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Making Magic Making Class Invisible Analysis

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As Gregory Mantsios noted in his article "Making Magic: Making Class Invisible", "Of the various social and cultural forces in our society, the mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness" (Mantsios, 2008, 409). The way the media presents certain ideas and concepts, influences the way society perceives things. In this essay, I will focus on how South Asians are represented in the media and popular culture. And how this unfortunate portrayal by the media develops negative stereotypes. This then alters how society perceives them based on popular culture.
The media and television shows have a penchant for over exaggerating certain characters in order to make the show funnier. Certain stereotypes are overhyped in …show more content…

One of the televisions shows most prominent characters is Raj. Raj is an Indian physicist who is plagued by insecurities. The show makes him out as a silly, insecure, goofy, unconfident, inferior, unsocial and an effeminate man. Like Apu in The Simpsons, Raj is constantly the target of all the jokes. Every possible stereotype that you can think of about Indians Raj has it in spades. In the television show, Raj is so incapable of talking to pretty girls that he has a mental condition in which he can only talk to females when he is intoxicated. I am aware that this is a comedy television show but the vast amount of negative qualities the creators of the show are placing on Raj is unfair.
Raj is essentially made out to be inferior to his other male and female colleagues on the show. The theme that South Asians are inferior to their white counterparts is constantly …show more content…

These roles are based of erroneous stereotypes that further the media’s hegemonic agenda. The majority of main characters in the media are held by white actors and actresses. In the book Media and Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment, Larsen talks about the stereotypes that commonly ail the asian community in the media. She states, "these include inscrutable evil foreigners, China dolls, dragon ladies, desexed sidekicks, criminals, nerds, and mystics" (Larsen, 2006, 67). These stereotypes portray the asian American community as bookworms, and submissive. This gives the image that these Asians are weaker and thus inferior to the white

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