Elizabeth B. Pearce, Jessica N. Hampton, Hannah Morelos, and Katie Niemeyer

Art has been a part of history and daily lives for centuries, but what is considered “artistic” and valuable as defined by financial worth has been shaped by the same preferences and oppression that shape other aspects of our daily life. Many individuals face discrimination and underrepresentation based on their gender, race, sexuality, or other social characteristics. Even in the 20th century, we see the perceived differences between men and women’s art in the way that artists are often described in the media. Why is a woman referred to as a “female artist”? A person of color as a “Black photographer”? Or a “Latinx sculptor”? In contrast, when created by a White man, race and gender are not usually mentioned.

The topic of whiteness as the dominant culture can be an uncomfortable topic for many, while seeming quite obvious to others. Dominant culture expresses itself in the United States as the “typical” or “regular” way of being. Sometimes, White people express that they don’t actually have a culture. This is part of the whiteness experience. When we describe this experience, it includes the power given to a particular group of people, and oppression to another group of people, otherwise known as White privilege. “White-washed art” can be described as giving privilege to a group of people based on their social characteristics and perpetuating a system that favors Euro-Americans (mostly White people).

When we talk about whiteness in art, it allows us the opportunity to peel back a layer of denial. Western expansion and dominance of Indigenous communities is one reason that there is a preference for White and westernized art and institutions. It is interesting to note that implicit bias, “the attitudes and stereotypes that affect our actions that we aren’t aware of, can affect how and what we feel and think about the word art when we hear it” (The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 2015).

What do you think of when you think of art? An example of implicit bias would be when an Implicit bias and cultural norms shape how we respond to art. Individuals from any culture are more likely to view a work of art as pleasing if it fits with their culture’s dominant social characteristics. For example, one of the most famous sculptures in the world, The David by Michelangelo Buonarroti, shows a young, White male, which are dominant characteristics of Western culture. Traditionally, art that represents Western culture has been made, exhibited, and celebrated by White men. This bias affects who is considered an artist and what is considered art. A recent study found that 85 percent of artists featured in permanent collections are White, while 87 percent are men (Magazine & Solly, 2019). Our exposure to these institutionalized biases as children can affect how we view art.

Social institutions are complex systems that both influence their members and which can be influenced by individuals as well. For example, schools and museums are both examples of institutions in which children and families participate. They are exposed to art that is, for the most part, White and male-dominated through the selection process that has occurred throughout history. Increasing awareness of these biases has led to exhibitions and mentorship of individuals in underrepresented groups related to gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, ability, and other social characteristics. Individuals and allies contribute to institutions by advocating for change. Examples within this chapter show both the built-in biases and the ways in which artistic expression helps us move beyond socially constructed bias, preference, and ideas; this expands our definitions of art and beauty.

12.3.1 Art, Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

Ken Monkman is a North American artist well known for his paintings that reexamine the past. He frames his work by noting that these past experiences significantly influence the present. Monkman describes his use of visual art to examine the experience of Indigenous people in North America, both during the period of colonization and the effects on the present day families. His paintings depict the violence that European settlers acted upon Indigenous people, and the cultural beliefs that have been silenced. He creates works of art that tell the story from the perspective of those who were harmed and emphasizes the heroism of Indigenous families, the nonbinary aspect of gender they expressed, and other cultural aspects.

In the 3 minute video (Figure 12.12) Monkman describes his use of visual art to examine the experience of Indigenous people in North America, both during the period of colonization and the continued effects on the present day families.

Figure 12.12. Shame and Prejudice: Artist Kent Monkman’s story of resilience [YouTube Video]. Ken Monkman describes his critical perspective on art and its role in taking us to dark places.

Kehinde Wiley is another artist known for using his work to expose hypocrisies in the framing of European history, such as the Age of Reason, or Enlightenment period, which is known for its progress in liberty, universalism, separation of church and state, and freedom. This same time period is known for the colonialism of many Indigenous people and people of color, including Napoleon Bonaparte himself who reinstituted slavery in the French colonies a year after the famous Jacques-Louis David painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps was painted.

Figure 12.13. Comparing Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps by artist Kehinde Wiley (A, left) and Napoleon Crossing the Alps by artist Jacques-Louis David (B, right).

Wiley’s re-interpretation of this painting, Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps, pictures a young Black man in the same pose (Figure 12.13), but in a way that questions the heroism and softens the military masculinity portrayed in the original. He confronts and critiques the portrayal of Black people in art.

The paintings hung side-by-side in the Brooklyn Museum through March 2020.

12.3.2 Art, Sex, and Gender

Art, reflective of society, has been work dominated by men. Men’s work was more likely to be sponsored, commissioned, featured, publicized, and preserved. Women artists have often been seen as secondary. The well-known artist Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who was inspired by artifacts of her culture and used a folk art style (Figure 12.14). She explored themes of identity, postcolonialism, class, race, and gender. A prime example of marginalization taking place in Frida Kahlo’s lifetime happened when she lived in Detroit, married to a male artist named Diego Rivera. In Detroit, Frida Kahlo never showed her portraits in any exhibitions; however, she did get the opportunity to be interviewed. Although she was praised for her work through this opportunity, when the article came out, it was titled “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art.”

Figure 12.14. Los cocos by Frida Kahlo (A, left) and Poster – Frida Kahlo by Vagner Borges (B, right).

Through this lens, Frida Kahlo was publicly known to her peers and the world as “Diego Rivera’s wife” and not as an artist. But Kahlo’s work surpassed Rivera’s in terms of artistic and social recognition. Kahlo died in 1954 at age 47, and her work became best known between the 1970s and 1990s. She is regarded as an icon of the Chicano civil rights movement, feminism, and the LGBTQ+ community.

Many paintings considered classic representations of ancient myths and events were painted by men. Carmen McCormack, a 2019 graduate of Oregon State University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program, has recreated some works from a female, feminist, and lesbian perspective. For example, she has reinterpreted Francois Boucher’s 1741 painting, Leda and the Swan, which tells the story of the seduction or rape of Leda by Zeus in the form of a swan (Figure 12.15).

Figure 12.15. Painting Leda and the Swan by Francois Boucher (A, left) and Carmen McCormack (B, right).

“I wanted to reinterpret that as a feminist, as a woman and as a contemporary painter,” McCormack said in an interview with the Corvallis Gazette-Times. “In the original (the women) were smiling, which is interesting for a male painter because it reinterprets the story of sexual violence — it’s not a happy thing.” McCormack’s version shows a dark, stormy background, and the women’s facial expressions and body language suggest more fear and resistance than does the original.

Centuries ago, genders were oppressed and underrepresented in their creative aspects. We can acknowledge that although there has been an improvement, there are still groups, genders, and individuals who face underrepresentation, discrimination, and oppression. New York is known as the hub of art and yet it is estimated that 76–96 percent of the art showcased in art galleries is by male artists. We can see that to this day there is a gender gap in the art industry that continues in the 21st century.

12.3.3 Television

Take a minute to think about how much media you are exposed to in one day—from watching television and movies, to cruising the internet, reading newspapers, books, and magazines, listening to music and watching music videos, or playing video games. The majority of this media is produced by corporations and infused with advertisements.

According to The Nielsen Company—a marketing corporation that collects statistics on media usage—report, the average American ages “18–34 spent two hours and 45 minutes daily watching live TV in the 4th Quarter of 2015, and one hour and 23 minutes using TV-connected devices—a total of four hours and 8 minutes using a TV set for any purpose” (Nielson Company, 2016). The pervasiveness of media in culture begs a number of questions: what are the effects of such an overwhelming amount of exposure to media that is often saturated with advertisements? How do media construct or perpetuate gendered, sexualized, classed, ableized, and racialized differences and inequalities? What is the relationship between media and consumers, and how do consumers interact with media?

Media expert and sociologist Michael Kimmel argues that the media are a primary institution of socialization that not only reflects, but creates, culture. Media representation is a key domain for identity formation and the creation of gendered and sexualized difference (Kimmel, 2003). For example, think back to Disney movies you were probably shown as a child. The plots of these movies typically feature a dominant young man—a prince, a colonial ship captain, a soldier—who is romantically interested in a young woman—both are always assumed to be heterosexual—who at first resists the advances of the young man, but eventually falls in love with him and marries him.

Disney movies teach children a great deal about gender and sexuality; specifically, they teach children to value hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity. Hegemonic masculinity refers to a specific type of culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage and heterosexuality and patriarchal authority in the family and workplace, and maintains its privileged position through subordinating other less dominant forms of masculinity (i.e., dominance over men of lower socioeconomic classes or gay men). Emphasized femininity, meanwhile, refers to a compliance with the normative ideal of femininity, as it is oriented to serving the interests of men (Connell, 1987).

What do Disney movies have to do with how people actually live their lives? It is because they are fictional, so pervasive in our culture, and shown to us at such a young age that they may shape our gendered and sexualized selves in ways that we do not even realize. How many times have you heard people say that they want a “fairy tale wedding,” or heard the media refer to a celebrity wedding as a “fairy tale wedding?” This is one example of how the media reproduces dominant ideologies—the ideas, attitudes, and values of the dominant culture—about gender and sexuality.

Media also reproduce racialized and gendered normative standards in the form of beauty ideals for both women and men. As Jean Kilbourne’s video series Killing Us Softly illustrates, representations of women in advertising, film, and magazines often rely on the objectification of women—cutting apart their bodies with the camera frame and re-crafting their bodies through digital manipulation in order to create feminized bodies with characteristics that are largely unattainable by the majority of the population. Kilbourne shows how advertising often values the body types and features of White women—having petite figures and European facial features—while exoticizing women of color by putting them in nature scenes and animal-print clothing that are intended to recall a pre-civilizational past. The effect of this is to cast women of color as animalistic, savage creatures—a practice that has historically been used in political cartoons and depictions of people of color to legitimize their subjugation as less than human.

In addition, the media depict the world from a masculine point of view, representing women as sex objects. This kind of framing, what Laura Mulvey called the male gaze, encourages men viewers to see women as objects and encourages women to see themselves as objects of men’s desire; the male gaze is thus a heterosexual male gaze. These are just a couple of examples of how media simultaneously reflect and construct differences in power between social groups in society through representing those groups.

Another way in which media reflect and simultaneously produce power differences between social groups is through symbolic annihilation. Symbolic annihilation refers to how social groups that lack power in society are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized through mass media representations that simultaneously reinforce dominant ideologies and the privilege of dominant groups. For example, as we argued earlier, gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled characters in mass media are often few and far between, and when they are present they are typically stereotyped and misrepresented.

While Kilbourne’s insights illustrate how beauty ideals produce damaging effects on women and girls, her model of how consumers relate to media suggests that the consumers are passively accepting everything they see in advertising and electronic and print media. As Kimmel argues, “The question is…how the media and its consumers interact to create the varying meanings that derive from our interactions with those media” (Kimmel 2003: 238). No advertisement, movie, or any form of media has an inherent, intended meaning that passes directly from the producer of that media to the consumer of it, but consumers interact with, critique, and sometimes reject the intended messages of media. In this way, the meanings of media develop through the interaction between the media product and the consumers who are interacting with it. Furthermore, media consumers can blur the distinction between producer and consumer through creating their own media in the form of videos, music, pamphlets, ‘zines, and other forms of cultural production. Therefore, while media certainly often reproduce dominant ideologies and normative standards, media consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject the intended meanings of media.

12.3.5 Film

Another visual medium, film, is a part of many families’ daily lives. Mainstream movies are accessible to Americans via many formats. Although women and people of color are represented in audiences in greater percentages than their population base, they are vastly underrepresented in lead roles both on and off screen. In 2018, only one female, Greta Gerwig, and one person of color, Jordan Peele, were nominated for Best Director in the Oscars award show. In an analysis of speaking roles for women in the 900 most popular films from 2007 to 2016, fewer than one third of the roles went to women. Representation is worse for nonbinary people and when intersectionality of color and gender are examined (Tan, 2018).

When a child watches a movie, they are exposed to a variety of people. What most of these actors and actresses have in common is that they are White. As of 2017, only 20 percent of all lead actors and actresses on screen were people of color (Statista, 2020). To the children watching these movies, White people are the majority demographic being represented.

In one study, researchers found that when preschoolers were asked to draw a main character from a fairy tale, most of the students drew a figure with blonde hair and light skin. The findings imply that children, even those of color, saw that White skin meant a happy ending (Hurley, 2005). In their minds, only blond people with white skin were allowed to save the day and be stars.

When movies such as Home, Black Panther, or Crazy Rich Asians came out, people of color flocked to see them. These movies lack obvious stereotypes, and people of color play leading roles. Movies with successful people of color are important because these movies challenge the idea that White culture is the norm. When movies feature people of color, parents have the chance to show their children a main character with the same skin color or hair type as their own.

Representation in movies also pertains to how the characters are portrayed. Do they follow common, sometimes derogatory, stereotypes? Are they seen as the villain? Are they the first to be killed? When people of color are being represented through stereotypes or typecasting (when a person is repeatedly cast for the same type of character, usually based on looks), it sheds a negative light on those people even if the film has a more diverse cast.

In March, 2020, the Washington Post magazine featured a project in which actors of minoritized groups were asked what kind of roles they typically were cast in and what kind of roles they would like to play (Sakaguchi & San Martin, 2020). This powerful series emphasizes how easily stereotypes can be embedded in our minds. You can see Haruka Sakaguchi & Griselda San Martin’s full photography series at the Typecast Project.

Typecasting people contributes to the reinforcement of stereotypes of people of color and other minoritized groups; it emphasizes the centrality of White people both as the norm and as the keepers of interesting plot lines and life stories.

12.3.6 Representation of People of Color

How are people of color represented in visual mediums? And which people of color are prominent? Notice that when leading roles are cast in visual mediums, they are often people of lighter-colored skin. This is called colorism and is distinct from racism in that it shows a preference for the visual look, as opposed to implying that there is inferiority based on race (Farrow, 2019). A recent example is the prominence of Jennifer Lopez (J-Lo) and Shakira in the 2020 Super-Bowl half-time show. While both women are Latina, many people of color do not feel represented by lighter-skinned people who have dyed their hair blonde.

12.3.6.1 Understanding “Isms”

Another way that film can help us to understand the world is to view how an “ism” affects a group that we are not a part of, such as understanding how women experience sexism, or Black people experience racism. But how do we identify which movies can help us understand what the actual experience is for the individual, and what “isms” feel like?

One of the best ways is to listen to a member of the group that experiences it. Podcasts such as the 1A Movie Club’s program “‘The Help’ Doesn’t Help” in June, 2020, can help to explain how White-centered stories about racism fail to expose the actual experience of discrimination and to teach realistically and deeply. “White-centered” refers to stories which are told primarily from the White person’s point-of-view, with a lead or leads who are White, and sometimes feature what is called the “White savior” meaning that it takes someone who is White to solve the problem, save the day, or otherwise fix some aspect of racism. Instead, the podcast hosts and guests recommend the following movies, among others:

• 13th (2016)
• Blackkklansman (2018)
• Get Out (2017)
• I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
• Just Mercy (2019)
• When They See Us (2019)

Figure 12.17. Black directors and actors, such as in “The BlacKkKlansman” are less likely to present a “White Saviour” story.

Listen here to the 1A Movie Club’s lively discussion and debate about movies, Rotten Tomatoes and other movie rating systems, racism, health care, the racial empathy gap, history and current events.

12.3.6.2 Employment

While our discussion has focused on representation and on the effects that lack of representation has on families, it is important to mention employment. An obvious outcome of fewer people of color or other minoritized groups in media means people in these groups have fewer employment opportunities. A person who has multiple intersectional characteristics has even fewer options. In this one-minute video in Figure 12.18, actor Rosie Perez talks about how the intersectionality of being a woman of color, weight, hotness, ethnicity, and age affects her employment. Because movies influence so many consumers, the effects on Perez also indirectly affect the individuals and families who view media.

Figure 12.18. Rosie Perez on Roles for Women of Color [YouTube Video]. Perez takes a blunt approach in her description of social characteristics, especially related to age and to body size.

She is conveying the message that while what is deemed “less desirable” by society may be acceptable for White males, it is less acceptable to have these traits as a woman of color. Her language may be triggering to some readers. The second video in Figure 12.19, from the group and YouTube channel “Film Courage” contains similar descriptions from actors and actresses of color.

Figure 12.19. These actors describe not just lack of quantity of roles, but also limitations in the kinds of characters available to play.

These descriptions by Rosie Perez and other actors are supported by research. Family films made between 2006 and 2009 in the United States and Canada were studied specifically for gender bias, but also included appearance and age in the assessment. Twelve-Fourteen percent of women, with unrealistic body types, exposed skin, and waists so tiny that they would leave “little room for a womb or any other internal organs” are featured in these films. In addition, it is most common for women to be under the age of 39 years (about 74 percent) with a higher percentage of men over the age of 40 years (Smith & Choueiti, n.d.).

12.3.8 References

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (2015). Understanding implicit bias. Retrieved February 18, 2020, from http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/

Nielsen Company. 2016. “The Total Audience Report: Q4 2015.” http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2016/the-total-audience-report-q4-2015.html. Accessed 31 March, 2017.

Kimmel, M. 2003. “The Gendered Media”,in The Gendered Society, 2nd Edition, edited by Michael Kimmel. Oxford University Press.

Connell. R.W. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bettcher, Talia. 2007. “Evil Deceivers and Make‐Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion.” Hypatia 22 (3): 43-65.

Tan, S. (2018, February 28). This year’s Oscar nominees are more diverse, but has Hollywood really changed? Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/entertainment/diversity-in-films/

Statista. (2020, February 17). • Ethnicity of lead actors in movies in the U.S. 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/696850/lead-actors-films-ethnicity/

Hurley, D. L. (2005). Seeing white: Children of color and the Disney fairy tale princess. The Journal of Negro Education, 74(3), 221–232.

Sakaguchi, H. & San Martin, G. (2020, March 4). How Hollywood sees me … and how I want to be seen. Washington Post Magazine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/03/04/actors-color-often-get-typecast-two-photographers-asked-them-depict-their-dream-roles-instead/

Farrow, K. (2019, January 10). How the camera sees color. National Museum of African American History & Culture. Retrieved March 9, 2020, from https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/collection/how-camera-sees-color

Smith, S.L. & Choueiti, M. (n.d.). Gender disparity on Screen and behind the camera in family films. Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Retrieved June 2, 2020, from https://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/full-study-gender-disparity-in-family-films-v2.pdf

Magazine, S., & Solly, M. (2019). Survey finds white men dominate collections of major art museums. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/survey-finds-majority-artists-represented-major-museums-are-white-men-180971771/