Stereotypes, ah the simple easy to fall back on comedy back bone of life. We can separate ourselves from this but it is all to easy to indulge in a splurged out stereotype. It is easier to throw a name at someone rather than the hard process of making an informed decision on that person and what they individually are like. On a wider spectrum you can include a dash of racism with stereotypes, be a simple ‘hehe, French frogs’ stereotype or a panicky ‘all Asians have bombs!’ slavering idiocy.
But I guess thats the thing with stereotypes, as a concept they work, the label gun of life jumps out from behind a rickety fence out and smacks a word onto your eye. Thats what you are now, you don’t have a personality or any spark of originality or vim. You are just a name, a floating name tag in the whirl wind of society. Your a northerner, or a scouser or a cockney; your a name and thats all. Above all stereotypes are lazy, its a easy thing to do taking the mick out of someone because of there ‘group’. And for once I am not an exception to what I write, i’m included in this process, I mock groups of people folk with much merriment and mirth and I am in no way going to whip out my linguistic ladder and take the high ground.
So lets try and flip this round, lets say we get rid of the idea of stereotypes, poof! Gone. Right now try and think of jokes that would now be made redundant. Well for a start nearly all jokes involving people would go. The Irish, English and Scottish men would never meet and the world would be a much darker place.
Also the tourist industry would collapse into a husk of emptiness. Although there would still be Germans drinking beer from buckets and French eating frogs and fondling their women until the early afternoon they would not be advertised as much. And therefore people would find it hard to describe people from specific country’s.’Yeah the americans, ermmm, there the ones with the big country right?”. Country references would be flung like arse nuggets at the sun, the Dolmio advert would be a fanciful thought and Mario would not be scampering around killing fungi.
If there weren’t any stereotypes there would be so much individuality in the world that everything would become a blur. If you where to take into account everything you picture of someone from a country you get a stereotype. If you merge all these country’s together you get a human. A person. On earth. Like you. Country’s would be indistinguishable, and it would be ruddy hard to pick a holiday destination. The world would be a terribly confusing place, and although there would be little prejudice, there would be no ’simple’ jokes, therefore the planet would be a much duller danker, old man with a glass of water sort of place.
What we can all agree here is that in extreme cases stereotypes are bad evil little things. But they are necessary for life. Perhaps with work certain stereotypes can be tweaked, but it is really going to take a while. America may reduce the obesity rate to one wobbling flab bear out of one hundred perfectly normal folk, but we we still call them fat. The French may save us from a war, and they will still be cheese eatings surrender monkeys. And due to total prejudice and narrow mindedness, people of ethnic descent will all be bombers, no matter how many win peace prizes and live decent lives.
So there we go young fella me lad. Another post of rhubarb to plug a crevice in the ever expanding tinterweb world. I am not saying I have the answers because I don’t, and if you have ever glimpsed at one of these pixel blockades between you and you life, you will see that I am unable to come up with a logical conclusion. However what I can serve you up with is this. Stereotypes are wrongly right. They are bad because they isolate groups of people and often mock them. But they also bring other groups together.
It is a shame that stereotypes are sometimes hate figures and that it is a lazy way to output aggression and stupidity by saying all Irish people are drunkards and all black people are drug dealers. Its an outlet for the simpleton, and they are ruining it for everyone. The silly fools. Equal stereotypes are what I crave, because you all know that most jokes could become universal by changing the stereotype. For example:
[Insert stereotype here] walks into a bar. “Ouch!”
Now simply fill the gap with and Irish man, a French man, a Scottish man, a Yankee, a Mexican, a fat man, a cockney, a chav, a rabbi, a priest, a goth, a jew, a catholic, a hindu, a women, your mom, your mother in law, my mother in law and and many many more. So theres this post pretty much wrapped up for this week. If you have been reading use stereotypes, but with caution. Rather like plutonium.
P.S. These posts have been running for a year now. How the hell did that happen?
