Through a set of ingeniously concocted experiments, reported Friday in the journal Science, researchers show that white characters in television series display far more negative body language toward their black peers than to members of their own race.
The bias conveyed by these body clues is not only recognized subconsciously by people who watch the shows, but significantly influences their feelings about the black characters.
I'm too weary to go into it further. But let's start from the top:
TV storytelling is about characters in conflict. Therefore, any study of "tv body language" is going to be skewed because on TV, unlike in life, people are ALWAYS IN CONFLICT.
Comparing relations and body language of say, "House and Foreman" vs. "House and Wilson" that doesn't take into account not just the race of the character, but their social relationship to the other character, the genre of the show, the way they tell stories...all of it...is BULLSHIT.
Phrenology & "subliminal" science -- that's about the weight of this.
I would love to see this study, I really would. I bet any TV writer, no matter how addled, could demolish it simply by comparing how they've cherrypicked character relationships, in about twelve seconds.
Completely fucking stupid.
2 comments:
You could also draw the conclusion from the same study that psychological researchers in Massachusetts are biased and sloppy.
At least one group of such researchers is certainly proving themselves so.
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