Ava Duvernay Essay

Julie Taymor, a director and playwright, was the first women to a Tony Award. Her works in opera, theater, and film has gotten her many awards, including Academy awards, an Oliver award, and much more.

When thinking about black actresses in the 1930s through 1950s, a few names may come to mind like Nina McKinney, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Hattie McDaniel. However, many other black actresses have graced the big screen including Suzette Harbin, Theresa Hams, Ethel Moses, Mae Turner, and Hilda Simms just to name a few. Many of these talented actresses differ in their career paths, but they all endured some form of racism and sexism which made it laborious for them to thrive in their careers. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark represents the hardships of black actresses during the 1930s through 1950s. The protagonist, Vera Stark, persistently tries to prove to the people around her that she has star quality for show business. However, she does not reach her potential because of her race. Although she obtains some gigs, the gigs demean black women during that time. The offensive parts for black actresses vary from mammy to slave woman to seductress. The following roles offered black actresses’ opportunities to one day acquire star making roles. Unfortunately, those roles did not apply to black actresses. Only white actors and actresses experienced that fortuity. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark exposes Hollywood’s misconduct of black actresses and further explains the lack of black representation today. Indeed, roles for black actresses have increased since the 1930s through 1950s; however the roles have become more stereotypical like the obnoxious black woman, the token black

The documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay was a visual masterpiece. The documentary provided its viewers with an array of information that spanned throughout centuries and was eloquently executed in less than 2 hours. The central focus of the film was about how the 13th amendment shaped this country and its prison system. The 13th amendment was the building block for mass incarceration and as time has gone on, new laws and amendments strengthened the process for more people to get incarcerated. Slavery benefited the country as a whole and as the Civil War was winding down, slavery was coming to an end. As the documentary states, the South especially relied heavily on slavery for their economy to sustain. After the passing of the 13th amendment, slaves were freed and it left the South’s economy in shambles. A stipulation within the 13th amendment, that states “Neither slavery not involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been dully convicted, shall exist within the United States.” In turn, mass amounts of newly freed slaves were arrested and deemed criminals. Being criminalized reduced them back to a lower status in the United States, and unfortunately reignited slavery in a new kind of form. The film was not only educational, it also provided its viewers with knowledge about why there is such a disparity in mass incarnations amongst people of color compared to their white counterparts.

But why do ask would Hollywood want to make Viola Davis the new face. Think she’s what Hollywood need to make the face of super heroes and strong black female role to stick. Where with also her message of living your life and that color does not change how you showed act. Where in Hollywood

“It is said that seeing is believing but that depends on the source vision”. If one does not experience first-hand they see through another medium which is often film and television. Film is one of the reasons black culture and the black experience is misunderstood and filled with fabricated beliefs. African Americans have been involved in Hollywood films since film earliest forms in the early 20th century. In these early films African Americans was showed in a damaging unpleasant way. African American filmmakers have been are emancipating the black image from Hollywood’s depiction of Blacks. They are challenging the stereotypes and destroying the view of the singular black experience. Black are becoming more involved in the

This is the second straight year in which not a single person of color was nominated for an acting Oscar. Jada Pinkett took it upon herself to bring people’s attention to the lack of diversity in the Oscars and in Hollywood, in a video posted on her face book page. Diversity can be defined as the inclusion of different types of people, race, or cultures in a group or organization. United States of America is a country full of different diverse group of people, races (Black white), culture, and religion. An organization’s success and competitiveness depends upon its ability to embrace diversity and realize the benefits. For example, if workplace diversity issues are handled well in an organization, benefits are reported. Also, according to a broadcast on NPR, Mcevers says, “Right, I mean, one of the findings of your Hollywood diversity reports at UCLA is that movies with more diverse cast tend to make more

Hollywood not only shows little to none diverse to race but also gender on screen and behind the scenes. When watching a movie to the end credits most the names that are shown are males. The diverse for gender in Hollywood is low. Females are not given the same opportunity as the males. Article from NPR STAFF (2015) informed that women make up half of the U.S. population but only 6% of the females directed theatrical films in 2013(Hollywood’s Homogeneity section, para.1). Even though the study is old the data has not change. Population in females in Hollywood in front and behind the scenes cannot be compared to the nation. Hollywood is own by males which are keeping positions for women to a minimum. The heads of Hollywood are not willing to be diverse so they can stay in control. Among the ranks of top Hollywood film executives, the

Black women have never “had it easy” or “had it made” when it comes to the entertainment business. Hollywood has always been white-washed when it comes to the direction they wanted to go in terms of actors for their movies. Most roles that are casted are for white women and men, and the black actors/actresses are given whatever is left. It is truly not fair at all. When black women are given the opportunity to embody a traditionally white role, they are nothing short of phenomenal. This makes one wonder why they are still given supporting roles. African-American women have struggled to gain promising roles in Hollywood, which has hurt their acting careers and affected their lives.

*Throughout the film DuVernay maps the journey of African Americans as they endured slavery, segregation, then integration, and finally societal oppression; how they went from slavery to mass incarceration.

“Early black cinema is an important part of American culture because it visually brought our stories to life. Without the black independent film movement, there would be very few black films today.” The 1970’s and the 1980’s marked a the entry of a new generation of Afro American directors like Haile Gerima, Charles Burnet, Larry Clark, Pamela Jones, Jamaa Fanaka, Julie Dash, Robert Townsend or Spike Lee. They want to stand out and always required more artistic and financial control. Furthermore the emergence of the Afro-American director can be interpreted as a will to break the glass ceiling. Spike Lee is one of the directors who want to break this glass ceiling. He is unmistakably the major Black filmmaker of the 80 and 90 decades. During

Afro-American woman are one of the most under represented groups in Hollywood films. They face double underrepresentation not only on screen but also behind the camera and it is because they are woman and black. Since the very beginning, Hollywood film industry has been dominated by white male producers, writers, directors and executives (Smith, 780; Covington, 21) that empower their own race and gender hierarchies. The Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA carried out a study of the top 200 Hollywood films in 2013 and found that leading characters are 74.7% male and 25.3% female and according to race, 83.3% are white in contrast to 16.7%, which consists the minorities. Behind the camera, regarding the gender of directors,

By analyzing the statistics of movies and music produced by people of color, maybe one day people will learn that diversity is part of the change there needs to be in the world. The color of someone’s skin does not define their talent, or box office stats, and whitewashing shall one day be an affair of the past. Whitewashing has been entwined into the very fabric of the American film franchise. “Whitewashing describes the habit of casting white actors to play non white character often to shoehorn in star, sometimes out of racial insensitivity, invariably to the detriment of people and especially actors of color”, as told

As a child most of us were raised to believe that jail consists of all "bad people". We did not think much about the system that incarcerated people. I think it is fair to say that the United States is filled with "children" who do not know the realities of how society works and treats black people. These people are colorblind. In the film, Ava DuVernay talks about systematic racism and the injustice in prison systems. She addresses the problem of Americas prison growing. DuVernay states, “It’s a long time coming for me, just being really affected by police interactions". She then goes on and talks about her experiences with the prison system and police. She grew up in the atmosphere that prison was always present. As a child she remembers

Cynthia Theriault Documentum, Inc. Documentum, a Silicon Valley startup, is the first to market with an enterprise-scale document management solution built from standard relational database technologies in combination with object-oriented methodologies. The software enables people to collaboratively create, manage, deliver, and archive the content that drives business operations. The Company is at the crossroads of marketing strategies. Jeff Miller, the new CEO of Documentation, is faced with the question whether to undertake an innovative, but unproven, market selection process presented by Geoffrey Moore, a well-known Silicon Valley marketing pundit. Boeing (aerospace market) and Syntex (pharmaceutical market) were the

I first remember hearing about Mira Nair last year, not in my Introduction to Cinema class but from my half-Indian friend who praised Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding. It should be noted that my first film teacher was a white man, older than sixty and not concerned with women directors; out of the sixteen films screened for the semester, two were directed by women and none by women of color. Mira Nair has a unique understanding that she is fighting a long and slow battle for her films to be made relevant. Because of her race and gender, the system is against her. Thankfully, Mira Nair creates her films for herself and usually based on her own experiences and thoughts and is not waiting around for people to give her chances, she is taking them. She is a radical, feminist filmmaker with the way that she makes her own actions of making all type of films (shorts, documentaries, and fiction films) and packs a meaning behind them with her themes that are intended to make her audiences experience impressions of the life she has lived.