The Media 's Influence On Society

Many people may not find anything positive about regular African Americans. “According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in the year 2008 black youths, who make up 16% of the youth population accounted for 52% of juvenile violent crime arrests including 58.5% of youth arrest for homicide and 67% for robbery” (Wikipedia). Spike Lee films such as Malcom X and Get On The Bus depict black people coming together instead of tearing each other down and shed a more positive light on African American culture. There are many stereotypes on every ethnicity and culture, but African Americans in particular may have the worst rap sheet. Spike Less criticized the way African Americans are portrayed in films and television (Yale Bulletin & Calendar). Long before television and film took over as leading forms of entertainment, African Americans have been cast in roles that aided in the perpetuation of racialized stereotypes. During the latter half of the 1800s minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment among white Americans. These shows portrayed both free and enslaved African Americans (who were mainly played by whites) in an extremely demoralizing fashion. The minstrel show is the birthplace of “Jim Crow”. Jim Crow is most popularly seen in the context of the Jim Crow laws, which enabled white Americans to legally separate themselves from African Americans in nearly every facet of life (Antiracist

The rise of Blaxploitation films such as Coffy revived the social problem films of the 1940s, but instead introduced new representations of race and gender as well as the drug crisis of the 1970s. Despite the progressiveness of Blaxploitation films in relation to previous films such as Birth of a Nation–where black characters were exploited through flat, racial stereotypes for the enjoyment of white audiences–they also thrived on the exploitation of evolved black stereotypes of the 1970s; Bogle’s “black buck,”1 characterized by violence and insatiable sexual desire evolved into the 1970s “pimp daddy,” thriving through hustling women, selling drugs, and sending hits when necessary. The representation of black women in films followed a

In most films, African Americans are also shown in a stereotypical manner that promotes notions of moral inferiority. When it comes to the terms of movie characters shown by race African Americans use more vulgar profanity than whites. African Americans are also being physically violent and restrained than whites. The despite history of African Americans in television, there has been improvement in some of the television and movie roles and portrayals. Improvement in media roles still needs to accurately reflect our diverse roles in society.

Often in many films that undermine African Americans, they are depicted as thief's, murders, or unintelligent. These images are used to show that African Americans are unlike their white counterparts. According to Friedman, "This formulation undermines the racially and sexually based violence toward African Americans, wiping out the memory of rape, castration, and lynching of slaves that occurred in the past" (Friedman). The development of African American films, or films that truly put African Americans in any type of positive light did not really start to occur until the 1970's or 1980's. Before then films were often negative in spirit. Paula Massood describes the Hollywood depictions of African Americans in the previous era as, "failing to recognize the sociopolitical changes in the American landscape. African American characters most often appeared within a southern setting, largely ignoring the black city space and culture that figured in the lives and the imaginations of a vast majority of African Americans" (Massood). However, in the following years the development and progression of African American films was able to be seen.

African Americans have had a long history in the American motion picture industry. Early depictions of African American men and women were limited to demeaning stereotypical images of people of color. During the first decades of the 20th century, many films depicted idealized vision of life in the South. These films glorified the image of the Old South .African American characters, in keeping with the dominant stereotypes, were portrayed as incompetent, child-like, hyper-sexualized, and criminal.

In today’s movies after all the integration and quest to level out the superiority, the social dominance of the white folks is still present in the film industry. For example, in the movie The Bodyguard, Whitney Huston and Kevin Costner live together in perfect harmony, despite their racial differences. In todays movies when they want to show tension between the races the Africans Americans are generally grouped with criminal behavior while on the

According to Tukachinsky, Mastro, and Yarchi, prior to 1930, the role of Blacks on screen were seen involving mostly in criminality and idleness (540). That role still persists until the present, with Blacks usually have to withstand to “longstanding and unfavorable media stereotypes including sexually provocative females and aggressive male thugs” (Tukachinsky 540). 1970’s movies such as The Mack, Black Caesar and Coffy have reinforced this stereotypic image of the black community. The

African Americans have been represented in the media with harmful stereotypes which were founded in the slavery era (Cartier, 2014)(Carpenter, 2012). This negative representation invites bias from those who accept the images, the distortion of which is accentuated by both sexism and racism. Black women are the least represented group in cinema, making it easier to rely on stereotypes which encourage societal bias. From these stereotypes, like the Jezebel and Sapphire, stem the “real world” stereotypes of the welfare queen and the crack mother (Carpenter, 2012), showing that media portrayals have shaped public perception regarding black women. While certain genres have seen a rise in portrayals of diversity, overall Hollywood as an industry remains unchanged, inaccurately representing minorities (Smith et al., 2016).

During the 20th Century, it can be noted that minorities have made significant strides in securing their dreams and reaching equality in America. The advances such as the right to own land and the right to vote has defined America to be the “land of opportunity”. Despite the political advances obtained, minorities still suffer from the racist beliefs that have also been ingrained into American society. Although it has been long since these bigoted practices have been upheld by the law, it could be argued that supremacist ideologies and derogatory stereotypes are still seen in the entertainment industry. Historically, the portrayal of minorities, especially African Americans, has been less ideal.

Movies in the 70’s were stereotypically about black people fighting crime or doing the crime. A

In early African American Cinema, filmmakers had a mission to move away from white perspectives on what it meant to be black (Stewart 225). Oftentimes, we would see black actors being portrayed in scenes as the antagonist committing crimes, as in the case of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Soon after Griffith released the film, filmmaker Oscar Micheaux forever changed American Independent Cinema with his “response” film Within Our Gates, which helped start the advent of race films (NAACP 1). Some of the most notable race films were: The Homesteader, Body and Soul, and The Blood of Jesus. Such films were produced for all-black audiences that featured black casts. But that did not necessarily mean that they were directed and written by

Most film portrayals I have seen, most famously “Birth of a Nation,” show African Americans as lustful, lazy, violent, and unintelligent. In fact, in D. W. Griffith’s entirely racist “Birth of a Nation,” African Americans in the film, played by actors in blackface, continuously disrupt the “peaceful” nostalgic way of life of the south after the war. Eventually, filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux, W. E. B. Dubois, Herb Jeffries, and Lorenzo Tucker sought to put an end to the racist films by making “race films” where African Americans acted in, wrote, shot and directed their own films. However, this wasn’t enough. Some race films reverted back to racist films, where African Americans were making fun of themselves, just to turn a profit.

Redefining Black Film by Mark A. Reid is the book I’ve selected for the mid-term reading report. This book is an eye opener learning experience as well as a beginning guide to understanding African American film, filmmaking, actor/actress and directors. Mark A. Reid discussed the challenges and obstacles African Americans faced during the turn of the century up and through the civil rights movement of the Sixties including the focus on feminism in black cultural production . Redefining Black Film fits in the history of filmmaking as it relates to the ground breaking movements of African Americans in film as well as production process. The acceptance by white society of African Americans in film was a major part of this book as African American

Between 1970 and 1980 there was a cultural film explosion, there were over 200 films released by major and independent studios that hyped major black characters and themes. Prior to the Blaxploitation era black actors had been relinquished to playing small parts that usually presented stereotyped images of the black race with roles such as waitresses or shoeshine boys. This however all changed when in 1971 when the first successful black film "Sweetback's Baadasss Song" showed a black man coming out on top over the white establishment. The term blaxploitation both helped and destroyed the genre. While many blaxploitation films were box office successes, they also fueled the public's perception of blacks as cold-hearted heroes, gangsters,

From the very beginning of the early stages in American cinema, African Americans had a presence on the silver screen. The twentieth century created a new era of cinema that consisted of films produced for and targeted to an all-Black audience. “Race films” which existed in the United States for over thirty years (1913-1948), were films produced by African Americans that focused on Black themes and highlighted the talents of African American directors, producers, scriptwriters, and actors.