Twenty Feet From Stardom Analysis

The main purpose of the film is to educate people on the truths about the life of former slaves in post-Reconstruction era. The major themes of the film is that racism still existed then but more

This movie Directed by Paul Haggis who also directed Academy Award Winning "Million Dollar Baby" and had also won an Academy Award for this movie as well puts a twisted story in this film. This movie is trying to symbolize what goes on in the world today in regards to racism and stereotypes. He tries to make a point on how societies view themselves and others in the world based on there ethnicities. This movie intertwines several different people's lives, all different races, with different types of beliefs. Such ethnicities include Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Middle Eastern. This movie includes conflicts on both sides of the picture from cops and criminals as well

This film was based on the time period, as Calvert describes it in The Myth Of The Old South, downloaded May 8, of the Antebellum South, filled with large, prosperous plantations and big white, columned houses. In the Old South, before any equal protection laws were ratified, slavery was a central and important part of

The film reminds us that “slavery and its aftermath involved the emasculation-physical as well as psychological - of black men, the drive for black power was usually taken to mean a call for black male power, despite the needs of (and often with the complicity of) black women. That continues to result in the devaluing of black female contributions to the liberation struggle and in the subordination of black women in general.”4

Everyone has a dream to become someone significant one day, and would try to work his or her best to achieve that goal. Although the goal can take many years to achieve, but there are some people who are willing to work that hard for it even if it takes them 10,20,30 or 50 years. From the movie 20 Feet From Stardom by Morgan Neville, it shows how the struggles of back up singers. Many listeners have heard of their song thousands of time, they have been played on the radio, malls, and on television, but we never know what their names are, or how they look like. The title of this movie really define how back up singers are only a few feet away from fame, yet it takes them so much longer to be successful, or have other to know their name.

“ Some of these early productions have racial themes which reorganize the world in such a way that black heritage is rewarded over white paternity; they are schematic renunciations of the prevailing order of things in white American society where, historically, the discovery of black blood meant sudden reversal of fortune, social exclusion, or banishment.” (Gaines, P.3) Within the movie the amount of mistruths about African Americans was sad. Within the movie you notice that the blacks were always or seem to be yelling, acting uncivilized and doing

The degree of connection between all of the characters in the movie is so coincidental and interrelated to emphasize the point that we do not always know what is going on with everyone else we may encounter. It also accentuates the fact that racism is not one particular race against another. It also shows that we never know someone’s situation and what is happening in their life to make them act the way that they do if

The film, “The African- Americans: Many Rivers to cross, Episode 5: “Rise!” coves African American history from 1940 to 1968. This film was written by Henry Louis Gates which is composed of taking us down the road to civil rights. In the beginning of his film, he briefly mentions that even a century after emancipation things such as segregation would be contradictory. Gates is opposed to the thoughts of segregation; he views segregation as something that’ll never fade – even years after the freeing, there will always be that separation and injustice. He covers all historical people who left their marks and historical events through that time period. Throughout the 1940s, African Americans experienced a downfall. When it came to employment, the “Negroes,”

If a movie of this sort had such an emotional impact on me, it is no wonder people embraced these ideas back then. The use of new and popular media methods in those days was more than adequate in transferring the black inferiority ideas to the general public. Beginning at the early 19th century with the happy, dancing, toothless, drunken Negro with big, bold and white lips to the image of the mid 21st century African-American, the media has always used these images to convey inferiority. These images implied inherent traits in the black community. This whole community was represented in the new media as one who can not be collateralized and integrated in to society without being happily enslaved. Most of these images had great commercial values that made it all the more impossible for the rest of the nation not to embrace the African American stereotypes.

The film also gives background information on black facing and speaks upon the black actors that did participate in it. In my opinion the movie became pretty poetic, in a spoken word form, when it began to talk about the feelings of men that would entertain whites with their black face performances. These

This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie

After picking up a rotten apple, Mama asked one of the white employees if she could have a batch of fresh apples and he agreed. However, when a white woman asked the same question, the man gave her the apples instead of Mama. Disgusted, Mama walked out of the store, refusing to be treated like a second class citizen any longer. Though this was a short scene from the movie, it portrayed the daily intolerance of African Americans living in the United States and the actions taken, however miniscule, to prevent them from being treated as equals to white men. Third of all, we can observe how a low economic status further affects the treatment of African Americans by white people.

Stardom can be read from another angle in the 1950s. Even while actors received much fame they were still under the control of producer and studio, who assigned actors to pictures “in their range and within the range of the audience expectations (Schickel 91). This system prevailed even after the Supreme Court ruling of 1948. Actors gained so much from Hollywood but became victims of the same-few died young and others had troubled private lives. Studios continued to own their actors despite the shift in film production. For instance Marilyn Monroe signed a seven year contract with Fox in 1950 and those who tried to build a career outside the studio system were vulnerable like the black actress Dorothy Dandridge. She found it difficult to survive in a white dominated industry though she achieved mainstream success through musicals such as Carmen Jones (1954)

In the light of, the director makes good points through the whole movie about what they went through. I like this movie because it gives me more information of the people who were involved or who were there during that time. Like, Ann Lee Coper (Oprah Winfrey), Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo), and the rest of the people who help fight for African Americans to be able to vote. The movie also shows the difficult and the happy time they went through. Even the problems with their family. No matter what’s going on, they were still focus and full invested in having freedom. What I learned from this movie was that they did not let all the obstacles of what they went through mess up their main goal because of that I am able to take those lesson for my

Lisl Winternitz lived during World War Ⅱ, a young girl not fully knowing what was happening in her country around her. Living life scared, never knowing who is watching you, who will stop you on the street because you’re a jew. The Holocaust was repulsive, ghastly, and foul. The Jews at that time had done nothing to deserve the punishment Hitler gave them.