Media Framing in 2020

Media framing is a concept in various media that depicts how the culture of society is defined in the social class. Diana Kendall, a professor at Baylor University, studied how the media has portrayed social class. Her non-fiction book Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America was released in July 2005 and was reprinted by the Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in 2011. In her study, “Framing Class, Vicarious Living and Conspicuous Consumption,” she discusses how different types of framing depict each social class rank and why the media doesn’t differentiate between real and fake. Her main claim is that media framing tends to depict social classes and exaggerates the ideology that people tend to overanalyze other social classes in our American society. She believes that the solution to media framing is journalism. She proves her claim by showing the differences between various classes in a cultural perspective, and that the social classes don’t reflect or mirror society as a whole. A movie that relates to some of the framing concepts is Crazy Rich Asians (2018), a story about a Chinese-American woman, Rachel Chu, who visits Singapore for the first time with her boyfriend, Nick Young, only to learn that his family is unbelievably rich and very well known. As Rachel learns about his family, she finds out that she is the target of Nick’s rarefied family culture because she is different. In this paper, I will analyze and discuss Diana Kendall’s main argument, its strengths and weaknesses, and analyze the movie, Crazy Rich Asians, discussing how it relates to one of her framing concepts in the overall argument.

Kendall uses the concepts of media framing to show the differences on how the media depicts the social class. She generalizes that the media portrays the upper class positively which emphasizes admiration framing, consensus framing and emulation framing. Admiration framing is the idea of the upper class being portrayed as generous, caring individuals. Consensus framing defines the members of the upper class as everyone else. Emulation framing is the idea that people should reward themselves with something valuable. She first generalizes that the media sees the upper class as a positive type of class that’s depicted from admiration to consumerism and adds the point that T.V. shows on FOX, NBC, and ABC heavily emphasize on consumerism and that it’s measured by what the person owns, meaning that those with the most expensive items are the ones who are the happiest (426). This means that, in a cultural perspective, the upper-class society is portrayed as people who tend to be more wealthy and tend to be more positive in their life. She uses T.V. networks and shows as evidence to define what it means to be in the upper class society. Kendall also generalizes that the media portrays the poor and the homeless as people who shouldn’t be under the presence of the media. She says that the poor contrasts with those in the upper class society (427 - 428). In other words, the poor and the homeless don’t fit in the presence of the media and we are encouraged to view these people as “outsiders”. She does this because it exaggerates the idea of how our society is viewing homeless and poor citizens compared to the upper-class citizens. Later in the article, she shows the reality of the media and its effects on social class and consumerism.

Diana Kendall believes that the media doesn’t reflect the reality of social class because it misses the overall aspects of our cultural ideologies and beliefs. For example, “The blurring between what is real and what is not real encourages people to emulate the upper classes and shun the working and the poor” (425). In other words, the difference between reality and “real-life” is very distinct and that we can only tell based on how we see other people in a cultural perspective. She uses the proof of logos to generalize and identify the main difference in reality and realism. She then adds, “Class clearly permeates media culture and influences our thinking on social inequality… Because of their pervasive nature, the media have the symbolic capacity to define the world for other people. In turn, readers and viewers gain information that they use to construct a picture of class and inequality” (431). In other words, the media tends to pass down information gained, thus making us viewers think about how the information symbolises class and inequality.

Overall, Diana Kendall defines media framing as something that can be shaped from the media point of view. Kendall states, “we over identify with the wealthy, because the media socialize us to believe that people in the upper classes are better than we are. The media also suggest that we need to have no allegiance to people in our own class or to those who are less fortunate (425).” She means that we tend to go straight to conclusions about the media’s perspective on social classes that we don’t realize, the media have no correlation to other members in the class in every shape or form. This shows the usage of ethos because she is implying her own perspective on the media and correlating that to how we react in everyday life.

There are some strengths and weaknesses that are being addressed from the movie that result from Kendall’s argument. One of her strengths consists of the use of ethos to support her background on how people view others from their own cultural perspective and how it’s used in her study. Another strength comes from her use of logos because she is using relevant sources such as T.V. shows, networking, and some historical reference to reflect on how the media is portraying people in a visual aspect. Her weakness in her argument is her use of pathos because she doesn’t really express her own feelings towards the situation the way that Ehrenreich does about minimum wage. Ehrenreich believes that jobs should be fair in terms of having an equal minimum wage along with some respect between the boss and its employees. Ehrenreich states, “I make the decision to move closer to Key West. First, because of the drive. Second and third, also because of the drive: gas is eating up $4 to $5 a day, and although Jerry's is as high-volume as you can get, the tips average only 10 percent, and not just for a newbie like me.” It means that her experience in having minimum wage is affecting the amount of pay Ehrenreich gets. It’s important because it justifies the experience of what it’s like to work with a small minimum wage. I believe what the 21-century audience values most is having the right to be equal to other social classes as a whole and not be separate. Therefore, Kendall’s argument should be amended because she doesn’t add the importance of culture, its differences in countries and classes.

In 2019, there are still some types of media framing on social classes. In this case the movie Crazy Rich Asians uses some of the concepts in the upper-class framing to define the characters in the scenes. There are a few scenes that represent the framings used in Kendall’s argument. For example, the part where Rachel meets up with her old college roommate, Peik Lin, later on she eats dinner with her family and reveals that her boyfriend is Nick Young, leading to the history of the Young family and their rise to fame. She states, “ Look, there’s new money all over Asia. We got the Beijing Billionaires, the Taiwan Tycoons. But the Young family, they’re old money rich. They had money when they left China in the 1800s. And they went all the way down here. Not there. Here (London). They came to Singapore when there was nothing but jungle and pig farmers. You know what I mean? And they built all of this. Now, they’re the landlords of the most expensive city in the world”. In other words, the Young family started out as landlords in London after they left China in the 1800s and then they came to Singapore and built all of the houses and infrastructures, declaring them the landlords of the most expensive city in the world. In this context, the way the frame is portrayed is that they used the concept of emulation framing because Kendall portrays emulation framing to show that people who buy a lot of valuable things without working hard have temporary happiness. However, in the movie people who work hard tend to have valuables that create happiness that lasts long making them winners in life. In the next moment of the movie, it is being shown how cultures are different between America and Asia.

Rachel meets up with Nick’s mother, Eleanor, to play a game of mahjong, as they play, Rachel starts to question Eleanor on why she didn’t like Rachel, she responds, “There’s a Hokkien phrase. Ka gilan. It means ‘our own kind of people.’ And you’re not our own kind… You’re a foreigner. American. And all Americans think about is their own happiness… It’s an illusion. We understand how to build things that last. Something you know nothing about” (Crazy Rich Asians). It means that people who are or look like those in other countries aren’t “their” people so they are considered foreigners, like Americans, they tend to follow the American dream and find happiness, but Eleanor defines it as an illusion and that she knows how long hard work lasts compared to temporary happiness. It’s showing the idea of consensus framing because this moment is showing the major difference in how upper class culture is different in third world countries compared to America and that the members of the classes aren’t part of the social culture. Thus culture is more important than class because culture is very distinct and there are differences between countries in the same class.

In this paper I have analyzed Diane Kendall’s main argument along with its strengths and weaknesses, and shown how Crazy Rich Asians reflects the main ideas addressed to the argument. Diana Kendall believes that the media shapes their public opinions on social classes by using the idea of media framing to show how they depict social classes in a cultural perspective. One reason is that the media uses the cultural perspective to show the differences in social class. Another reason is that using social class in media framing doesn’t reflect the reality of society in general. She backs up her own argument by analyzing the idea and concept of media framing. Her strengths in the argument were the use of logos and ethos to show the differences between cultures. Her weaknesses were the use of emotions because she doesn’t express herself, she only depicts how the media views other cultures and the importance of culture. Crazy Rich Asians reflects on the aspect of the upper-class and that it differs between the cultures and beliefs of first-world versus third-world countries. I believe that the movie still applies to our current generation of media and our everyday lives because it affects our ideology in terms of why society sees other cultures as different or the same. Overall, media framing is controversial and is being used in many various ways to make us believe what is actually a true or a false statement.