Star Wars is an epic space opera film series created by George Lucas, which includes galactic battles, theatrical adventure, as well as chivalric romance. The music, mainly composed by John Williams, gives depth to the storyline and is something that fans of all ages will always remember. The specific Star Wars movie that I have chosen to analyze is Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, which was released on May 25, 1983.
It seemed to me that rather than given the African-American community pride, such was the goal of black independent filmmakers, these black films seemed to further perpetually an untrue stereotype. That once again, black people, specifically darker skinned people, still somehow inferior to those who are is lighter skin not. Its not different at all from the movies that were created during this time, having white actors play black people pretending to be white people. In this since I completely agree with Peebles that black independent filmmakers didn’t create thing that were all that different from what was already out there; because the community was so desperate for some type of positive representation that they subconsciously over looked deeper ingrained prejudices
Over the course of the film, clips of many western movies play which show parts of Native Americans shown as the enemies of the Americans. The biggest perpetrator of the image upon Natives is Hollywood, which sought out to develop a characteristic on Native Americans. It obviously worked because all of America believes the films show the true character of the Natives. Hollywood’s job was to entertain so they created films that showed the braveness of these savage Natives and eventually moved onto silent films and caricatures to add more entertainment to the industry. They depict the Natives as
History Vs. Hollywood: The Untouchables The Untouchables is an action packed movie, set in Chicago, 1920s. Crime controls the city, the system has gone corrupt, and people are dying.
Throughout the 70s, innovative and impactful movies featuring heavy African-American involvement hit the scene of thousands of theaters across the United States. The overall positive perception of Blaxploitation films provided many opportunities for black involvement in America’s entertainment industry that Hollywood failed to provide. Audiences positively perceived things that were not brought to light in the white dominated entertainment industry such as, new stereotype defying roles, uplifting messages, and the exposure of different communities and their issues. Blaxploitation was a result from African-Americans having a very strong desire to “see themselves empowered” in films (Christian). This genre of 70s cinema, were mostly set
Benefits Street is a documentary series on channel 4 focusing on the people who live on benefits. The series is known for attracting criticism, the residents of James Turner street have also complained that the show Benefits Street represents them as drug-users, benefit scroungers, and bad parents”. This programme raises many ethical questions exploring; representation of characters, and the way the media creates an unbiased view of the subject. The characters in Benefits Street are shown to be intoxicated, commit crime, and dispute with kids. In the first and second episode we are introduced to the Romanians of Benefits Street who are constantly being attacked and aggravated by the other residents.
But one can say that Black Westerns was just marketing to bring black viewers in, no different from the Blaxploitation movies like Shaft. But this time period, films were also bumped up the extreme violent factor, the one seen with Preacher talking to the men playing cards, and Buck comes in
Merriam-Webster defines strong as, “able to withstand great force or pressure.” In ancient Greek culture, the idea of having a strong mind and a strong body was heavily emphasized. In Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus the king of Ithica is a perfect model for this value. He begins his trek home following the Trojan War; however, his journey is troublesome and lengthy as he encounters numerous monsters, gods, and other predicaments. After twenty years, he returns home to his wife and son unaccompanied by his men who were killed at sea.
Miscegenation has never been seen as “right” in Hollywood out of fear it would hurt the already fleeting revenue stream of theaters and movies. There was also a slight return of depicting Black men as a savage in films set in urban areas due to the veil of danger that shrouded the inner city. Along with the depiction of Black Americans, Native Americans began receiving negative attention in entertainment media for being too spiritual and taking their qualms with white people to the grave in films like Amityville Horror and The Shinning. The Shinning and others like it also exemplified another insignificance of Black characters as a sacrifice or unwavering follower of their white, leading
These movies were full of sexy and over exaggerated stereotypes of the African American race that painted the masses in a bad light which angered the black population who were dealing with the Civil Rights movement at the time. While the hero of your everyday white film would be someone like Superman, or some larger than life cowboy these movies portrayed pimps, thugs, and hookers as the heroes and main focus. They also had these black characters performing larger than life acts of revenge and heroics against their white foes which angered many due to some seeing these things as a mockery. Some members of black audiences fed up with various racially driven hate crimes viewed these movies as a bad joke thinking things along the lines of,”A real black wouldn’t get away with doing something like that to any white. Later on however we find the influence and success of these films had positive effects as well.
The United States of America, a country known as the “melting pot”, has a population of citizens that make up a plethora of ethnicities and races. Despite the fact that nearly half of Americans are— in fact— minorities, it does not translate into past or modern-American film. Race—both now and in the past—has been controversial in Hollywood films and screenwriting. There is a great disparity of minorities in all areas of Hollywood from acting to producing, directing, editing, and critiquing. From the very beginning, Hollywood’s depiction of race has been extremely controversial.
Those films were not considered as reputable films in the society. So when we see Tarantinos role as an appropriator, it's interesting to see that he borrows elements from movies which were considered as low art and converts them into high art by the method of re-sampling. Though Tarantino is borrowing from the Blaxploitation movies as a white person, he is not actually exploiting the stereotypes used in those movies like that era. The reason is, he is not using any of those impressions for the immediate effect and then dismissing them. That's the difference between exploitation and appropriation.
Before researching African culture and modern civilization, I had an outdated and inaccurate concept of what Africa looked like. These ideas came from either fiction or narrative biases set in place by American or European writers and travelers. After studying Purple Hibiscus, reading an article on Nollywood, and watching a video about Africa, I came to terms with the stark dichotomy of American society’s portrayal of Africa and the reality of the continent, causing my views and the way I pictured Africa changed drastically. While reading Purple Hibiscus, I learned that a large portion of Nigerians spoke English. This surprised me; due to misleading, culturally inaccurate renderings of Africa, I had always believed that Nigerians spoke some sort of tribal dialect, never thinking much on the practicality or realism of that concept.
Toxic Masculinity is the root of men’s oppression, and it requires our attention to be adequately addressed. This is because in the United States we teach boys that demeaning women make them more valuable to society. The idea is that women are only around to give men pleasure and to be seen as objects. In the documentary, we are also told by Joe Ehrmann that in addition to demeaning women we are taught that we need to strive for money and positions of power to obtain money with the help of media and film perpetuating the idea. He also added that if that we look at what society is telling boys, they will lose what is truly important in life.
The media has long been recognized as important source of gender related information, television and cinema specifically influences its audience in a considerable way. (Denmark and Paludi 2008). With regards to the concept of gender cinema can offer a space where ambiguities of identities are played out; understanding the play of the categories of femininity and masculinity is very important in evaluating our own understandings of gender and how we react to different representations of it (Tasker 2002).If a film can show different individuals and we can recognize how social forces shape and constrain the individual according to classifications of gender it narrates an experience where we experience the film as gendered viewers. Film reflects and generates out own experience of gender over and above out own recognition and observation of it. (Pomerance 2001).
