Friday, April 30, 2010

Blackface/whiteface--offensive or humorous?



Nowadays it seems like there's so much racial humor that it doesn't seem to phase people anymore, but does it still create a lot of hype in the media? Many movies have used this method of entertainment such as White Chicks, The Jazz Singer, Tropic Thunder, and even shows like Saturday Night Live that have made this type of comedy so popular.

It's intersting to think that using whiteface/blackface throughout entertainment would've been more offensive around the 1930's-1950's because of all the segregation, but now, even though some people still take it offensively, society has come a long ways of taking such a certain matter like this that personally. Movies like The Jazz Singer (1927), where the main character Jack uses blackface to sing jazz for the broadway plays he was in, seemed very normal around that time period since blackface was such a common form of entertainment. Of course with all the discrimination back then, not having any form of racial humor against whites, many African-Americans were angry and offended for what they had to deal with. Now, there's so much racial humor with any type of race that as a whole, most people find it a positive sense of humor that's rare not to find in most comedies today.

One movie where blackface was used in a very humorous, but exaggerated way, was Tropic Thunder. Talented actor Robert Downey Jr. played the role of Kirk Lazarus, an Austrailian actor that had a pigmentation alteration to play an African-American character called Sergeant Lincoln Osiris for the movie they're shooting. Personally, I think he did an amazing job for playing such an exaggerated role of how a typical black person would act. What's also impressive is that not only does he have to be in character for an African-American, but he had to pull off originally being Australian, which ended up really successful. What was so funny about his role was that even off screen of filming, his character still played the portrayal of a black person. He had sayings like, "yeeah, hah!", "yo!", but even funnier is that at one point, he brings up that most of what he says has to end up in the exclamation "hah!".

For a whiteface example, Eddie Murphy had a hilarious role of playing a white guy in the show Saturday Night Live. The whole clip before he was actually "transformed" into this white guy, was about him studying how white males act in public. He talked about things such as keeping his butt and posture firm while walking and how white people read many Hallmark cards. After his transformation and going out to see how whites treat other whites, he notices that it's a very different perspective than he thought; white people giving eachother free things at the cashier, having a little party on the bus after a black guy walks off. Many exaggerated acts of humor may have seemed a little offensive, but looking around my classroom after watching these scenes, everyone continued cracking up over every racial joke.

With this in mind on how blackface, whiteface, and even other "faces" of racial jokes that come up in entertainment so casually nowadays, this use of humor seems like more of a use of comedy that most people like to watch, as long as people don't go over the top to offend anyone. This simply is just another form, of the many racial jokes out there, that seem to positively entertain people of all ethnic backgrounds.











satire

Thursday, April 22, 2010

African-Americans make it big in entertainment

Throughout the entertainment industry, there has been much discrimination for African-Americans to play strong roles in well known movies. As soon as "Hollywood's Golden Era" (1930's-1940's) came around, television shows started having "mammies" (nickname for black maids for mostly white families). Not too long after, movies with most of the cast being African-American began airing. In one of the articles called "The Studios Have It All Wrong" by Film Director Spike Lee, he stated, "...I rarely see anybody that looks like me. That's the case throughout the industry...". He said this refering to many of the office meetings that the movie producers had.

Another quote that stood out to me from Lee was "There are some black men who can push a project onto the screen: Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Wesley Snipes and Samuel Jackson all have varying degrees of power." All of these actors are talented but my favorite one that he stated was Will Smith. I have always been a huge fan of Will Smith and not just because he's just a good actor, but he can pull off any type of role extremely well, whether it's comedy from "Hitch" or a serious drama like "Pursuit of Happiness". He's probably one of the most recognized black actors, or just any actors in general, in today's entertainment industry.



Will became very well known when the comedy series "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" started in 1990 and continued through until 1996. After his huge popularity with Fresh Prince, he made many blockbuster films even to this day. A fascinating and amazing fact is that Will is the only actor in history to have eight consecutive films to gross over $100 million in the domestic box office. Lee also mentioned in his article that many black films haven't been recognized enough at award shows and that they seem to show the same black celebrities that host/perform at them. Well we really have come a long way since discrimination issues began and actors as talented as Will Smith prove that. It's definetely not a walk in the park to be standing where Will is, but looking back at everything that he's accomplised, we as a society have changed majorly when it comes to great success among diversity.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Patriarchy still continues

Discussing this topic in class has made me realize that not only were there stereotypes based on sex that were very common around the 1920’s, but even to this day there are many films that revolve around the masculinity around men. To compare, let’s start with cinema in the 1930’s/1940’s. During this period, the wives in movies were expected to be stay at home mothers who would have dinner ready before their husband got home. No arguments were meant to happen between the spouses and the husband was always working to bring home the money. Currently there are still films and even videogames, though not as drastic as back in the day, that intentionally make men the main character or just overpowering other supporting characters. For example, with films, most action movies star men as the main role. Of course it makes sense when the movies are based on actual comic books, having to keep the main character the same, but movies like The Day After Tomorrow or Disturbia are just a couple of the many films that decide male actors better suit that genre. Also, with videogames, most of the characters that people get to choose from are male; only one to a few are female, even though many girls are playing videogames now. So overall, it’s just very interesting and kind of shocking that these stereotypes still live on through movies today just because of how we as a society are used to this continuation of how men/women are viewed.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Sick of being sick

I rarely ever get sick. So last week as my roomate starts to come down with a pretty bad cough, I begin to worry about even catching a little bit of it. As it turns out, I do. About a week ago is when the cough started, wasn't too bad, but I worried considering that the last time I had this bad of a cough was a year ago and now I'm falling into the same trap. Not only does it start off with this vicious cough that only starts to get worse, but now my nose is constantly running by the end of the week :/. So ok, all I can think to myself is, "This is a small cold. You barely get sick. Sure, it's getting a little worse, but by the end of this week it should be gone, right?". Wrong. Easter weekend is coming up and I'm visiting family I haven't seen in a month. Great. As I continue to get worse, now I'm gonna have to energize myself up to spending time with the family and also visiting a close friend; not a good time to be this sick when it's supposed to be a cheery weekend, right? So by the time I come back to Seattle early Monday morning, I realize that I will not be able to funtion properly to get up for school on only 2 hours (if I'm lucky) of sleep. Ugh, even sleeping in a little I still feel horrible. To get to my point...it's Wednesday, still sick, getting a little better, same symptoms, cloudy day, blah mood...I.Want.This.Cold.To.End. But on the other hand...I must say that I'm looking forward to, what so far, seems to be a sunny weekend! That always brightens up my mood :)