The portrayal of African American women in recent films, has served to highlight the negative stereotyping against them and increase awareness to their plight. The negative stereotyping occurred before the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, where African Americans were predominantly bought and sold as slaves. It is only after the passing of the amendment and the Civil Rights Act, were African Americans considered citizens of the United States, granted the opportunity to vote and had the right for equal treatment. As such, this allowed for the empowerment of African American women, allowing them the opportunity of more work options and given the freedom of decision-making. However, the negativity that skin colour represented in the past still pervades, hence, film has become a platform for the exposure of the oppression and restrictions faced by women of colour, and allow for the exploration of the disadvantages that plague them. This has brought about revisionism (Barbu, 2011), which has granted African American women with more compassionate views, as compared to their white counterparts. Although the oppression of African American women are brought to light, their ultimate empowerment is not shown, leaving the audience to question their future. The pursuit and glorification of the “white standard of beauty” (Patton, 2006, p. 24) by African American women in film, highlights the insecurity and stigmatization they face due to their colour. This desire to look like models on billboards and magazines, has drove them to peruse the shelves of beauty products, undergo plastic surgery and skin bleaching in order to have lighter skin. The mismatch between the comparisons of their black physiques against white ideal body shapes, has resu... ... middle of paper ... ...works for african american women. New Directions for Student Services, 2003(104), 19-27. doi:10.1002/ss.104 Hudson, S. V. (1998). Re-creational television: The paradox of change and continuity within stereotypical iconography.Sociological Inquiry, 68(2), 242-257. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.1998.tb00464.x Jarman, M. (2012). Cultural consumption and rejection of precious jones: Pushing disability into the discussion of sapphire's push and lee daniels's precious. Feminist Formations, 24(2), 163-185. Patton, T. O. (2006). Hey girl, am I more than my hair?: African american women and their struggles with beauty, body image, and hair. NWSA Journal, 18(2), 24-51. doi:10.1353/nwsa.2006.0037 Taylor, T. (Director) (2011). The help [Motion Picture]. United States: Touchstone Studios. Yuval-Davis, N. (1994). Women, ethnicity and empowerment. Feminism & Psychology, 4(1), 179-197.
Throughout time, women in movies and other similar texts are shown to be generally focused on men. This might make sense if every movie ever made was set in a time where women had absolutely no rights but of course, that is not the case. Older and more modern depictions of women in media, both show women whose lives revolve around men. Even movies that market their female characters as strong and powerful are still shown to be dependent on the male leads and puts them first. Also, since women in movies have more of a focus on men, female to female relationships suffer in the same films. There are very few exceptions to this unfortunate truth.
Minstrel shows were developed in the 1840's and reached its peak after the Civil War. They managed to remain popular into the early 1900s. The Minstrel shows were shows in which white performers would paint their faces black and act the role of an African American. This was called black facing. The minstrel show evolved from two types of entertainment popular in America before 1830: the impersonation of blacks given by white actors between acts of plays or during circuses, and the performances of black musicians who sang, with banjo accompaniment, in city streets. The 'father of American minstrelsy' was Thomas Dartmouth 'Daddy' Rice, who between 1828 and 1831 developed a song-and-dance routine in which he impersonated an old, crippled black slave, dubbed Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a fool who just spent his whole day slacking off, dancing the day away with an occasional mischievous prank such as stealing a watermelon from a farm. Most of the skits performed on the Minstrel shows symbolized the life of the African American plantations slaves. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and Rice performed it with great success in the United States and Britain, where he introduced it in 1836. Throughout the 1830s, up to the founding of the minstrel show proper, Rice had many imitators.
The film industry has always influenced the way society views the world. In today’s day and age it certainly influences trends and the way people view the world. This is the reason the film industry and Hollywood has had a huge impact on society throughout the years. This impact has not always being a good one. If we try to go back and analyze the film industry through the years we can see that there has being a huge amount of misrepresentation.
When you hear someone say, “no she didn’t!” who do you usually picture saying that? You picture an African American female. There are many different stereotypes depicted in the media, some positive and some negative. The main stereotype that everyone knows is typically young male/ female African American teenagers. They are portrayed as being really loud, obnoxious, ghetto, uneducated, and dangerous. This stereotype was chosen to show how negative young African Americans are betrayed. This is depicted in movies and TV shows such as Friday, Madea, Moesha, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Love and Hip-Hop.
This essay is concerned with issues of identity, body image and the politics of hair within African American culture. It discusses the lived experiences of a number of African American women and is no way generalizable to all African American women. Nonetheless, body image and hair politics are prominent features in African American culture because they have deep historical roots and still feature in present day. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of one’s body as it appears to others (Featherstone 2010). This mental image produces body consciousness, which Samantha Kwan describes as an amplified mindfulness that one’s body does not conform to hegemonic cultural standards (Kwan 2010). In today’s modern context, hegemonic cultural norms are reproduced and widely disseminated by the mass media with the help of new technologies. These new technologies Elliott’s discusses, with some in the form of satellite television and other widely utilized media, give viewers unprecedented opportunities to view and scrutinize their favorite celebrities in close proximity (Elliott 2010).
From the early ages of American film, Latino women have been portrayed in a negative light. Has this image changed over the years? The answer to this question is left up to the viewer, but there is one thing that has not changed in the portrayal of Latino women in American film. That is the clear distinction between two stereotypes of Latino women; the "innocent, passive Madonna" and the "hot blooded, fiery, sexy whore". In the case of the hot-blooded tamale, these images date back to the 1930’s in Lupe Velez and to the present Rosie Perez. Dolores Del Rio and Maria Montez represent the virgin Senorita. (Rodriguez 75-7) These are just some of the actresses that have portrayed characters that fit into these two stereotypes. Other actresses include Carmen Miranda, Natalie Wood, and Rita Moreno. These actresses are featured in the following films, West Side Story, Flying Down to Rio, Mexican Spitfire, and White Men Can't Jump. These two stereotypes have been carried out in American cinema from the thirties to today and are a common theme in many films.
Network news appears to convey more stereotyped impressions, a narrower range of positive roles for blacks than for whites. Representations of whites in network news are more varied and more positive than of blacks, not because of conscious bias, but because of the way conventional journalistic norms and practices interact with political and social reality. The findings raise questions about the journalist ability to represent the reality of black America while adhering to the professional practices that currently shape network news. Mainstream news portrayed African American as criminals, homeless beggars, welfare queens, ghetto-dwelling gang members, or drug addicts in American Society. Perpetuation of young black men as dangerous has been planted in the mind of American society not only by words and images projected by journalists but also in the mainstream news especially. Television particularly the news has the least positive representation of African Americans especially young males. When television became a house-hold item in the early 1950, this was a dark time in American History because there were huge racial tensions brewing in the south. The news show African American mostly young males getting abuse, hosed by police and attack by police dogs during a peaceful protest. It gives the negative images that African American was unlawful people and need to be dealt with swift action. Most of the time African Americans weren’t resisting but the news media depicted the images that they were and police were just doing their job to keep the peace.
Beauty is often described as being in the eye of the beholder. However in modern western culture, the old adage really should be beauty is in the eye of the white makeup artist, hair stylist, photographer, photo shop editor, and advertiser. Beauty and body ideals are packaged and sold to the average American so that we can achieve vocational, financial, social, and recreational successes. Mass media and advertising has affected the way that women perceive and treat their own bodies as well as their self-concept. Women are constantly bombarded with unrealistic images and hold themselves to the impossible beauty standards. First, we will explore the role of media in the lives of women and then the biggest body image issue from a diversity stand point, media whitewashing.
Since this winter, I can't watch television or movies anymore without critiquing how women and minorities are portrayed. One unexpected thing that I have picked up from taking this class is a sense of wariness when I counter any piece of written material. I have learned to be suspicious, if not directly critical of any particular part of the media as I experience it; I have been inspired to read and be influenced by some prolific female thinkers. It's all coming together for me, what I want to do; I just have to figure out how.
For many years, African Americans have faced the challenge of being accurately and positively portrayed within mainstream media, such as American made films. They are often represented as people who are inferior to those of the Caucasian race, and are frequently presented with problems that are related to racial discrimination. The portrayal of African Americans in media such as movies has often been considered a large contributing factor to the racial tensions that still exist in our world today (Lemons, 1977). The movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, sheds light on the portrayal of African Americans in movies, and how stereotypes can greatly impact the lives of those who are not of the Caucasian race.
Cox’s work is exactly the type of discussion that is needed to move the discourse on black women’s bodies from being regarded as part of a stereotype to being regarded as individuals with beautiful differences. This is not a ‘re-mirroring’ of the ‘un-mirrored,’ but rather a creation of a new image, void of previous misconceptions but filled with individuality. The stereotypes concerning black women’s bodies needs to be abolished, not reinvented like Hobson suggests in “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture.”
Author Michael Omni states in his work “In Living Color: race and American Culture”, “ The power of the media lies not only in their ability to reflect the dominant racial ideology, but in their capacity to shape their ideology in the first place” (542) . The media has the ability to make society see any race in any light they choose. For example African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics are all tied to smoking marijuana, excessive alcoholism, broken sentences, being indolent, jobless, and imprisonment. These are sometimes true in every race but they portray these listed races in an inaccurate way in every film. Hollywood directors do have a social responsibility to stop stereotyping different ethnic groups. Through analyzing various films such Friday, American Me, and Skins you will be able to see the prejudice stereotypes and the negative affects its causes in society.
By the twentieth century, slavery had damaged black pride, and made it known that black features were inferior. When it came to black women and their hair, black women desperately wanted to match the standard of “white” beauty. Walker’s solution to this was to create a look that was Afro-American without trying to imitate whites. Walker spoke about beauty emphasizing that to be beautiful does not refer to the complexion of your skin, or the texture of your hair, but having a beautiful mind, soul, and character.
Hollywood’s diversity problem is well-known; however, the extent might be surprising to most Americans. According to a 2014 report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media, found that females comprised only 30% of all speaking characters among the top grossing films of 2013. (Lauzen, 2014) However, minority women faired far worse than their Caucasian counterparts. As a matter of fact, if one looks at the numbers even female characters from other world’s were as better represented in film than some minority women; the numbers are as follow for women: Caucasian (73%), African American (14%), Latina (5%), Asian and other world tied (3%). (Lauzen, 2014) If the lack of representation were not enough consider a 2009 study which found that when minority groups are portrayed on television the portrayal tends to be negative. (Alexandrin, 2009) A study by Busselle and Crandall (2009) found that the manner in which African-Americans are portrayed, often as unemployed criminals, tends to have an influence on the way the public perceives African-American’s lack of economic success. Furthermore, the news media does an equally poor job in the ways that African-American’s are presented; according to the same study while 27% of Americans were considered “poor” in 1996 the images of America’s “poor” being presented by news media was heavily Black (63%). (Busselle & Crandall, 2002) Today, this can be seen in the way that African-American victims of police brutality are depicted in the media. Even when African-Americans are murdered at the hands of police for minor and non-violent offenses (e.g. Mike Brown, Eric Gardner, and Tamir Rice) they are often portrayed as thugs, criminals, and vandals. What’s more, seve...
This reinforces a traditionally biased historical narrative, where white, middle-class women are the “norm”. It can be said that African American history has been shaped by systematic inequality and oppression, encouraged by a racially prejudiced system.