Why do sexually desirable women in Hollywood so often get cast in the role of sex worker who gets abused? Why are women characters denied a complex personal journey? Women often have limited dialogue in the full scheme of the story. Men get to be heroes with interesting tales, even when their characters are despicable drunks. Today, women make up only one-third of speaking roles in global movies. Why does Hollywood tell stories the way they do, with racism and racist sexism at the core?
Why cast a Black kid in the role of a thief? Why is it James Earl Jones who voices the villain in Star Wars—who decides that a deep Black male voice represents evil? These questions may seem familiar to students of sociology, but they are not straightforward.
When Black women publicly question this racist and sexist logic, they are denied professional opportunities, even after an Oscar win. When White women directors have an opportunity to tell stories, they often ignore, whitewash and romanticise the intersections of gender and racial inequality.
What I had not thought of before was how someone is consciously creating these representations, whether it be a submissive woman or a character who is a thief casted as a black male or any element that is setting us back. Someone goes out of their way to make these decisions simply to produce a certain reaction. My question is whether or not these directors, filmmakers, musicians, etc. In regards to Madonna, as Bell Hooks spoke of, it seems as though those who partake in this oppression are simply in it for selfish reasons.
Madonna, for instance, a once self-proclaimed feminist, knew that there was more money and stardom on the right than on the left and in an effort of rebranding, she essentially sold herself and women everywhere out for a bigger paycheck. More than the reading, obviously, the Bell Hooks video series really made me angry more than anything.
The actions of a few determine the treatment of many and this, above all else, is probably what leaves me the most frustrated and feeling the most helpless. The Madonna situation is very interesting because of her need to sell out other women and their fight for equality in order to gain success, money and fame. It is sad to think that a woman cannot have all of things while also being an advocate for the feminist movement. Well let them tell me. The other side of it was Asian-bashing—it was as simple as that.
I had been told that the play was about a sexual relationship between the two main characters. Well, it is not. The play just hints at the possibility that white Miss Daisy and her black chauffeur are sweet on each other. Reading the play, it was easy to see the way it relies on those old stereotypes about Southern black men lusting after white ladies to titillate, without interrogating these images.
Whether blatantly racist or condescending to represent the Other, these examples and there are many more give an idea of the attitudes underlying popular culture. And in many ways, a certain unconsciousness about these attitudes has also characterized—even informed—intellectual inquiry into race and racism.
To begin, what does it mean when primarily white men and women are producing the discourse around Otherness? Years ago, when I first left my segregated neighborhood for college, it seemed that the vast majority of college liberal whites were confused: on the one hand, eager to make connections with black people, and on the other, uncertain about the nature of the contract.
They were, however, confident that they were not racists. As the black liberation struggle waned, feminism emerged as a new terrain of radical politics.
Black male literary critics joined the discussion, at times appropriating the subject in ways that made it appear as though they—and not black women—had been at the forefront demanding consideration of these topics.
And as male scholars from various backgrounds and disciplines focused more on culture, particularly popular culture—post-colonial discourse and the work of Third World scholars and critics began to receive widespread attention. The upshot of all this has been the unprecedented support among scholars and intellectuals for the inclusion of the Other—in theory.
For who is controlling this new discourse? Who is getting hired to teach it, and where? Who is getting paid to write about it? One change in direction that would be real cool would be the production of a discourse on race that interrogates whiteness.
In far too much contemporary writing—though there are some outstanding exceptions—race is always an issue of Otherness that is not white; it is black, brown, yellow, red, purple even.
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