The Portrayal of Race in American Film

Race relations and other stereotypes that are found in American films can be recognized by the time period that they were made in. Films in the early 1930's didn't have any black characters at all and if they were involved in the film the played either a very small roll or a mammy or butler type character. As we fast forward into the 1980's and early 1990's black actors start to have large roles and even star in films. We talked about the lethal weapon series with Danny Glover and also the Spike lee effect, who was one of the first black movie producers out there.

Race in American film is usually made apparent by the use of stereotypes. Although these stereotypes aren't always correct and can be considered very inappropriate. These are what people associate as to what people of different races are actually like. These stereotypes allow movie producers to have the audience understand what is going on and why these people are acting the way they do by these stereotypes.

One concept of race in American film would be that or othering. The example that we saw of othering in class was the Black people are good and dancing and white people are not very good at dancing. and example of othering that I will show a photo from the film White Men Cant Jump.

In this film is an excellent form of othering. I would have show a clip here but my computer is not working well with video stuff. In this film we see woody harrellson's character as this white guy in the inner city and looks like he wouldn't be any good at basketball because of the stereotype that white men aren't as good at basketball as black men. Wesley Snipes character uses the stereotype that whit men cant jump to his advantage and they hustle basketball games for money. This is an excellent film to see the concept of Othering.

Another concept of Race in American film that we talked about in class was Tokenism. Tokenism is when there is a stereotypical character that is put into films or shows to show a level of Diversity.

One example of Tokenism is found in the very popular Television show on Comedy Central is South Park. They have one black character in the show and the movie that was made based on the Television is token. The black child's name is token, which can be seen as very offensive but that is what this show is going for. Humor or comedy that pushes the line of offensive or in just plain humor.

As you can see in this photo of Token from South Park, he plays a very stereotypical black character. In this picture he is playing a bass guitar and in the show they tell token he can play the bass guitar because he is black even though he really doesn't know how to play it. The example of tokenism here is very apparent and in this example it is actually probably very offensive to some people and the this Television show get in a lot of trouble sometimes for the things they put into the shows.

Race in American film is always going to be a struggle because, we still have problems in equality in our nation and until these problems are solved and everyone feels that they are considered equal and treated that way stereotypes will still be present in our films and television shows. I am going to talk about whiteness now and how whiteness in being portrayed in American films now.

White people in film mainly white men have been man stays in Hollywood blockbuster films. IN almost every major film up until the 1980's white males have played the major roles and you didn't see many minorities having a big part in these films. These days are changing now and you can find films where black people and other minorities are starting to have the major roles and even some films have very few white people playing major roles. This is a good thing for Hollywood because it lets people know that actors or minorities can be just as good or even better than the white actors. IN time we will have equality in Hollywood but this will take some time but the times are changing.