Cultivation Theory - mass media & society

1. What is the Cultivation Theory?
George Gerbner’s “Cultivation Theory” which basically states that what society sees in the media shapes how we act, react, and think about things in the real world. We are shaped or “cultivated” by any stereotypes that are shown consistently in the media.

2. Examples

★ The Big Bang Theory

 While watching one of my favorite show, The big bang theory, I never realized how scripted and planned it was so that the cast had their specific roles based on their gender.

The main characters include: Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, Raj, and Penny. Penny is the only female and she works as a waitress at a local restaurant. The four males are all students and also doctors and scientists because they have such a high degree. They are all Caucasian except for Raj, in their 20s, and living a pretty good life.

This definitely fit into Cultivation theory. One proof is that shows how the roles of men and women are portrayed in society is on page two when the theory says, “No one is born a minority. Minorities are trained to act like minorities.” That just goes to show how minorities, in this case women, are basically trained throughout their lives to act like a women should according to society and the media. Penny plays a waitress who doesn’t really care much for her education while the guys are all doctors and scientist and very smart. I never realized it before, but after watching it while keeping the Cultivation theory in mind, I was surprised at how true it ended up being.

★ The Grey’s anatomy

I watched a latest episode of Grey’s anatomy. The episodes name was “Support system.” This episode displayed the major problems that Cristina and Owen were having. What their colleagues don’t know is that the two of them are faking the flu in order to stay home to discuss Owen’s infidelity. Christina wants all the painful details but Owen is reluctant to give them to her because he knows it will hurt her. Because she demands them Owen gives step by step details about the night he slept with another women. This causes Cristina to sob uncontrollably when he tries to console her she locks herself in the bathroom.

A worried Owen tries to break down the bathroom door just as his wife opens it. the two of them laugh about this momentarily, but then all the pain comes rushing back. Chrisatina ultimately believes that the reason Owen slept with another woman is because he was still so hurt about her abortion. He wanted to hurt her back. After this unsetting revelation, Owen packs a bag and moves out of the firehouse.

The characters are all doctors and very attractive. Christina is a female, she is a asian, and middle aged as well. In the episode the men played the strong leads and Christina was vulnerable throughout the whole show. This goes along with theory very well, because like stated in his theory the most leads in TV shows are successful, white, male, attractive, and strong leads. The girls will be vulnerable and a victim just like in this episode. Christina was the hopeless victim because her husband and cheated on her and she spent the whole episode crying.

In the Cultivation theory, the males were in power and the one female that really had a lead role was devastated and crying pretty much the whole episode because a guy broke her heart. Most of the main characters in this episode are while males. Some of the other leads are of color, but the most important, main characters in the show are white. Males were in power and most of the women were having troubles or seemed just lost, like they needed help and were victims.

Overall, this episode and many episodes in Grey’s Anatomy fit into Cultivation theory. White, handsome, successful, males were the main focus and leads of the show and the females were vulnerable and seemed to be the victims.

3. CSI

Sometimes I watched an episode of the CSI Miami. The characters were mixed some females, some males but the main roles were men. The most powerful role belong to: Lieutenant Horatio Caine a white male of roughly 40 years. In cultivation theory, the leading role is both white and a male. He is not a minority and is someone that the media portays as powerful all the time. The media has done such a good job setting the standards of power to while men that anything other than that is weird in the eyes of the public. In my opinion if SCI had a female lead it will not be the success it is today.

Overall, most criminals are minorities and the leading roles of CSI are majorities. Females do hole a semi powerful role in the show, but it is not the number 1 power roles. There is one CSI agent who is Puerto Rican, but the rest CSI’s are Caucasians. Most minorities play the enemy, criminal, bad guy.