I genuinely love watching movies, and ever since the last project we had I cant help but analyze movies while I am watching them with both SCWAMP and FHALT-P. I was recently watching Despicable Me 2 and it really had me looking at the movies characters and the stereotypes associated with them. For instance, when Gru, the main protagonist is asked to do an undercover job at the mall to catch the latest villain, all of the stores in the mall are associated with stereotypes of different people. There is one restaurant named Salsa y Salsa that is owned by Eduardo (aka El Macho, the villain). The depiction of this store is shown as the stereotypical point of view of the Latin culture, which we covered in class. His store is heavily decorated in the color red, the son to Eduardo is seen as temptation, and Eduardo has a pet chicken that guards his special recipe. Then there is the wig store owned by an oriental man. He is dressed in what looks like a traditional orient robe and talks with the broken English, that is commonly associated with the Western Asian culture. These depictions are detrimental to the demographic the film is aimed to appeal to. There is also the fact that adults watching understand what is going on in the film and laugh at it.
It lead me to think about the article we read the first week of class about the two young girls Melissa and Holly, and how they interpreted different Disney movies. I just cant help but notice that the movies we allow our children to watch are perpetuating the stereotypes placed upon people by the hegemonic structure that runs our country.
The creator of the SCWAMP tool is Leslie Grinner, an adjunct professor working in Rhode Island. She is a brilliant resource on a wide range of intersecting issues of class, race, and gender.
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