it says a lot about the show for tackling them. However, shows might reinforce stereotypes at time. I’ve never seen Modern Family but i’ve heard that it satirizes stereotypes and dispels a lot of them by making fun of them. Lastly, I think multicultural shows can say a lot about how the mainstream media see’s interracial, gay and alternative couples.
I think you could really do a lot with “color-blindness” in General Mills. A lot of people profess to be ‘color-blind’, especially when talking to african-americans, middle easterners and Hispanics. What does this say about a nation? A country where people try to ignore their culture and their differences? I think this builds up to a huge culture shock when people come into contact with other cultures.
I never noticed the gender roles thing about the parents in modern family! That’s so obvious now that it’s mentioned. Claire is definitely the more dominating one, and Phil is more creative and silly. Gender roles in parenting is interesting and comes from so many arenas. The commercial about a bi-racial couple, and the negative backlash reminds me of how Target got boycotted by some extreme conservatives. We think times are changing, but unfortunately there are people still holding on to outdated norms. I love commercials that feature gay couples and their children or biracial families because it normalizes something that is totally normal. People will always say they aren’t prejudice, but when a cheerios commercial becomes upsetting because of the actors thats when you know we aren’t as far along as a society as we’d like to imagine. The school reading is super interesting! When i lived in NY in a predominately white school, we rarely learned about any other perspectives. When i moved to south florida, because of all the cultures, i was exposed to so much more. I’m sure the teachers in diverse schools try to appeal to the diversity and teach the students how to regard diversity within the literature assigned.