An issue near and dear to every CMC major’s heart is, of
course, the importance of representation in media. Reading Macherey’s
reflection on the explicit and the implicit, I was struck by the relevance of
his argument to critical consumption and production of media. Both Barthes and
Macherey note that there is an incredible significance to what is not stated in a text—such is the case
for what is not stated in a media text. Barthes’ romantic notion of “the place
where the garment gapes” can easily turn into a gap through which people and
cultures slip, a pit at the bottom of which bias and bigotry bloom in the
darkness.
Throughout history and even in modern day, white actors have
dominated the majority of popular film and television. On the silver screen,
entire societies become unrealistically monochromatic in their whiteness, and
children watching at home and in theaters use this picture of the world to form
their definition of what is normal, what is beautiful, and what is worthy of
representation. Often, the movies we see are not explicitly racist. They may
have an overall positive message and center on themes outside of race. They may
even feature one or two token POC characters to add an acceptable level of
diversity. However, as Macherey so perfectly articulates, “[a] prejudice is
that which is not judged in language but before it, but which is nevertheless
offered as a judgment. Prejudice, the pseudo-judgment, is the utterance which
remains imperceptibly beyond language” (Macherey 1978, 19). Although a script
may be free of racial slurs or offensive stereotypes, it can still be
prejudiced in the essence of who and what it represents. “[If] the author does
not always say what he states, he does not necessarily state what he says” (19).
Implicit racism can exist in many subtle, even silent forms. I’d argue that
erasure is the most common of these unstated forms of bias. It reinforces the
power structure within society by representing those who are deemed most
important and silencing marginalized voices. Just because oppression is not loud does not mean it isn’t present. As
Barthes mentions in passing, “[conflict] is always coded, aggression is merely
the most worn-out of languages” (Barthes 1973, 110). If we only read into what
is explicitly stated (and only acknowledge prejudice in the form of language), we will lose an essential understanding of the full
meaning of the work.
Of course, this argument can also work in discussions of
sexism, transphobia, and ableism. My point is that Macherey’s concept of the
explicit and the implicit can serve to further our understanding of modern
dynamics of representation in media and film. Absence and silence can communicate a message just
as clearly as presence and language, and this week's readings demonstrated that both Macherey and Barthes understood
that.
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