Mothers, Daughters and Political Socialization ‒ Two Generations at an American Women’s College. By Krista Jenkins (2013). 178 p. Philadephia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press. ISBN-10: 143990927X (original) (raw)
Related papers
The White Savior Film and Reviewers' Reception
Symbolic Interaction, 2010
This article documents the collective interpretations of film reviewers; a position typically associated with individual aesthetic judgment rather than socially shared scripts of explanation. Drawing on the reviews of a feature film with implicit racial content, produced in the context of a supposedly “color-blind” era, this article documents how reviewers constitute a racialized interpretive community. Reviewers rely upon specific cultural frameworks to both contest and reproduce the notion of a “post-racial” society. These interpretations equate non-whites with pathological and dysfunctional traits, frame hard work as a white normative characteristic, and construct deterministic views of both Hollywood’s ability to represent progressive racial representations and the educational system’s potential. This analysis illustrates how film reviews operate as mediating voices between producer and consumer, and in so doing, the interpretations of the film serve as “common-sensed” mappings of the contested terrain of contemporary race relations.
The Impact of White Savior Films on Representation in Hollywood and Society
In Hollywood, perhaps the main source of controversy historically has been the issue of representation for nonwhite groups. Though the industry has certainly made strides since its inception, people of color still are not recognized, paid, or represented as much as their white colleagues. In recent years, however, this conversation has started to become more relevant with certain events and issues triggering a national discussion on how Hollywood can provide more opportunities for POCs in front of and behind the camera. Through this discussion, it is possible and necessary to reflect on how both Hollywood stories and news stories are told through a white savior lens.
Color-Blind Racism: A Review of Whiteness Seen in White Savior Films
This is a Literature Review about characteristics of whiteness seen in contemporary films today, which are considered to be called "White Savior Films." I discuss Color-Blind racism and how its the new form of invisible racism that we use today's society. I describe aspects of whiteness and how it effects our media, popular culture and Hollywood cinema. Films discussed is the review include; Avatar, City of Joy, Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, The Blindside, The Soloist, Hard Ball, Gran Torino, and The Help.
Journal of Black Studies, 2013
Hollywood films reflect the racial order in which they are made. The sociological significance of understanding racial representations within films is highlighted in this study as it recognizes that films offer a useful site for contentious views of the racial order—colorblind and colorconscious—to be played out. Focusing on films with an African American actor and/or actress, this study will highlight how actors and actresses in these films demonstrate the pervasiveness of racial inequality, as well as how the films still maintain a colorblind framework. Although the colorblind framework persists, acknowledging the presence of colorconscious themes is a new perspective that can help challenge the colorblind framework.
The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2020
In her chapter ''Sympathetic Racism: Color-Blind Discourse's Liberal Flair in Three Diverse Communities,'' Meghan A. Burke describes sympathetic racism as ''characterized by an explicit disavowal of racism and racial inequality'' while simultaneously using ''familiar racist tropes.'' It is, she writes, ''liberal in its politics, benevolent in its affect, and often racist in its reliance on cultural assumptions and racial codes'' (pp. 243-44). This essay is for any of us who have put up a sign in our front yard that ''Hatred has no home here'' without figuring out how to put it into action. Based on careful research, Michelle Dodson cautions her readers not to assume that multiracial churches are truly multiracial (p. 199);
Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes In" Magical Negro" Films
Social Problems, 2009
Recent research on African American media representations describes a trend of progressive, antiracist film production. Specifically, “Magical Negro” films (cinema highlighting lower-class, uneducated, and magical Black characters who transform disheveled, uncultured, or broken White characters into competent people) have garnered both popular and critical acclaim. I build upon such evidence as a cause for both celebration and alarm. I first examine how notions of historical racism in cinema inform our comprehension of racial representations today. These understandings create an interpretive environment whereby magical Black characters are relationally constructed as both positive and progressive. I then advance a production of culture approach that examines twenty-six films as resonating within mainstream audiences’ understanding of race relations and racialized fantasies. I find that these films constitute “cinethetic racism”— a synthesis of overt manifestations of racial cooperation and egalitarianism with latent expressions of White normativity and anti-Black stereotypes. “Magical Negro” films thus function to marginalize Black agency, empower normalized and hegemonic forms of Whiteness, and glorify powerful Black characters in so long as they are placed in racially subservient positions. The narratives of these films thereby subversively reaffirm the racial status quo and relations of domination by echoing the changing and mystified forms of contemporary racism rather than serving as evidence of racial progress or a decline in the significance of race.
Race Traitors: White Filmmakers Who Make Black Films
To begin with, I do not use the phrase “race traitor” in its negative or pejorative sense, but instead I use it as an emblem of a certain kind of selfless artistic heroism that honors an individual white filmmaker’s sacrifice of immediate commercial interests in the effort to shift narrative focus from whites to African-Americans within a film. In the analysis that follows I am primarily concerned with white filmmakers who have taken it upon themselves, so to speak, to explore universal humanist themes by shifting narrative focus from whites to African-Americans. This deliberate choice that goes beyond the commercial considerations of the film reveals that the auteur of the film is using the work as a means of personal expression and not just as a means of generic entertainment. Moreover, in my analysis of the form of the films we will see that how these filmmakers break familiar and conventionalized film grammar is how they actually establish their authorial voice and express themselves within the medium of film beyond just the content and the shift of narrative focus from whites to African-Americans. Two films from two White filmmakers will be the major focus of this study: John Cassavetes' SHADOWS (1959) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's WHITY (1970). I will also discuss perhaps the first genuine race traitor filmmaker in American Film History, King Vidor and his film HALLELUJAH, as well as, a more recent race traitor filmmaker, Lance Hammer and his film BALLAST (2008). Yet the overall aim here is not to separate out friend from foe in regards to racial sympathies throughout the canon of highly regarded auteurs, but rather to examine the strength of particular auteurs to surmount certain ideological, political and financial obstacles as they made the narrative shift of racial focus. This is a chapter from my book: Slave Cinema: The Crisis of the African-American in Film 2nd Ed.
Racial Diversity: A Cultural Necessity in a Contemporary, Globalised and White-Washed Hollywood
2017
Traditional tropes of racial stereotyping in both old and contemporary Hollywood cinema lend credence to the continual need for further progression of ethnic representation on screen. Information from sources such as the Motion Picture Association of America (2015: 2) and the Hollywood Diversity Report (2015) establish the industry's economic prominence and global influence over the modern-day film market. By using the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, this research underlines the subliminally domineering effect of culture upon audience perception, thus highlighting the importance of ethnic equality on-screen and denouncing the negligent stereotypes that have plagued mainstream American cinema since conception. America's racial history is imprinted into the subtext of their film culture; the release of The Birth of a Nation (1915) exemplified stereotypical racial profiling and how it's intricately tied to the US political system. After the socio-political event of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the white saviour narrative evolved and is still in use, placing emphasis on friendly depictions of ethnic minorities, whilst covertly coercing the stereotypical minority into subservience for the white protagonist, due to their paternalistic, moral, and messianic qualities. The history of mainstream race depiction contextualise the recent Hollywood trend of Whitewashing (the replacement of a coloured character with a white actor), and combined with the cultural relevance of the capital gained from popular film media, the importance of racial progression and further democratisation of ethnic diversity in our globalised culture is apparent. By drawing correlations between sociological culture theory, the progressive change of public consensus advocated by millennials, and Hollywood's self-detrimental adherence to traditional tropes of racial profiling, the contemporary filmography exemplified in this essay indicate that the demeaning and subversive qualities of the industry's traditional ethnic profiling is still prominent today. Whilst audience research advocates an increasing awareness towards this area of racial relations, the re-evaluation of race-representation on the big screen has become an ever more pressing and necessary endeavour.
Seven Nation Armies: Racial representation in the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster
In the notion of post-racialism, the contemporary society is often considered to be freed from racism, prejudice and discrimination on a macro, institutional level, while claiming that racism has turned into a personal act belonging only to the micro groups. However, many sociologists argue that the post-racial mentality denies the problems around racial diversity and multiculturalism, constructing a false, oblivious atmosphere which helps to ignore racist tendencies and let them live on. In comparison to that, in the aftermath of the 2016’s Oscars, Hollywood also happily congratulated itself with its latest success on producing racially diverse movies with casting and representing as many possible races, nationalities and groups in one single story as possible to fulfill the needs of a post-racial public. While the screen time of racial and minority groups has indeed increased in mainstream American cinema, the classical Hollywood whitewashing and race-bending also keep flourishing, creating a very ambiguous environment, where the aggressive whitewashing and forced diversity of cinema seem to live happily next to each other. The strange and surprising co-living of opposing race representations raises the doubts on whether the obligatory diversity in the cast really is the right way to go for the mainstream cinema or if it offers only surface answers for correctly and innovatively representing the multicultural audience. This thesis aims to show through the representation of different ethnic groups in two major blockbusters from 2016 (The Magnificent Seven, director: Antoine Fuqua and Suicide Squad, director: David Ayer), that the diverse casting without intelligent, purposeful and well-written narrative and characters backlashes and while hoping to show equality, leads to a racist and judgmental final product. With the promised diversity and reaching global audience, these films are not just counterproductive but harmful, as they sugarcoat the act of recreating and further developing the existing racial hierarchy and stereotypes and therefore, they are a perfect representation of the American post-racial society.