The other day I went to go see “The Town” with a couple of my friends and after the movie I started to think about the role that movies have on our society. I consider movies to be one of the largest media in our society. They are able to reach a national audience, they are accessible to nearly everyone, and they can be watched at one’s convenience. What is amazing to think about though is the influence that a movie producer can have on our society. Producers and directors have a specific vision that they try to get across to their audience. They use several different tactics, including actor choice, camera angle, lighting and dialogue, to get their point across. Often times, if a producer is good enough, he can manipulate the audience and get his point across without them every noticing.
Chapter 6 in Media Society discussed the different stereotypes that movies have reinforced over the years and how different minority groups, specifically African-Americans, have been portrayed in movies. One of my favorite movies of all time, “Training Day”, stars one of my favorite actors, Denzel Washington. Unfortunately, this movie reinforces some negative stereotypes about African Americans. Denzel plays a glorified cop who is the leader of a Narcotics police force. His team deals specifically with high profile drug traffickers and criminals. Throughout the movie the audience learns more about Denzel’s character and discovers that he is in fact a crooked cop. Years after the movie came out a Rapper named Jadakiss wrote a song called “Why”. One of the lines in this song is “Why did Denzel have to be crooked before he took it”. This line is referring to the fact that while Denzel Washington has played numerous roles before “Training Day”, the first time he received an Oscar was for his role as a crooked cop in “Training Day”. I think this is extremely disappointing and that the first time Denzel is recognized for his acting achievements is when he played a role that reinforced an extremely negative African-American stereotype.
Training Day Trailer:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caqE0DY5t_8
Jadakiss "Why":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-cpL--0AQA&ob=av2e
As we discussed in class, movies are one of the major ways that stereotypes are shown to society. This is very unfortunate because movies are very popular and some people do not notice that what is being portrayed in a film is purely stereotypical and not real. That is why it is important to be able to distinguish between a stereotype and reality.
ReplyDeleteMichael, I really enjoyed your blog. I especially enjoyed how you were able to combine the words of famous lyricist Jason Phillips (AKA Jadakiss) with the teachings of our Media Studies class. No matter how much we try to deny it, stereotypes and generalizations still exist in todays society. I applaud your efforts in being able to decipher stereotypes within the content of D-Block's melodies.
ReplyDeleteYou did a nice job linking your personal moviegoing experiencing with our class discussion. The lyric you quoted is very succinct and making a good observation. I hope to see, however, that you take up this quesiton head on and build your own analysis around it. You mentioned the movie Town at the beginning of the post, but your analysis didn' really follow through with it. Maybe this is where you can put your own two cents in--using the critical perspective provided by the lyric, you can conduct your own analysis of the movie The Town.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I think your post is sincere and thoughtful, but it needs a more organized structure and more in-depth analysis of one artifact.
c.