Topic summary
Stock characters
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Stock character.
American film
Stock characters in American popular culture, especially racial and ethnic stereotypes, often came to be seen as offensive in later decades and were replaced with new stereotypes. For example, the "lazy Black" and the "treacherous bespectacled Japanese" were replaced in the 1990s with the "street-smart Brother" and the "camera-happy Japanese tourist". Other groups more frequently represented as stock characters include Native Americans, Hispanics, Arabs, Gays/Lesbians, Jews, and Italians. Other briefly popular stock characters include the 1950s "overweight Communist cell leader" and the 1970s "Black Panther revolutionary".