Formatting Race in the Cultural Industries

• In Event: "Context and Environments": Situating Race and Gender in Media Industries

Abstract

Situating my working within the increasing interest in how the nature of production in the cultural industries shapes the representation of racial minorities, in this paper I demonstrate how the process of formatting leads to the reproduction of racialised/gendered tropes. Following the sociologist Bill Ryan who describes formatting as ‘making an original to type’, I show how formatting in relation to the cultural commodities of racial and ethnic minorities becomes a process of making an original to racial archetype (which always has a gendered/sexual/class dimension too). Drawing from several case studies from my research into British Asian cultural production, I demonstrate how racial ideologies are embedded within, or rather, structured into the logic of formatting. In doing so I argue that breaking the cycle of the making of racial/gender/sexual stereotype entails strategies that focus not just on the politics of representation, but the transformation of industry logics and rationales themselves.

Author

• Anamik Saha, Goldsmith, U of London