Video clip:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2006/11/26/us/1194817111326/life-in-the-fast-lane.html
Accompanying article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/us/27album.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
For this entry, I decided to do a media analysis of an interview conducted by Charlie Leduff for the New York Times series “American Album.” Leduff’s piece focuses on fast food worker and American, Gloria Castillo. I chose to deconstruct this interview because it reminded me that the way we make sense of the numerous impressions that we come across us daily is to use frames that Chaika mentions in chapter 5 of Language: The Social Mirror. A frame is an artificial intelligence data structure used to divide knowledge into substructures by representing "stereotyped situations."
I hope that through an analysis or a dissection of Leduff’s interview and video clip “Life in the Fast Lane,” we can resurface stereotyped situations in society and more importantly, show how people may choose to interpret them differently based on their own experiences and cultural meanings.
In terms of content and organization, in the video “Life in the Fast Lane,” the core of the interview is told mainly through Gloria Castillo, herself. Its main focus is on minorities, in general, in the workplace –something we find very stereotypical today. In her interview, she even states that she has never worked with white people before; it has only been Mexicans, African Americans, and Asians. The entire interview cleverly takes place through the window of a Burger King drive-thru.
Obviously here, Leduff is trying to put a human face on a serious problem. His voice is casual and familiar, but that doesn’t mean he wants us to be casual in our attitudes towards that fast food worker from Dallas. He wants us to listen to her, and to take what she has to say seriously. He provides us with factual information –stuff that could be found in any abstract report, but his insights run a little deeper than the statistics he tosses at us. He employs “pathos” to get our attention –he appeals to our emotions, our sympathy –in an effort to gain our interest and concern about a problem or issue that many people live with from day to day.
After watching this clip I ask you this:
Because “society says so,” why must we conform to these stereotypical generalizations that people of ethnicity must be separated from jobs and isolated from gaining any amount of success?
Intriguing question, Stephanie, but I wonder if these jobs are open to the minorities because white people do not want to do those jobs. Many “white” Americans do not like to do hard work, so minority groups, the hard workers, take the jobs that the white people do not want to make money. It has been very hard for America to move forth and get away from segregating or stereotyping women, minorities, and white from each other. By the way the lady was talking, it seemed like working in fast food can be dangerous, which could be why many white people stayed away from getting a job there, and since everyone needs to make money, the minorities take the jobs no one else wants to do. That would be my intake on people of ethnicity being separated from “good” jobs. The good thing she is doing is getting a degree to get out of there, which is what most people have to do in order to get a good job.
ReplyDeleteI like the video clip in regards to the class. As a Mexican-American myself, I can relate to being stereotyped in some way, shape, or form. I feel people have a tendency stereotype anyone, something that even I have been guilty of occasionally. We need to be more accepting of different cultures, even in the workplace. Working with people of other cultures is very beneficial in order to truly understand cultures in other countries. I feel this will pay off in the long run for workplaces everywhere. I can only hope that more people will think this way over time.
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