American Film was Born from White Depictions of Blacks

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History
“American film was born from white depictions of blacks” Rogin (1996)
Rogin (1996) argues that American films became popular from popular images at the time of caucasian people painting an image of African Americans using the well known "Blackface".
"Maafa 21" is a film Directed by Mark Crutcher released in 2009; this film looks into how African Americans history shortly after slavery and how they struggled with labels and categorised with different types of insulting names. This documentary is a study about how allegedly the higher achy was trying their best to eliminate the race, by dehumanising the afro Americans thus making the “average white folk” believe that they are a burden to America. Although the views of Mark Crutcher are quite extreme, a lot of what his studies mention about labelling and antagonising the African Americans is present in films.
In early nineteen hundreds, silent cinema there was use of racial stereotypes, racial slurs and racist cosmetology; it was very common to see stories about the racially inferior Denzin (2002) pg 22.
The films from the early 1910’s and 1920’s had a lot of African American characters were actually played by white actors. Hearts and Flats (1911) and Birth of a Nation (1915). These are just some of many films in that era that portrayed Black characters as submissive, dim, criminal, dangerous, and buffoonish or animalistic. Duke University Website (2007)
In the roaring twenties Blackface was extremely popular in cinema films such as The Jazz Singer (1927) proved to be a hit at the time. Rogin (1996) Studies the relationship between Blackface and Americanization, in his book “Black Face, White Noise” were we soon find out how Americans managed to spread their views of A...

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...s that people like to watch other people who they can relate to, meaning people pay more attention when the person on screen is relatable. If this is the case this would mean that according to the statistics there is more Caucasian viewers than any other race thus, the money would go towards Caucasian representations etc. The first Disney African-American princess, Tiana was introduced in 2009 this made people believe that "the colour barrier is breaking down in Hollywood”. A majority of people may still see the thin line between Hollywood's "new" attitude toward race and their "old" attitude toward race. “The consolidation of a black presence in the movies and television did not signal the arrival of a post racial Hollywood any more than the election of Barack Obama in 2008 spelled the end of America’s 400-year-old racial drama.” Duke University Website (2007)

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