Re: The Portrayal of Blacks in Popular Media

snood wrote:

My point is not nearly so convoluted as you attempt to make it. I say simply that by and large, today's mass media hasn't the ability and/or balls to portray ethnics realistically - either historically or reflecting modern life.

And my point is that you have such a narrow, impossibly contorted view of what it means for blacks to be portrayed "realistically" that nothing would satisfy you.

snood wrote:

You make my point for me - I already said that the examples I could cite had black writers, and all the examples you gave fit the bill. My whole thrust in this thread is that white hollywood has no clue, and wants none.

And your response makes my point for me. As I predicted, your gross generalization could accomodate all possible exceptions -- including the ones that I offered -- which would tend to indicate that your gross generalization has little merit.

snood wrote:

Soldier's Story started as A Soldier's Play by Charles fuller - it languished for fully 3 decades before it made its way to the screen. It took that long for hollywood to decide it was a story worthy of being told.

But that's not a problem with the portrayal of blacks -- that's a problem (if it is a problem at all) with Hollywood as a business.

snood wrote:

It's not A Color Purple, it's The Color Purple.

My apologies.

snood wrote:

The fact that you cite this as some kind of blow for the cause is hilarious - Alice Walker is notable in the black community for her black male-bashing...

So what? If you want blacks to be portrayed realistically, then you have to be prepared for the possibility that someone's take on "reality" will include male-bashing.

snood wrote:

...but I suppose your ilk (white male republicans who Loooove Colin and Condie) deems ANY drama with blacks in it as something "we" should be grateful for.

Me? A Republican? Obviously you haven't been paying attention.

snood wrote:

Lorraine Hansbury wrote Raisin - you can't see the forest for the trees - the damn play is ABOUT the oppresion of white racism.

Quite right, which is why it is an exception to your list and why I mentioned it. Or are you saying that it's not "realistic" enough for you?

snood wrote:

And anyway, let's pursue both of our arguments to their apparent logical ends. Mine would appear to be that there are countless miles to go before blacks are portrayed realistically and contemporaneously.

Your argument would "appear to be" that? Do you mean to say that you don't know what your argument actually is, only what it appears to be?

snood wrote:

Yours would appear to be - what? - that a FINE job has been done by all, and nobody better whine about it? You said the examples are "numerous and easily recalled". I say they're about as relatively "numerous" as the number of Black Senators and CEOs, but I reckon some folks think those numbers are just fine, too.

I don't think Hollywood does a good job of depicting anyone realistically, but then that's the nature of fiction. Most people lead lives that are dreadfully un-cinematic. If we wanted realism, we could reflect on our own boring realities -- we wouldn't have to go to the movies. Hollywood, for instance, came no nearer the truth of white suburbia in American Beauty than it did to that of the American west in Dances With Wolves, just as "The Bernie Mac Show" is as rigorously truthful about the black experience as "My Three Sons" was about the white experience. What you're asking for, then, is a cinema of realism for blacks that Hollywood has never achieved for any ethnic group. Your demand for a "realistic" portrayal of blacks is a quest for a chimera, snood, an impossible beast.

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Let me add to joefromchicago's last point that "Children of a Lesser God" is absolutely dreadful at capturing the actual Deaf experience, and terribly cast.

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Wouldn't worrying about the way blacks and other minorities are perceived in real life be a lot more productive than the way hollywood elites are portaying monorities in fictional movies and television shows?

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I'd largely agree with that JP, although i'd imagine there are those who will contend that media protrayals form perceptions . . .

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That may be, Set. Still, it seems to me that energy spent fighting racism could be better spent talking about real life people rather than the Cosbys and Shaft.

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jpinMilwaukee wrote:

That may be, Set. Still, it seems to me that energy spent fighting racism could be better spent talking about real life people rather than the Cosbys and Shaft.

Okay, start a thread about "real life people", and we'll discuss that.

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I don't think it needs to be either/ or. I'd love to see a movie that accurately depicts the Deaf experience, and would happily help get it made -- at the same time as doing various real-world advocacy sorts of things.

The media does help shape reality, certainly. (A recent study about kids and smoking comes to mind, but all sorts of ways...)

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I think that every race is stereotyped in the media. The point is that people should be smart enough to seperate reality from fiction, which we know that the masses are not. I agree that blacks are shown in that "typical black Barber Shop" way. But what about Asians? They are always smart, geeky, quiet people. Native Americans? Smart, sensitive, quite people. Blacks? Loud, boisterous, trouble making people. Hispanics? Loud, angry, poor people. White? Rich, comfortable, smart, snobs. Now, which of those descriptions really fit?Personally, I wouldn't want anyone to think all white people are rich, smart, snobs. What is the "normal" person anyway?

I think that so long as we have media, we will have someone to bias it. And someone to complain about it.

Please don't think I am saying there is no racism in this country. But know I am saying it exists across all races, for every race. It's just that no one talks about the racism against whites. It's "acceptable" to be racist against a white person because we've "had it so good" the last 200 years. Again, don't misinterpret me to be saying that all black people are racist against whites. I am just saying that many of the stereotypes of whites on tv are just as bad for this country as the ones against blacks. They perpetuate the mentality of racism of whites againsts blacks and reinforces the development of racism of blacks against whites. Does that make sense?

I agree we need more representation of blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans in positive roles. And by positive I mean, more diverse roles.

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Re: The Portrayal of Blacks in Popular Media

snood wrote:

I found that fully 30% of the cowboys and pioneers who first pushed westward were of color. Why, then were all the cowboys white on TV? I found that There were courageous all-black units that fought in many of our major Wars. Why, then can I only name "Glory", "Tuskeegee Airmen" and a documentary about the Buffalo Soldiers in all my life as the positive examples 'allowed' to be seen by the masses?

Because the point of movies isn't to portray anyone representatively. Their point is to tell a story. To tell this story to the largest possible audience, the authors and producers have to use characters that the majority of consumers can identify with, and to avoid all complications, all deviation from stereotypes, unless those strictly necessary to the story. Thus, cowboys are always white, Germans are always evil, and the West is always Wild. This is not about race -- it is about stereotypes that cannot be contradicted, lest big audiences change the cinemas they go to, TV channels they watch, or bookshops they shop in.

If you want to watch movies that portray blacks realistically, you'll have to watch independent productions in small, off-the-mainstream cinemas. I'd have to do the same if I wanted to see American spy movies with nice Germans in them. Tough titties for both of us.

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I disagree somewhat about whites -- the sheer volume of movies with them at the center necessarily yields a more nuanced portrait, if still not exactly accurate. (Foreigners who think they know all about [white] Americans from watching American movies -- and being very, very wrong -- is a familiar trope.)

I think that's where things have to go with all the rest of it, too, and it's getting there. More, and more nuanced, movies that feature all of these different cultures and cumulatively add up to something meaningful.

One thing I think is interesting is how, on kid's shows, the purposeful restructuring of the black cliche is creating its own cliche. On a bunch of them, the smartest (sometimes downright nerdy) and most level-headed character is black. (Danny Phantom, American Dragon [which is itself really interesting for the Asian stereotypes it tries to bust], LazyTown, etc., etc.)

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Oh and if we're talking kid's shows, can't leave out "Little Bill" -- Bill Cosby has done it again, at the preschool level. Amazing show, absolutely fabulous approach to race, both implicit and explicit.

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Bella nailed it, IMO. If representations of blacks were more prevalent, more nuance of character would exist--and they would be portrayed as rich, beautiful, corrupt, stupid, funny, philosophical, adventurous, dynamic, loving, deluded...as white people. So, people like snood wouldn't be so focused on stereotypes and unfair representations. I feel like I understand snood, and think he has valid points, but I have to say I also agree with the members who say his thrashing about to settle on a complaint yeilds no actionable solution. Don't like Bernie Mack, didn't like Cosby, don't like the extremes... if blacks are people, they have extremes. They are portrayed as reasonable people---but they should be so prevalent and varied, we can't notice one sided type casting.

I hope this thread won't go off in another direction.

(An aside: I agree heartily with whoever supported Alice Walker. This very complaint of snood's belies his original complaint. HE is stereotyping by villifying Alice Walker. So, black violence against women is off-limits? So, anything written containing violence by black men is an attack on black men? That is the very problem you complain about. If blacks are equal to whites in artistic representation, you can't supress an aspect of their lives.

I recently researched Alice Walker--and found the most powerful dialogue in The Color Purple. It was an African black, ripping an Afo-centric, paternalist American black missionary. Walker basically communicated that putting on the robes of Africa on your outer self is an insult if you don't have Africa in your inner self. She was insulted by the "intellectual" black community for questioning the new Africanism--as if blacks are too fragile to be criticised. THIS is just one more thing that keeps them separated from American culture. This "touch-ousness." It is disappearing though.

When Condi and Colin can be Republican Americans, without being crucified by blacks, we're done.

(Damn. Refreshed and soz said approximately the same thing.)
Very Happy

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:-)

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Lash agrees with me? Shocked

:wink:

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Joe's position and mine are dangerously close to agreement as well. Obviously there is some kind of white conspiracy going on here.

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joefromchicago wrote:

snood wrote:
...but I suppose your ilk (white male republicans who Loooove Colin and Condie) deems ANY drama with blacks in it as something "we" should be grateful for.

Me? A Republican? Obviously you haven't been paying attention.

Oh my God, I almost got in trouble here at work when I read this post. I let loose a bark of laughter that carried through the whole office.

I had to use the old "I hit my funnybone on my desk" excuse.

The True Gentleman From Chicago ... accused of being a Republican... my whole day is made.

Snood, you would have probably hurt Joe's feelings less of you had accused him of being a card cheat and a known liar and horse thief.

Sorry for bouncing off topic, but I just never thought I'd see the day.

Hope life is treating you well Joe.

Being of the 'terminally white' variety of humanity, I have otherwise refrained from commenting in this area for fear of stirring up an ugly kettle of fish.

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News is always about something unusual and so is cinema - unusual, maybe true or untrue i.e. fictional just like the Bible. The Bible is perfect for cinema as it is so unusual full of true and untrue events, colorful characters, phenomena, etc.

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Lash wrote:

(An aside: I agree heartily with whoever supported Alice Walker.

Uh, that would be me. Now I'm going to have to reevaluate my position.

Thomas wrote:

Joe's position and mine are dangerously close to agreement as well.

Now I'm really going to have to reevaluate my position.

Fedral wrote:

Hope life is treating you well Joe.

Well, it was before people started accusing me of being a Republican and agreeing with me and everything. I'm just not accustomed to that -- it has threatened to disturb my normally placid equilibrium.

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<ok, now reel him in with promises of cash>

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Alice Walker- There are some who feel that Alice Walker is an abomination.

Who?

Not lawyers, who usually know very little about good literature.

It is one of the premier literary critics in the land, Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale and a Member of the American Academy.

Dr. Bloom is considered by many to be the pre-eminent literary critic in the land.

Alice Walker?

Bloom writes in his fine book-"The Western Canon"

quote( caps mine)

"I am not prepared to dispute admirers of Alice Walker's Meridian, a novel I have compelled my self to read TWICE, but the second reading was one of my most remarkable literary experiences. It produced an epiphany in which I saw clearly the new principle implicit in the slogans of those who proclaim the opening up of the Canon, The correct test for the new canonicity is simple, clear and wonderfully conducive to social change: IT MUST NOT AND CANNOT BE RE-READ, BECAUSE ITS CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIAL PROGRESS IS ITS GENEROSITY IN OFFERING ITSELF UP FOR RAPID INGESTION AND DISCARDING."

My own opinion is that Alice Walker, like most Black writers, are Johnny-One Notes, forever and ever chanting--racism--racism--racism.

Anyone who reads Walker when Shakespeare or Proust are availabe for re-reading is soft in the head.

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Re: The Portrayal of Blacks in Popular Media

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