A review to chapter 8 John Storey’s Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, ‘Race’, racism and representation
‘Race’, racism and representation
The topic of this chapter is an issue that is closely related to our daily life. That makes it more interesting to comprehend to be finally implemented. This chapter is divided into four parts, ‘Race’ and racism, The ideology of racism : its historical emergence, Orientalism, and Anti-racism and cultural studies. Each part is connected to presents the conception of ‘race’ and historical development of racism in England. Before opening the first subchapter, Storey firstly projected the abstract of this chapter. The abstract supports the reader in perceiving the content in this chapter. It is readable because the abstract is straight-forward and sharper compared to another chapter in this book I have read so far.
The ‘Race’ and racism subchapter starts by conveying a mind-blowing idea. Storey stated “There is just one human race. Human biology does not divide people into different ‘races’ ; it is racism (and sometimes its counter arguments) that insist on this division.” Only two sentences in the beginning of this chapter and I already got an eureka moment. It excites me to finish the whole chapter to find out more things about ‘race’ and racism. In this subchapter, we can find the three major moments in the history of ‘race’. Those are slavery, colonialism and 1950s immigration. Storey added a quotation from Paul Gilroy, “‘Race’ has to be socially and politically constructed.” I highly agree to this statement.
In the next subchapter is ‘The ideology of racism : its historical emergence. As implied on the title, this part tells us the history of ‘race’ that was firstly emerged in England as the result of slavery and slave trade. Slavery issue was supported because it developed the economic condition in England at that time. Based on this book, racism first emerges as a defensive ideology for economics profit of slavery. Also in this chapter, there are many racial statements that are completely unacceptable, such as Fryer (1984) “The White and the Negroe are two distinct species” and Charles White (1975)’s “The white European . . . be considered as the most beautiful of the human race. No one will doubt his superiority in intellectual powers; and I believe it will be found that his capacity is naturally superior also to that of every other man”. This sentence is a result of the inferiority by white people to black people. Black people were also considered as criminals and caused deterioration to British. While reading this part, I was wondering what made the racism level extreme back then.
Orientalism is the next chapter. I first recognize this term as one of the approaches in postcolonialism theory. However, this subchapter contains the clearest explanation about Orientalism. Orientalism by Edward Said is a way to define Europe by contrasting the image, idea and personality to the orient. As mentioned in the book, “It is one of the mechanisms by which the west maintained its hegemony over the Orient”. In this chapter, Orientalism is used as the racial representation. It is explained in more detail the example of Orientalism in popular culture by bringing out Hollywood’s account of America’s war in Vietnam. Moreover in this subchapter, Vietnam Hollywood is explained very clearly in many aspects. After a long description, I can conclude the highlights of this subchapter. First taken from this statement, “ Hollywood has ‘invented’ Vietnam as a ‘contrasting image’ and a ‘surrogate and . . . underground self’ of America. In this way Hollywood — together with other discursive practices, such as songs, novels, TV serials, etc. — has succeeded in producing a very powerful discourse on Vietnam: telling America and the world that what happened there, happened because Vietnam is like that.” and also as Storey stated, “My claim is only that Hollywood produced a particular regime of truth.” I relish this chapter because I found correlation between ‘race’ and racism and popular culture.
The last subchapter, Anti-racism and cultural studies. To end the section, Storey provided some quotations by Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. The first quotation, about the role of cultural studies in overcoming racism is to activate intellectual resources to support society in living diversity. The second is about what sort of insight could help people to successfully face diversity without being anxious. Storey also added his statement that the work of cultural studies intellectually helps to defeat racism.
To sum up, Storey has compiled this chapter well to present the relation of ‘race’ and popular culture. Storey also included quotations that make me amazed at the extreme rate of racism in the past. However, through reading, I found some things that did not fulfil my expectations. I found the fraility on the last part which I consider this part is necessary to be explained deeply to influence the readers about racism issues. Compared to other chapters which are lengthy and detailed, the last chapter is uneven. It is because Storey only provided more quotations and less explanation to conclusion. It makes this chapter seem unfinished and hanging. In addition, the elaboration about Vietnam Hollywood as an example of racial representation in popular culture is wordy and there is a lot of superfluous information that less relate to racism and popular culture . On the contrary, the explanation about the historical development of racism, which was mentioned on the abstract, is not specified enough. Despite things that did not meet my expectations, this chapter grows my gratitude because people nowadays are more aware about respecting all human races equally.
