Blog 1

From what I got of the Madison reading, the use of stereotypes can be both harmful and helpful. Madison points out how stereotypes can “diminish one’s individuality” when using stereotypes which I can wholeheartedly understand. I often use Indian stereotypes for my own personal humor to ease situations. Of course, when it comes to racial stereotypes there is a fine line between humor and offensiveness. While the entertainment industry has done a great job of presenting other cultures within various sorts of media, we often fail to look more deeply into cultures that we have been presented.  Stereotypes are often manipulated for the worse within media but that should not detract from our ability to do our own research to discover how these cultures actually behave.

While I could not find the clip I wanted, I think Psych did an excellent job of using Hindi singing for the intro to one of their more culturally based episodes. If you watched the episode before, i wanted to show where Shawn and Gus are at the actual show and watching a Bollywood dance performance but the Hindi singing is just as good in my opinion as well as the use of Devanagri script to spell out the actors names.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTefObWPzMI