Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams) portrays an African American male that is outcasted by his fellow peers. At a prestigious university such as Winchester University you would think the Black Student Union would bring together all African Americans but sadly Lionel is not included. Lionel is an undeclared past philosophy major who is still trying to find his niche. What sets Lionel Higgins apart from other peers and classmates is his sexuality. He is a homosexual that has not found his voice and has not figured out what he stands for. That is, until a blackface Halloween party erupts on campus and he walks in on the party first hand. The party portrayed stereotypical black people personas such as ratchet females with long nails, males …show more content…
At the party, he attends causation people took African American culture and used it to mock stereotypes generalized to our people. Lionel Higgins walks into this scenery and for the first time actually has an urge to take action. Originally he is assigned a task by his editor at the University's newspaper to get a closer insight on the party. But after what he witnessed he realizes that this party is degraded our people and rushes to inform Samantha White. First off, This entire action affects him negatively because throughout the entire movie Lionel had no voice when he encountered minor mishaps with Kirk as well as Reggie who even though he's still color discriminated him because of his sexuality. His encounter with Samantha White ignited him to speak to the rest of the Black Student Union. While they were more for cracking down the party they also felt misguided because of Samantha not being in attendance like usual. This affected Lionel Higgins because this made him realize that this was his chance to take a stand for something he felt so passionate about. So, he rallied together students from the Black Student Union and a few other minority organizations to crash the …show more content…
Sam and Coco are also there, with Coco sporting a blonde wig, and Sam recording everything on her film camera. Coco tells Sam that the white people spend a lot of money just to be like black people, and for a night that's what they got. Lionel begins to smash bottles, pull masks off faces and even goes to the point of destroying the DJ turntables. Kurt snatches him off stage and the scene picks up outdoors. There is a huge wrestling match between the two and somehow Kurt ends up on top of Lionel. In a previous scene, Kurt disrespected and humiliated Lionel in front of others. Kurt whipped out his penis and insinuated that his penis is the only way Lionel could ever understand him. This may have become a memory of Lionel’s during the tussle because while Kurt was on top, he kisses him. Lionel’s attendance at the blackface party proved to himself that some things are unacceptable, he showed this by confronting the white people and even his bully; Kurt without caring who sees and what they
Throughout the film of Smoke Signals, the story centers on two characters, Thomas and Victor. Thomas, through his storytelling shows Victor that there's more to life than cynicism and pure anger, while Victor let's Thomas know what it means to be a real Indian. We can see this in the scene where Victor tells Thomas that Indians are not supposed to smile to white people and that Indians always should look mean in order to gain the respect of white folks. However, we can see that after they return to the bus their seats have been taken by two white men and neither did Victor’s mean face and faded smile help him gain their seats back. This scene shows us that those stereotypes about how what an Indian is supposed to act are not in fact true because
The movie White Man’s Burden, a 1995 drama, reverses the typical American cultural perspectives. In this movie John Travolta and Harry Belafonte create an emotional story highlighting the way people treat others. In a White Man’s Burden Harry Belafonte is a successful and wealthy black man, and John Travolta is a poor struggling white man. To me this movie showed me many things I was blind to. The reversal of traditional white and black roles emphasized the injustice that many minorities, in this scenario blacks, go through on a daily basis.
Each of the show’s male characters played a different role of what black masculinity looked like. “Will” was cast as a relatable young man humorously trying to find his place in the new world that he has been given. “Will” is an easy-going cool guy, who has his way with the ladies. “Will’s” cousin “Carlton,” played by actor Alfonso Ribeiro, is the privileged, money hungry goody-too-shoes who efforts seem to always f...
Race is a huge issue in the film and many stereotypes are made. Jamal Wallace is introduced in the film as a typical black teenage male who goes to a low class school in the Bronx and really excels on the court as a basketball player. He always plays basketball with his friends in a parking lot. Jamal is dared to go into the apartment of a recluse who watches them play through binoculars. Jamal is caught and, running away in fright
The film being analysed is the Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes. Trapped in Saturday detention are 5 stereotyped teens. Claire, the princess, Andrew, the jock, John, the criminal, Brian, the brain, and Allison, the basket case. At 7 am, they had nothing to say, but by 4 pm; they had uncovered everything to each other. The students bond together when faced with the their principal, and realise that they have more in common than they think, including a hatred for adult society. They begin to see each other as equal people and even though they were stereotyped they would always be The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club highlights a variety of pressures that are placed upon teenagers through out high school. One of the most challenging aspects of screenwriting is creating characters that an audience can identify with, relate to, and be entertained by.
Although Lionel’s character is portrayed as passive and utterly disengaged in his work, he is disinterested and unhappy by mentioning: “Way things go, I guess” when asked about his daily job and life (King 80). King presents the discrimination against Lionel’s own culture when he speaks of Lionel’s need to be white. When the novel states: “That’s what you did when you began again. That’s what John Wayne would do”, the author emphasizes upon Lionel’s changing life, with a sense of discrimination for his heritage and a welcoming to the White culture (King 243). Furthermore, the identification of John Wayne is repeated in the novel to be Lionel’s definition of an ubermensch, the ultimate symbol of a White male, and to describe Lionel’s drive to be more like this character. To add, when Lionel receives the jacket on his birthday and feels its warmth and comfortability, it becomes a symbol of the white culture as Lionel tries on the jacket and Eli says: “You know, you look a little like John Wayne” (King 303). Wayne is seen as the epitome of the Whites which are then often seen as the heroes in the Western films. It becomes the driving force of reason when Lionel wants to be just like his hero, John Wayne. Ultimately, Lionel dislikes being a part of his current Native community and therefore decides that since he cannot rise above the
(4) Conventional is easy. Whenever an idea is generally perceived by society as standard or traditional it becomes very easy to display to the public without the raise of an eyebrow. This is the basis on which stereotypes appear in films. You’d think in the 21st century where what once were radical notions like same sex marriage and recreational drug use are being legalized that something uncalled for like the constant portrayal of character stereotyping would come to an end. Alas, stereotypical characters continue to emerge in film and unfortunately have become a staple of Hollywood because they’re simple and straightforward, requiring little effort on the part of the writers or thinking from the audience.
“The sitcom is a jumble of mixed metaphors: the repetition compulsion of eternal sameness conjoined to a desire to overturn the established order; a profound aesthetic conservatism bundled with an ingrained desire to shock. Every sitcom possess not just a routine that it perpetually seeks to overturn but also a particular style of fomenting that chaos.”
In the movie “crash” people from different racial group crash in to each other and at least two of the characters come to recognize how their prejudice and stereotyping is based on their accidental encounter with members of other social groups.
In the 2004 film Crash, directed and written by Paul Haggis along with fellow screenplay writer Bobby Moresco (“Crash: Full Cast & Crew”), the entire storyline of the film is heavily influenced by intersectionality and skewed perceptions of other social groups within society. The character that I am choosing to focus on specifically is the character Anthony, played by Christopher Bridges (also known as Ludacris). Anthony’s ...
The movie Crash was directed by Paul Haggis is a powerful film that displays how race is still a sociological problem that affects one 's life. It also focuses on how we should not stereotype people based on their color because one may come out wrong in the end. Stereotyping is a major issue that is still happening in today 's society and seems to only be getting worse. This movie is a great way to see the daily life and struggle of other races and see how racism can happen to anyone, not just African Americans which seems to only be seen in the news and such.
Tension between the African Americans and Caucasians have been present in America since slavery. In the movie Crash (2004), race and culture are major themes that can be seen in the lives of the characters in the film. One character in particular, Cameron, a prestigious color vision director, displays the friction between two cultures. He belongs to the educated, upper class of the Los Angeles area. He is also an African American, yet he seems to have no ties with that class. He has a light-skinned wife, attends award shows, and it appears that his acquaintances are predominately white. When he and his wife, Christine, get pulled over by a racist cop, he experiences emotions of powerlessness and helplessness that he never knew he would experience due to his upbringing and place in society. Cameron goes through a radical transformation where he comes to grips with his background and how he fits into these two clashing cultures.
This movie has the potential to fall into all of the stereotypes we have come to expect from black and white comedies. There is a little of that: Kutcher’s character is goaded into telling black jokes at dinner with Theresa’s family that includes her racially intolerant grandfather and Mac’s character lies about his daughter’s boyfriend to an employee describing him as a black man named Jamal who lives in Atlanta, plays basketball and went to Howard University. However, while poking fun at the problems of inter-racial romance, the movie reminds viewers that discrimination and stereotypes are still alive and well in the new millennium.
The first being a Sam White the radical revisionary. Sam brings attention to issues concerning race, but the entire film struggles with being who she truly is, oppose to what others want her to be. Similarly to Sam Colandrea “Coco” Connors struggles with who she. Unlike Sam, who at times overly expresses where blackness and feels strongly about her roots, Coco is ashamed of who she is a just wants to fit in with people who she thinks can love her more than her own race. Troy Fairbanks falls somewhere in the middle between Sam and Coco. He is a legacy student who comes from privilege and seems to do a better job in convincing others that he is being himself, when in reality his father runs his life. Lastly Lionel Higgins who differs from the other characters in the fact that he fits in with no one. Lionel could be seen as the Bayard Rustin of the story, he possesses the ability to lead and change Winchester for the better, but his sexual orientation holds him back.
While watching movies, have you ever noticed that the villains in almost every single Hollywood film are of Middle Eastern or European descent? In a reoccurring theme of Hollywood, the villains in these films are almost always foreigners or people of color. This is a stereotype. On the other side of the spectrum, we often see that the heroes of these films are most often than not white males. This is another stereotype. Within the last few years, we’ve seen actors such as Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, and Zoe Saldana take the lead roles, so it can’t be said that there are no non-white heroes, but there certainly isn’t many. Hollywood action movies, moreover than other genres, are typically loaded with an abundance of stereotypes. The way these movies are composed and structured can tell us a great deal about the views held within the American psyche and who holds the social power. The harsh reality is that the media ultimately sets the tone for societal standards, moralities, and images of our culture. Many consumers of media have never encountered some of the minorities or people of color shown on screen, so they subsequently depend on the media and wholeheartedly believe that the degrading stereotypes represented on the big screen are based on fact and not fiction. Mary Beltran said it best when she stated in her “Fast and Bilingual: Fast & Furious and the Latinization of Racelessness” article, “ultimately, Fast & Furious mobilizes notions of race in contradictory ways. It reinforces Hollywood traditions of white centrism, reinforcing notions of white male master while also dramatizing the figurative borders crossed daily by culturally competent global youth – both Latino and non-Latino” (77). This paper will specifically look...