In Chapter 2 of Framing Class, Diana Kendall discusses the following frames through which the news media encourages us to regard the wealthiest people in the United States:
- The consensus frame: the wealthy are like everyone else.
- The admiration frame: the wealthy are generous and caring people.
- The emulation frame: the wealthy personify the American Dream.
- The price-tag frame: the wealthy believe in the gospel of materialism. (Kendall, p. 29)
Discuss a specific example from the media that exemplifies one of these frames. You may choose to discuss how one or more of these frames is used in media accounts of one wealthy U.S. citizen who is in the news of late, Donald Trump.
February 13, 2019 at 10:13 am
The emulation frame “raises the question, If they can do it why can’t you? It portrays the United States as the land of opportunity, where anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can achieve the American Dream (Kendall, pg. 40).” Though Jennifer Hochshild enumerates the 4 key tenets of a true American Dream, essentially amounting to the conclusion that one should be able to try and succeed if they so choose, her tenets might not all always be true, as Kendall points out, “this ideology hides structural barriers to upward mobility.”
Kendall explains that the emulation frame often appears in one of two forms, relating to success either through random windfall or entrepreneurship. Windfall would be, for example, winning the lottery, while entrepreneurship would be a poor son of a minister starting a million-dollar company through grit and hard work alone. Regardless of its producers’ opinions on the “myth” of the American Dream, the hit TV show, Shark Tank certainly perpetuates the entrepreneurship side of the emulation frame.
Shark Tank is a reality television series during which millionaire and billionaire venture capitalists are pitched ideas for new products and companies and choose whether to invest. In the show’s opening sequence, particularly, several of the venture capitalists, called “sharks,” are portrayed as being inspirational rags-to-riches success stories. Some of these include the son of an immigrant factory worker who started a million dollar cyber-security firm, a poor kid from the Bronx who started hit clothing company FUBU, college dropouts with ambition, and so on. The rhetoric of the show not only pervades the minds of the viewers but even influences the conversations on the show itself in both positive and negative ways. Sharks often say they admire a contestant’s ambition and can foresee them achieving rags-to-riches glory, while they also have been known to abhor any complaining or excuses-making from contestants, being sure to remind them that they themselves never complained on their path to success. The latter example recalls Kendall’s affirmation that the emulation frame, “provides an excuse for those who are better off financially to deride those who are not (pg. 42).”
With the prevalence of these larger than life personalities who are preaching their gospel of the myth of the American dream, this specific media utilizes successfully the emulation frame to show, however inaccurately, that anyone can go from rags to riches.