Cultivation Analysis: A Portrayal of African Americans on Television

Above you will find three pieces of television media: one music video, a clip from a television show, and a clip from a news station. In the following blog entry, I will explain how each of the videos pertains to George Gerbner’s Cultivation Analysis.

To begin with, a brief explanation of Cultivation Analysis must be given and elaborated upon. Cultivation analysis essentially believes that if people are exposed to media messages over a long period of time, people’s perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and understandings will be shaped and changed in congruence with the media messages.

There is a Four-Step Process that researchers developed and used to help explain how cultivation works. The four steps of the process are message system analysis (analysis of content), formulation of questions about viewers’ social realities (make questions about how people understand their everyday lives), surveying the audience (asking about how much media intake audiences receive AND asking the questions from step two), comparing the social realities of light and heavy viewers (this involves cultivation differential which is the difference between the responses of light and heavy viewers). Although the Four-Step Process is an important aspect of Cultivation Analysis, it will not be used in this particular blog because it is only used by Cultivation researchers.

There are also three products of Cultivation Analysis. The first is mainstreaming, which is the phenomenon that people who watch a lot of television end up viewing the world in terms of how the media messages portrayed the world. The second is resonance, which occurs when the reality portrayed by media messages is reality in the real world. Both mainstreaming and resonance produce effects on two levels: first order effects and second order effects. First Order Effects pertains to learning facts from the media. Second Order Effects pertains to learning values/assumptions from the media. The third and final product of Cultivation Analysis is the Mean World Index, which is an index that is based on three statements: most people are just looking out for themselves, you can’t be too careful in dealing with people, and most people would take advantage of you if they got the chance.

Cultivation Analysis also contains what Gerbner terms as the 3 Bs of Television. These are blurring (traditional distinctions are blurred), blending (“reality” is blended into a cultural mainstream), and bending (the mainstream reality benefits the elite).

Because it is very difficult to find pieces of media that depict the affect of particular media messages on people over a long period of time, I will draw from personal experiences, and experiences of my friends, in incorporating the video clips into the Cultivation Analysis Theory.
In this blog analysis, I will show how black people are portrayed in the media, and how this portrayal affects perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and understandings. The reason that I chose to use three video clips, instead of one, is because black people are mainly portrayed in the media in three different ways. They are portrayed as sexual and materialistic, wholesome and intelligent, and criminal and dangerous.

The first video clip is a music video entitled “Pop Bottles”, and performed by Birdman featuring Lil’ Wayne. This video is categorized as sexual and materialistic. Throughout the video there are many sexual references made and the women in the video are dressed in a very provocative way, and they also seem to participate in provocative actions such as dancing in a very sexual way. I interviewed a close male friend who is a heavy television viewer, and asked him what he thought about this video and the message it portrays about black people. He said that he saw black people as very sexual people, which can be supported by the number of accidental teen pregnancies that are rampant in the black community. This is an example of both mainstreaming and resonance. It is mainstreaming because sexual and materialistic media messages, such as the ones in the video, portrayed about black people has shaped his worldview. It is resonance because he related these views to the real world in the way he described the problem of accidental teenage pregnancies. My close male friend’s response can also be associated with first order effects and second order effects. His response is associated with first order effects because he has learned facts about the consequences that have occurred due to a supposed overly sexual community. These facts (coupled with the many sexual videos featuring black people rampant in the media) then caused him to make the assumption that the whole black community is overly sexual (second order effects). Blending is also part of this example because my friend’s reality was blended into the cultural mainstream of the views on sexuality in the black culture.

The second video is a clip from the popular sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Using comedic effects, this show portrays a family that grows, loves, and learns through different trials and tribulations that happen daily. This is a compilation of three different clip is categorized as wholesome and intelligent. In each of these particular clips Will, the main character, seems to switch role from being wholesome and intelligent at some instances, but at other instances he comes across as abrasive and “ghetto”, especially when making sexual advanced towards women. However, it should be noted that these sexual advances are no where near the level of sexuality of the previous music video. Overall, the show is more wholesome and intelligent than not. I asked a friend (a medium television watcher) that I met at college to view this clip and give me her reactions and what she thought the video portrayed about black people. Her response was that she has many black friends that are both wholesome and intelligent individuals. She said she often watched this show (and other shows like it), and felt that many black people were just as the show portrayed. She also recognized that there were black people (that she knew) that are not wholesome and intelligent, but not many. I found that her response contained resonance. It contained resonance because she could compare the wholesome and intelligent side of Will, and also the non-wholesome and unintelligent side of him, to people she knew.

The last video clip is a 4-minute clip depicting a group of black girls arguing with and beating up a white man on a New York subway. Although this clip is a very disturbing thing to watch, many more scenes like this, depicting criminal and dangerous black people are rampant in the media every day on shows like COPS. Although this clip was originally just a YouTube video, it was played countless times on both local and national television news stations. This clip is categorized as criminal and dangerous. Instead of interviewing someone else to learn their views on this clip, and how black people are portrayed, I decided to use my personal reactions and feelings. Even though I am a black person, and know what it feels like to be stereotyped because of a generalization, after watching this video (and others like it on shows like COPS), I could not help be pulled into the idea that many black people are indeed violent and criminal individuals. I also know black people who act like the girls in the video. Again, this is an example of mainstreaming because I ended up seeing the media messages that black people are criminal and violent, and believing the messages myself, even though I am a black person. This is also an example of resonance because I know people who act like the girls in the video, thus making the two realities the same. The Mean World Index also partly played a part in my views on the supposed criminal and violent aspects of the black community because one of the statements (you can’t be too careful in dealing with people) rang clear when seeing the portrayed violent and criminal aspects of the black girls in the clip.