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Learning Objectives
- To differentiate theoretical perspectives on respect and inequality.
- To explain how lack of respect or status can worsen marginalization.
- To compare and contrast the effects of erasure, stereotyping, and representation in popular media.
- To identify gender scripts in everyday life and how they influence our behaviour.
- To critically apply the idea of “othering” and name the conscious or unconscious use of this process to bolster power structures.
- To recognize the importance of discourse in shaping our view of the world.
- To identify approaches to increasing respect for all people in society.
Summary
Introduction
Respect is a non-tangible type of survival capital. Disrespect can harm people socially, psychologically, economically, and culturally. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs organizes human needs in rising stages and suggests that more basic needs must be met before an individual will strive to satisfy higher-level needs. The fourth level – self-esteem – is the stage where people satisfy their need for appreciation, respect, esteem, and approval. This is necessary to move on to the final stage, self-actualization. As well, a lack of respect for particular categories of people helps produce and reproduce degrading messages that prolong their maltreatment and exclusion.
Theoretical Perspectives on Respect and Inequality
Functionalists argue that depriving people of the money, authority, and respect they want makes these rewards more valuable and motivates people to gain more education and work harder to get them. However, not all forms of respect can be accessed through study and hard work. Conflict theorists see unequal access to respect as the result of efforts by the wealthy and powerful to deny others the respect they covet. This unequal access to respect negatively affects people’s self-esteem and motivation. At the extreme, it results in “alienation,” a feeling of distance from oneself, one’s activities, one’s colleagues, and humanity in general. Symbolic interactionists focus on face-to-face exchanges in which people seek and receive respect. They note that shows of respect and disrespect can be subtle, and sometimes even unintentional.
Defining Our Terms
Respect forbids “treating a person as a mere means to an end” or “ignoring their personhood or their humanity.” People are disrespected when they are treated as someone who is lesser than another. Respect is different from other types of survival capital in that, at least in theory, respect is unlimited. In this chapter, we explore disrespect in popular discourse. Discourse refers to the communication of information, thoughts, and ideas. It includes language, art, and all forms of expression. Popular discourse involves conversations and messages that are readily available and widely distributed.
Sociologists have often studied “respect” in relation to status. Status is a measure of social standing or respectability and can be inborn or earned. Often people of a similar status gather as members of “status groups,” which are groups that celebrate and protect their common characteristic. Status is also a term sociologists use to describe a person’s social rank or position. Everyone holds many statuses at once (e.g., mother, doctor, athlete, etc.). A person’s multiple statuses are known as a status set. Some statuses carry power, prestige, wealth, and comfort, while others are popularly understood as “bad” or deceitful. Both achieved and ascribed statuses play a large part in controlling social rewards like respect. Moreover, when resources appear limited, money may be diverted from people that society views as less deserving. In this way, a person’s status may influence their chances for a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life. Damaging ideas about status reproduce across society, becoming entrenched and perpetuating inequality.
Racialized People in Canada
One type of disrespect is the unrealistic and damaging representation of vulnerable populations in popular media. In his book Orientalism, Edward Said analyzes how the West inaccurately represents the Middle East in a way influenced by colonial and post-colonial attitudes. The diverse people of Middle Eastern countries are often falsely grouped into a few “types.” They are depicted as the “Other,” a separate, backwards, opposite, and inferior population. This othering justifies colonial or imperial ambitions. Othering applies to all superior and subordinate relationships (e.g., relations between genders). After 9/11, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment grew in the West. Terms like Arab or Muslim became synonymous with terrorist. False assumptions and outright lies about the Middle East were widely circulated.
British cultural theorist Stuart Hall shows that despite the diversity in people’s appearance, people get placed in just a few discrete racial categories with fixed characteristics. Hall proposes that people with the power to define what is “normal” and what is marginal manipulate these categories (e.g., the role the media plays in defining what race is). Images of race produced and reproduced in the media reinforce people’s ideas about what someone from a particular racial category can or will be. He also looks at what it means, socially, to be classified into a racial category and how this classification is used to justify unequal treatment.
In 2012, a new design for the Canadian $100 bill was proposed, featuring what appeared to be an Asian woman scientist peering into a microscope. Focus group participants had concerns the scientist appeared to be Asian. The Bank of Canada had the image redrawn, imposing what a spokesman called a “neutral ethnicity” for the scientist, who now appears to be Caucasian. The imagined “neutrality” of white skin is a practice called invisibilizing whiteness. This reinforces ideas that being white is “normal” and being non-white is odd or different.
Women in Canada
Another type of disrespect is indifference. In the past few decades, sociologists have turned their attention to how the lack of quality roles for women in Hollywood movies reflects beliefs about women’s status in real life. The Bechdel test is a popular tool for rating the representation of women in film. It has three criteria: first, the film has at least two women in it; second, the women talk to each other; and third, the conversation is about something other than a man. Despite the test’s low standard, few blockbuster Hollywood movies pass. On average, men get more screen time and more speaking time in movies than women. Moreover, women are often cast in one of just a few roles. They are more likely than men to be portrayed as parents, in committed romantic relationships, or wearing sexy clothes, and less likely to be portrayed as employed or in high-prestige positions. Some suggest the poor representation of women stems from industry beliefs about what audiences want to see, but films that feature strong, complex female characters fare better than most at the box office. Others suggest the lack of women in film stems from the lack of women making films. Some argue the lack of realistic women proves that movies are patriarchal. The male character, who is usually white and straight, is the default against which all others are measured for their difference.
In hopes of gaining social approval, we usually follow gender scripts, generally understood rules for how “normal” males and females behave in our society. But these gender scripts are limiting, and there are real-world consequences of the invisibilizing of women. For example, consumer products are often designed to fit bigger bodies, from smartphones to astronaut suits to hard hats. This is related to Bourdieu’s notion of “embodied capital” – capital that is embodied in a person’s appearance and other people’s perceptions of their appearance.
Immigrants in Canada
The mischaracterization of newcomers to Canada (e.g., as uneducated and a drain on society) is a common form of disrespect in popular discourse, and when mainstream news media tell this story, they shape public opinion accordingly. However, even though Canadians hold some damaging beliefs about immigrants, one survey showed that we rank near the top when it comes to positive perceptions of immigrants compared to other OECD countries.
Negative portrayals of immigrants show a lack of information and firsthand familiarity with the people in question. Often, they arise in periods of economic difficulty among groups of people who feel they are in competition with immigrants for jobs, housing, social services, and other social benefits. Some immigrants are also mischaracterized as criminals, even though evidence has not shown a strong correlation between high immigration rates and high crime rates. The cumulative effect of mainly negative accounts of immigrants is distorting and degrading. This lack of respect can have dangerously harmful effects that range from stereotyping to job discrimination, social exclusion, and hate crimes.
Indigenous Peoples in Canada
Since before Confederation, Indigenous Peoples have been negatively characterized by European settlers in places like novels, postcards, and early colonial newspapers. These media reinforced a binary relationship between white, European settlers and Indigenous Peoples and reduced Indigenous Peoples to inferior, childlike beings. The Indigenous view was absent. Disrespectful images of Indigenous Peoples continue to abound in the media. We use the term Imagined Indian to describe these two-dimensional characterizations (e.g., “noble savages,” “squaws”) that bear little resemblance to reality.
The systematic de-humanizing of Indigenous Peoples throughout colonization is what sociologists call a strategy of differentiation, producing a view that one population is inherently different than another. Differentiation leads to narratives of blame that suggest the “different” population is deserving of maltreatment. Ideas that the oppression of Indigenous Peoples was somehow acceptable conveniently supported colonial agendas, and these ideas continue today. Media representations of Indigenous issues often contain misinformation, generalizations, and stereotypes, meaning that most Canadians have little real knowledge of the issues.
One place to examine the representation of Indigenous Peoples is the three Canadian Olympic Games. In each Olympics, the organizing committees chose to feature Indigenous Peoples prominently in the opening or closing ceremonies. However, each of the Olympics has been criticized for its “beads and feathers” characterizations of Indigenous Peoples. These misrepresentations, cloaked in the rhetoric of multiculturalism, mask an effort to obscure the true history of Canada’s colonial past. Another example is professional sports, where many teams have adopted mascots and team names that recall the Imagined Indian figure (e.g., the Braves, the Redskins, the Chiefs), and fan traditions such as “the Tomahawk Chop” cheer or “Half-time Pow-wows” degrade and trivialize sacred customs. In this case, these discriminatory practices become so ingrained and normalized that many fail to see them for what they are. Increasingly, teams have been called on to change their names and mascots.
LGBTQ+ People in Canada
Just a few decades ago, depictions of LGBTQ+ people were typically negative, showing them as sexual deviants or sick, depraved, and dangerous individuals. Some of these mischaracterizations were challenged in the 1990s, with gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters in mainstream television. While these characters played an important role in normalizing homosexuality in popular discourse, they were never shown being sexual. Today, there are more LGBTQ+ characters in mainstream television shows, and increasingly, these characters have regular story arcs, although they are often killed off in a sadly predictable plot development referred to as “Bury your Gays.” However, racialized LGBTQ+ people, or those with a disability, are almost absent from pop culture, reinforcing the belief that homosexuality is a young, white, male experience. Another population that is either largely ignored or negatively depicted in popular discourse is trans people. Major film studios are slowly beginning to incorporate trans people, but their gender identity is often the most significant part of their character.
People with Disabilities in Canada
The definitions and implications of disability are socially constructed. And yet in Canada today, many disabled bodies are still not viewed as “whole” or “healthy.” Disabled bodies can be feared, degraded, or stigmatized, while bodies read as non-disabled are attributed with higher statuses. And our beliefs about disability have real-life effects, as beliefs create inaccessible architecture and public transportation, limit employment choices for people with disabilities, and privilege certain types of body functionality over others.
The population of people with disabilities, though vast and increasing, is often ignored in popular culture. Historically, when people with disabilities are depicted, their disability is a vital part of their role and a significant part of their story arc. All too often, the roles are based on a limited list of unfavourable tropes and tired, disparaging clichés. Some movies and television shows cast a non-disabled actor to play a person with a disability, but others feel these roles should be filled by actors with a disability. When directors defend the practice of casting non-disabled actors, they often point to a lack of available talent, suggesting that the problems start even earlier, in acting schools, in high school drama classes, and in the television shows themselves. What we know is that accurate and realistic depictions of people with disabilities in popular discourse are useful in equalizing opportunities. Familiarity and firsthand experience are essential in dispelling unfair treatment and stereotypical opinions.
Consequences of Unequal Access to Respect
Respect is vital in social relationships. Everyone likes to receive respect and wants to associate with people who show them respect. So, by giving respect, we assure ourselves of continued social relationships. In addition, respect is a way of treating people as “ends in themselves,” not mere instruments for the achievement of our own goals. This is similar to the Golden Rule.
Strategies of Resistance
Much like remedial mental healthcare and addictions support, respect helps us prevent people from falling into harmful and even fatal spirals of behaviour. In early 2015, the Assembly of First Nations presented a mental wellness continuum they had devised. This project, in collaboration with Health Canada and First Nations and Inuit mental health leaders, allowed them to set their own priorities for mental healthcare locally. The goal of this framework is to address the long-standing gaps in the mental healthcare and addictions services available to Indigenous individuals, families, and communities in Canada.
Reel Injun is a 2009 documentary directed by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond and co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and the CBC. This exploratory documentary looks at the way Indigenous groups in North America have been portrayed in American cinema. Reel Injun seeks to deconstruct the image of Indigenous Peoples created and preserved by Hollywood since the 1930s. As an alternative, Reel Injun offers the possibility of an era in cinema in which Indigenous Peoples make their own films from their own points of view.
Anita Sarkeesian challenges the way women are represented in pop culture in her educational video web series “Feminist Frequencies,” available on YouTube. Sarkeesian covers the representation of women in various platforms. However, her primary focus is on women in video games in her subseries called “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.” Sarkeesian has lectured and presented internationally at universities, conferences, and game development studios and has been featured in multiple mainstream publications.