Excuses To Live!

According to The Los Angeles Times, the majority of black actors working in quality films seem significantly older (Steven Zeitchik 1.) Let’s not forget how visually obsessed the film industry is. So, surely weight gain, gray hair, and excessive wrinkling will ruin the careers of these aged actors in Hollywood. Subsequently the young black generation of actors will be a necessity to filling the void in future films. Only one problem, young black Hollywood lacks a consistent opportunity to showcase their capability in quality film (Zeitchik 2.) Quality films include great story-lines with fully developed backgrounds for each character excluding any ethnic stereotyping. Basically the character’s script does not determine the characters ethnicity. Some young actors like Anthony Mackie avoid all black cliche films. This creates difficulty in finding quality work in an industry where standards are plummeting (Zeitchik 2.) As result, a younger actor like Mackie loses the battle of booking these films to more experienced black Hollywood actors such as Denzel Washington. If Hollywood allows new faces such as Mackie to grace the big screen when it is time to fill the void then, the viewers will be more familiar with their work.

Multicultural Americans can influence Hollywood by choosing to not support stereotypical films. These viewers can make the first cut in Hollywood’s reconstruction. The second cut includes writers, bloggers, and researchers spreading the good news to the entire world. The third and last step should be the Hollywood film industry making a conscious effort to accurately depict and culturally diversify their films. What Hollywood needs is change and time to recover which requires adequate space and opportunity. If we ever hope to see a Hollywood that looks like many of its supporters then, this process of transformation must begin.

Could it be that Hollywood is purposefully excluding an intricate part of their audience’s makeup? Is Samuel L Jackson’s suspicion of discrimination due to inaccurate portrayals of minorities or lack of minority inclusion on the big screen? Many of Hollywood’s images are imprinted in our memory starting with childhood Disney films. For instance, some will never forget the image of Cinderella’s evil step sisters ripping her dress into scraps. The imprint of this scene might cause one to reflect on the emotion of what the film invokes. This possibly allows the viewer to classify those reflections giving them symbolic meaning such as romance, comedy, or horror. I believe the purpose of a film is to capture a realistic reaction to a hypothetical scenario. What if Cinderella was an Arab-American whose step sisters tore her dress thread by thread? Would her response be completely different from the original Cinderella? Why can’t the Arab-American respond the exact same way as the original Cinderella? What do Disney filmmakers define to be a realistic reaction for her? What do we have in common as an American culture? In theory, we all want the American dream or fairytale ending that symbolizes our own perception of what our society should be. What do you think?

What does Hollywood really look like? Many viewers are asking this exact question as it relates to diversifying the images shown on the big screen. Could the Hollywood film industry improve casting methods to appeal to a multicultural American audience? Should talent be depicted by the color of one’s skin or does talent even need to be measured by skin color? Let’s be honest, Hollywood can be all about the outer: what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, and what it acts like? Without Starlets such as Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, and Tika Sumpter, would we know what beauty looks like? Would we know what the perfect nose or perfect skin look like? The truth is Hollywood is not perfect but plastic. Literally, “According to statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 13,828,726 cosmetic procedures — including the minimally invasive as well as the surgical — were done in the U.S. last year”(Dawson 1). So how do these surgical procedures affect the average movie goer? The answers to these questions vary because of the multicultural perceptions and beliefs in America. This creates feuding points of view that stir up controversy. In particular, Samuel L Jackson’s statements about the 83rd Academy Awards saying, “In the Hollywood I saw tonight, I don’t exist nor does Denzel, Eddie, Will, Jamie, or even a young comer like Anthony Mackie”(Zeitchik,2011)! Jackson continuing, “It’s obvious there’s not one black male actor in Hollywood that’s able to read a teleprompter, or that’s hip enough, for the new academy demographic!” Jackson’s sarcastic statements drew my attention to his controversial innuendos which prompted this post.