Racism, sexism, classism and lookism in the Peruvian television comedy programs

Abstract

With discriminatory subtlety, the television media in Peru tend to highlight the country’s social or ethnic differences. Comedy programs are the ones that most resort to such forms, as a common resource for easy laughter. The aim of the research was to determine the level of discriminatory content of Peruvian TV comedy programs. The study, of simple descriptive design, had as sample 24 editions of two programs broadcasted at a national level, released between April and June 2019. The Discriminatory Content Analysis Sheet, designed for this research, was used as a tool. It was found out that discriminatory content occupies 51.6 % of the comedy programs studied, with the predominance of direct messages and with hierarchical and heterophobic nature; in addition, the content is related to the ethnic group or socioeconomic status of the character they discriminate against. The research concluded that there is a high level of discriminatory content in Peruvian TV comedy programs; the most frequent is the racist and classist content.