Slant's Ed Gonzalez's article "Barack Obama: A Story of Race and Politics"
From the article:
" "I turned away, embarrassed for her, irritated with the people around me." Those are Obama's words, about his mother and the crowd at the revival theater, but they could just as easily be mine, describing what I often feel whenever I see predominantly white audiences swoon for obscene films like Crash, Blood Diamond, and Under the Same Moon, wishing they could see how those films pander to white prejudices by condescending to non-white experience, and how that's a symbiotic relationship worth affronting."
Read the rest here.
Thanks House Next Door for the link.
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And let me add something to this discussion and say that there is a lot of experiences that "white" humans and "non-white" humans have in common; so much so that artists should not be afraid to write about or film characters who do not look like them or belong to a different "race". When a unique human character is created it is possible to rise above racial stereotypes in a film.
Actually, a lot of our (meaning human, world wide) other art forms; storytelling, music, literature have, for decades and perhaps centuries, presented the world with multi-dimensional, fully human, non-stereotypical images of people who belong to different groups; in that sense American cinema is probably now in the "early days" of reflecting diversity (of personalities, etc.) within minority/"non-white" populations. Independent film has contributed heavily to this development; with John Cassavetes's Shadows, Spike Lee movies, Jim Jarmusch movies, and works by many other filmmakers who began or stayed outside of Hollywood.
- Sujewa
" "I turned away, embarrassed for her, irritated with the people around me." Those are Obama's words, about his mother and the crowd at the revival theater, but they could just as easily be mine, describing what I often feel whenever I see predominantly white audiences swoon for obscene films like Crash, Blood Diamond, and Under the Same Moon, wishing they could see how those films pander to white prejudices by condescending to non-white experience, and how that's a symbiotic relationship worth affronting."
Read the rest here.
Thanks House Next Door for the link.
::
And let me add something to this discussion and say that there is a lot of experiences that "white" humans and "non-white" humans have in common; so much so that artists should not be afraid to write about or film characters who do not look like them or belong to a different "race". When a unique human character is created it is possible to rise above racial stereotypes in a film.
Actually, a lot of our (meaning human, world wide) other art forms; storytelling, music, literature have, for decades and perhaps centuries, presented the world with multi-dimensional, fully human, non-stereotypical images of people who belong to different groups; in that sense American cinema is probably now in the "early days" of reflecting diversity (of personalities, etc.) within minority/"non-white" populations. Independent film has contributed heavily to this development; with John Cassavetes's Shadows, Spike Lee movies, Jim Jarmusch movies, and works by many other filmmakers who began or stayed outside of Hollywood.
- Sujewa
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