http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/showbiz/movies/the-butler-race
Discovered this article and I thought it would be a great topic to present about the impact that movies have on racial issues today. The articles covers the movie 'The Butler' and talks about how it reflects some of the racial conversations that go on today and have been apart of the past. Overall, what I want to get out of this blog is to see how my fellow classmates feel racial issues are portrayed through movies? Is it a good thing or bad? Are the issues presented well or poorly?
In my personal opinion I believe movies present the main point but fails to give all the details because in the end the producers are trying to make money. However, I also believe that there is some hope to racial issues being shown in movies because it vocalizes the issue and gives people a starting point to learn about some of the racial issues that occurred in the past and occur today. Do I believe movies being based on racial issues is a good thing? Yes. But I think it is important to have an accurate interpretation of the story so that the issue can presented in an effective manner. If not then I believe the message of the movie loses it strength.
Please read the article, watch the video, and read some of the comments at the end.
This is a really interesting topic, especially considering how big the film industry is and how much producers spend a year making movies. It's also interesting because Americans, unconsciously, draw conclusions about society and groups of people from movies. Personally, I think movies that are made to explicitly address racial issues like "The Help" do an overall good job at summing up the issues of the focus minorities. However, films that are too lengthy disengage the audience. Movies that address racial issues should be much longer than they are in order to truly capture the deeper seeded issues of minorities and the complexity of such issues. Films like the "The Help" and "The Secret Life of Bees" tend to be stereotypical and just skim the surface of the issues African Americans faced in the past. Films like "Selena" and "Red Dawn" don't address racial issues but both feature a large number of racially ethnic actors and actresses. However, "Red Dawn" was about South Koreans attacking the U.S. and there were few Korean Actors in the film. Most were Chinese and instead of speaking Korean when the Korean army leaders were shown, they spoke Chinese. The movie "Selena", my childhood favorite, was about a Mexican-American singer named Selena who rose to fame in Mexico before starting to cross-over to become an American singer. Selena was played by Jennifer Lopez, who isn't Mexican but Puerto Rican. Selena was one of the biggest and most adored singers in Mexico before she died in 1995. When the movie "Selena" was in production, based on the real life singer's life, the Mexican community found out J-Lo was cast as Selena and there was a lot of controversy surrounding the film. The Mexican community didn't want a Puerto Rican actress playing a Mexican singer. Both of these examples, along with many others, show how stereotypical and unconsciously racist producers and casting directors can be when it comes to picking racially ethnic actors for movie roles. Casting directors fail to cast Mexican actresses for Mexican characters and Chinese actors for Chinese characters. They pick actors who seem racially ambiguous and pass them as being Chinese or Mexican when they're not. Personally, I think this just adds to how people stereotype others by looking at them. If you see "Mexicans'" who all look the same in most films, you'll think you have an idea of what Mexicans look like. Minority groups are very complex and can look very different than what we might expect. I think that careless casting directors are just continuing to shape Americans' minds in a meatier way by not paying attention to detail when making films.
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