Friday, June 15, 2012

Don't judge a book by its cover


"The Stereotypes Song - (Your Favorite Martian music video)"



This song was made to make people laugh, but unfortunately it might offend someone else. Anyway, I chose it in order to show you how strong stereotypes can be. Just think about it, it was written and animated in the United States and it can still be funny all around the world. The main reason is simple: we tend to consider these characters as if they were true.


I think most of the things that are funny need previous knowledge about something. As we ignore much about these countries and its citizens we prefer to accept what mass media shows us on TV, Internet, Newspapers and so on. That is where everything starts: we watch a film and we think it shows the truth, then we read a magazine full of pictures from an European city and we believe that is the way the whole country is like. In the end it is completely wrong and we allow them to tell us what to think. Usually, we even pay to access these false contents (they are easy to make and easy to sell).



In my opinion, it is fine to laugh at things like this when you do know it is not true, as it just represents what you use to see about those countries (yes, stereotypes once again). However, we must be careful and it is our responsibility to bear in mind that we need to respect everyone if we want to be respected. Definitely, you cannot judge a book by its cover. Every place has got its own culture and way of thinking and in no case we have the right to say whether one culture is better or worse than the rest; they are simply as different as special.

No comments:

Post a Comment