This book studies how documentaries, and factual media in general, can contribute to the reduction of social stigma and prejudice. It adopts models from social psychology, media studies and cultural studies and is intended for scholars and media makers who aim to increase social inclusion and diversity by deconstructing harmful boundaries between social groups. Such boundaries may be based on the stereotyping of ethnicity, culture, age, dis/ability, gender and sexual orientation, for example. The first part of the book outlines the functionality of stereotypes as essential processes for social cognition both in real life and during documentary viewing. The second part establishes a classification system for stigmatising media stereotypes and formulates a methodology based on critical discourse analysis to analyse them in narrative and audio-visual representations. The third and final part of the book conceptualises a set of methodologies to reduce stigmatising stereotypes. These methodologies are based on 1) representations that prompt perspectival alignment with screen characters, and 2) the perceived salience of multiple, intersecting social identities.
Panel discussion of the book at the SCSMI Conference at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2023. The panel participants are Dan Flory, Dirk Eitzen, Meghan Sanders, Carl Plantinga, Karen Pearlman and Catalin Brylla:
Table of Contents
PART I: UNDERSTANDING STEREOTYPES
Chapter 1: Prologue
1.1 The Context
1.2 The Scope
1.3 The Methodology
1.4 The Structure
Chapter 2: Why Do Stereotypes Exist?
2.1 Introduction: Social Identity
2.2 Social Categorisation
2.3 Stereotypes
2.4 Stereotype Properties
2.5 Bottom-up and Top-down Stereotyping
2.6 Stereotype Activation and Application
2.7 Consequences of Stereotypes
2.8 Conclusion
Chapter 3: Narrativising the Other
3.1 Introduction: Mental and Media Stereotypes
3.2 Folk Psychology
3.3 Documentary Narratives
3.4 Othering Discourses
3.5 Othering in Documentary Narratives
3.6 Social Distance
3.7 False Empathy and Hyperempathy
3.8 Conclusion
PART II: ANALYSING STEREOTYPES
Chapter 4: Types of Others
4.1 Introduction: Classifying Media Stereotypes
4.2 The Primitive Other
4.3 The Incapable Other
4.4 The Amoral Other
4.5 The Victimised Other
4.6 The Extra-capable Other
4.7 Additive Combinations of Others
4.8 Conclusion
Chapter 5: The OIMDA Model
5.1 Introduction: A Body of Media Texts
5.2 The OIMDA Model
5.3 Outgroup
5.4 Ingroup
5.5 Social Wrong
5.6 Media Sampling
5.7 Media Analysis
5.8 Conclusion
Chapter 6: The OIMDA Model—Blindness Case Study
6.1 Introduction: Context
6.2 Outgroup
6.3 Ingroup
6.4 Social Wrong
6.5 Media Sampling
6.6 Media Analysis: Narrative Stereotypes
6.7 Media Analysis: Aesthetic Stereotypes
6.8 Media Analysis: Socio-cultural Context
6.9 Conclusion
PART III: REDUCING STEREOTYPES
Chapter 7: Current Strategies
7.1 Introduction: A Message-centred Approach
7.2 Visibility
7.3 Incidentality
7.4 Narrative Foregrounding
7.5 Non-stereotypical Portrayals
7.6 Positive Portrayals
7.7 Exposing Stigma and Stereotypes
7.8 Subverting Stigma and Stereotypes
7.9 Outgroup Self-representation
7.10 Conclusion
Chapter 8: Perspective-taking
8.1 Introduction: Achieving Stereotype Reduction
8.2 The Stereotype Reduction Model
8.3 Perspective-taking
8.4 Materiality
8.5 Materiality through Objects
8.6 Materiality in the Home
8.7 Materiality in the Past
8.8 Everydayness
8.9 Everydayness through Routines and Rituals
8.10 Everydayness through Disruptions and Failures
8.11 Conclusion
Chapter 9: Cross-categorisation
9.1 Introduction: Multiple Categorisation
9.2 Multiple Categorisation Configurations
9.3 Surprising Category Combinations
9.4 Case Study: The Gardeners of Kabul
9.5 Less distant Outgroups
9.6 The Shared Ingroup Category
9.7 Case Study: Africa with Ade Adepitan
9.8 Extended Cross-group Intimacy
9.9 Conclusion
Chapter 10: Recategorisation
10.1 Introduction: The Common Ingroup
10.2 The Common Ingroup Category
10.3 The Universal Common Ingroup
10.4 De-emphasising Differences
10.5 The Dual Identity
10.6 Precluding Ingroup Projection in Dual Identity
10.7 Outgroups without Stigmatising Stereotypes
10.8 Outgroups with Stigmatising Stereotypes
10.9 Conclusion
Chapter 11: Decategorisation
11.1 Introduction: The Individual Identity
11.2 Differentiation
11.3 Differentiation by Ambiguity
11.4 Differentiation by Contrast
11.5 Personalisation
11.6 Personalisation through Self-other Comparison
11.7 Personalisation through Self-disclosure
11.8 The Filmmaker’s Perspective
11.9 Conclusion
Chapter 12: Epilogue
12.1 Summary
12.2 Condition and Risks
12.3 Using Stigmatising Stereotypes
12.4 Final Thoughts
REVIEWS
This book is a tour de force, combining the best and most sophisticated insights from experimental psychology and the social science of prejudice with a powerfully effective discourse analytic approach – exactly what is needed to engage with documentary and film makers to enable them to move beyond stereotypes that stigmatise groups and perpetuate disadvantage. It is intellectual, engaging, practical, eminently sensible, and persuasive.
Dominic Abrams, Professor of Social Psychology, University of Kent
Written with clarity and passion, this book is packed with illustrations and case studies that offer innovative ways of critiquing representational issues with regards to stigmatised groups in non-fiction screen media. Given its focus on the intersection of marginalised identities, it is an impressive contribution to a variety of disciplines, such as post-colonial and gender studies. Strongly recommended for scholars, students and filmmakers whose work align with principles of equity and social justice.
Florence Ayisi, Professor of International Documentary Film, University of South Wales
Dr. Brylla has done the world a great service by providing a thorough, carefully researched, and elegantly explained treatise on the potential of factual media to decrease discriminatory attitudes. At the heart of every major media effects theory is the belief that people learn through consuming media. Dr. Brylla walks the reader carefully through scholarship in social psychology, sociology, and media studies to explain how stereotypes are formed, transmitted, and—fortunately—combatted. Though scholarly, the book is also practical as it lays out the necessary steps for factual media to reduce stereotypes. I highly recommend this book.
Edward Schiappa, John E. Burchard Professor of the Humanities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This book is groundbreaking in its approach to lessening stigmatizing portrayals of many diverse groups in mass media. It puts forth a plan to mobilize media industries that produce documentaries and other reality-based content to reduce negative stereotypes. It gives media production teams, industry executives, and the academic community practical tools to help transform documentaries into spaces for more authentically diverse and inclusive content.
Beth Haller, Professor of Communication Studies, Towson University
This perceptive and well-argued book develops effective new models for analyzing and reducing harmful stereotypes in nonfiction media. As both an experienced documentary filmmaker and practiced scholar, author Catalin Brylla is exactly the right person to accomplish this task. This book is not only a notable expansion of documentary film theory and theory of spectatorship, but also provides concrete strategies for documentary filmmakers.
Carl Plantinga, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Calvin College; Author of Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film
How factual media shapes relationships between viewers and ‘Others’ is a matter of urgent concern for documentary scholars and makers. This original volume explores stereotypes in factual media, from journalism and digital media to documentary film and television, showing how they appeal to, and potentially amplify, deeply held implicit attitudes. The book is richly interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarship from fields as diverse as psychology, ethics, and media/documentary studies. It is jam packed with case studies and draws on the author’s own experience of documentary production. In Documentary and Stereotypes Brylla makes a compelling argument for the value of cognitive approaches to the study of factual media and provides a clear and practical method for documentarians committed to challenging stigmatising stereotypes in their practice.
Kate Nash, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Leeds; Co-Editor Studies in Documentary Film
Brylla’s book combines an original inquiry into the processes of contemporary stereotyping with a sharp analysis of how documentaries work to promote or question them. It breaks important new ground in the closeness of its attention to the variety of routes by which misunderstandings and prejudices become established. This knowledge is then used to recommend ways for media production to work as a positive, corrective force in the circulation of ideas about social identity.
John Corner, Professor in Documentary Studies, University of Leeds