Blacks In Film

Film is one of the most influential means of communication and a powerful medium of propaganda. Race and representation is central to the study of the black film actor, since the major studios continue to reflect and reinforce the stereotyps of our times.

The depiction of blacks in Hollywood movies reinforce many of the misconceptions of the white majority rather than objective reality, limiting black actors to stereotypical roles.

The movie "Soul Food" proved to be the inspiration for African-Americans hungry for balanced, realistic depictions of blacks in America The film is about a Chicago family who airs out its tribulations over Sunday dinner. It depicts well educated African Americans in lavish suburban homes and high ranking job titles. Yet, comedic films, such as "Booty

Call," or violent dramas, such as "Dead Presidents" or "Next Friday," still seem to be the norms for black films in Hollywood. There are no gun-toting ruffians in "Soul Food," no over-the-top streetwise caricatures. Instead, the film serves up real-life characters grappling with real-life familial problems. That's why it seems to resonate with black audiences -- and why it was considered risky to make. "Soul Food" resonates with blacks because, as with whites, the most evocative films present idealized visions of their real lives. Unfortunately, films such as “Soul Food”, “Love Jones”, and “The Best Man”, rarely receive the credit in which they deserve due to the lack of promotions and viewership by mainstream society. In witness of this truth, the American public is faced with the guilt of perpetuating the historical images of Sambo and Mammy with the new depictions of aggressive, streetwise, and comedic caricatures.

In recent years, much of the debate around racial inequality in the United States has focused on Representation. That is: how peopleare imagined, portrayed, and often stereotyped by the mass media. Integrally linked is the question of how these depictions in the world of media contribute to social discrimination and personal self-esteem in the real world. No medium is a more powerful disseminator of images and stereotypes than television, and no citizens have suffered more from misrepresentation in this country than minorities. However, too often the debate about race and represen...

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...he 80s. It seemed TV and film pioneer Bill Cosby had finally broken through the stereotype ceiling, depicting the life a strong black middle class family and projecting it into the living rooms of blacks and whites throughout the United

States and the world. But just a few short years after Cosby, television's way of dealing with portraying black life was simply not to. For years none of the major networks were creating programming for black audiences. UPN, Warner Brothers Network and Fox

Network shrewdly tried to fill that void. However the succession of black shows created by these networks seemed not to be a result of a sincere social consciousness, but rather an attempt to appeal to an untapped revenue market.

And so blacks have come full circle as it is this market and its hopes for something better than images of domestics and mammies that first spawned the blaxploitation craze.

There is no argument that blacks in film have made significant advancements since the days of popular blaxploitation film such as Shaft. However there is also no argument that blacks have far to go in receiving a fair and honest portrayal in movies and television.