Unit IV: What do films teach you?

I believe that movies teach you/give you perspective. Movies are motion pictures and pictures are visual representations of life. Movies are able to take the audience and immerse them into their world by evoking feelings, especially when you're being represented on scene.

"12 Years of Slave"

For example, as an African American it is one thing for me to read about slavery in books but to get a visual of those events adds another level to my understanding of slavery. I see myself (a black individual) being put in that situation, literally imaging that if I had lived in that time period then I would have gone through the same thing.

Noah's Arc

As an African American homosexual, films can also teach me how to live in certain spaces. Although I have personally never experienced a hate crime, the scene from Noah's Arc shows me how I can be put in that very same situation. While "Noah's Arc" is very fictional, the subject matter is not.

Unit 3: Black Bodies

When it comes to black bodies and how they are controlled, there are examples everyday present right before our eyes. During the years of slavery our bodies, and lives, were not our own. Slaves were literally taken and stripped bare in front of hundreds and seen not as a human being tortured, but as a thing to serve someone else. While the controlling of black bodies isn't as literal today, it is still very much alive, especially when it comes to perception of beauty.

In the video above you have what is called the doll test. Kids are given two dolls, one black and one white, and they are asked a series of questions. One of the first questions was "which doll is prettiest" and all of the children immediately picked the white doll. When asked which doll was bad or ugly they all selected the black one. This video is a pretty evident case of controlling black bodies. It is conditioning them to believe that anything brown, like them, is considered bad, ugly, etc.


Another way in how "others" control black bodies is the appropriation of the black body. Piggybacking off of the video, black people have been told for years that our bodies were not beautiful. Although aspects of the black body cause fascination, it still wasn't anything important. Take for example the butt. Like one of our readings stated, the butt was something that always caused a stir in other communities and as stated before, it was literally taken and put on display. It wasn't until recently that the black body started to get some appreciation, just not on black people.
"Twerking", something already popular within the black community, was previously deemed savage or animalistic. It wasn't until a popular white artist took it to make herself seem "cool" that it became something to celebrate. Twerking is a dance that puts primary focus on the butt and now that it's something that white people celebrate there is a rise in white people with these physical features that are associated with blacks. A prime example is Kylie Jenner.

A once flat buttocks, thin lipped, pale white woman now has larger lips, hips, rocks a spray tan all year long, and has a significantly larger butt. While she continues to get praised for the way she looks, black people and there bodies are still considered less than.

Unit 1

While reviewing the materials for this unit the topic that stuck out to me was the whole idea of image and representation. This topic stuck with me the most because I feel that the topic of race and representation of African American is still an issue in the media today. In the first reading "Black American Cinema: The New Realism", author Manthia Diawara talks about the image of African American in the world of film. In the reading the author states how blacks are shown "in relation to Whiteness". White people are the center while blacks are on the outside looking in, and because of this Blacks are not always depicted in the best light. Taking an example from our first movie, Birth of a Nation, even when blacks were seen portraying positive emotions they were not authentically black but merely white people in black face. In those mainstream films blacks are often cast aside as the thug or generally something negative. That same notion of how blacks occupy mainstream films is still very much alive today.

In the year 2014 the Egyptian themed movie "Exodus: Gods and Kings" was release. Historically we are taught that people who are of African descent are people of color. Seen in the picture above, Director Ridley Scott ignores this fact and casts all major roles, such as Moses, to white actors. This leaves all other roles such as "The Royal Servant", "Thief", and "Lower Class Citizen" to African Americans. 

It can also be noted that even when recognized by the mainstream audience, it is still when Blacks take on negative roles that the recognition happens. Actress/comedian Monique won "Best supporting Actress" in 2010 for her role in Precious where she plays an abusive mother to an illiterate child who is about to have her second baby. Gabourey Sidibe was also nominated for Best Lead Actress for playing the role of Precious. Lupita Nyong'o, who won that same award in 2014 as Monique, was also casted as a slave in the film "12 Years of Slave". Actress Halle Berry Won an Oscar for Best Lead Actress in 2002 for her role in Monsters Ball where she plays struggling mother who is forced to take care of her child alone due to her husband being taken to prison. Berry is still the only African American woman to win the Oscar for Best Lead Actress.

I feel that the rise of Black/Race films is because of the poor image Mainstream Media has created. Race films take on the objective mentioned in our second reading, "Black Looks" by bell hooks, by recreating that image. As she states in the reading "the emphasis on film is so central because it, more than any other media experience, determines how blackness and black people are seen and how other groups will respond to us based on their relation to these constructed and consumed images". Race films takes a jab at reconstructing that image by putting African Americans in the center. One of the oldest films by a black director, Within Our Gates directed by Oscar Micheaux (pictured above), highlights not only the life of a black person, but a black woman. Being in that position allows us to bring forth our lives and our issues. It shows our truth which is something our mainstream counterparts never did.