Stereotypes In Iron Man And Into The Woods

Hollywood always seems to try and paint a picture in their films about how certain races are viewed in America. Minorities are always depicted as inferior to the white American man. The minorities either serve them or get destroyed by them. Neff noted that “racial identification in movies in no way responds to the realistic portrayals of marginalized groups. Hollywood has traditionally gone to some trouble to assert that the economic underclass of the nation is people by Black in menial positions (doormen, maids or servants), or in positions of social inferiority (prostitutes, drug-dealers and ghetto-dwellers).” (91) This statement embodies the exact picture Hollywood tries to paint on all minorities, and not just Blacks.

The two films, Iron man and Into the Woods are both filled with examples about white dominance over the other minorities. Specifically, in Iron man the entire movie is built on the stereotype that all Middle Eastern people are sand creatures who live in a cave and are destined to be destroyed in a rather video game like style of destruction. In one of the opening scenes Tony Stark is captured by the evil turban wearing Arabians who want him to make a bomb for them. Again, the turban that just about every Arab had either around their neck, and or around their heads are just symbols that reinforce the

Hollywood banks on certain stereotypes to sell their movie to their consumers because it makes the consumers comfortable with what they see on the screen. Both Iron Man and Into the Woods demonstrated how the director’s used stereotypes to structure the movies, and to complete the portrayal of certain minority characters based on the stereotypes instilled in the movie. Hollywood’s movies tell a lot more than just the plot of the movie itself. It tells us that even if stereotypes are not true for a certain group of people, it is accepted in Hollywood films and portrayed as