Appropriating culture in American Films with Ethnic Stereotypes

Cultural Appropriation in American Films:

Danielle Rochlin

Lens: Ethnicity

 

Both the growth of Media and our long past with ethnic struggles help to fuel cultural appropriation in American films. There are numerous ways in which cultural appropriation can take place, usually it deals with a majority ethnicity taking parts of a minority culture and using or displaying these parts in a way that denotes, stereotypes, or gives a negative connotation to the minority culture. Cultural Appropriation is far different from cultural exchange, this is when one culture agrees to share part of their traditions, symbols, or other important pieces with another culture, cultural exchange is a powerful tool to help other cultures understand and educate each other.

Our media lights the match for cultural appropriation, we can now share and view anything we want without putting much thought or effort in at all, and with so little though put in, we aren’t thinking about who can be affected by our halloween costume, outfit choice,  movie choice, etc. In class we have discussed that one of the privileges of being white is you don’t have to think consciously about your ethnicity, and because we have this privilege of lack of awareness it makes it all too easy to just not think about the message you are sending towards another ethnicity. Tv shows such as South park, Fresh off the boat, Glee, The Simpsons, All American Girl, Movies such as Kill bill, Ghost in the shell, Dr. Strange, Artists such as Beyonce, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, and the list goes on.  These are just some of the many popular examples  that  promote negative stereotypes or show a misrepresentation of minorities in film. Presenting harsh stereotypes on such a large platform is hurting a whole culture, as Postman states in his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” When Postman wrote this book he was mainly concerned about television and its lasting effects on society, but applying this to both American films and our rapid media we can come to the conclusion that allowing films that support and show cultural appropriation to be widely spread in our community can and will do harm, we are squashing cultures one film at a time. When asked about this problem, our community partner, the director of education at SIFF, had this to say “The fact is Scarlett Johansson is going to sell more tickets than just about any sadly, asian face and that the reality” Dustin was referring to the popular movie “ghost in a shell” where Scarlett Johansson was cast for a part supposed to be played by an Asian actress.

 

This is just one example of Cultural appropriation, and it’s a heartbreaking thing that our community partner is right, a white face is not only more common to see on screen but it is more common because it sells more tickets. If you do a google search for “top grossing movies of 2017” you will find a list, of this list you have to scroll to number 17 in order to see the first main character to be of a different ethnicity than white, and mind you the movie is Hidden Figures which focuses on oppression of black woman, after this inspirational movie, comes number 51 “Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween” which is filled of stereotypes. The problem here is that we, the majority ethnicity go to see a movie, and as part of being white we don’t have to think about seeing our race or ethnicity on that screen, we get the privilege of seeing people that look like your “average guy” If we don’t start to become aware of this problem, recognize it, bring attention to it when it happens, then we are in danger of a “culture-death”.

 

Our negative ethnic views are older than film. We have learned about the Nations troubled past that has been oppressing people of different ethnicities for many years. We have learned how we stripped the native americans culture, forced them out of their land, and still to this day try to oppress them with cultural appropriation and negative stereotypes such as the NFL team named “The Redskins”. We have learned how we have kept a whole culture away from us, away from our schools, our restaurants, our parks, we have learned about these many wrongs, we know they are wrong, and yet we still allow these parts of history to be seen in our so different world today.“America’s Dilemma has been our resistance to ourselves… our denial of our immensely varied selves” this powerful quote by Ronald Takaki in his book “A Different Mirror” points out the problem, we deny where we came from, that the majority itself are immigrants and that no one person is of a pure non mixed ethnic background. Part of this denial is through our filtered master narrative. As we’ve learned through this class the only way to diminish such thought is through education, educating ourselves on our real master narrative is how we will start to develop an empathy for other cultures and in turn hopefully prevent stereotypes and cultural appropriation.

References cited:

Postman, N (1985) Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business. New York, NY: Viking Penguin Inc

 

Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America (Revised ed.). New York: Back Bay Books.

Mass Communication by Katey Kelly

With looking at American Films and Cultural Appropriation through the lens of mass communication, one must first understand what mass communication is. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, mass communication is: “National press, radio, and television, utilized as mass media method of delivery of messages to general public.” Based off that definition, what I have learned in class, and through our reading in A Different Mirror and in Amusing Ourselves to Death, I would categorize American Film as a whole as mass communication. Cultural appropriation in American film has been around since the beginning of film, sometime it extremely obvious in films but other times its hidden within films that are seemingly innocent like some Disney movies. Thankfully we have companies in our community who help educate and discourage cultural appropriation.

There are many forms of mass communication today including; social media, radio, music, and TV and film. TV and film are two of the largest forms of mass communication today in our country, and in Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman says “…everyone goes to the television for all these things and more, which is why television resonates so powerfully throughout the culture.” (p. 92) A majority of people in this country own a television and watch movies, they use it as a source of simple mindless entertainment, it “…offers viewers a variety of subject matter, requires minimal skills to comprehend, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification” (p. 86) All ages are exposed to film starting now at the time their eyes can focus on a screen, children grow up seeing these hidden subliminal messages buried deep with in the shows and movies that they are being exposed to. Postman ends chapter 6 with saying ”The demarcation between what is show business and what is not becomes harder to see with each passing day.” (p. 96) We are trained from a younger and younger age to become numb to the hidden wrongs that placed within the most innocent looking films.

Like most 90s babies, my childhood consisted of many classic Disney movies on VHS being played on a big clunky television, and I still adore Disney movies to this day, but now that I am watching these movie threw a completely different lens. Those “harmless” Disney movies I watched growing up I know realize that a lot of the older ones are filled with cultural appropriation and even blatant racism! In one of the most iconic classic Disney, “Peter Pan”, there are a group of Indians that are in Neverland and they are portrayed as savages. In A Different Mirror Takaki quotes Richard Johnson talking about “…the Indians in Virginia as “wild and savage people,” living “like herds of dear in a forest.”” And the film defiantly portrays they Indians in the movie like that. Another Disney classic that was full of cultural appropriation was “Aladdin”, most of the movie is trying to “replicate” Middle Eastern culture, but ends up butchering in and filling the movie with extreme stereotypes of that culture. The film even ending up changing a line in the opening title song of the film when it was rereleased on to DVD.

Today there are do many movie that have cultural appropriation in them, that it is hard to tell which movie are save, but there are some places you can still go to and trust. The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), who was our community for our project, is the largest fill festival in the country. SIFF brings movies and culture to us directly from their country of origin, Dustin Kaspar talked about in our previous meeting that they try to find film that are made by people who are from the counties or culture of the film, instead of an outside group trying to culturally appropriate films. SIFF educates people and lets them see the culture in its proper setting.

Now although Disney has had a past of cultural appropriation, recently they has tried to make sure their movies include a proper image of the characters culture. In Disney’s recent hit, Moana, they spent a lot of time in the Polynesian islands creating a board of natives to teach them about the culture and to have a voice in making decisions about the movie to make sure that the culture was properly represented. It seemed like Disney was tryin to make up for cultural appropriation in the past. Then around the time of halloween, a “Maui” costume was releases for children causing much controversy over it arm and chest padding, and its tan tattooed “skin” pants, that Disney pulled it from the shelves and issued an apology.

American Film will remain a form of mass communication for many many years. Now big companies like Disney have had a past that they may not be very proud of but it defiantly looks like they are starting to steer in the correct direction and hopefully organizations like the Seattle International Film Festival will help change the way movies today are created.

 

 

References Cited

Mass Communication [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Black’s Law Dictionary (2nd ed.).

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of showbusiness. New York, NY: Viking Penguin Inc.

Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America (Revised ed.). New York: Back Bay Books.

The role of ethnicity in American film by; Sophie Wick

Throughout the history of American films many different cultures have been misrepresented through film. this can have a negative impact on the way those cultures are viewed and the way the people of those ethnicities are viewed by those outside of that culture. we can see the harmful affects of these types of stereotypes when we look at slavery and how black slaves were given the name sambo because according to Ronald Takaki in his book A Different Mirror on page 104 white southerners thought “slaves were childlike, irresponsible, lazy, affectionate, and happy”. this greatly contributed to the mistreatment of slaves and the feeling of superiority that lead to the continuation of slavery for far too long. we can see similar effects like this from film as well certain stereotypes and prejudices people have in their minds that they likely don’t even realize they have because those stereotypes feel more like facts when you aren’t aware of the truth.

A recent example of the controversy of american film today is the movie Moana. an animated disney movie about a pacific islander girl set long ago. despite disney hiring people from the pacific islands to be apart of this film and to portray the culture as accurately as possible the controversy lies within the fact that disney is an american corporation that will be profiting off the movie. Since Disney will be making all the money and none of it will be going to people of the actual culture portrayed in the movie besides the few who worked on it this was still viewed as wrong since many believe only those from that culture should make movies about that culture. another controversy surrounding the movie was during halloween when many children who weren’t pacific islanders but still dressed up as the character which some saw as cultural appropriation. others noted that it wasn’t an issue because the children weren’t trying to dress up as a culture or ethnicity they were dressing up as a character they admired which they believe shouldn’t be viewed as appropriation. this shows how controversial the topic of cultural appropriation can be since so many people have different opinions on it.

The easiest way to avoid cultural appropriation in film is to have the ethnic groups those movies are about be apart of the process of making the film. In 2016 Hollywood made about 10 billion dollars in film revenue making it the highest grossing film industry of all. this means that American films are seen by lots of people and have a huge impact on those who see them. this is why it’s important for the U.S. to put out films that correctly portray other cultures. according to our community partner dustin who is apart of the Seattle international film festival, he believes that the best way to get films that portray different ethnicities is to bring in films from the countries themselves that are made by people of that culture in order to get an authentic view of their lives. the people at siff actively seek out movies from different countries that may introduce a new culture to their audience in Seattle. Dustin has found that the best representation for cultures in film comes from people of those groups themselves.

Today most Americans rely heavily on the media to get most of their information about the world, specifically the parts of the world that don’t show up in your everyday life and that you don’t come face to face with to see for your self. because of this combined with the inaccuracy with which many american films portray other cultures we are faced with the problem of a country that only knows about some cultures what they learned from tv and movies which makes their view of the world narrow and often incorrect and filled with inaccurate stereotypes. to make matters worse this has been going on since before film was even invented with stories and newspapers being the only outlets to spread misinformation. but with the invention of film and television these problems can be spread faster and further than ever before. because film has become what used to be books, then newspapers in terms of how they captured peoples attention as Neil Postman says in his book Amusing Ourselves to death on page 41 “the influence of the printed word in every arena of public discourse was insistent and powerful not merely because of the quantity of printed matter but because of it’s monopoly”. today that monopoly mostly belongs to film which is why with film capturing so much of our attention today we need to make sure it’s giving us accurate information about other cultures and that we’re not allowing cultural appropriation to dominate film.

 

 

Home of SIFF Cinema, Seattle International Film Festival, and SIFF Education. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11, 2017, from https://www.siff.net/

Nine ‘Cultural Appropriations’ By Music and Movies In 2015-16. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11, 2017, from https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/mairead-mcardle/2016/05/19/nine-cultural-appropriations-music-and-movies-2015-16

Postman, N. (2007). Amusing ourselves to death public discourse in the age of show business. Burnaby, B.C.: Simon Fraser University.

Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America. New York: Back Bay Books.

Race Inequality in American Films By: Kyle Hendrickson

When analyzing our community partners own personal perspective for the making of our project I think that it was really important to have empathy for what he does at the Seattle International Film Festival.  Dustin from SIFF works with the department dealing specifically with African films and analyzing them and their culture.  What Dustin has done for African Film in America is truly amazing because when no one really was volunteering to start analyzing this cultures film industry he was the one who rose to the occasion and took the challenge.  In the meeting with Dustin he talked all about his journey through African films from where it started to where it is now.  Dustin told us about how he had been to Africa multiple times to talk to and discuss films with popular directors in this country.  He also talked about how he learned a lot about the African culture in general which gave him a better perspective when analyzing these African American films.  This gave him a great frame of reference and empathy towards the culture that he has been studying and gave him a platform to introduce these African films to the American film industry.  Overall I think that Dustin has done a great job of trying to get people to come see these films and overall just trying to fix the problem of racial inequality in American films

In the eighth chapter of “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, Postman talks about media and how it is being viewed by people and how it should be viewed by people.  He says” Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on public television.  No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure” (Postman, 1985, p.87).  In this quote in particular Postman shares a blanket statement on what the entire chapter is about in his own words and it relates directly back to the American film industry.  He wants the reader to know that people are taking media and entertainment seriously but is also trying to tell the reader that this is not how media and entertainment should be digested.  After reading about some of the top movies that deal a lot with race and have heavy racial issues in them, I saw that people seem to look at these movies like there reading a history book.  This is exactly what Postman is trying to discourage because of how the media and entertainment industry is structured.  The American film industry is a business and its priority is to make movies that will entertain the people in order to make revenue.  So why are we still treating it like we went back in time and are experiencing what happened in history?

 

In an article written on the website studybreaks.com, author Galen Patterson writes all about racism in the film industry and how it has affected the industry past and present.  She talks about the past and how “…Movies were made predominately by white directors and producers with white casts and audiences in mind” (Patterson, 2017).  This alone has created a problem with racism in the film industry because it has carried on for so long.  We are just now recently seeing more and more races being involved in the American film industry but back during all that time in-between when everyone was supposed to be treated equally and now, it seems as if people forgot about some of the different industries that didn’t have a wide range of people from different races.  I also think that media and the digital media age has a lot do with this because without the digital media platforms we have today this issued still probably would not be resolved due to lack of attention given to the subject.  Now, coming from the other side of racism in the film industry I found a very interesting article on the NPR website written about a recent study done by USC regarding actors and actresses in the American film industry.  The quote that I thought was extremely important was a fact brought up by the Study at USC saying that “Just 28.3 percent of characters with dialogue were from non-white racial/ethnic groups” (Deggans 2016).  This one fact tells a lot about the entire film industry and how this is still a problem that should have been dealt with a long time ago.  I think that both of these sources really do a good job of showing how much values and beliefs play into this whole thing.  If we do not value something like this issue, which we obviously have not, then we will not see any change in its current state. That right there is why we have not seen any change in equality for different races in the film industry.  It even says in the definition of values on black’s law dictionary that values are “…what is good and what is not about a culture” (Values, N.D.).  Based on this definition we see that based on our own individual values we decide what is good and what is not about the culture and we see in the American film industry that not enough people have considered this too be a value and address the topic.

In Takaki we see that he tackles race issues all throughout the course of his book but I wanted to close in on specifically chapter 17.  He begins to write about Bill Clinton and his final speech in office and how Clinton gave a call to action to the American people on racism in America.  Takaki quotes Bill Clinton saying “We face a different choice: will we become not two but many Americas, separate, unequal and isolated? Or will we draw strength from our people and the ancient faith in the quality of human dignity, to become the world’s first truly multiracial democracy?” (Takaki, 2008, 435).  This quote was extremely powerful because of how direct of a statement and call to action it was by a person of such authority and who was white.  As we see here Bill Clinton made this issue of culture a value to him and addressed it to the entire country.

 

In conclusion, I think that all of these examples do a great job of expressing the struggle that people of different races deal with in the American history.  As for the Takaki quote and the Postman quotes these do very good job of explaining the problem that stands before us and how we can address this problem as well.

 

References Cited

Deggans, E. (2016, February 22). Hollywood Has A Major Diversity Problem, USC Study Finds. Retrieved December 11, 2017, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/22/467665890/hollywood-has-a-major-diversity-problem-usc-study-finds

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of showbusiness. New York, NY: Viking Penguin Inc

Racism in the Film Industry. (2017, May 22). Retrieved December 11, 2017, from https://studybreaks.com/2017/05/22/racism-film/

Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America (Revised ed.). New York: Back Bay Books.

What is VALUES? definition of VALUES (Black’s Law Dictionary). (2013, March 02). Retrieved December 11, 2017, from https://thelawdictionary.org/values/

 

Appropriation of Race in American Films

Sam Bae

For the midterm, we analyzed how misrepresentation and underrepresentation of minorities in American films. In this paper, I will be examining how entire races have been appropriated in America film. We’ve seen how cultures and ethnicities can be appropriated, but I want to look more into how entire peoples are appropriated as well. We saw in Caliban how Caliban became a broad and general idea of what Africans were perceived to be (Takaki, 2008, p. 28,49). This is a big problem that’s been going on in the American Film industry for quite some time now. We’ve seen white actors playing minorities and appropriating them countless numbers of times. We’ve also seen token minority characters reduced to superficial characters only representing the stereotypes of their race. Race is always a tricky topic to tackle, but it’s a conversation that needs to be had so we can improve upon our flaws.

Over the years as America grew more diverse, TV and film producers realized there was an untapped market to be targeted in minority groups. Their solution to reaching these groups was to add in minority characters sparsely throughout scenes. This is often called the token minority trope and was abused endlessly especially in the 90s-00s. My favorite rendition of this is probably in South Park where the creators parody token minority characters by having the only black kid in South Park literally named “Token.” While we see some ironic uses of this trope like in Harold and Kumar, which was advertised as starring, “That Asian guy from American Pie,” and “That Indian guy from Van Wilder,” the issue lies when this trope is used unironically. It’s just a simple money grab for these big companies, but having token minority characters can leave a very strong impact on people actually from those groups.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The token characters are always very superficial with no background and only serve the purpose of driving the plot and supporting the white protagonists. It’s demeaning and disrespectful to the real lives of minorities. The producers just try to make the character as general as possible and bundle all the stereotypes into this one character so he/she can be “relatable,” but it often distances these minority groups even further. There’s a clear pattern of racist stereotypical characters being cast throughout TV and films.

 

 

Black characters are often portrayed as the wise character who has no ambitions for themselves other than to help the white protagonist achieve whatever they need to. These characters act as a crutch to the protagonist simply there to prop up and support the main character (i.e. Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile). Other times black characters are portrayed as thugs or loud and unabashed; the black women are often seen as sassy and flamboyant. Latino characters are often seen as sexy, exotic with thick accents. They’re reduced to the “Latin Lover” role and it’s embarrassing to see an entire race get generalized into a niche role (Nittle).

 

This stereotyping is also abundant for Asian characters as well. Originally the Asian character was bucktoothed, dumb, and spoke broken English (i.e. Breakfast at Tiffany’s). After Bruce Lee took America by storm, now many Asian actors are even asked if they know martial arts when they are being casted. It’s a shame that a powerful role model from the Asian community has led to even more appropriation and stereotyping because of the success he had. That led to characters like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid who was the mysterious, wise Asian man who was a martial arts expert. Eventually they even took out the protagonist as being Asian and just made it a white character who adopts the culture. In The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise became the savior of the entire history of samurais, which is a Japanese character. Other than martial artists, these days there have been more token Asian characters portrayed as nerdy, weak, and tech-savvy. What’s worse is that these characters almost always lose their ethnicity and are just thrown together as a general Asian (Nittle).

 

Our community partner, Dustin from SIFF, talked about how large the film industry is and how much influence it wields. He also discussed how cultures are appropriated in the film industry. The American film industry does make the effort to tell the stories of other cultures, but it’s always from an outside perspective. Someone from America goes to another country or does a movie about another country, yet that doesn’t allow for the true culture to shine. SIFF does a great job with specifically choosing films done from people within those cultures, but that ideal has not spread all the way throughout the industry. Media has taken over so much of our world and as it gets larger, it will be even more difficult to spread this issue around.

 

This issue would not be as relevant if mass media did not have such an influence in our lives, but it controls us. As Postman warned, we have fallen into the trap set up by the media and we are blinded to anything other than it.

“What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is far more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours (Postman, 1985, p. 155).

We are sucked into media and it controls our lives. There is such a large influence from the film industry that appropriating the culture of these races is so damaging. The industry wields so much power that they can alter people’s frame of reference and perception so easily without anyone even noticing. Films are broadcasted to billions of people every year and when many those films show these minority stereotypes and racist portrayal of characters then the emotional toll adds up. If you’re a minority and you see your race being generalized and appropriated everywhere you look then eventually you start believing those things. Postman warned us about this, but the world didn’t listen and now we are addicted to our “beneficial” screens and accept everything they show us and tell us what to believe.

 

As a Korean myself, it’s sad to see completely different ethnic groups be morphed into just a general race in the media. These industries appropriate entire races and strip them of all unique features simply to appeal to minority groups and make more money. The Takaki chapter regarding Asians as model minorities really hit home when I was reading it. The media used successful Asians as America’s model minority because they were doing well in school and in the workplace. The media pitted Asians against the other minorities and created an even more polarized America (Takaki, 2008, p. 402-404). We were thrust into a role of “safe” minority when we did not ask for it. Because of this “safe” tag on Asians, racists jokes and underrepresentation of Asian-Americans goes overlooked. Asians only made up 1% of leading roles in films and are the most underrepresented minority group in films proportionally to population (Smith, 2016). While I may not have noticed the effects on myself over time, looking back I can see that it truly did. I gradually grew accustomed to accepting racial jokes and all the stereotypes because that’s what I saw all around me. It was almost a given even that my race be appropriated and generalized to a few aspects. I believe I’m just one example of living proof that appropriation of race and culture can affect people personally because of how widespread it is throughout the film and TV industry. It’s not just damaging the cultures anymore, it’s damaging people’s lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References Cited

Nittle, N. K. (n.d.). Common Racial Stereotypes in Movies and Television. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.thoughtco.com/common-racial-stereotypes-in-movies-television-2834718

Postman, N. (19

85). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of showbusiness. New York, NY: Viking Penguin Inc.

Smith, S. (2016, September 6). Hollywood Equality: All Talk, Little Action. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://annenberg.usc.edu/news/faculty-research/hollywood-equality-all-talk-little-action

Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America (Revised ed.). New York: Back Bay Books.

 

Cultural Appropriation in American Films – Gender

Cultural Appropriation in American Films
Lens: Gender
By: Silvio Guiso

A basic definition of cultural appropriation is when you take something from a different culture, and use it for your own purpose, often ending up misrepresenting the other culture. A lot of the times, people are unaware of how the actions they take have an impact on a different culture. I will be looking more deeply into the Gender aspect of cultural appropriation and how it can affect the different groups and minorities.

Gender can nowadays be very tricky to define. But for this post, I will be using Black’s Law’s definition of Gender, which is:  “Defined difference between men and women based on culturally and socially constructed mores, politics, and affairs. Time and location give rise to a variety of local definitions. Contrasts to what is defined as the biological sex of a living creature.” So do not confuse this with the biological version which is more specifically based on sex. So either male, female, or in our current more modern society, X, for people who do not wish to identify as either male or female.

Redefining gender is also a very important step towards how Ronald Takaki wants us to slowly start changing this country. In his last chapter, “We will all be minorities” he mentions that if we want to have an impact and make a change, we will have to redefine who is actually an American. “Demography is redefining who is an American. The time has come for us to embrace our varied selves” (page 439). And we should actually go even beyond that, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to a single country! Because in the end, we all come from the same species, we just have cultural differences that make us unique. But it’s already a leap forward, so slowly we’ll get there.

Cultural differences is what I would like to address, because what might seem obvious for one culture or group might be completely farfetched for the other. A huge distinction should be made between purposely being ignorant and just not knowing about something. Because the latter has no intent of hurting or targeting a specific group while the former just does not care. However, the targeted group’s reaction will be the same, no matter if the appropriation was done on purpose or by accident. That’s why it is very important to know what you’re wearing or saying, to know who or what you are representing. Because appropriation can be avoided by showing respect for each other’s differences and by doing a minimum amount of research.

I understand that when making movies or video games we want to tell a specific story that targets the biggest possible crowd. But in order to target a huge public, we will have to abide by a certain set of rules. The most important rule is the entertainment factor. Neil Postman says it so well when saying: “Thou shalt induce no perplexity” (page 147). Meaning that in order to keep a crowd interested, you will have to make the display very entertaining. An example of this is when two gay people would be kissing in a movie, a more conservative crowd would not approve and would not likely recommend the movie to anyone. But if those gay people would be thrown in prison for such an act, the conservative crowd would not be perplexed because the display would be in line with their values and beliefs.

Even though Wonder Woman was a huge step forward with Gal Gadot as a strong female non-American lead and Patty Jenkins as the director… The movie still objectified women in a very stereotyping way. Gal Gadot was portrayed as this super beautiful Amazonian who had it in her to become this fiery warrior. But any warrior would highly unlikely weight under ten pounds and do not have a single scratch over their entire body. The same goes for women in video games. Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider series was an awesome protagonist but also very much objectified. Obviously they were just satisfying their biggest crowd but at the same the creators were establishing a norm for how women are supposed to look. Lara Croft is only one example. Another great example is fighting games such as the Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Dead or Alive series. The creators took fighters from different disciplines, such as Karate and Kickboxing. Obviously portraying the ladies who know eastern martial arts as Asian, giving them ridiculous proportions, a huge cleavage and barely any other clothes.

One of the more famous movies, Grease, also shows a big amount of gender appropriation. Sandy, who does everything to change her appearance just to impress Danny. And also Danny who had to lie to his friends about having had a sexual relationship during the summer break with Sandy, just to look cooler. Because if not, he would significantly decrease his awesome image.

Although there are a lot of bad examples out there, there are also a lot of good ways to portrait a movie. Like the release of Hidden Figures, that inspired a lot of women in STEM fields. They invested a lot of time trying to get an accurate picture of the events that happened during that time. However, our community partner, Dustin Kaspar, firmly believes that movies have to be told by their proper story tellers. A movie about a certain culture will best be told by someone from within that culture. Someone who understands and has lived among that group. Because creating a feeling is difficult if you don’t entirely understand the feeling.

Reference list:

Black’s Law Dictionary – Free Online Legal Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved November 06, 2017, from http://thelawdictionary.org/

Postman, N. (2007). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business. London: Methuen.

Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America. New York: Back Bay Books.