Monday, May 25, 2009
mandela's uniqueness
Factors that made him unique and form part of his personality or his image are the class and race. Before the democracy, Nelson was presented as the economic gains black people have made and the lack of progress they have made in terms of how they were seen by the others. Berger wrote that ‘even when black people are shown at the summit of their achievements, they often fail to carry it off’. In a way, Nelson proved Berger wrong. Behavior of people who are minorities is frequently interpreted in this binary form of representation with complementary polar oppositions such as good or bad and civilized or primitive. Hall said that black people always shown ‘being good at something, winning at last!’(Berger 2005:169). A political power determines how people are being represented, classified, stereotyped and made different. Mandela was, in a post-apartheid, as a negative stereotyping, but now the media portrayed him in positive and influential way.