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Representation of minorities in american cinema
Representation of minorities in american cinema
Minorities in cinema
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Black Superheroes, Where are They? Think back to your favorite marvel movies, you may think of characters like Iron Man, Thor, or even Spiderman. These are all great superheroes that have saved the world more than once, but the only problem is with this is these characters are all white, where are the black superheroes. I found a website titled “The Top 100 Marvel Superheroes” and according to this website there is only one black superhero in the top 15. This needs to change, this website referring to the comics, I looked more in depth to see if this trait carried over to movies and sure enough it did, nothing has changed. Where are all the black superheroes? To find a solution to this problem I will be looking at lists of black superheroes …show more content…
This problem was occurring all the way back into the 1960’s. Why the 1960’s? Well that is when Marvel first started to make its comics, the comics is what the movies go off of. The problem with this is that everything was white back then due to segregation. This is an image I found on Google with that puts in it good words “In the early 1960s, when many of these beloved Marvel characters were introduced, American popular culture was more or less all-white everything. When I found this out I was surprised by this, it makes sense now. If the comics were made today and the movies were made later I would predict the movies and the comics would be much more diverse than they are today. The comics were so dominant with white people that the movies have even incorporated or added in some black characters here and there to make the movies not all white. Here is an example of this from the article titled “Fear of a Black Superhero: Michael B. Jordan and the Importance of Colorblind Casting” the article stated this: “The character of Nick Fury, the mysterious agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who has a hand in virtually every Marvel movie storyline, was portrayed as a white man for decades in the comic books; but a generation of movie fans know the character as portrayed by African American actor Samuel L. Jackson.” There have been more than this one case. “In Tim Burton's Batman, the role of Harvey Dent, another “traditionally” white character, was played by Billy Dee Williams. There was no sizeable backlash—but Dent was a minor character in that particular film.” The problem that occurs with both of these characters are is that they are both minor characters in the movies, they are not the ones up front. Michael J. Williams explains this very well, “When the central action takes place, it’s with only white characters at the forefront. White characters get the
Ken Hamblin is the author of “The Black Avenger.” He has worked in various media fields and continues to work as a talk radio host and has a talk show of his own. He also refers to himself as a thinking black man (384-385). Hamblin seems to believe that hard work is the only way to be successful. Hamblin writes an effective work that portrays ethos by using his racial credibility, pathos to invoke emotions, and logos by cause and effect.
According to PBS.org,”12.5% of film actors were black in 2014.” Only 12.5% of all actors!You would think it would be a lot more in a developed and liberal country like America. On the contrary, it's a lot more compared to the 3.2% it was in the 60’s.Dorothy Dandridge being part of that percent. Dandridge was a black icon in the 60’s starring in many films but, most notably, Carmen Jones. Where she is a seductive factory worker, who falls in love with a soldier after he kills his sergeant.She was so famous in the 60’s but in present times, she's unknown. She should be as famous as other icons in the 60’s such as Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe but she’s not since being black in the 60’s put you at an automatic setback. It caused her to be
The authors title “What to do when you’re not the hero anymore” is directed at a group of people who aren’t the likely audience for this essay. Penny explains how since the recent movement in the media particularly white males have been raging with anger that their lead roles are being taking over. Prior to reading the essay it is common to have heard of female lead roles becoming a universal theme. While it is not so common to hear of how white men “have been expressing rage loudly and violently over the idea that they might find themselves identifying with characters who are not white men.” Penny
African American representation in the film industry has always been a topic for discussion. Whether talking about character types and roles, the actors being cast or not cast, and the lack of diversity in front of and behind the camera. ‘The contemporary status of race in mainstream American culture is intimately bound to the process of representation within and through the mass media.’ (Rocchio, 2000, p. 4). Any role that was to be played by an African American kept in with the dominant stereotypes of the time of production; incompetent, child like, hyper-sexualised or criminal.
During the semester, race is a big part of the lectures. In class, we talk about how race is distinguishing physical characteristics used to place people in different racial categories (Jensen). The biggest concern with race is racial inequality. Racial inequality is the inadequate or unfair treatment of minorities in areas like income, education, employment, health, the criminal justice system, and media. The article written by Rebecca Keegan from the Los Angeles Times newspaper discusses the inequality of race in media specifically movies. This article relates to the unfairness in films because minorities are poorly portrayed in the majority of films. More often than not, minorities are the “bad guys” in films. They are caught up in criminal activity and live in poorer neighborhoods than the majority. The article gives numerous statistics proving and exploiting that there is indeed racial inequality depicted in films. Also the Keegan touches on how minorities are underrepresented in films in the way that they usually do not have as many speaking lines compared to the white actor/actress.
Let’s discuss a little bit of comic book history for starters. The most iconic superhero in all of American comic book history has got to be Superman. He was created near the beginning of superhero comic books and debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938[1]. He would remain as the blueprint for many superheroes for years to come as the atypical white American male. But as the years go by there were comic book heroes that came out that go against this archetype such as Wonder
It is estimated that African Americans spend about four to five hours more than the general public on watching television a week. Yet still with these findings, there are only 18 shows that feature an African-American cast or lead character out of the 115 that air on the six major broadcast networks. Even with this imbalanced ratio, there are reasons why there are so few programs featuring leading African Americans, despite the great amount of blacks that are consistent television viewers (Hall 12).
Although blacks have won Academy Awards for acting, screenwriting, and music production they still find trouble in getting quality roles within the film industry. (Common Black Stereotypes) Long before television and films were being produced, there were plays and different forms of entertainment where blacks were stereotyped. They were often played by white people in a demoralizing fashion. Over time blacks became seen as the same and that was bad people.
...g place for a long time now; blacks have went from not being banned from certain stages to dominating theater with actors and actresses such as Halle Berry and Denzel Washington. In modern day film, African-Americans have prevailed over all of the negative setbacks, and as the old Negro spiritual says, "We shall continue to overcome."
The truth is that there has been a deliberate and consistent campaign to feminize, emasculate and even homosexualize (newly coined) the black male image. Although this extends far beyond the entertainment world, it will do well to keep the focus here for maximum elucidation. I have made it a personal policy not to personally attack any of my black brothers and sisters, unless I identify the fact that they are acting with negligence and clear hostility toward the black collective. So, I will stick to addressing this in general, but I will use a couple of names as benchmarks.
Although we have taken monumental strides in the past fifty years towards racial equality and diversity, it is still commonly argued that popular culture lacks some sort of racial representation. In the United States, the people who live here are vastly diverse when it comes to race and culture, yet in the media people of color get marginalized and stereotyped everyday in film, music, and etc.
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...
The Hurst book discusses in Chapter 8, that “whiteness is invisible to most whites,” this could be a reason that there is not a lot of diversity in Hollywood, but it could also be racism, and discrimination toward people of different ethnicities as well (Hurst, 183). According, to Hurst racism is “embedded in the structure and institutions, and defining racism individualistically rather than in structural terms, has allowed our attention to be defected from White privilege” (Hurst, 184). White privilege is present in Hollywood, everything is ran by white people, and it is the white writers and directors, they decided who they will cast in the show or movie. Racial and ethnic diversity in TV programming should not be a problem in the 21st century, this is a problem of the past and should not still be going on. The NPR article discusses the shift of more series with “non-white actors, and a more non-white cast, but that still is on 30% of all TV shows” that is a major improvement but there still needs to be more
Racial stereotypes have always invaded films, from the earliest silent film, to the most modern film production. Stereotypes in early America had significant influence over how other viewed African Americans, Latinos, Asians etc. The most stereotyped race in history is the black male. In most early films, they were portrayed as simple minded and careless individuals, but when African Americans started to stand up for themselves films portrayed them as more savage and bloodthirsty.
Okay, Sam Wilson is one example; but, we also have Miles Morales who is the new African-American Spider-Man; but, not only that, he is in (was) an interracial relationship with Kaite Bishop. That itself shows a little more diversity as well with Miles. The difference we see here is that although he is essentially replacing the past Spider-Man who was Caucasian, it 's not necessarily mentioned or you don 't necessarily think about it too much. What is important about Spider-Man is that each one has distinct personality traits, they do not attempt to make every single one the same. With Sam Wilson, I somehow think they want to make him old Cap, no matter how hard they deny it. Cap has one single personality and to change it would be to change the entire Captain America character. His name is what he does, what he stands for and what he lives for. With Spider-Man, there is more leeway to do what you want with new characters: