Page 122 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

CULTURAL CONTEXT

always called for Lenny to lose, giving the audience an opportunity to
vent its anti-gay feelings. De Moraes notes, “When Lenny entered the
arena, the live audience would chant anti-gay slurs. . . . And when he got
the stuffing beat out of him by an opponent, the crowd roared.” 2
Scott Seomin, media director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against
Defamation (GLADD), draws a connection between the crowd’s reac-
tion to the Lenny character and hate crimes directed at individuals like
Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was found bludgeoned to
death in Wyoming only six months before Lenny began appearing on
the pro wrestling circuit. “The crowd is incited to very base homopho-
bic behavior that’s shocking but is unfortunately a reality in 1999, and
the audience’s reaction gives permission to viewers to do harm to gay
people in a very literal way. It’s appalling.” After a protest orchestrated
3
by GLADD, Lenny was eventually cut from the WCW roster.
Seomin maintains that GLADD would welcome more gay characters
in media presentations—including the professional wrestling genre—pro-
vided they are not depicted in a stereotypical manner and that sexual
orientation is not the sole defining characteristic of the character: “It
would be great if WCW introduced a wrestler for a given amount of time,
a dozen appearances or so, and then revealed that he was gay.” 4
By 2005, a new villain emerged on the wrestling scene: an Arab char-
acter named Muhammad Hassan on UPN’s Smackdown. The appearance
of Hassan—whose real name is Mark Copani, an Italian-American—ex-
ploited the fears of Arabs and Muslims by the American public in the
wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack.
A popular genre can also serve as an arena in which social issues are
brought to public attention. In South Africa, charges of racism were raised
in regard to the reality series Big Brother 2 (2002), when only non-whites
were nominated for the first eviction. In the letters to the editor section
in the South African newspaper The Star, readers discussed whether Big
Brother was “a racist game for racists,” and questioned whether the rules
were designed for white players. In response, in the following year’s
5
version, Big Brother Africa (2003), the contestants were primarily black;
only one contestant was a white male. Significantly, however, the number
of white South African viewers dwindled.

Cultural Preoccupations

A genre can also serve as a barometer of cultural preoccupations. A
cultural preoccupation can be defined as the relative importance that a
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