I need div-ed remedial lessons

[mothwing]

"The majority of people are white, so what's wrong with them being on billboards in the majority of cases?"

A work/friend of mine recently showed her class extracts from Blue Eyed and subsequently discussed a scene in it in which a billboard with a good-looking white, middle-aged and obviously affluent couple are shown. Pretty much unanimously, the class came to the above conclusion. Now, statistically this seems to be true, but srsly. We'd like them to knoy what's problematic about that statement, but are at a loss on how to achieve that. What I could come up with on the fly was:

1.) To ask them if they think that these billboards should show people who represent the national average of what people look like (I'm assuming here that that'll not be a very good-looking, affluent, elderly white couple) and why this isn't on it if they want the majority represented.

2.) To ask why there has to be a couple at all on this product, and if this product is only for white married elderly people.

Basically to make clear that this is a constructed norm and make them think of ways in which this is harmful - because what happens if you don't belong to that norm? Maybe also showing them quote by Adrienne Rich might help a bit, too: 

"When those who have the power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you ... when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked in the mirror and saw nothing. It takes some strength of soul—and not just individual strength, but collective understanding—to resist this void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard."

So yeah, grasping a straws here.

Help, oh wise flist?

Comments

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I love that quote, even though the author has issues. I've been looking for a way to include that in class somehow for ages, and this might be perfect. I'd say that yes, it's difficult to grasp both language-wise and content-wise, if you've never faced any oppression, but I think that students in year 11 ought to be able to pull it off if you give them some of the words.

I'm curious what people'd come up with for #1, too, though I think that if they've really never thought about this, this might not get very far, and then yes, the quote might help, but then someone is bound to go, "But it's just advertising, you don't have to take it seriously!", at which point you'd have to expand the topic to the general inequality in media representation, and for that it'd be handy to have some more magazines ready. Hm. Also, there's always the Privilege List (http://www.uakron.edu/centers/conflict/docs/whitepriv.pdf) (which is far too hard for them, language-wise, of course), but I've had students who are really slow to grasp why that might be problematic, too, so there just doesn't seem to be an easy way.

Personally, I prefer visibility even when it's on billboards to invisibly staying true to my dogma, but I can see the point.
Yeah, it's difficult, because while ads aim to meet norms, they also reinforce them, so it's dangerous either way not to be included and therefore targeted in ads, I think.