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Abstract

The mass media industry as a hegemonic entity has played a crucial role in displaying false accounts of the black life. Due to physical, social and psychological trauma incorporated with racism and sexism, African-American women may feel pressured to present a self to the world that is deemed acceptable by others. The focus of this dissertation will be on how the continual phenomenon of clichéd stereotypes in the 20th and 21st centuries is perpetuated from the past generations. Each chapter shows how these portrayals affects the shifting values, identities and ideologies of black women. This dissertation seeks to analyse the parallels and distinctions of representation ranging from the slavery era, blaxploitation era, down to our present-day society. This project illustrates how ideas of blackness in white memory are not merely constructed from the imaginations of producers in mainstream culture. Rather, black stereotypes are the result of white people’s imagined ways of blackness. Through this, I hope that readers understand the impact of the negotiation of race, class, and gender identities on black women’s self-perception, specifically as it relates to their participation in film, television, social media and advertising, (in addition to the workforce, and personal and professional relationships.)

Course: Media Studies - BA (Hons) - C1346

Date Deposited: 2020-10-28

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13593.html