Abduction of Race

 

I recently viewed the newest Twilight film with my wife. I know you see the Abduction poster and I will get to that. I have seen all five films, and before you question my manhood I saw each of them with a woman, and as mediocre to bad as those films are I must give them credit on one thing. That one thing being casting of ethically proper performers. They actually cast Native Americans in the roles of the Native Americans from the books; yes I read them. They also seemed to have cast Brazilians in the roles of the Brazilian vampires in the final film. To cap it all off when they cast other minorities in the film in roles that where Caucasian in the book it didn't feel forced. I will admit to being surprised that Laurent was played by an African American, Edi Gathegi, after the book talked about he and his fellows being extremely pale, but by his final appearance in the series he had made the character his own. Also Justin Chon, an Asian American, played Bella's friend Eric. I don't recall the books saying what is race was but he fit seamlessly into the population of the film with out feeling like they were trying to be properly diverse. 

The reason I bring this up is Hollywood has a historical track record of casting whites in minority roles. John Wayne as Genghis Khan anyone? 

 

Or the decades of black face.

 

This is not a thing of the past either. I'm looking at you Johnny Depp.

 

What the crap are you thinking, Mr. Depp? And Disney I know this man has made you a crap ton of money on different projects, but really this is your image of Tonto? You are so politically correct as to not marry Mickey and Minnie for 80 years, and counting, to not offend anyone and you recently got rid of the just married buttons you had been giving out for years so not alienate certain demographics and now you do this? How is that less offensive then a button that celebrates marriage? Is it because Native Americans are a quite population or you think that the American populace in general is so in love with Mr. Depp that we won't care or notice? You may be right about the latter suggestion, but that does not make what you are doing right.

Now back to Abduction. The reason why I chose the film was to see a film with a Native American lead. I admittedly don't know of any beside Taylor Lautner so Abduction it was.

I was watching the film with issues of race as my focus. Instantly in the first scene you see Taylor's character Nathan and his two best friends; one white and one black. This reeked of politically correctness, which was only furthered when the trio arrived at the party and the only minorities that I saw were Taylor and Denzel Whitaker, who plays best friend Gilly.

 

Shortly after the party you meet Nathans parents, both white. (SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT) I knew going into the film that he found out they were not his birth parents and wondered throughout the entire film if/when he met his real parents what there ethnicity would be. You don't really get a clear view of either, but from what I could tell they were Caucasian. So in essence Taylor Lautner played a white kid. I don't know weather to applaud or hiss at this. His birth parents have very little dialogue and even less screen time why could at least one of them have been Native American or another ethnicity? But instead I am expected to accept that a teenager in the Pittsburgh area is able to keep a great tan. For the ladies that does include Mr. Lautner taking his shirt off. At least the film takes place in the summer. On the other hand I like that his race was never brought up and he completely believed that his "adoptive" parents were his genetic parents. Seeing they don't last long into the movie one of them could have been a minority as well. I do have to give Jason Isaacs credit for his portrayal of the adoptive father. His English accent had completely disappeared and if I hadn't used IMDB I would never have notice that he was Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.

One other race issue that really bothered me in this film is that Gilly, the African America young man, ran an under the table business making fake I.D's. He does get more screen time and it turns out to be a very important role for the film; but why does the black kid have to be doing illegal things? I will give the film credit for not making him a gun toting, pot smoking, baggy pants wearing thug, but still. Couldn't it have been a joint enterprise with the other white friend Jake?

Back on the Hollywood soapbox for a moment. Don't tell me there are not minorities trying out for roles. Freaking Twilight cast an entire Native American tribe for crying out loud. If movies of that level can properly represent races why the hell can't high end films. I get that you can't very well cast Denzel Washington as Abe Lincoln or Will Smith as Senator Milk. I get that changing historical dramas is not something you do, but why couldn't Forrest Gump be African American? Why not have Mila Kunis have the lead in Black Swan? I get that maybe these are extreme examples with Tom Hanks and Natalie Portman earning Oscars in those roles. Think about this for a minute though only four times has an African American man won best actor they have only been nominated eighteen times, while there has only been one best actress win and only nine nominations. That is 80 plus years of Oscars and you can count on one hand how many times someone of African decent won the big prizes. In total across all categories African Americans account for only 32 Oscar wins. That is disgusting. 

Some may say there are not as many great minority actors and actresses out there. That may be true but what I see is a lack of opportunity. We have films releasing every year of entirely black casts. Give those people chances in better films. Do I think Martin Lawrence has the skills to win an Oscar? No, but with that said early in Jamie Foxx or Will Smith's careers I would have said the same thing. Now Foxx has an Oscar and Smith has been nominated twice.

Bravo to the brave studios, producers, and directors who do give them chances. Bravo to those who give white characters from source material to African American actors. Michael Clark Duncan in Dare Devil, Denzel Washington in Much Ado About Nothing, Billy Dee Williams in Batman, or Idris Elba in Thor. Being a comic book fan their are tons of minority superheroes and villains ripe for their depiction on the big screen. Give me Steel, give me Black Panther, give me more Blade! 

Dear Hollywood Studio Execs,

I, Michael Ward, a Caucasian, hear by promise that if you make quality films with minority leads I will buy tickets and/or Blu Rays. A great film is not only about who is in them, but the story being told and how it is being told. If you tell a good story I don't care who the lead is I will watch it.

Sincerely,

Michael Ward

Race, Class and Gender in Film

                        

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.