Thursday, December 31, 2009

My Response to a facebook status:

"let's discuss: race relations in the entertainment industry. minorities have come along way in film and tv. but is it enough? should minorities settle? revolt?"--(Damone Williams)

i would say it depends on how you look at it because recent movies such as surrogates, avatar, the princess & the frog could technically be seen as stereotypical, and we haven't really "gone" anywhere...




surrogates touched on the history of the rastafari movement and how dread locks originated out of revolt against colonialism--the movie had "dread areas" and they were in revolt against the surrogates, Ving Rhames played the dread locked "the prophet"and people of color in movies and books are often seen as mystics or some wise witchdoctor...In the end it was revealed he too was a surrogate--you could go far as to say he was used as a puppet, an unlce tom of sorts lol but that would be too far in my opinion




(this is more of playing devil's advocate) avatar--which i thought was really beautiful btw--Zoe Saldana played an "indigenous" alien, they were even referred to by other characters as a "race" or the epithet "blue monkeys"




also in Avatar, Dileep Rao played Dr. Max Patel, Patel is a popular Indian surname and most of the time, Indians are usually seen as lab technicians or some sort of scientists




princess & the frog from my understanding a very light (if not white) prince brings a black girl out of the slums of louisiana from rags to riches

so i don't think this is enough and minorities in the entertainment industry should not settle

as far as tv, they always give black women attitudes--whether it's a show or commercials, but since Obama came into office, there have been more commercials w/ "loving" black families....i think there's one commercial w/ a latino family, i do not recall seeing any asian families in any commercial--or soap operas for that matter....

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