If you can  spare a few bucks (every dollar helps) please consider kickstarting this great film project!

Help Increase Nuanced Racial Representation in The Media -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Brazilian fantasy action flick Besouro available to watch at this link

If you need a reminder… the story goes… As essentially an action movie set in 1920s Bahia, and based on the life of a legendary capoeirista from Bahia who uses the power of Candomble to fight the harsh conditions which, even post-abolition, the black population endured in Brazil, Besouro, tells the fantastic story of a young Afro-Brazilian man who became a symbol throughout all of Bahia for his bravery and loyalty, in defending the persecuted and oppressed.Watch Besouro now

Via the same blog Shadow and Act comes news of this webseries OSIRIS

“OSIRIS” Series Teaser Trailer (HD 1080p)

“Osiris” is a new 10-episode action/thriller Web Series featuring mystery, espionage and gritty crime fiction. The series follows the title character “Osiris”, a man with an eternally extended warranty on life. He can never stay dead. If killed, he resurrects in EXACTLY 37 minutes, every time. Each episode features a jaw dropping cliffhanger in the vein of classic shows like True Blood, Lost and 24!

They got vlogsPart One: Introduction, Part Two: Influences, Part Three: Casting, Part Four: Questions

And: xposted from racebending

Future states tv has a web series in which people make short films based on what they think the US will be like in the future. Tons of poc as actors AND directors.

From Season Two:

Digital Antiquities Directed by JP Chan

By 2036, data loss has become a thing of the past. All digital media is instantly uploaded to the internet and permanently stored in the cloud, safely backed-up on servers scattered around the world. Only a handful of small businesses in the world have the expertise to recover data from pre-cloud devices. On a hot summer day, a young man named Kai visits Digital Antiquities, a store in eastern Pennsylvania specializing in data recovery and sales of vintage electronics. He shows Cat, the store’s only employee, an old compact disc left to him from his deceased mother and asks her to recover its contents. Will Cat help him find a working CD reader? And what will they discover among the contents of the disc?

Spring of Sorrow Directed by Suzi Yoonessi

Sisters Lily and Isabelle live a nomadic life, displaced by global warming. Trapped in the desert in the midst of a water shortage, Isabelle offers hope to her younger sister by telling a whimsical fairytale that allegorically explains how this tragic world came to be. When Isabelle falls ill, Lily embarks on an imaginative journey in a magical paper cut-out forest to find the mythical Spring of Sorrow, an everlasting spring of fresh water. Along the way, she forges a friendship with an eccentric florist, creates flowers and animals, and learns a valuable lesson about environmental responsibility.

Beholder by Nisha Ganitra

Beholder takes place in the biosphere-protected Red Estates, a gated community with a socially conservative political majority. At a clinic where patients can genetically engineer their children, Sasha, the wife of rising political star Bobby Aryana, is informed that her baby carries the genetic marker for homosexuality. By the laws of Red Estates, this is an aberration that must be dealt with immediately, and Sasha must decide between staying faithful to the love of her life or risking everything. Touching on issues of race, sexual orientation, and conformity, Beholder examines the notion of identity and the costs of belonging.

That Which Once Was Kimi Takescue

In the year 2032, Vicente, an 8-year-old Caribbean boy, has been displaced by global warming and fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile Northern metropolis. Orphaned and without connection to family or friends, Vicente now lives in a children’s shelter on the fringes of the city, and struggles with anxiety, rage, and disturbing memories of the tragedy he fled. On a hot summer day, Vicente sits outside the shelter and sees a mysterious man smashing large chunks of ice against the pavement. Thus begins an unexpected friendship between Vicente and Siku, the ice carver: two people from different worlds who have both experienced tremendous loss. Through their bond, Siku ultimately helps Vicente confront his past and understand the value of memory.

Remigration Directed by Barry Jenkins

Upon returning to their countryside cabin one day, Kaya, his wife Helen, and their daughter Naomi are confronted by two suited men: representatives of the San Francisco Remigration Program. The men explain that San Francisco is now occupied entirely by the wealthy class. But stoplights still burn out and trains occasionally jump their rails. Blue-collar labor isn’t obsolete, but it’s scarce. The city has created a program to “remigrate” long-gone working class families from their inland homes back to the city that once pushed them out. Kaya, Helen, and Naomi return to San Francisco and join a handful of other potential remigrants for a tour of what can be expected in their new lives. But can they learn to trust their old home once again?

White Directed by Sayeeda Clarke

It’s another 120-degree day with five more days to Christmas and hot is the only season left in New York City. Global warming has accelerated and the sun has become a tangible threat to survival. Bato and his wife Gina are expecting a baby, but they weren’t expecting it so early. Although they planned to have the baby at home, Gina now requires the services of a clinic for the premature delivery. With no money for the clinic, Bato enters into a race against the sun, the birth, his community, and even his own identity to save his family as he is forced to sell the new currency of this world.

Worker drone Directed by Sharat Rajue

Rahul’s days blend together. GlobeCom India, his employer, specializes in remote systems operation. When Rahul leaves his dungeon-like GlobeCom office, he goes to his dungeon-like living quarters in Technology City. But things change when an American contractor announces a new partnership with GlobeCom — Planet Dogstar, a massive multi-player online flying combat simulator where players shoot down targets on an alien planet. GlobeCom is hired to operate and manage the game. To decide who will lead and manage the operation, the company organizes an office showdown: whoever shoots down the most targets wins the promotion as well as a one-week furlough to leave Technology City. Can Rahul beat his coworkers to win the game?

Exposure By Mia Trachinger

Roxanne is a government agent who works as a live body contagion to immunize urban populations. Jesse is an anti-contagion activist, whose office is breeched by Roxanne’s team. Led by Roxanne, the contagions try to contain the workers inside the building, chasing them down in an attempt to mass-inoculate, while Jesse, caught in a cycle of fear and illness, soon learns that there are no easy answers.

And of course go watch the other two: Asparagus which has gorgeous cinematography, and Dig and then when you are done, go check the First Season and watch all of those too!

So there you are! Cool stuff to watch all over the place!

Entertain us!!! -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I’m liveblogging my watch of Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Watch along with me! Starts at 10am EST.

Tyler Perry Project: LiveBlog “Diary of A Mad Black Woman” -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

The first movie I’m watching for the Tyler Perry Project is Diary of a Mad Black Woman. I’m going to start at 10am eastern time this Saturday. A few people have indicated a desire to watch my head implode, so there will be a live blog of this. I’m using Cover It Live to literally liveblog the movie. Just show up on the blog at 10, it will be the post at the top.

Tyler Perry Project: Heads Up, First Movie This Weekend -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Tyler Perry’s little outburst at Spike Lee has shown up so many times in my newsfeed that I finally broke down and read about the press conference and then this letter he posted on his website called “They Are Trying To Kill Madea!”¹

My first thought: Well, I certainly hope so.

But, you know, I don’t want to be a “hater” or anything, so I actually read the whole thing. Most of it is just whining about how folks out there are trying to stop his audience from seeing his movies by going on and on about how they’re terribly written, misogynistic, crap² instead of seeing what’s good in the movies. To wit:

They don’t get the spiritual side of this, they don’t get the folks that not only laugh, but also get something out of it that they can use to make their lives better. They don’t get that this is about more than making a movie and telling a funny story. They don’t get that it’s about uplifting and encouraging the soul.

Really, Tyler Perry? Is that what your movies are about? You could have fooled me, because from the small sliver I’ve seen in passing or been forced to watch by my family members (who have unfortunate bad taste), I haven’t seen much that’s spiritually uplifting or been imparted any wisdom that might make my life better. Perhaps it’s because I have not sat down and watched any of these films in full that I’m not experiencing the full effects.

Perry is on a serious “poor, poor me” trip right now, which is surprising since his newest movie just hit theaters and I haven’t seen any inkling of his next movie not getting made because of the world’s haters. I would have a lot of empathy for his sensitive artist bit — being one myself — if I didn’t have the impression that his movies aren’t just bad, they are bad for you. Not just You in general, but for the American black community as a whole.

But again, I havn’t watched them all. Maybe it’s time I did.

Thus The Angry Black Woman’s Tyler Perry Project:

I will watch every movie made by this man in an attempt to offer critical analysis based on actual experience and viewing. As I watch each, I’ll liveblog it, then I’ll write up my thoughts after it’s over and I’ve had time to settle. The movies on my list:

• Diary of a Mad Black Woman
• Madea’s Family Reunion
• Daddy’s Little Girls
• Why Did I Get Married?
• Meet the Browns
• The Family That Preys
• Madea Goes to Jail
• I Can Do Bad All by Myself
• Why Did I Get Married Too?
• For Colored Girls

I just added all of these to my Netflix queue³ — oddly, only Madea Goes to Jail and I Can Do Bad All by Myself are available for instant viewing. As I’m on 1 DVD at a time right now this might take a while, but I plan to start with Diary of a Mad Black Woman this coming weekend. If you all would like to join me in this endeavor and maybe hang out in a chat room all watching the movie together, let me know in the comments. As it is, I’ll let you know when I plan to watch each movie so you can bring the popcorn.

ABW’s The Tyler Perry Project -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Footnotes

1. The second link goes to a text-only version of the message. In the full website view, you can’t link directly because it’s a Flash-based website. Siderant: How is it that Tyler Perry is this successful and still has a website from 1996? This shit is terrible. Just because you came from the ghetto doesn’t mean your digital home has to still be one.
2. At least, this is the impression I get from the critical analysis I read
3. And now my recommendations are messed up forever.

I wish that M. Night would read this moving essay by a young Chinese American adoptee about how the whitewashing of The Last Airbender made her feel as both a fan of the show and as an Asian person. I wish he would read it and have to respond to her in person.

Avatar is important to me because it shows that Asians can be leaders and heroes as well as white people. I was born in China, and I like to watch something about Asian and Inuit culture because usually at school we don’t get to read about these cultures. It feels really good to see something about my birth culture along with other Asian and Inuit cultures so I can learn about them too. It feels important to me that there’s a series that doesn’t have stereotypes about Asian people.

I felt sad when I heard that the main characters in the movie were going to be played by white actors. I was crestfallen about that because I thought it showed a message that only white people could be heroes while the TV series says the exact opposite. I thought the movie wouldn’t look at all like the original Airbender series because white people would play the main roles and it wouldn’t be believable for me. I felt sad, insulted and furious all at the same time!

…

…it’s horrible to treat us like dirty laundry that needs to get bleached. We are human beings just like everybody else.

Sing it, sister.

Hat Tip: Racebending

The Last Airbender’s Target Audience Thinks Whitewashing Is Wrong, Too -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

(crossposted from my personal blog)

I know that pointing out RoF Fail is a little like kicking a puppy, but you know how it is when Nick Mamatas sends you a link clearly meant to induce blog-worthy rage — you just have to accommodate him.

So, LJ user torrain was reading the latest issue of Realms of Fantasy and didn’t get far before the facepalm reached epic proportions. Inside the magazine’s movie review of The Last Airbender ze found this awesomeness:

However, The Last Airbender has already caught flak for “whitewashing,” meaning, the casting of white actors (or actors who appear to be white) to play non-white characters, especially when those characters are heroic. It’s a hot-button issue that dredges up memories of images like Al Jolsen wearing black-face makeup. Of course, there are two sides to this coin. On one hand, whitewashing can feel insulting, disrespectful, and disappointing to movie-goers. Many may label it as politically incorrect. On the other hand, anyone who has run a casting call will tell you that when you find the right person for the role, something magical happens. Time seems to stop, and you feel as if the character comes to life right in front of your eyes. The character is no longer ink on paper; the character begins to live and breathe. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the individual human being reading for the part. Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn’t a one-way street. It’s a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.

There’s a lot of obvious fail going on here, and it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with this notion that “something magical happens” when the right person comes along for the role, even if that person is white and the character is not. Even if this was ever true somewhere in the world, it’s not true in this movie. Let’s quote Roger Ebert talking about the casting, specifically:

Shyamalan has failed. His first inexplicable mistake was to change the races of the leading characters; on television Aang was clearly Asian, and so were Katara and Sokka, with perhaps Mongolian and Inuit genes. Here they’re all whites. This casting makes no sense because (1) It’s a distraction for fans of the hugely popular TV series, and (2) all three actors are pretty bad. I don’t say they’re untalented, I say they’ve been poorly served by  Shyamalan and the script. They are bland, stiff, awkward and unconvincing.

Entertainment Weekly:

The trouble with The Last Airbender is that Aang, as a character, is a saintly abstraction (Noah Ringer plays him with a sensitive pout that grows cloying), and he’s surrounded by generic young actors who are like place holders for real stars.

Variety:

Shyamalan has worked wonders with child actors before, but Ringer is no Haley Joel Osment, delivering some fancy footwork but zero charisma in the pic’s key role. Most dialogue scenes are framed in tight Sergio Leone-style closeup, emphasizing the actors’ wooden nature. At that proximity, we notice that Rathbone never blinks; nor can he be counted on to deliver any of the comic relief of his animated counterpart.

I could go on. The issue here is not that M. Night just happened to find these amazing kids to play these roles who just happened to be white. This is what he or the producers or the studio set out to do from the beginning because, even though millions of people love the cartoon and its clearly Asian characters, they felt that audiences just can’t handle brown and yellow people as the heroes. As the evil villains, sure. But protagonists must be white, right?

Whitewashing, no matter how much you pretty it up with the magical casting feeling of amazingness, is still just damn wrong.

The second half of that paragraph, which you probably didn’t even read because the first part was so rage-inducing with its faily wrongness, I shall paste again, because it also needs addressing:

Adding to the mix is the fact that some roles written for white people have been won by actors of color, and some roles written for men have been played by women. In other words, whitewashing isn’t a one-way street. It’s a difficult situation that places filmmakers between the goal of finding magic and not offending audiences. At the end of the day, most directors simply want to tell a good story.

Jesus. Okay, deep breath. First of all, the conceit of having women play roles written for men is usually about deconstruction more than it’s about some magical audition process or someone being “right” for a role. And I can’t come up with any examples of people of color playing roles “written for white people” unless you’re talking about classical theater or something. Maybe they mean Sam Jackson as Nick Fury? But again, when POC play, uh “white” roles, that actually has a different weight and purpose behind it than whitewashing. The power differentials there are NOT equal. Are POC overrepresented in Hollywood movies and American television? No. Are white people? Yes. So when whitewashing occurs, do you know who it hurts and disrespects and diminishes? POC.

The fact that this Realms columnist doesn’t understand any of this is already major fail. The fact that his or her editor doesn’t understand any of this is even bigger fail. And it’s leading many people to question why they would even bother to save such a magazine from its impending cancellation when all they have to look forward to is a bunch of racefail in the non-fiction section.

I’m just going to bottom line it for you: Whitewashing is never okay no matter what. If you don’t agree, then you’re really too far gone to exist in polite and cultured society and perhaps you should do us all a favor and go back to the cave you most certainly crawled out of.

Is that too harsh?

Realms of Fantasy Columnist Condones Whitewashing When “Magic” Is Involved -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

So apparently this month is LGBT Pride Month. I therefore snagged this from ontd political which gives the info that it was first put together by students of Earlham College and then link-enhanced by the current poster. Do I need to mention the part where ‘phobic assholes of any kind will be summarily deleted and banned? Oh who am I kidding? Homophobic, transphobic, any ‘phobic assholes of any kind will have their comments summarily deleted and be considered for banning depending on the severity of the offense. That having been said…on with the show.

I can be pretty sure that my roomate, hallmates and classmates will be comfortable with my sexual orientation. (Example: “Gay bulling in schools ‘common’” – BBC | Campus Climate for LGs – The Task Force).

If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented. (Example: More gay characters on TV now than before – Variety | LGBT Character Shows May Lose Tax Credit – SD G&L News).

03. When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others.

04. I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences. (Example: PFLAG Rejection Statistics – PFLAG)

05. I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer). (Example: From Bullies to Heroes: Homophobia in Video Games – Student Pulse.)

06. I am not accused of being abused, warped or psychologically confused because of my sexual orientation. (Example: “Camp that ‘cures’ homosexuality” – Times Online.)

07. I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation. (Constance McMillen Wanted to Take Her Girlfriend to the Prom, So the School Board Canceled it – CBS News.) It’s also worth noting that CBS probably chose the worst picture of her to pair with that article. It’s hard to say if that was motivated or not.

08. I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual.

09. I can be sure that my classes will require curricular materials that testify to the existence of people with my sexual orientation. (Example: Banning Gay Books – Alternet).

10. People don’t ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation.

11. People don’t ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation.

12. I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It’s assumed.

13. My sexual orientation was never associated with a closet.

14. People of my gender do not try to convince me to change my sexual orientation.

15. I don’t have to defend my heterosexuality.

16. I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual. (Example: Homosexuality and Religion – Religion Facts).

17. I can count on finding a therapist or doctor willing and able to talk about my sexuality. (Example: Rekers and the Barbarism of Anti-Gay Therapy.)

18. I am guaranteed to find sex education literature for couples with my sexual orientation.

19. Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass me. (Largest Ever Study on Anti-LGBT Harassement – GLSEN).

20. I have no need to qualify my straight identity.

21. My masculinity/femininity is not challenged because of my sexual orientation. (Examples: Are Gay Stereotypes true? – ABC).

22. I am not identified by my sexual orientation.

23. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my sexual orientation will not work against me. (Example: ‘Doctor Shock’ – Huffington Post.)

24. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has sexual orientation overtones.

25. Whether I rent or I go to a theater, Blockbuster, an EFS or TOFS movie, I can be sure I will not have trouble finding my sexual orientation represented. (Example: Before ‘Bruno’: A brief history of gay characters in movies and TV – NY Daily News).

26. I am guaranteed to find people of my sexual orientation represented in the Earlham curriculum, faculty, and administration.

27. I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare. (Example: Kiss Off: A gay couple cited for holding hands on Main Street Plaza – Salt Lake City Weekly).

28. I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation.

29. I do not have to worry about telling my roommate about my sexuality. It is assumed I am a heterosexual.

31. I can remain oblivious of the language and culture of LGBTQ folk without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

32. I can go for months without being called straight. (I suppose this depends on where you are and who your friends are.)

33. I’m not grouped because of my sexual orientation.

34. My individual behavior does not reflect on people who identity as heterosexual.

35. In everyday conversation, the language my friends and I use generally assumes my sexual orientation. For example, sex inappropriately referring to only heterosexual sex or family meaning heterosexual relationships with kids.

35. People do not assume I am experienced in sex (or that I even have it!) merely because of my sexual orientation. (Example: GLBT Stereotypes – GLBT Social Sciences).

36. I can kiss a person of the opposite gender on the heart or in the cafeteria without being watched and stared at. (Example: Is Main Street USA Ready For Gay PDA – ABC News).

37. Nobody calls me straight with maliciousness. (Example: John Mayer’s Apology Wanted for Use of Gay Slur – Aceshowbiz).

38. People can use terms that describe my sexual orientation and mean positive things (IE “straight as an arrow”, “standing up straight” or “straightened out”) instead of demeaning terms (IE “ewww, that’s gay” or being “queer”).

39. I am not asked to think about why I am straight.

40. I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job. (Example: Bias in the Workplace: Consistant Evidence of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination [.doc download] – UCLA).”

Can you add more?

Linkspam: Unpacking the invisible knapsack Straight privilege edition -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

The Linkmistress would like to interrupt her regular linkspams to bring you an actual blog. With words. As usual, civility is requested and will be enforced. Iron fist, velvet glove etc.

crossposted. The following critique is based on the media I have consumed and the experiences I have had. Feel free to rec media in which the things I am complaining about have been fixed. Except that Pullman fellow. I tried. I tried. But.

Pharyngula is linked to my old blog, and thus, when I go over there, I sometimes check his feed. I say sometimes, because the writer thereof is like many white middleclass atheists in that FAIL! on race issues, and the difference in scale between religions affected by the past how many hundreds of years of colonialism and Christianity is constant and unremitting (and the comment section is WORSE.) This post however Letting go of gods is a reason for joy…like being free of prison, sparked an annoyed rant that I had been turning over in my mind for a very long time.

I am an atheist. A black atheist at that. And I am HAPPY AND FULFILLED ABOUT THIS. I do NOT run around wistfully gazing after religious people, feeling sad that I am missing out on the experience of faith. Nor do I run around feeling nihilistic and angry at the world because there is no God and therefore LIFE ON EARTH HAS NO MEANING !!!!!!!!!!!!! And I sure as hell do not run about committing crimes and hurting people left, right and center because God isn’t in my life. I have ethics. And morals even. And NO that it NOT because God is in my life and I don’t know it, WHAT!!! Hell I formed my ideas of ethics and morals in direct opposition to some of the things in the Christian Bible (fer instance, the idea of a god sending his people to go kill people and take their possessions reminds me of European colonialism and is WRONG WRONG WRONG in my ethical universe. Women are intelligent and sensible and should therefore have been in on the equal human rights from the beginning of time, no excuses. In fact, in my ethical universe, strict instructions about the equality of EVERYONE from transpeople to disabled people to poc to people with alternate sexualities to people in different classes to anyone who has a mix of these identities, plus anyone else who might have been left out of this list would be MY FIRST FREAKING COMMANDMENT. And that’s just the beginning.)

I am SICK AND TIRED of encountering those tropes in most of the tv, movies and books which even deign to acknowledge the fact that people who don’t believe in gods exist in the first place. Almost every black movie and tv show or book mentions God somewhere. If a character does not believe in God, the person is taught a firm lesson, which is usually accompanied by humiliation of some sort, so as to bring them back into line (praise ye the Lord!!) For white characters in tv shows, more latitude is given in that there are atheist characters, but we end up with people like House, or atheists who are made to accept that the fact that someone has faith makes them a better person. (I think I have seen that dynamic in Bones but I may be wrong. Anyone watch the show and can clarify?) Which. It doesn’t. It makes you a different person. Good for you. But my lack of faith is just as good as your abundance of it and gives you no moral cookies over me, kthx.

So. I want proudly atheist characters who are happy about it in my media. Minorities of every kind, even. Because we exist. And our stories deserve to be respectfully told.

The myth of atheists being “less” than religious people -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Via Angry Asian Man, a great article that makes a point about the ineffectiveness of protests about racism in mainstream Hollywood films. Basically, if we don’t patronize the good portrayals created by our own filmmakers, we’re unlikely to see much change in the racist dreck being cranked out by the Hollywood factories, because they pay attention only to money.

But then, the conversation turned to the work of Asian American filmmakers. And it turned out he had not paid to see any of the following films in the theaters—Better Luck Tomorrow, Saving Face, Finishing The Game, The Motel, In-Between Days, The Debut, Journey From The Fall. In fact, he couldn’t think of one Asian American indie he had paid money to see theatrically—the closest he came was the last Harold and Kumar movie, which hardly counts as an independently produced Asian American film. He was talking passionately about how we need to force Hollywood to change and show respect to our community, but even he admitted he had not done much to support our artists and our work.

Unfortunately, this brother’s story is not isolated. And herein lies the problem—it’s great that we’re willing to speak out when we see something that offends us. But until Asian Americans as a whole are willing to put down our money to support the work of our Asian American filmmakers—nothing will change.

It’s a good point. But something about it bugs me.

Because it assumes something that I’m not sure is true, and feeds into a bigger problem. What Phillip suggests is that if Asian Americans just go and view more Asian American films, this will show Hollywood there’s a significant demand for positive portrayals. The same reasoning, IMO, underlies African Americans’ patronization of black films (and African American Interest books, and so on) — we’ve taken to heart the racist rationalization that if we don’t make it ourselves, and go see it ourselves, we can’t expect the mainstream to follow suit.

Except… African Americans have been making it ourselves, since the Sixties. We’ve been going to see those films, too, enough to create several blockbusters, catapult several African American filmmakers to auteur status, and launch a few subcultural film/theater movements.

But has all this success — all this proof that we will support our own — really changed anything in Hollywood? We’re still getting slapped in the face with grotesque stereotypes, and “allegories” for the black experience of racism that Fail miserably. (I’m kind of dreading Cameron’s much-hyped Avatar, ya’ll. Looks like yet another “what these people need is a honky” derivation.) There’s still only one black male per generation permitted to reach A-list status — first Sidney Poitier, then Denzel Washington, lately Will Smith. And more often than not that black male is paired with a non-black female, out of the apparent belief in Hollywood that one black person on screen is tolerable, but two — especially if they’re showing love for one another — is just too damn many. (BTW, name a current black female A-list actress. Go on, try. Good luck with that.)

So basically, African Americans have been doing exactly what Phillip advocates for 50+ years now, and it hasn’t changed a damn thing in Hollywood. Which suggests to me that there’s a fundamental flaw in Phillip’s premise. He’s suggesting that money is Hollywood’s guiding philosophy. I think he’s forgetting the role that racism — some intentional, most aversive — plays in the way Hollywood people think. Money is just the excuse/rationalization that they use.

And to counter this racism, we have to do more than go and view films by demographic, as Phillip suggests. One of the justifications used by the producers of whitewashed films like 21 and The Last Airbender is that PoC aren’t “universal”. That actors of color might be able to appeal to audiences of color, but to really make the leap to broad mainstream (i.e., white) appeal, white actors must be inserted, even into PoC’s stories. This is racist bullshit, yes, but it’s racist bullshit that Hollywood keeps trying to support with numbers which show that PoC actors don’t pull the audiences that white actors do. So does it make sense to urge Asian Americans to go see Asian American films? That actually proves the Hollywood racists’ point — because of course those PoC actors won’t be able to pull big numbers if they’re only pulling an audience from within their respective communities. If only Asian Americans go to see Asian American films in any numbers, and only African Americans go to see black films, and so on, the racists can point at this and say, “See? PoC only appeal to their own.”

And yeah, I get the irony here. The whole reason these demographic-specific film industries have cropped up is because Hollywood has historically excluded us… but they’ll also use the existence of these industries to exclude us further. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

But here’s my proposed solution: all of us, regardless of race, need to go and see all good films, regardless of their target demographic. We need to see more Latino/a viewers attending events like the Asian American film festival. We need to see more black filmmakers creating films for that event, and more Asian filmmakers making stuff for black and Latino/a film festivals. We need to see more American Indians behind the camera, and sticking their shit into every festival with “American” in its title, regardless of the racial qualifier that comes before it. And so on.

And we as audiences need to attend all of it. Yes, I mean you, fellow black Americans. Put down that ticket to Tyler Perry’s next monstrosity; he’s gotten enough of our money and hasn’t done shit with it. (Well, except this. But he’s got to do a lot more before I’ll forgive him for all the rest.) Pick up your mouse and find a film by some other ethnic group that’s playing in your area. You can still stick to black people — we still need to support our own, especially given that there’s better stuff out there than Perry’s work. (If you can’t find anything recent, go see some older stuff that never got enough attention.) But in addition to work by African American filmmakers, maybe you can go see a Nollywood film too. Then branch out more. Did you go see Sleep Dealer when I told you to? Lazy ass. Now you gotta go buy it. (Shoulda listened to me, but nooo, you had to be hard headed.)

We still need to protest, IMO, because racism won’t change on its own. But I’m taking Phillip’s point to heart; we need the carrot as well as the stick. We’ve got to support the positive portrayals that are already out there. And that includes work by other PoC, because all this stuff feeds into each other. We’ll get more successful black actors in Hollywood once we prove that Latinos/as will go and see them. We’ll get more Asian actors when we can prove they appeal to black audiences. We’ll see fewer pretendians when audiences start going to see real Indians. And so on.

So. What films by/about another race are you planning to see this year?

The problem with viewing films by demographic. -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman