Family Guy confirms Stereotypes within Police Brutality

A stereotype is defined as a standardized mental picture that is formed overtime and held in common by members of a group. It is also seen as a bias mental picture that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudice, attitude or uncritical judgment. People can often use these judgments to discriminate and it can also lead to violence towards a specific group.

This scene is from Family Guy titled “Southern Sheriff Traffic Stop.” To summarize the video Peter gets pulled over by a police officer and Peter who is a white man who puts on a Harvard sweatshirt and inserts a pipe into his mouth so that he could have more power over the police officer and talk down to them. When the officer comes to the window Peter talks down to him as if he is better, while Cleveland is an African American male apologizing for Peter’s actions towards the officer. Cleveland explains that he is sorry for his friends’ actions and they only want to follow the rules. After this is said the officer gets offended and asks if Cleveland threated an officer. This leads the officer to pull out a bat and break the headlight, and turn signal light while also planting weed inside the trunk of the car and arresting the four men. When he calls into dispatch to make the arrest he describes them as one African American, One Crippled, One Skinny and One Handsome. By the officer calling the men by these names he was stereotyping them.

            A schema is cognitive structures that represent knowledge about objects, people or situations. It is often normal to see police officers abusing the law, using weapons unlawfully and sometimes “planting” drugs on people. In the video there are many stereotypes that can be noticed. You first notice that when Peter gets pulled over he pulls a Harvard sweatshirt on and sticks a pipe in his mouth to look "prestige". This is a schema that if you are white, male, who is educated you can get through life on a clean slate. I am using this media text because it portrays that we do have certain schemas and have the ability to stereotype one another. It is referring to how we see each other, and also who also holds power. Although Peter being a educated man is a positive schema it can be seen as negative because although we see him positively, the officer fails to treat everyone the same. It can be seen as favoritism. We have this organized knowledge that leads us to our guide behavior.

            When you hear about a police officer you tend to picture a bigger man that is white, in his mid-20’s- late 40’s, with brown hair, blue eyes, rude and possible uneducated. This video confirms this schema because the man in the video fits the description of what we believe to see in an officer. We tend to build these schemas based off our past experiences and mainly by the things that are seen in the media. In order to change how we are prejudice behavior we have to bring intention, attention and time. If we do not have all 3 elements we cannot simply change the stereotype, or prejudice that are held against a particular group.

 

 

This video can also be found by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlOYlws4EBw