My top favorite movies have been created by Wes Anderson. I loooove Moonrise Kingdom,
a story about two misunderstood scouts on the search for love and adventure. I am obsessed with his recreation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. The artistic aesthetic attracts me and the unique quirky storylines keep pulling me in. Recently though, Anderson has been called out in the news by Whoopee Goldberg for not having enough people of color or people of color. While reading through the article thoughts raced through my head analyzing plot content. Could it be true? Of course it was. Daily this continued to irk me, and would come up in my thoughts on what I noticed in the media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/19/whoopi-goldberg-wes-anderson_n_7624030.html
A short time passed and I read an interesting topic article about actor and video editor Dylan Marron.
Dylan create a project on Tumblr where he spliced every scene where a person of color speaks into one clip. Dylan said his reasoning for creating this was " I think I feel so strongly about this because I was a kid who was queer and brown, and I didn't feel like I saw my reflection in the art and entertainment that I was watching. The message that I got was: It can't be done, there is no place for you, nobody looks like you, nobody talks like you, nobody walks like you, so don't try." He created this project to share these frustrations and shed light on a very dire reality in the media industry. The results were not surprising, but still astounding. My favorite movie Moonrise Kingdom? Only 10 seconds. Wedding Crashers? 39 seconds. 500 Days of Summer? 30 seconds. Harry Potter and all its lengthy goodness? 99 seconds. All of these consisted of roles in the service industry, meaningless filler lines, stereotypes, or just the funny friend.
http://everysinglewordspoken.tumblr.com/
One of the saddest visuals he created was the splicing of The Fault in our Stars
based off of the novel by John Green, one of my favorite authors. If you do not know much about the story, check it out here. A quick summary is the story of two teenagers with terminal cancer meet in a support group, through their love of a particular author they go on a journey to meet him that ends up being the adventure of a lifetime. The spliced clip left about 30 seconds of lines for people of color, this one being the main character Hazel’s doctor. Marron’s frustration was shown when he said “It’s an amazing book that has touched so many people internationally,” Marron said. “Nowhere in the book is race mentioned, so why do you have an entirely white cast?” He is absolutely correct. John Green himself is a high advocate for social justice and chance, and a supporter diversity. Hollywood stole the opportunity to make those connections with the millions of readers of the book, taking away the experience and ownership of the story for readers of color.
If you’re not angry right now, you should be. When I hear this information and connect it with things that I have enjoyed, I began to identify the white privilege that completely controls the media and Hollywood casting choices. These societal privileges rank whites as the characters in power, the ones who get the spotlight or hero role instead of the fun buddy, first person to die, or other meaningless role. This is the underlying white privilege that people do not always care to admit, or analyze. BUT WE NEED TO. This is just one small piece of where we need to be advocates not only as teachers, but as individuals who want to make change in this white privilege Hollywood norm because this is not acceptable.
I am tired of hearing people say that if we talk about this or try to point out these stereotypes/inequities in casting that we are being too serious, or making the problem worse. Pretending there is not a problem is just as bad as perpetuating it. What can we do as teachers, as adults, as people? First off I think of my students. Particularly I go back to when I did my student teaching in a predominantly Hispanic and Black community. Every single day I would see little black girls with Hannah Montana’s face on it.
Now, I am absolutely not saying they cannot appreciate or enjoy that show. What frustrates me is this was the only choice they had in the media in terms of who to think is cool, or to try to identify with. When I think of Disney five years ago all I think of is white girls and boys living on a beach, spending loads of money, and pulling pranks. (Note: I have three younger brothers and have seen excessive amounts of this over the years) Can our students look at the screen and see themselves? Can they see their own stories in what is being acted out and in a positive authentic manner? No.
I believe it is our job as teachers to find those role models, those TV shows, those book and people in the community that are of color and fighting that white privilege power in character and predominant important roles. My students deserve to feel like they too can be that awesome, that they can do anything that they can have their stories displayed too. Because for a matter of fact, there is no reason why this should not be happening. As adults, and culturally responsive individuals we need to do a better job with the items we give attention and our power to. Personally, this is making me reanalyze and think about all my media connections and how I can change that media makeup. Solution wise this is what I have so far. I think this a topic that deserves on going attention and discussion, and I am not done trying to get involved in changing this.
Extra links: http://www.naacp.org/programs/entry/media-diversity
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/study-finds-people-color-nearly-invisible-evening-cable-news
https://youthradio.org/classroom/article/misrepresentation-of-people-of-color-in-the-media/
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/08/person-of-colour-hollywood-films-diversity
based off of the novel by John Green, one of my favorite authors. If you do not know much about the story, check it out here. A quick summary is the story of two teenagers with terminal cancer meet in a support group, through their love of a particular author they go on a journey to meet him that ends up being the adventure of a lifetime. The spliced clip left about 30 seconds of lines for people of color, this one being the main character Hazel’s doctor. Marron’s frustration was shown when he said “It’s an amazing book that has touched so many people internationally,” Marron said. “Nowhere in the book is race mentioned, so why do you have an entirely white cast?” He is absolutely correct. John Green himself is a high advocate for social justice and chance, and a supporter diversity. Hollywood stole the opportunity to make those connections with the millions of readers of the book, taking away the experience and ownership of the story for readers of color.
If you’re not angry right now, you should be. When I hear this information and connect it with things that I have enjoyed, I began to identify the white privilege that completely controls the media and Hollywood casting choices. These societal privileges rank whites as the characters in power, the ones who get the spotlight or hero role instead of the fun buddy, first person to die, or other meaningless role. This is the underlying white privilege that people do not always care to admit, or analyze. BUT WE NEED TO. This is just one small piece of where we need to be advocates not only as teachers, but as individuals who want to make change in this white privilege Hollywood norm because this is not acceptable.
I am tired of hearing people say that if we talk about this or try to point out these stereotypes/inequities in casting that we are being too serious, or making the problem worse. Pretending there is not a problem is just as bad as perpetuating it. What can we do as teachers, as adults, as people? First off I think of my students. Particularly I go back to when I did my student teaching in a predominantly Hispanic and Black community. Every single day I would see little black girls with Hannah Montana’s face on it.
Now, I am absolutely not saying they cannot appreciate or enjoy that show. What frustrates me is this was the only choice they had in the media in terms of who to think is cool, or to try to identify with. When I think of Disney five years ago all I think of is white girls and boys living on a beach, spending loads of money, and pulling pranks. (Note: I have three younger brothers and have seen excessive amounts of this over the years) Can our students look at the screen and see themselves? Can they see their own stories in what is being acted out and in a positive authentic manner? No.
I believe it is our job as teachers to find those role models, those TV shows, those book and people in the community that are of color and fighting that white privilege power in character and predominant important roles. My students deserve to feel like they too can be that awesome, that they can do anything that they can have their stories displayed too. Because for a matter of fact, there is no reason why this should not be happening. As adults, and culturally responsive individuals we need to do a better job with the items we give attention and our power to. Personally, this is making me reanalyze and think about all my media connections and how I can change that media makeup. Solution wise this is what I have so far. I think this a topic that deserves on going attention and discussion, and I am not done trying to get involved in changing this.
Extra links: http://www.naacp.org/programs/entry/media-diversity
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/study-finds-people-color-nearly-invisible-evening-cable-news
https://youthradio.org/classroom/article/misrepresentation-of-people-of-color-in-the-media/
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/08/person-of-colour-hollywood-films-diversity
No comments:
Post a Comment