AFRICAN STEREOTYPES IN AMERICAN TEEN MOVIE MEAN GIRLS

Authors

  • Fiza Asri Fauziah Habibah Universitas Bina Sarana Informatika
  • Fadilah Fadilah

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47313/pujangga.v8i1.1717

Abstract

Movie has emerged to be a powerful device in shaping perspectives of culture, society and history. The power of visual stimulation can be manifested and exploited politically, socially and economically.  The movie Mean Girls, which premiered in the United States in 2004 actualized the racial stereotypes lobbed at Africans, but with a soft ignorance. The present study aims to observe African stereotypes in American teen movie Mean Girl. This study employed qualitative descriptive method, which is a method of research that attempt to describe and interpret the objects in accordance with reality. The data of this study were collected from scenes and excerpts which contained African stereotypes based on its scripts. The study draws on Doh’s (2009) Stereotyping Africa: surprising answers to surprising questions and February (2019) Mind your colour: The “coloured” stereotype in South African literature. Findings have shown that the African stereotypes are black-skin coloured, wild and savage, financially poor, doing voodoo, and having impolite attitude. These stereotypes indicate the movie Mean Girls tends to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Africans more than the positive ones.

Keywords: African stereotype; American teen movie; Mean Girls’s movie

 

Author Biographies

Fiza Asri Fauziah Habibah, Universitas Bina Sarana Informatika

Prodi Bahasa Inggris

Fadilah Fadilah

Fakultas Komunikasi dan Bahasa

References

REFERENCES

Kaplan, Anna. (2019). “Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen”: The Disempowerment of Women’s Voices in the Film Mean Girls. SUURJ: Seattle University Undergraduate Research Journal, 3(Article 16). https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/suurj/vol3/iss1/16

Doh, E. F. (2009). Stereotyping Africa. Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions. In Mankon, Bamenda, Cameroon : Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, [2009]. African Books Collective.

February, V. A. (2019). Mind your colour: The “coloured” stereotype in South African literature. In Mind Your Colour: The “Coloured” Stereotype in South African Literature. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315829159

Mack, N., Woodsong, C., Macqueen, K. M., Guest, G., & Namey, E. (2005). Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide (Issue January). Family Health International.

Ndiayea, I. A., & Ndiayea, B. (2014). Sociocultural Stereotypes in Media and Intercultural Communication (Africa in the Polish Media). Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 154(October), 72–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.114

Ratu, D. P., & Utami, N. A. (2017). Dynamics of Female Bullies: An Analysis of Mean Girls (2004). International Young Scholars Symposium of Humanities and Arts.

Bourne, St. Claire. (1990). The African American Image in American Cinema. The Black Scholar, 21(2), 12–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41067680

Downloads

Published

2022-06-07