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Final Reflection Paper

Decent Essays

Final Reflection Since my youth, I’ve had little trouble suspending my disbelief in media, especially film and TV. As such, issues such as racial or sexual representation meant little to me, as I would end up projecting myself onto whatever character I most related to, skin, gender, or sexuality be damned. Growing up like this, I identified with many characters of diverse personalities (not necessarily skin tones), and found myself rather complacent with the state of the medium as a result. Looking back in history, however, I realized that film didn’t always feature this diversity of mind, and what it does feature today is still significantly lacking.While I believe that Hollywood has made a significant amount of progress over that years, it still features significant issues that need attention, especially in regards to character portrayal. As a child, I was largely unaware of the blatant racism and sexism that permeated early film history due to a combination of lacking a critical eye and rarely seeing old film. Popular films such as D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of A Nation(1915) and Broken Blossoms(1919) center their plots on archaic depictions of race, with the former glorifying white supremacy and the KKK and the latter using the term “Asian” as a disability to be overcome rather than an intrinsic part of one’s character. Watching the “otherness” of these characters opened my eyes to many of the larger issues that would be discussed in the class, as they were very extreme

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