Walter Lippman refers to stereotypes as a projection on to the ‘world’. Although he is not concerned primarily to distinguish stereotypes from modes of representation whose principal concern is not the world. it is important for us to do so. especially as our focus is representation in media fictions, which are aesthetic as well as social constructs. In this perspective, stereotypes are a particular sub-category of a broader category of fictional characters, the type. Whereas stereotypes are essentially defined by their aesthetic function. namely a mode of characterisation in fiction. The type is any character constructed through the use of a few immediately recognisable and defining traits, which do not change or ‘develop’ through the course of the narrative and which point to general. recurrent features of the human world. Th opposite of the type is the novelistic character, defined by a multiplicity of traits that are only gradually revealed to us through the course of the narrative, a narrative which is hinged on the growth or development of the character and is thus centered upon the latter in her or his unique individuality, rather than pointing outwards to a world.In any society. it is the novelistic character that is privileged over the type. for the obvious reason that the society’s privileges-at any rate. at the level of social rhetoric-the individual over the collective or the mass. For this reason, the majority of fictions that address themselves to general social issues tend nevertheless to end up telling the story of a particular individual. hence returning social issues to purely personal and psychological ones. Once we address ourselves to the representation and definition of social categories. for example, alcoholics. we have to consider what is at stake in one mode of characterization than another.
Representations that appear in the media fictions are
