Imagine being in the middle of New York City, purchasing center orchestra seats to the opening of a brand new musical comedy for that evening. Hours pass and you are running late, and are rushing through the streets. You arrive just in time to hear the orchestra begin to warm up and soon the lights dim, and the curtain, ever so slowly, begins to rise. As the actors appear on stage you notice something odd about the way they all look. Everyone on stage is dressed in overalls and straw hats, and all of their faces are smeared with black greasepaint. The actors speak and sing with offensive accents, making audience members uncontrollably laugh. You suddenly realize that the actors onstage are in blackface. You are appalled and immediately leave the theatre demanding your money back. Luckily, this type of …show more content…
Discrimination through Broadway casting is also evident in the award winning run of Disney’s “Aladdin” (Disney’s Aladdin). Aladdin is about a poor man who uses a magical genie to grant his every wish to fall in love with a princess. The show is set in a small Arabian town with many aspects of Middle Eastern culture including names, dialect, and a sultan ruled monarch system. With a huge influence from Middle Eastern culture, one would assume that the show would cast actors of Middle Eastern heritage, however, there are 34 people in the cast, none are of Middle Eastern descent (Arts In Color). A Middle Eastern Actor, who decided to stay anonymous for the sake of his career, stated that I am 100% for casting diversity, but when a story is about race, and about a specific ethnicity, I believe that ethnicity should at least be represented. I do understand that the pool of Middle Eastern actors in NYC is small in comparison to other ethnic groups. I am not suggesting that every actor cast in Aladdin should have been of Middle Eastern descent. I am merely
Warriors don’t cry is a story of the Little Rock Nine who went to Central High School; an all-white school with hopes to integrate blacks and whites into non segregated schools. The story mainly follows a girl named Melba and what her life was like at the time of going to this school and making a stepping stone into desegregation. However this took place in a time and place where white people were still being very racist towards black people. Some say sending a girl into a school like this is child abuse because these kids suffered death threats, being physically abused, and slandered against. There is also the people that believe this was the right thing to do even if a child like Melba’s life was at risk. It was not child abuse to send Melba
Staging and costuming a show for the stage requires a lot of time and hard work. When staging Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes one would have to consider how to dress each individual character and how to split the scenes to have them flow with the different characters. For example, the scene where Joe leaves Harper at the same time as Louis leaves Prior has to be staged carefully so that the audience understands what is happening. The playwright Tony Kushner allows for overlapping in conversations, but the director of the play has to figure out how to make the scene have an impact on the audience. The play examines significant themes of the time period such as religion and sexuality as well as AIDS. The play has to be presented cautiously to have a significant impact on the audience.
On March 1, 2001, I had the great opportunity to see a very unique Off-Broadway variety show named De La Guarda, written, directed, and designed by Pichon Baldinu and Diqui James. The theatre presenting this show is the Daryl Roth Theatre, which is located at 20 Union Square East, just a few blocks from Baruch College. There were many interesting moments in the show that one would be definitely surprised if he had no prior knowledge about the show. What makes this show the most interesting is that it is not traditional theatre whatsoever. Everything is changed, including the area where it is performed. There is no real plot, but there are many artistic scenes throughout the show. Although there is no real plot, the performers present a wide range of emotions from one part of the show to the next that makes the audience members crave for the next emotion. It is a definite attention getter and everything including in the show, such as props and the performers themselves, makes the audience a part of the show.
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.
One of the most far-reaching concepts in Sociology is how personal biography intersects with history to inform the social reality. Depending on the biological features of a person – skin color and other genetic characteristics that cannot be changed – and the perception of these genetic features in a sociological sense by the society in a particular era, is affected by culture, politics, and regional attitudes, among others. Thus, as the times change, the general social attitudes about racism change as well. This concept of relative social reality can be analyzed through the racism that pervades the Walt Disney animated film, Dumbo. This paper will examine the social expectations during that era, and attempt to understand the reasons for why Disney may have included such racial stereotypes in his film.
Discrimination is too common in the current day and age. It is used to help ignorant, weak people with insecurities to feel better about themselves. Humanity as a whole needs to learn to be more accepting of others, differences and all. Disney Pixar’s “Day and Night” is a short film about two characters, Day and Night, who couldn't look past each other’s differences in the beginning, yet by the end, they developed a mutual appreciation of each other through getting over their fear of the unknown and discriminating others. In “Day and Night,” the characters’ lack of understanding and prejudice paradoxically assists the characters, Day and Night, in developing tolerance for each other and learning to embrace their differences. Ultimately, “Day and Night” proposes that even though the unknown is not well-perceived by others until they experience the said "unknown" themselves, humanity should be less judgmental and more open-minded because nobody is perfect and everyone is different and perfectly unique in their own way.
Walt Disney was a man who has done many great things but he was also a racist and a sexist . Even though he did not like colored people and thought that men were better than women , he still accomplished a lot. In october 16 , 1923 he started his own company. in that company Walt Disney has made a various amounts of Legends characters and stories such as Mickey Mouse , Donald Duck, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. most of the stories Legends and characters still live on today in television and books.
The popular Disney film Aladdin follows the story of “street-urchin” and orphan Aladdin and his pet monkey Abu. In the story, Aladdin falls in love with princess Jasmine. However, she is not allowed to marry anyone other than a prince. Meanwhile, Aladdin is swept away to become a part of a ploy by villain Jafar to search for and claim a mysterious lamp that is said to grant wishes. The movie is full of false representations of Arabia and Arabians. Seen by children, Aladdin perfectly exemplifies the idea that many racial stereotypes in the media easily go unnoticed. While these young boys and girls are excited by the story, they are blind to treacherous social constructions that are indoctrinating them.
Those who deny the existence of the racism rooted into modern day Hollywood are far from reality. They may think that in the United States we are getting closer to equality when it comes to casting but we in fact are not. While there is the belief that America has progressed when it comes to social issues, the percentage of roles held by black actors in film and TV has dropped from 15 to 13 percent from the early 2000’s to 2011 (McClintock and Apello 2).
At the end of the NPR article they discuss the problem between keeping television shows diverse, “without amplifying the problems of stereotyping and prejudice” (Feld). Television shows feel that in order to a successful show with diversity, the people need to be cast-typed or take on every stereotype that is associated with that particular race or gender. The Erigha article discusses how, “many of actors were type-casted, or put in racialized roles, that fit their ethnicity” and some of these people do not necessarily fit that type, “they used Asian Actors as an example, many of the actors that were born in America, were asked to speak in a Chinese accent.”
Angels in America is a play by Tony Kushner exploring themes of identity, power and stasis versus change in the setting of McCarthy era San Francisco. The play looks at homosexuality and homophobia, race, ethnicity and the AIDs crisis through exploring motifs of religion (especially Judaism and Mormonism), politics and law. This essay will explore how these themes could be examined and expressed through stage magic and circus arts in the context of a production inspired by Part One: Millennium Approaches of the two part play. A circus interpretation of Angels in America raises issues of casting skills and practical stunts performed live, demands consideration for set requirements and digital effects, music, and for style of process devising work. Kushner’s playwright’s notes for Angels in America describe “moments of magic”, referring to the appearance and disappearance of characters on stage, hallucination sequences and the dramatic conclusion of the play featuring an angel crashing through the ceiling of a small New York apartment. He states that “the moments of magic are to be fully realized, as bits of wonderful theatrical illusion – which means it’s okay if the wires show, and maybe it’s good that they do, but the magic should at the same time be thoroughly amazing” (Kushner, 1992, p11). It was this statement of aesthetic that inspired me to apply the themes of the play to creating circus and classic stage magic.
The point of many films is to convey a message to its viewers, such as morals and ethics. Consequently, films intended for adults convey messages suitable for adults; while children’s films do likewise for their target age groups, as one might expect. These children’s films, directed towards particularly younger audiences, prove useful when they contain beneficial maxims. Although at times, these films elicit less than healthy social views. Disney’s Aladdin is a prime example of a children’s film that immerses the audience in unhealthy views towards women. This film is an irresponsible in its portrayal of women - it sexually objectifies the female protagonist and enforces sexist ideologies, which directly affects the female characters within the story’s patriarchal system. The idea of sexism towards women is rampant throughout the movie Aladdin by making the following three claims: a woman’s worth is defined by men, women are incapable of making their own choices, and that women are inadequate and thus require saving by a man.
Within Aladdin, there are themes of stratification, stereotyping, and discrimination. “Stratification occurs when members of a society are categorized and divided into groups, which are then placed in a social hierarchy” (Ferris). Race, gender, class, age, or other characteristics are the categorized qualities predominantly. Aladdin mainly focuses on issues relating to class and gender. Stereotyping occurs throughout the movie and can be defined as, “the judging of others based on preconceived generalizations about groups or categories of people” (Ferris). Discrimination is also prevalent in the movie and occurs when “unequal treatment of individuals based on their membership in a social group; usually motivated by prejudice” (Ferris). Ideas
The 1992 Disney film Aladdin represents an analysis of the social inequalities. Society ranks individuals consciously into certain class statuses such as being rich or poor. The class status acts as a barrier or a wall, preventing the individuals from escaping the social norms of what class they were placed in. Every individual is placed into one of the classes through appearances, skills and wealth. The individual is given a title and they must then comply with the norms according to the class they have been assigned to. There is a clear distinction between the two class status that separates one from another. The owning class and the working class. The film demonstrates an understanding of how each class are represented in the eyes of society.
“The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation,” says Stella Adler. Theater is unique and intriguing because it blends literary and visual arts to tell a story. Before Theater 10, I viewed theater on the surface level: cheesy plot lines with dramatic scenarios for entertainment purposes. Throughout the course, I have learned what it means to appreciate theater, such as understanding Brechtian and Chinese theatre; however, I believe understanding theater’s ability to convey crucial historical and social messages, such as in the production of RENT, is more relevant and important for theater appreciation.