American cinema has a
long and rich history. The films produced have been mesmerizing, moving, and
amusing us for around a century. Over that time our culture has changed; what
is and is not acceptable has changed time and time again. Seeing a white man
play a different ethnicity wasn’t just the norm but the preferred action to
take. The only time such choices are tolerated today is in farce or spoof
movies and even then they can have repercussions. To have a film with main cast
is all female would have been laughable not too long ago; now this is common
practice. Class is even portrayed differently now. Sure we still have the ever
popular “rags to riches” type stories that seem to capture all audiences
regardless of generation, but now we can see “riches to rags” or “stick it to
the man” tales that were never heard of when everyone embraced “the man”. Even
what constitutes good films has changed; spectacle can overcome poor plot
lines, happy endings are not a requirement, and subject matter once taboo are
now, more often than not, the stuff Oscars are made of.
Race
I would not classify myself as a “movie buff” but I am a
movie fan. I don’t always see the issues brought up with race in film, or the perceived
stereotypes depicted in films. An example of this is Disney’s The Lion King. A classic children’s film in my opinion can
be seen as racist. While I don’t personally agree with this view I can see that
argument. The hyenas could be seen as minorities of a variety of races (They
are even voiced by ethnically diverse actors) and their gluttonous and lazy
ways would ruin the course of nature (the circle of life) and it is up to the
lions (their lighter fur makes them white) to keep things in order. I feel this
falls apart under further study seeing Mufasa is voiced by James Earl Jones who
is an African-American. I have also heard it said that Scar is homosexual and
his being in charge was a reason for the downfall of the pride lands. This also
falls apart when you look at the entire film. If any character(s) can be
assumed to be gay are Timon and Pumba. The two who raised Simba who ends up
saving the day; that doesn’t sound like much of an anti-gay thought process in
my opinion.
I digress I have gotten away from race. Being a fan of
Disney films in general I have seen a great many of their features and will use
them as examples. As recently as 2009 they were in the racial lime light with
the theatrical release of The Princess
and the Frog because the princess, Tiana, is an African-American and the
vast majority of the cast is as well. While I appreciate that it was
groundbreaking to have a “black” princess I feel it was a bit overblown. Should
it have taken Disney to 70 (1937 was the year Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs hit big screens) something years to
make a black princess? No. That being said I don’t remember it being that big
of a deal when Jasmine became the first “minority” princess in 1992 when Aladdin was released. I would think that
would be ground breaking seeing we just came out of Desert Storm and we were
seeing an Arabic princess. Or in 1995 when Pocahontas was the title character
in a Disney picture. I do remember it being a bigger deal the Jasmine but not
on the level of Tiana. We saw a Chinese princess in 1998 with Mulan. I don’t
think any of these characters or ethnicities were given the time and attention
by the media as the more recent Tiana. I’m not condoning Disney’s lack of
diversity in the earlier years (in defense of Disney they would have had to
deal with a huge backlash if they had used minority princesses in the 40’s and
50’s) but it shouldn’t have taken until the 90’s for it to happen. That being
said I think they deserve some credit over the past 25 years. In 1989 The Little Mermaid debuted including
that film they have had seven films prominently feature princesses. Four of
those; Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, and Tiana are “minorities” compared to;
Ariel, Belle, and Repunzel. You could also argue for characters like Esmeralda
from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and
Kida (who is technically a princess) from Atlantis:
The Lost Empire as two more non-white leading ladies in the Disney
pantheon.
Enough Disney, for the moment, another place where I see
a severe lack of racial diversity is superhero flicks. Minority superheroes are
near nonexistent in film. Until we saw Sam Jackson play Nick Fury and Terrence
Howard/Don Cheadle as James “War Machine” Rhodes in the recent Marvel movies we
only had Wesley Snipes’ Blade movies
that were critically successful, well the first two anyway. Also Halle Berry as Storm had mixed reviews. We
were given a Steel movie starring
Shaq, yes basketball superstar Shaq, and Will Smith’s Hancock. Steel is a DC Comics character while Hancock was an
original property, but neither of them were what most people would call
successes and don’t even mention Berry’s turn as Catwoman. I feel this is a
supremely missed opportunity both Marvel and DC have great black characters to
adapt to film or you could make an original property. Green Lantern pops into
mind as a big miss. For those that don’t know Green Lantern is not a single
individual but a group of “space police” if you will. There is a black Green
Lantern in the comics, John Stewart, who was one of the main characters in the Justice League cartoon in the early 2000’s.
I will admit that not many thought Ryan Reynolds film would suck as much as it
did, but what if they had gone with John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan (mixed
with Guy Gardner)? Danzel Washington comes to my mind as a great choice for
that. Just think of what we could see if characters like Steel, Cyborg, or
Static Shock from DC or Black Panther, Luke Cage, or Prowler from Marvel got
big budget treatment.
Class
I admit that this is something that before this class I
really never paid close attention to this subject in film. I cannot deny that
it is there though. It pops out at me in plenty of rags to riches stories like Pursuit of Happyness, Cinderella Man, or
Good Will Hunting. The other genre
that drips with class issues is the underdog story Real Steel, Karate Kid, or Rudy
all feature the economically challenged overcoming the more financially backed
competition.
I think part of the reason I sometimes miss what is being
said about class is that it sometimes disappears into race issues. Invictus is a great example of this. On
the surface you see Nelson Mandela being released from prison to become
president of South Africa as a race issue, which it is. But it is more than
that. If Mandela and black Africans had been treated fairly to begin with or
were on equal economic terms with the white Africans would there have been such
animosity and hate between the peoples? I think that it would at least be
greatly lessened if that had been the case. I strongly recommend you see this
film if you haven’t. Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon’s performances are superb
and the film does a great job of conveying the perilous times Mandela had to
navigate his country through. Other films that I think have the same issue,
losing class with in race, are The Blind
Side, Remember the Titans, among others.
There are same race class issues in film as well.
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises
uses this as a driving force for the film; using the disparity between the
wealthy and the poor to drive people to do very inhumane things to each other. I
guess you could look at many crime dramas for this type of issue. The Departed comes to mind where poor
people and under paid cops turn to crime to achieve there wants or fulfill
their needs.
Gender
I think this is
an interesting subject in film. As with race; gender has developed to the point
where it has its own movies. I know I didn’t talk about African-American or
black films but they are there. Almost anything starring Martin Lawrence, the
Waynes brothers, or Tyler Perry has no intention of gathering audience members
outside of the African-American demographics. The same can be said for movies
based for certain genders. Are there males that will go see the next Drew
Berrymore romantic comedy? Probably. Will the vast majority of viewers be
women? Yes. Does Sylvester Stallone want women to see his newest action flick?
Sure, he does. Does he think the female demographic will make or break the box
office for that film? Hell no!
I think this anomaly has happened because of the increase
of film availability and production. Once upon a time a town was lucky to have
a single screen now you have multiplexes that have 20 or more screens. Not long
ago movies didn’t have nationwide releases and would work across the country.
Now even some small budget movies get the midnight showing treatment. Movies
don’t last long in the cinema either the biggest films may have a run of four
to six months, counting dollar theater showings maybe a year. Now movies will
be on dvd in a couple of months. With the shear amount of movies being made
there are going to be movies for more specific types of people not that this
has squelched gender issues in film. Raunchy college comedies depict women as
sexual objects that can be a man’s play thing with just the slightest amount of
alcohol consumption; chick flicks depict men as idiots, heartless, or hopeless
unless they have great looks and/or tons of money. Yes these are comedy tendencies
but the beliefs in these behaviors transcend out of the films into our culture
and that is a huge problem.
The last remark on gender I want to make is that most of
the time in movies it is still the man who ends up saving the women. There are
rare instances when the opposite occurs but usually it is in a comedy or not
well received by critics. Why did Avatar use
a white male marine to be the hero to save Pandora and get the girl? Why could
it not have been a woman who saved the day? How come it could not have been
Sigourney Weaver’s character to save the day? She cared about the planet
without having to be attracted to a giant blue alien. Why, because the big
movie producers don’t think we want it. They don’t think we will go to that
movie. I beg to differ and here is why. Being a superhero movie and comic fan I
have been greatly disappointed in female character portrayed on screen. Until
recently most costumed female characters added nothing but a pretty faces to
the films they were in. Some even manage to do that, I ‘m looking at you Uma
Thurman you were terrible as Poison Ivy. Still a lot of those pretty faces
couldn’t perform as characters well enough for us to care i.e. Jennifer Garner
in Elektra or Halle Barry in Catwoman. Some ensemble pieces have done
a decent job most of the X-Men films
and more recently Scarlett Johansson turn as Black Widow and Anne Hathaway as
Catwoman did spectacular jobs in their roles. Yet we don’t see Disney green
lighting a Black Widow movie or Warner Brothers pushing Anne to reprise her
role in her own spin-off. Mostly because they don’t think we would go or
because previous female driven superhero films have been bad. Here is my major
hang up with those issues. Superhero films became better when they actually
used people who loved or even wrote the comics. Yes we had Superman and Batman come
from non-comic people, but we also had Superman
III and IV, Batman & Robin,
Supergirl, and Howard the Duck
just to name a few bad comic movies. Then someone had the great idea of hiring
a comic book writer for a screen play on comic book characters. Enter David S.
Goyer who wrote Blade probably the
first critically successful superhero film sense 1989’s Batman which had been 9 years before. He also took part in the Dark Knight Trilogy and is involved in
the upcoming Man of Steel movie. Then
someone else thought it would be a good idea to let a comic fan direct a film
and we got Brian Singers X-men. Sam
Raimi, an avid Spider-Man fan, gave us two great movies about the web swinger.
Zach Snyder did the impossible adapting Watchmen
to film. Joss Whedon directed and co-wrote The
Avengers.
Don’t give me that a female superhero can’t make a good film. I
don’t care who the lead role if it is well written, directed, and acted. There
are great Wonder Woman, Batgirl, She-Hulk, and Black Cat stories in the comics.
That means there are people who can write them a good story. HIRE THOSE PEOPLE TO WRITE THE SCRIPT! THAN
HIRE FANS OF THE CHARACTER TO DIRECT THE MOVIE! Do these things and people
will go see the films because they are good movies. They will be good movies because
the people making decisions care about the characters not just the box office.
Stop being sexist superhero film makers and give me Wonder Woman damn it.
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