The reasons why I thought this guy was a drug addict are: first of all, he has a whole bunch of tattoos and piercings; second of all, he's young and white, and third of all, he's a male. Our society has taught me that a young white guy with a lot of tattoos and piercings on his body is either a junkie, a "freak", or has some kind of mental issues. This is a good example of raced, gendered, and classed bodies: Raced because he's white, gendered because he's a male, and classed because being put into a category.
I am particularly impressed by how classification works: If this exact same guy had happened to be Black or Hispanic and only had tattoos, I would have thought : "Oh, there goes another gangster, athlete, drug dealer, or maybe ex convict." And if the guy in this picture was a woman, I would have thought: "Poor lady, she's probably lost her mind." Classification happens almost all the time, is based on a variety of criteria (age, gender, race, social status, etc), and more importantly, it is natural/human as suggested by Hall.
However, even though classification is a natural process, it still does more harm than good. Racism, Nazism, and so on, all derive from classification; I wish a guy like Adolf Hitler had taken Cultural Studies 1001, or had read some of Stuart Hall or Richard Dyer's work, he would have understood (hopefully) that there's no reason to treat certain people a certain way just because of their race, gender, age, etc... I am not saying it's not okay to classify (this guy could actually be a junkie, or have some mental issues), but we shouldn't just stop at classifying people, we should also make sure to put them in the right category and treat them as humans.
I think another thing you could add is why people find heavy piercing to be almost offensive. The only other people stereo typically known to have body mods in history are Africans.
ReplyDeleteit is seen as savage and wild, not sophisticated and appropriate for the normal. Tattoos follow under that same trend and same past time.
I think you have a good ideal behind that if it was any other race, it would be classified as a hoodlum rather than a just a misguided white male. In fact I would say there is less fear in seeing a white tattooed male than any other race.
I try not go judge a book by it's cover, but when I see guys like this one, they scare me a bit. This is because most of the thugs/gangsters/trouble makers out there have tats and piercings. I realize that we shouldn't classify people because of their looks, specially without knowing them.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a white man like this one would be viewed as misguided as a child and took the wrong path in life, and a black or Hispanic man would be viewd as a gang member of some sort. Cougar has a point in that there probably is less fear towards a white male like this guy and more fear towards ay other race. Even tho its not right, I feel less fear towards white "gangster looking" guys than towards the same of a different race.
I had the same thought about how we view images differently based on what race the image is portraying. Like you said, if the image was of a black or Hispanic man, we would view him differently. I think that's key in how these stereotypes get into our heads.
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