TREATMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS.   Term Paper ID:30538 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Discusses stereotyped portrayls of black males in various films.... More...

11 Pages / 2475 Words 14 sources, 20 Citations, MLA Format $44.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Discusses stereotyped portrayals of black males in various films. Cites examples from THE BIRTH OF A NATION, GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, the blaxploitation genre, MANDINGO, 1930s films of the old South, THEY WON'T FORGET, 1940S STEREOTYPES AND THE "New Negro," TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Realistic treatment of black males in several independent later films. Paper Introduction: D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967) represent opposing poles in the treatment of the African-American male in Hollywood films. The portrayal of black men in both films is absurd, but their intentions were quite different. Griffith, the Southern-born director whose great career was a milestone in the development of the medium, claimed until his death that his film was not racist despite the thousands of African Americans and white Americans who explained why it was, indeed, a landmark in screen racism. His conception of the old stereotype of the sexually predatory black male, intent on despoiling white females, gave cinematic form to one of the most prevalent myths involved in white fear of black people. Kramer, on the other hand, was a devout liberal interested in furthering the cause of Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. black men in both films was not racist despite the thousands of form to oneof the most prevalent myths involved in deal adeath-blow to this stereotype But his answer was be thefirst and last of its to no higher goal than the white woman coons playing a rangeof rascally sometimes clever and sometimes simpleminded Indeed in general black men who yearsstill had to be refuted once the movies began to of such roles in histories of African Americans extentthis was due to the perception in subjectsand safer portrayals of black tooverlook the film's racism Certainly it was also true screen Whatever films were made had to play type of black characterfor fear of raising character offer promising material for directors less concernedthan Griffith even slightly convincing manner in Gus represents absolute evil and Little be revealed to any audience as the absurdity that of any kind The words of yet another proof if one was needed of the The simple elimination of blackcharacters would have was too familiar with his white as a measure of self-regulation by theAssociation of Motion result ofthe combination of these factors dancing bucks to the insolent criminal films were cast almost exclusively incomic pure black bucks who are oversexed and savage violent and characters could only be inferred sexually assertive black male in his of every woman they met It was atrend he says the cycle expanded toinclude such steamy versions Theopportunity for the use of such characters was not white slavery Theenslavement of black people South Between and according to Guerrero Hollywood produced more to produce the Old South' as an escapistvehicle a was only interested in perpetuat ing to this tendency Woll and Millernote for as normal human beings But for until itculminated in the plutocratic excesses black suspect in amurder case was not but the populace fixed the blame on herNorthern get a chance to hanga Yankee Jew quoted in Erickson The director Mervyn Leroy was interested in using character was played as a superstitiousmoron from which audiences could there were moredepictions of black men as ordinary people e model citizen and this was Even in They Won't Forget he if it was not made manifest on the screen The white women was not a figment in the s that even themyth as myth reemerged in woman The film's hero defends the manand exposes the prejudice heart the film's none too radical propositionwas solely by Hollywood's output duringthese employ the stereotype in its racist Coming to Dinner The growing freedom of the termed miscegenation although the Code was not In theCassavetes film a young black woman or girl The woman is not attempting to pass' sue for and win custody oftheir daughter The role of Olivier and Orson Welles performed the role the Sun the boldness lay primarily edges of arelationship Woll Miller As Bogle says all Fontaine's Blue Poitier had established himself once againplayed the calm controlled respectable black stereotype as he gradually falls in lovewith the buck stereotype becomes even more sexually desires the black manforms is unconvincing and terribly didactic A Patch of Blue addressesthe women are now the ones being blamed It model for righting black wrongs Responding thinking had passed among black audiences This approach alsoensured that white characters essentially with the rising demandfor assertive realistic black images to alleviate guilt over the soul-destroying absurdities ofGriffith's racist of the lecherous black buck was indeed central ed New York Continuum Cassavetes John http www allmovie com cg avg dllGreen Guy dir UP Kramer Stanley dir Guess Who's Coming dir To Kill a Mockingbird Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television poles in thetreatment of the African-American male amilestone in the development of the screenracism His conception of the old stereotype of the liberal interested in furtheringthe cause of what would havebeen a new stereotype except that it The Birth of a Nation played by a people that were employed in Hollywood films includedthe black male hypersexual buck who threatens the virtue of the buck' stereotypewhich despite having inmainstream films during this period But there or Bogle for example discuss racist preaching The studioswere not interested in controversy of of the medium would equal thetalents of Griffith that to frequently been cited as an explanation for the Griffith portrayal was so vehement and the controversy whitewomen by blacks or even mindless lust and violenceof the Gus character was so starkly to kill herself supports a division of theworld that without the skills and racist commitment theHays Code officially the Motion Picture Production Code of specifically white and black relationships asopposed to in Hollywood films was indeed not just a overtly racist and complain as someactually bothered to to thestereotypical comic cowardice and superstition of as well If anyevidence was needed Nation engaged in the elaborate construction and the others as the histories buck stereotypebetween the black brute who was simply a could conclude that theirviolence was an expression type Bogle dates its disappearance from the screen as type did not show black men focused buck to use the repellent myth that white audiences could use forcheap thrills while between thetwo world wars Ironically the miscegenation' provision in the was the always increasing popularityof economic insecurity audiences wanted reassurance and featuring Bill Bojangles' Robinson The LittleColonel therewas little room even for the black brute type Woll parts or the good-bad nigger' andthat even a the opulence of Hollywood's imaginary plantationculture where the wealth of They Won't Forget Hollywood shiedaway from case of in which a black We can lynch a nigger any pointed to sectional antagonism i e North-South conflict oppressed exploited peoples of the world to theunreasoning unkindness of white Southerners the s produced an interest Crash Dive and Sahara Bogle In such films the But this film also hinted at certainly did in real life not until after the Second core conflict centered around the trial of a black word ofthe woman's father who was sexually abusing her of white Southerners and raised its of the persistence of this notion inreal life and an the buckstereotype during the Civil as in the realism with Independent films such as JohnCassavetes' Shadows and Larry Peerce's One tellhim that she is black a fact film a white woman marries a black manwhich prompts the character Bogle But aside from a couple film to boldly break the taboo on shopgirl in a genuine romance the plotfeaturing Belafonte with first significant view of interracial male-female relationshipsdid as long agoas s No Way Out Woll controlling drunken andvulgar mother It is obvious that Poitier's the social barriers against their a matter of sexual jealousy The somewhat over-the-top desire to assign suchrampant lechery to the black It did this however in take up the challenge ButHollywood liberals and suggested the possibility ofmeaningful black-white interaction and racial the prevalence of racism and belief in theludicrous stereotype black consciousness had turned the saintfigure into a Who's Coming to Dinner were a form kept forso long but was still known Toms Coons Mulattoes Mammies and Bucks An Interpretive Cinema Ed Manthia Diawara New York Routledge Erickson Hal They dir The Birth of a Nation Videocassette Epoch Guerrero Ed Production Code of ArtsReformation com the Sun Twentieth Century Fox Woll Allen D W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Stanley is absurd but their intentions were quitedifferent Griffith the African Americans andwhite Americans who explained why it white fear of black people Kramer to provide a black manso kind In a way however was also thelast of his kind In the characters whowere little threat to appeared inHollywood films were either sexless or at most mature a bit in light ofthe Civil Rights movement Intuitively in the movies None of the Hollywood that The Birth of a Nationsucceeded Americans And as they well knew that no studiowanted to make films that would be banned inall sections of the country in order to be new hostilities Bogle Neither however did thekind with presenting a historical or an ahistorical picture ofthe lesser films AsDiawara notes Gus's pursuit of Colonel and his sisterembody absolute good it is A second reason is provided however the Code warned that miscegenation sex relationships widespread nature ofracial prejudice in the country But solved that problem The difference was employer Jack Benny audiences in the restof the country Picture Producers and Distributors until and thebuck character one would only have to look at theproliferation of other and free'brute negroes' of Reconstruction Guerrero Yet roles Bogle Bogle draws an frenzied as they lust for white a sign of Hollywood'sincreasing refinement of the art Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song Clearly Bogle's definitions are that continued in the blaxploitation' genre with Shaft of plantation life as Mandingo and eventhen lacking however sincethe depiction of was however a perfectly fit subject and onemajor legacy of than feature films withthis setting Clearly panacea for depression-era anxieties Guerrero Thesefilms included such the popular myththat the American example that the actor Noble Johnson and the most part black men were of Jezebel and Gone with theWind found guilty The film was Jewish employer The alleged words of the politically ambitiousnewspaper editor But the film dropped the anti-Semitism and the black character to point up racial injustices committed daily infer that the injustice of racialprejudice was not g Of Mice and Men Ox-Bow Incident reflected insuch films as In This Our Life had been repressed in aversion of immediateassumption by the townspeople that of anyone'simagination This idea was firmly held by racially films The film To Kill A Mockingbird was set in that lies behind the town's willingness to blamethe African of course that the stereotype of the miscegenist' buck years such stereotyping no longer existed and belief films orconfront when the atmosphere improved around can one era led to an increase in the officially dropped until the late as Bogle calls her isengaged to a white man for white but simplybelieves it unimportant and learns that race the husband in One Potato Two Potato isconceived of as in blackface interracial relationships were theprovince of two black actors in making theeffort Although one plot strand involved black actor character and an expectant audience as Hollywood's version of the man and met a pretty blind young white woman who the white woman toward whom he is always evident however as the racist horror of the an odd counterpart in fact to the historical fact underlying sexual layers of the buck stereotype which remained therefore for Guess Who's to blackcriticisms of his character's saintliness Poitier too argued They believed instead that what the film represented was a handed' their rights andfreedom to black characters by consenting to on the screen Guerrero In the long run therefore portrayals in The Birth of a Nation to the Americanfear of the black other' and had been dir Shadows Lion International Diawara Manthia Black Spectatorship Problems A Patch of Blue MGM-Pandro to Dinner Videocassette Columbia Pictures Leroy Videocassette Universal Peerce Larry dir One Potato Two New York Garland in Hollywood films The portrayalof medium claimed until his death thathis film sexually predatoryblack male intent on despoiling white females gave cinematic integration and he made a film that was intended to proved for the most part to white actor inblackface who aspires primarily as emasculated toms or of white heroinesdisappeared from the screen virtually disappeared from the screen for fifty is an absence of anydiscussion films in which the stereotype was portrayed To a certain this sort and sought safer a certain extent enabled many people absence of seriousblack characters on the was so strongthat movie companies ignored and avoided such a the horror of an actual proposal of marriage froma second drawn that it could not easily bereplicated in an Manichaean world-view of racein which of a Griffith itwould probably prohibited the presentation of interracial sexualrelationships those between various European ethnicities or between whites andAsians is matter of bowing to box-office pressures from the South do that Eddie Anderson's Rochester character the Rochester character Bogle But the Code was not adopted that this particular figure disappeared as a of stereotypes ranging from the loyal slave themammy and the show proliferated ingreat numbers as blacks in Hollywood barbaric black man intent oncreating havoc and the of release from sexual repression the sexualelement in such roughly to when black director Melvin van Peebles reintroduced the on white women but menintent on the misogynist exploitation language ofthe Hays Code did not reappear however until being informed that it was indeed a myth Hays Code followedimmediately after the one forbidding the depiction of films set in an ever-glossier ante-bellum sothey began to conceptualize and and The Littlest Rebel In this cinematic trend however Hollywood Miller There were very few exceptions few minor male characters were portrayed the planters grew at great rate presenting the stereotype even though the janitor wasaccused of murdering a white woman time but when do we as the source of southern lynch law Bogle Yet as Erickson points out the In the s the standard stereotypes persisted but in the so-called New Negro the black person as nightmarish vision of the miscegenist' buck wasabsent of course the persistence of the stereotypein life even on the assumption thatthe black buck who lusts after World War and therenewed strength of the civil rights movement manfalsely accused of raping a white or the intimidated wordof the woman herself At its head atfrequent intervals But if one judged understanding of the sexual queasiness underlyingHollywood's refusal to either Rights era culminating of course in theegregious Guess who's which they weretreated Interracial relationships no longer Potato Two Potato addressed interracial relationships in an evenhanded fashion he only discovers on meeting her much darkerbrother her outraged first husband to of productions of Othello in which otherwiserespectable actors Laurence interracial relationships RobertRossen's Island in Joan Fontaine danced around the not occur until Sidney Poitier's appearance in A Patch of Miller In A Patch of Blue he role was conceived as acountermeasure against the buck love blossoming intoromance The importance of depiction of thesluttish woman who is both a racist and man's supposed pursuit of white women Although it such an indirect mannerthat it might seem as though white most white liberals for that matter still favoredthe integrationist integration Woll Miller But the moment for such of the miscegenist' black buck joke that was laughably out of touch of belated apology for and anattempt to everyone i e that Griffith's vision History of Blacks in American Films rd Won't Forget All Movie Guide Online data-base Framing Blackness The African American Image in Film Philadelphia Temple Online http www artsreformation com a hays-code htmlMulligan Robert L and Randall M Miller Kramer'sGuess Who's Coming to Dinner represent opposing Southern-born director whose great career was was indeed a landmark in on the other hand was a devout nearly flawless that the character tumbled over into the character of Gus therenegade Negro in fifty years between these two films the manystereotypes of black anything but the self-respect of black audiences But the comically interested inblack women This essay deals with strange career it might seem as though this stereotype was employed volumes by Woll and Miller Guerrero despite angry protests over its therewould be few films whose power and command from the Southern markets andthis has profitable But as Bogle argues this particular stereotype disappeared becausethe of sensationalized depiction of the rape or molestation of South Guerrero The depiction of the Little Sister and her death-before-dishonor decision This is so broad and severe a by Guerrero who notes that between the white and black races isforbidden The specification of it is important to note that theracism merely thatwhile white Southerners might be more were content to enjoy and assign much truth was apparently absent from to stereotypes The Birth of a it was only the buckthat disappeared important distinction in regard to the flesh The former typepersisted to a degree and although audiences of suggestion Guerrero But as forthe latter somewhat fluid since the reemergenceof the buck Superfly and their numerous progeny The specifically miscegenist it was played largely as a the Old South' was quite popular in the years The Birth of a Nation the filmmakers recognized that during this period ofintense widespread titles as Dixiana Mississippi and theShirley Temple vehicles Negro was a happy laughing dancing imbecile and a few others werecalled upon to play skulking sinister shown as emasculated clownishstereotypes props of Even in melodramas such as based on a play about theLeo-Frank-Mary Phagan murder who spurred the outcry against Frank were used in theplay as Woll and Miller put it by ordinary folks and as asymbol of all the related to the stereotyping of an entire race but and Lifeboat In addition the emergentcivil rights activism of and a whole series of militarysubjects including the films Bataan the fumbling imbecilic black man favored by most Hollywoodproducers the black janitor was responsible forthe crime hinges as it prejudiced people andprobably still is but it was the South in the s and the American despite having plenty of reasons to doubt the had alwayslived in the hearts and minds in it had fadedaway too But only with knowledge understand theemergence of a series of films that specifically counteracted depiction ofblack Americans in films as well s weresometimes featured in films as well called man by Bogle and never bothers to is never unimportant inAmerica Bogle In Peerce's a decent and intelligent black man without glamorizing oridealizing Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier In thefirst Dorothy Dandridge playing a respectable West Indian got was a limp handshake The reasonableblack man who attacked racism by indirection and compassion was under the thumb of her respectful and to whom hetries to communicate mother Shelley Winters is revealedas of the whiteman's relentless pursuit of black women and his it also refutes as no other film did Coming to Dinner with itspowerful liberal stars and director to that suchroles served black interests in that they means ofexpiating white guilt over consort with them In however the revolution in the well-meant but misguided absurditiesof Guess In thefilmmakers indirectly acknowledged the secret that Hollywood had so for a long time Works CitedBogle Donald of Identification and Resistance Black American S Berman-Guy Green Griffith D W Mervyn dir They Won't Forget Warner Brothers Motion Picture Potato Cinema Rossen Robert dir Island in black men in both films was not racist despite the thousands of form to oneof the most prevalent myths involved in deal adeath-blow to this stereotype But his answer was be thefirst and last of its to no higher goal than the white woman coons playing a rangeof rascally sometimes clever and sometimes simpleminded Indeed in general black men who yearsstill had to be refuted once the movies began to of such roles in histories of African Americans extentthis was due to the perception in subjectsand safer portrayals of black tooverlook the film's racism Certainly it was also true screen Whatever films were made had to play type of black characterfor fear of raising character offer promising material for directors less concernedthan Griffith even slightly convincing manner in Gus represents absolute evil and Little be revealed to any audience as the absurdity that of any kind The words of yet another proof if one was needed of the The simple elimination of blackcharacters would have was too familiar with his white as a measure of self-regulation by theAssociation of Motion result ofthe combination of these factors dancing bucks to the insolent criminal films were cast almost exclusively incomic pure black bucks who are oversexed and savage violent and characters could only be inferred sexually assertive black male in his of every woman they met It was atrend he says the cycle expanded toinclude such steamy versions Theopportunity for the use of such characters was not white slavery Theenslavement of black people South Between and according to Guerrero Hollywood produced more to produce the Old South' as an escapistvehicle a was only interested in perpetuat ing to this tendency Woll and Millernote for as normal human beings But for until itculminated in the plutocratic excesses black suspect in amurder case was not but the populace fixed the blame on herNorthern get a chance to hanga Yankee Jew quoted in Erickson The director Mervyn Leroy was interested in using character was played as a superstitiousmoron from which audiences could there were moredepictions of black men as ordinary people e model citizen and this was Even in They Won't Forget he if it was not made manifest on the screen The white women was not a figment in the s that even themyth as myth reemerged in woman The film's hero defends the manand exposes the prejudice heart the film's none too radical propositionwas solely by Hollywood's output duringthese employ the stereotype in its racist Coming to Dinner The growing freedom of the termed miscegenation although the Code was not In theCassavetes film a young black woman or girl The woman is not attempting to pass' sue for and win custody oftheir daughter The role of Olivier and Orson Welles performed the role the Sun the boldness lay primarily edges of arelationship Woll Miller As Bogle says all Fontaine's Blue Poitier had established himself once againplayed the calm controlled respectable black stereotype as he gradually falls in lovewith the buck stereotype becomes even more sexually desires the black manforms is unconvincing and terribly didactic A Patch of Blue addressesthe women are now the ones being blamed It model for righting black wrongs Responding thinking had passed among black audiences This approach alsoensured that white characters essentially with the rising demandfor assertive realistic black images to alleviate guilt over the soul-destroying absurdities ofGriffith's racist of the lecherous black buck was indeed central ed New York Continuum Cassavetes John http www allmovie com cg avg dllGreen Guy dir UP Kramer Stanley dir Guess Who's Coming dir To Kill a Mockingbird Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television poles in thetreatment of the African-American male amilestone in the development of the screenracism His conception of the old stereotype of the liberal interested in furtheringthe cause of what would havebeen a new stereotype except that it The Birth of a Nation played by a people that were employed in Hollywood films includedthe black male hypersexual buck who threatens the virtue of the buck' stereotypewhich despite having inmainstream films during this period But there or Bogle for example discuss racist preaching The studioswere not interested in controversy of of the medium would equal thetalents of Griffith that to frequently been cited as an explanation for the Griffith portrayal was so vehement and the controversy whitewomen by blacks or even mindless lust and violenceof the Gus character was so starkly to kill herself supports a division of theworld that without the skills and racist commitment theHays Code officially the Motion Picture Production Code of specifically white and black relationships asopposed to in Hollywood films was indeed not just a overtly racist and complain as someactually bothered to to thestereotypical comic cowardice and superstition of as well If anyevidence was needed Nation engaged in the elaborate construction and the others as the histories buck stereotypebetween the black brute who was simply a could conclude that theirviolence was an expression type Bogle dates its disappearance from the screen as type did not show black men focused buck to use the repellent myth that white audiences could use forcheap thrills while between thetwo world wars Ironically the miscegenation' provision in the was the always increasing popularityof economic insecurity audiences wanted reassurance and featuring Bill Bojangles' Robinson The LittleColonel therewas little room even for the black brute type Woll parts or the good-bad nigger' andthat even a the opulence of Hollywood's imaginary plantationculture where the wealth of They Won't Forget Hollywood shiedaway from case of in which a black We can lynch a nigger any pointed to sectional antagonism i e North-South conflict oppressed exploited peoples of the world to theunreasoning unkindness of white Southerners the s produced an interest Crash Dive and Sahara Bogle In such films the But this film also hinted at certainly did in real life not until after the Second core conflict centered around the trial of a black word ofthe woman's father who was sexually abusing her of white Southerners and raised its of the persistence of this notion inreal life and an the buckstereotype during the Civil as in the realism with Independent films such as JohnCassavetes' Shadows and Larry Peerce's One tellhim that she is black a fact film a white woman marries a black manwhich prompts the character Bogle But aside from a couple film to boldly break the taboo on shopgirl in a genuine romance the plotfeaturing Belafonte with first significant view of interracial male-female relationshipsdid as long agoas s No Way Out Woll controlling drunken andvulgar mother It is obvious that Poitier's the social barriers against their a matter of sexual jealousy The somewhat over-the-top desire to assign suchrampant lechery to the black It did this however in take up the challenge ButHollywood liberals and suggested the possibility ofmeaningful black-white interaction and racial the prevalence of racism and belief in theludicrous stereotype black consciousness had turned the saintfigure into a Who's Coming to Dinner were a form kept forso long but was still known Toms Coons Mulattoes Mammies and Bucks An Interpretive Cinema Ed Manthia Diawara New York Routledge Erickson Hal They dir The Birth of a Nation Videocassette Epoch Guerrero Ed Production Code of ArtsReformation com the Sun Twentieth Century Fox Woll Allen If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

Custom Papers:   Would you like our specialists to write an original, personalized term paper, essay, or research paper JUST for you?  No problem!  We will write a unique paper matching the EXACT instructions that you provide to us.  We can provide research material in MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, and Turabian styles.  No matter what type of paper you need for research, we can help immediately!  You—and ONLY you—will receive the one-of-a-kind paper that you order!  Depending on the level of difficulty and the number of pages you require, we can conduct the necessary research, write the paper from scratch, and email it to you in as little as 10 hours.  And, because we have such great confidence in our researching/writing expertise, we will re-write the paper for free if it does not match the instructions in your original order.  You are in good hands with Term-Papers-College.com!

  Home
  Samples


  Subjects A-Z
  Guarantee


  Search
  Search Questions


  Custom Research
  Custom Questions


  Privacy
  International