Blaxploitation

Does race really matter on our tv screens? The facts, statistics and stories that follow this question almost a century after the invention makes the answer clear. What you see on television is a big part of what how people regard other cultures and diversity as a whole. The misconceptions of how the world looks and works dramatically impacts the audience, and what they think is the societal norm. Television has been around since 1925 and likely will not go away anytime soon. Back when it was new

their purpose. The white dancers are all dressed in black because it’s show often black culture is imitated and appropriated by white people. Kanye’s fascination with them as the camera zooms, pans, and focuses on their bodies is representing blaxploitation. Instead of half naked women of color dancing sexuality, he shows us half naked white women imitating birds. The Pheonix is an actual bird, the dancers are merely using ballet to look as close to a bird as possible to please Kanye. When Kanye

For the longest time art has been a tool for expressing one’s self, passion, anger, pain, grief, or even resistance. Cultural resistance, as Stephen Duncombe claims, can “provide a sort of ‘free space’ for developing ideas and practices” (S. Duncombe 5). There have been multiple theorists trying to identify what depicts a subcultural group as culturally resistant. Cultural resistance can take different forms and can be expressed via different media depending on the subcultural group. Some theorists

5 of the Best Vengeance Seeking Female Movie Characters Revenge can come in all shapes, sizes and forms, but there is no form I love more than that of the vengeance seeking woman. Whether it be through sheer wit, extreme violence or a mixture of the two, there’s something so thrilling about watching a woman stick it to the man in a variety of ways. Especially when the proverbial man deserves such comeuppance. For your consideration, I have compiled a list of five of the very best examples of vengeance

Over the hour and a half of Samuel L. Jackson reading Baldwin’s words, I Am Not Your Negro presents us with a range of interviews and digs into the murky, racist history of Western popular culture. The film is not subtle: sections are bookended with stark, black and white title cards, Doris Day’s smiling face morphs into a lynched body hanging from a tree, the end credits burst on screen to the sound of Kendrick Lamar’s 'The Blacker the Berry'. But the film’s power comes from its punch, and the punch

Hollywood today spends more money on movies than ever before, with an average budget of $140 million per movie. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; the most expensive movie ever made; cost approximately $378.5 million and that was five years ago. This isn’t surprising since history is witness to a rising trend in money spent on movies, even after adjusting for inflation, however, their impact on the industry isn’t as large as their budgets. Over the years, lower cost productions like B-Movies

Hip-hop music grew out of widespread popular genres like blues, R&B, and gospel in the 1970s. Black American youths used this genre and the themes it addressed to create a new culture that would aim to define what being a black individual in America meant and how the community as a whole dealt with oppression and anti-black attitudes post-Civil Rights Era. After its rise to prominence in mainstream American culture, independent directors decided to take advantage of the genre as a way to portray

Are there too many white people on television? An easier question might be: are there not enough people on television who aren’t white? It is true that the glowing magic box in our living room does more than just entertain, it molds and affects our opinions of the people represented on screen, and can even transfer into how people feel about race and culture. It goes without saying that because of the way media can shape opinions, there should be an accurate and equal representation of the people

Through the use of images, films, and other media outlets harmful stereotypes are often times created. One of the many challenges that American cinema endures is the inability to correctly portray characters of color. Film directors have formed a habit of creating and defining characters in a way that the audiences can easily identify with, thus leading to the reproduction of racial stereotyping. Black characters have generally been stigmatized throughout the course of history as aggressive, inferior

One of the most inspirational, upsetting, and hope inspiring pieces of history that America has to offer is the city of Harlem, New York. There might be many things that come to mind when one hears of the city Harlem such as the Renaissance, the ghetto, the hipsters, and even former President of the United States; Bill Clinton. While all of these things do embed the culture of Harlem it has feel from the heights the city once held it fell to the point where it was once even disowned by famous African