Bitch stole my Fish

This is a photo that has been widely circulated over facebook and many other social sharing websites in the past couple of years. It depicts a young African American male, who has the words “Bitch stole my fish” over his head while he is angrily glaring at a slightly older white female who has a fish in her hands. From this photo many American cultural ideas are shown and created about the relationship between African American males and society.

In this photo if one looks at the boy we begin to classify him as a gangster. We notice that his pants are sagging, which creates an icon semiotic of the boy being our ideal image of a thug. Similarly, the angry look on his face also helps spread the idea that he is dangerous. Lastly the use of the word bitch, which is used as semiotic symbol to stand in for the young girl, is also associated with the lower class.

The importance of all this is that by using these classification one starts to associate all these negative attributes with African American males. According to Stuart hall, a prominent cultural theorist, classification creates meaning, predicts ranges of behaviors, and maintains an order of dominance. In this photo the semiotics associated with the black boy helps the reader classify him, and by doing so one begins to associate African American males as being dangerous thugs of a lower class.

Furthermore, all of the attention in this photo is placed on the African American boy. According to Richard Dyer, a well known English academic specializing in cinema, we neglect to classify white people as a racial position and therefore unknowingly take their position as the norm. This causes us to hardly notice or care about the white girl’s placement in this photo, other than being the target of the young boy’s hatred. A reader of this photo takes the position of this girl and begins to worry about her safety next to the young African American male. This overall helps develop the stereotype that all black men are violent and should be feared.

Overall, at first my reaction to this photo was that I found it pretty humorous. However after closely analyzing it I realized that this photo produces and reinstates many of the negative stereotypes thought about African American males. Therefore, although the photo is entertaining, one must realize the true social implications and the ideas that this photo embeds into American culture.