South Park: Misrepresentation Of Groups In News Articles, The Television And Documentaries

Today I will be looking at how groups are misrepresented in news articles, the television and documentaries. The topic that I’m going to discuss is how the attitudes values and beliefs surrounding ‘poverty’ have been reinforced through the media and explore ways that society can abolish this misrepresentation.

This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You’re not lower class, you are excluded, – outside. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. Describe the rich life/Describe the poor life. When you hear the word poverty you probably think of beggars on street corners with carboard signs, images of drug abuse and violence in low socioeconomic neighbourhoods and gang affiliation among minorities. However, without the reinforcement of stories in the media the majority of this wouldn’t nearly be as convincing. In the media poverty and the poor are represented as statistics, social outcasts, the residuum, lazy and unworthy. The media ignores the marginalized and renders them as invisible. The media portrays escapism rather than reality as people would rather watch a show about wealthy superficial housewives squabbling over trivial issues or a show about people living in huge apartments that they can somehow afford while living off a small wage or no money at all.

People in poverty are stereotyped as being poor due to their own life choices, this is due to the media. When personal stories of the poor are discussed in the media, often they are shown without context to back them up. Many popular television shows are culprits for creating misrepresentations and stereotypes of poverty. Shows like Benefits Street, South Park, Shameless and Struggle Street are all examples. Benefits Street and Struggle Street are very similar as they both show footage of low socioeconomic towns. These documentaries show people swearing, smoking bongs and drinking alcohol, graffitied houses, violence, rubbish dumped everywhere and people using EBT cards barely scraping by. Projecting these extreme cases causes people to extrapolate this opinion and think that everybody in poverty are like that. These documentaries emphasise scenes of poverty but won’t mention the outside factors that have contributed to their situations. Provide examples of real-life examples of how people can get into poverty e.g. sick family members medical fees And yet the media does NOT talk about. Without the reasoning of why the poor live the way they do it causes people to make the assumption that people are in poverty because of their own choices. Our society thinks that if the poor got off there buts they would be able to get an education, find a job and get out of poverty – as if its that easy. The people in society who go on to live a successful life are typically the ones who have been given money and have access to an education. However, to accept that everybody has equal access to money and resources is just impractical.

Furthermore, it’s not just television shows and documentaries that are guilty for purveying this misrepresentation – news articles are also to blame. According to a recent article in the Daily Dot, it is believed that poor people have money, but they just waste it. Claire Lehmann states that “ if you’ve ever worked, lived or spent actual time with people trapped in the underclass, the problem is not lack of money, they just spend it frivolously on ‘a 3-day bender’” (Katzowitz, 2019). This is just not an insulting opinion but also an idiotic one. Statistics show that almost 80% of Americans live pay check to pay check and 1 in 3 Australia’s are penny less by Payday. Statistics also show that a 40 percent of adults in poverty wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency expense if needed. Not having money is a major problem. Lehmann’s argument goes on to imply that rich people deserve their spoils and poor people deserve their pain. Lehmann’s lack of both empathy and understanding stereotypes people in poverty and causes the audience to believe that people in poverty are poor because they aimlessly spend their money.

The American sitcom South Park uses humour and animation to hide the mockery of the poor. The sitcom represents the poor as white trash, child abusing, alcoholics and drug addicts. These representations are created by showing a meth lab, alcohol, swearing, kids being sent to foster homes and adults getting arrested. The accompanied yo mama’s so poor jokes reinforce the idea …. Similarly, to South Park, Shameless portrays poverty as comical and cheesy which runs the risk of condescension, especially when considering the idiosyncratic style of the show and the affluence of showtimes demographics.

So, what can be done in order to change the misperceptions that have been caused due to the media? I believe that those who are suffering deserve to be spoken about as more than ‘the marginalised’ and as more than the experiences they endure. So, how can we change our attitudes, beliefs and values about those who experience poverty in ways that humanise rather than humiliate? To put it simply we cannot and should not turn an eye against poverty. Despite poverty being such a widespread issue, poverty only accounts for less than 1% of the media’s coverage – this needs to change. The media needs to repopulate broadcasting with TV shows, documentaries, news articles and other media texts that accurately portray the lives of people in poverty. Shows like Roseanne, Gilmore Girls and Shameless are great examples of shows that represent realistic lives of the poor and they weren’t just produced for our amusement and mockery. If these changes are made then one day, when we turn the tv on we will see prevalent coverage and realistic interpretations of poverty, instead of them being satirised in shows like Southpark and Benefits Street.

To conclude, it is clear that the media not only has the power to frame how and what society thinks about an issue or group, but also determines which issues or groups are significant to the public. For example, the amount of media coverage is determined by the way the public views the issue. Since the publics opinion of poverty is formed by stereotypical and misleading portrayals the media is more than likely to insufficiently address poverty. People in poverty have been misrepresented in tv shows such as South Park, documentaries like Benefits Street and also in newspaper articles. We must not accept these stereotypes portrayed and start creating a change in the media now. You must send authors of media texts a message if they continue with the misrepresentation of people in poverty. If no changes are made in the media this misrepresentation will only continue to proceed and people in poverty deserve better.