Is Hollywood Whitewashing Ethnic Roles?
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Luchina Fisher, ABC News, June 4, 2008
In the new movie “Stuck,” which opened last week, actress Mena Suvari plays a young woman named Brandi, who, after a night of partying, strikes a homeless man with her car, sending him through her windshield, and leaves him to die.
The plot is based on the real-life story of Texas woman Chante Mallard, who, at age 27, was convicted of murder and evidence tampering, and given 50-year and 10-year concurrent sentences after she hit Gregory Biggs and left him to die stuck in her windshield.
Mallard is African-American. Suvari, the blonde, blue-eyed beauty from “American Beauty” and the “American Pie” movies, is not. But she does wear cornrows to play the role of Brandi.
In the realm of Hollywood, where artistic license is the rule and studios need to recoup the millions of dollars they sink into films, it’s not uncommon for white actors to be cast in ethnic roles or for real-life stories to be “whitewashed” to make them more mainstream.
“That movie Mena is in might not have gotten made if she wasn’t in it,” said David Vaccari, a New York-based casting director, who casts for films, television, commercials and theater. {snip}
{snip}
Nia Hill, a black producer working in Hollywood, says the casting of Suvari in “Stuck” is indicative not just of the current state of racism in Hollywood, but reaches back to the very beginnings of the industry. “Unfortunately, the idea that roles that were specifically created for women of color have consistently been offered to white actors, spans at least a century back.”
“Stuck” is only the latest example. Last year, there was “A Mighty Heart,” in which Angelina Jolie, a white actress, played writer Mariane Pearl, who is Afro-Cuban and Dutch and grew up in France. Pearl reportedly wanted Jolie to play her, because she trusted her. But the black blogosphere lit up when the first pictures of Jolie, in a corkscrew wig and tinted makeup, first appeared.
{snip}
Michael Rechtshaffen, a film critic and feature writer for The Hollywood Reporter, believes the reason is financial. “It’s a difficult subject matter. It’s going to be a challenge to get people in the theater, so you want to put your best foot forward,” he said.
{snip}
Similarly, Vaccari believes the film “21,” which came out this spring, would have had little chance of being made if it had stayed true to the story it was based on from the book, “Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to their Knees,” by Ben Mezrich.
The real whiz kid and his partners in crime are Asian American. The filmmakers made them white, with the exception of one Asian, and cast Jim Sturgess, a Brit, as the leader.
{snip}
Still, he believes if the film is based in fact, producers should “always try first to go for the real deal and really make an effort to find an actor who is most representative of the actual person.”
Rechtshaffen wonders if the producers of “Stuck” actually decided against casting a black woman and changed a lot of the facts of the case because they didn’t want it to be offensive to blacks.
{snip}
Vaccari believes the real issue is not what color or ethnicity actors are, but how bankable are they. “It’s hard for all actors, everyone wants more parts,” he said. “At the top, there’s a level of actor who can do whatever they want. If Will Smith wanted to do that part in ‘21,’ he probably could have done it. Will Smith can play a white guy. That’s the reality of the business.”
{snip}
(Posted on June 9, 2008)
Comments
Hollywood and the liberal press generally seem to think that minority problems and non-white crime will dispappear if no one is allowed to mention that the criminals are BLACK or Indians or MEXICANS.
Ignoring a problem does not make it cease to exist but the Marxists also thought that forbiding mentioning an obvious truth would make the real world conform to Marxist theory. That is a major reason all Marxist states fail.
Posted by Oldman at 6:38 PM on June 9
Perhaps they can come out with a new detective program. One set in the suburbs where whites and asians live. Instead of murders the crimes could be jay walking and speeding infractions. The rest of the time they are successful.
Posted by Hugo at 6:45 PM on June 9
Once again the media spin is, “Poor black actors, they don’t get no respect.” What about films where extremely unpleasant, villainous characters who were blacks or other non-whites in the original stories, suddenly became White (usually chosen to look as much like German Nazis as possible)?
Why the whining and complaining by black actors at the same time that many members of the White audience feel that blacks are being handed all the plum roles nowadays? For instance, in the Kenneth Branagh production of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” a leading character is played by a black actor. Was the character black in the original play as written by The Bard? (I really don’t know, and I’m just asking.) If he was not, wasn’t this just an excuse for a black to portray a role that carried a lot of authority and a positive image?
If someone wants to be really daring in filming a Shakespeare play, why don’t they have a White actor portray the role of Othello, and a black play Iago? Would that be any worse than two blacks “whiting up” for “White Chicks”?
Posted by Wayne Engle at 6:47 PM on June 9
Gosh, where to start? Even when the racism is obviously against whites (because they’re portraying a white person as the villain when, in real life, it was a black person) - they still call it “anti-black” racism because the role was given to a white actress. How utterly bizarre!
Secondly we have this:
“Last year, there was “A Mighty Heart,” in which Angelina Jolie, a white actress, played writer Mariane Pearl, who is Afro-Cuban and Dutch and grew up in France. Pearl reportedly wanted Jolie to play her, because she trusted her. But the black blogosphere lit up when the first pictures of Jolie, in a corkscrew wig and tinted makeup, first appeared.”
Sounds like the real character was half black and half white - so why, pray tell, is it racism against blacks to use a white actress? The implication is that, had they ignored the original character’s white ancestry and focused only on her black side, that would not have been racism against whites. So typical.
Posted by jewamongyou at 6:53 PM on June 9
n the realm of Hollywood, where artistic license is the rule and studios need to recoup the millions of dollars they sink into films, it’s not uncommon for white actors to be cast in ethnic roles or for real-life stories to be “whitewashed” to make them more mainstream……………..What do they mean by mainstream.As in the main stream media white washing just about all reportage about crime by blacks.BY the way CSI las Vegas already used this story in one of its episodes.They actually made the perp out to be an arrogant white man who was a Lawyer.Oh they also mentioned in this story that Angelina Jolie waas cast to play a Mullatto women.And that she was white.Turns out Angelina Jolie is not white either.So what is mainstream about portraying black criminals as white.They should try portraying the reality of black crime .They might really make some money.
Posted by at 7:03 PM on June 9
Surely hollywood wouldn’t ever produce propagada that would put whites or Christians in a bad light. Surely they haven’t did so for the last fifty years. I know they haven’t ribbed blacks into hating whites to the point that they would like to kill them or commit other crimes against them. Movies like Mississippi Burning was made to bring us all together. Hollywood has done so much to build up the white Christian men to the point that I don’t think they can stand much more!
Posted by Billy at 7:05 PM on June 9
Blacks get to play White heros.
Whites get to play Black villains.
Sounds fair to me….
Posted by at 7:05 PM on June 9
“Vaccari believes the real issue is not what color or ethnicity actors are, but how bankable are they. ‘It’s hard for all actors, everyone wants more parts,’ he said. ‘At the top, there’s a level of actor who can do whatever they want. If Will Smith wanted to do that part in ‘21,’ he probably could have done it. Will Smith can play a white guy. That’s the reality of the business.’”
WRONG!
Suvari was cast because the idea of black people committing crimes offends liberals and black people, so it’s a no-no. Can’t tell the truth, even when you’re ripping stories from the headlines. How much do you want to bet they make a movie of the Knoxville horror and make it White criminals terrorizing and murdering black victims?
On another note, no, Will Smith cannot play a White guy. He’s honestly not a great actor. He can play certain roles that fit his personality and plays them very well, but that’s all.
Posted by Teutonicus at 7:22 PM on June 9
“Rechtshaffen wonders if the producers of “Stuck” actually decided against casting a black woman and changed a lot of the facts of the case because they didn’t want it to be offensive to blacks.”
===========
He wonders? Of course this is why a white person is playing the killer. We wouldn’t want to show things as they truly were, now would we??
“Liberal think” means always show whitey as the perp, not the victim. After all, they have to keep the ignorant masses in check.
Posted by at 7:41 PM on June 9
As far as the book 21 is concerned I would have to say the following.
For some reason the author chose to give the main character a pseudonym rather than use his real name.
Another factor which may have influenced casting is the way the author describes the main character he describe him as an “anyman” who could be of any race.
If Spacy had actually read the book I think he would have felt free use anyone,I know I would have based on how the author described the main character.
Hollywood films cost a fortune nowadays so I can see why Spacy would made have changes to get the $100 million he needed to make the film.
In the end however the most important thing is whether or not Spacy can tell a good story.
Posted by Yellow Man at 7:43 PM on June 9
Jared Taylor wrote about this in Paved with Good Intentions. In the case of one made-for-TV “true crime” movie, every sympathetic character was made black and every villain became white, although for the most part in reality it was exactly the opposite.
Of course nothing has changed since then. When I saw this headline, I thought “The blacks are going to be claiming this is discrimination against them, instead of what it actually is, rampant political correctness (to put it kindly) or pro-black, anti-white reality distortion (to be more frank). In all my naiveté it never occurred to me that the writer would apparently take the same view! However, considering the writer’s name is Lucinda, I think we might have our explanation.
Posted by Tim in Indiana at 7:54 PM on June 9
This is one of the slicker lies the media uses to explain its behavior. But the steady push of diversity makes the lie rather obvious; if diversity is costing them so much, why are they pushing it so hard? If they’re willing to bite that bullet, then why not bite the bullet and push it when it doesn’t flatter non-whites (blacks, really)?
It also helps to read the subtext here. What’s really being suggested is that whites hate whites, and that they aren’t satisfied unless the bad guy is white. There is a grain of truth to that, given the absurdity that is “white guilt,” but the media is responsible for that nasty little phenomenon in the first place!
So there are two competing (though not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations here:
1) the media, in carrying out its campaign in the culture war against America and whites in general, seeks to put a positive spin on blacks and a negative spin on whites.
2) the media, in giving the customer what it wants, has psychoanalyzed white America and found that it is both racist against blacks (doesn’t want them in lead roles, or filling too many roles overall), and racist against whites (doesn’t want to see negative black roles, only black scientists, philosophers, and gentle heroes).
I think 1 is more consistent with what we see. Whites aren’t naturally racially masochistic, or enamored with blacks. Otherwise how could Jim Crow laws have come about or endured? Think whites in 1940 would’ve wanted to see black males paired with attractive white love interests, or ubercompetent black heroes surrounded by incompetent whites, or black males generally portrayed as haloed victims of whites generally, or a refusal to cast blacks as villains, or whites as more competent than blacks, etc?
Let’s face it, black males make excellent villains, if competence isn’t your thing. They can be quite menacing, especially to a 120 lb. white female theatergoer. And there must be none of that, let me assure you. So, there goes lots of money down the drain; even the “shock jocks” of the “horror” movies know better than to violate that taboo.
(note that when blacks are cast as villains, it’s often via the surprise ending (Underwood in Just Cause; Dutton in Gothika; Jackson in Unbreakable. This allows filmmakers to give us 90 minutes or more of the white bad guy (programming is more effective over time) and 1 minute of black bad guy, and allows them to take advantage of the racist (anti-white) conventions of Hollywood by “shocking” the audience with a black villain (in Hollywood’s Bizarro World, a black villain is a surprise ending). The reverse of this can be seen in Frailty, where the audience gets 90 minutes of insane fundamentalist Christian villains, and 1 minute of “twist ending” fundie Christian heroes.)
Posted by at 7:57 PM on June 9
It´s just like those “ripped from the headlines” Law & Order episodes which switch races all the time. Some time back a black city councilman in NY was shot by the guy that lost to him, in City Hall. L&O did it with, get this, a white evangelical politician as the murderer. A few years back there was a spate of murders of chinese food deliverymen, all done by black teens. The show did it with white teens. And on and on. The show Cold Case is the worst offender these days in that regard, but I remember shows such as the District (with “Coach” Craig T. Nelson) where most of the criminals in 70% black D.C. were white (usually dressed in camo. Get it? Evil white “gun culture”). I guess D.C. had an affirmative action program for white thugs. Guaranteed that if they had done the Chante Mallard case with a black then a)she would be protrayed as a hard working single mom and the accident wasn’t her fault b)the white guy would be shown harrassing her and calling her racist names earlier, so he had it coming and c)there would be an emotional acquittal. It´s long past time we turned off the TV.
Posted by at 8:03 PM on June 9
They do this for two reasons. First of all, black actors/actresses don’t draw in money the way that White ones do. I personally will not pay to watch a movie to see some no talent black hack and his/her one liner cliches. I would also get a funny feeling about being in a movie theatre in the dark seeing a picture that draws lots of black people. Second, if a black is cast in a role that might be offensive, even if based on a true story, it would cause a great deal of howling at the NAACP.
It’s probably been fifteen years since I’ve seen a negative stereotype of a black on TV. All the pimps are White guys in feathered hats and mink coats, the drug dealers are Nordic bikers and the crack w*h*r*s all look like Brittany Spears. Even a gang is comically portrayed as multicultural with a few blacks, a few hispanics, a few Whites and even a Chinese thrown it.
Posted by at 8:50 PM on June 9
Another white washed hate film. This is only the latest of a long line of movies that change a black criminal into a white one. Will the racial reverse of this ever happen? Dont count on it.
Posted by Peejay in Frisco at 8:58 PM on June 9
Is Spike Lee going to protest this movie?
Posted by at 9:07 PM on June 9
“Will Smith can play a white guy.”
How is this possible? When he portrayed “Jim West” in “The Wild, Wild West,” he didn’t look White, and as a result, the movie was ridiculous. How could a black have been in training as a secret service agent for the US government before blacks were even granted the right to vote? A black agent in President Grant’s time would have been mistaken for somebody’s butler just about anywhere in the country!
If Hollywood makes a movie about Martin L king, can Will smith play the role of James Earl Ray?
“But she does wear cornrows to play the role of Brandi.”
Oh, OK. So if blonde Whites braid their hair, they can masquerade as blacks. I think I’ll try this to reap some government benefits denied me because I am White.
How much more absurd can this country’s popular culture get? As absurd as its government and media, I suppose.
Posted by lady linda at 9:08 PM on June 9
“Nia Hill, a black producer working in Hollywood, says the casting of Suvari in ‘Stuck’ is indicative not just of the current state of racism in Hollywood, but reaches back to the very beginnings of the industry.”
This is almost so laughable, it is beyond belief!
Blacks are griping because this film casts a white woman in the role of a real life black murderess in a very heinous crime, and have the gall to cry racism?
Then all the other studio wonks and mouthpieces chime in to claim that it all boils down “marketability” and “profit margins,” as a sort of duck and cover for this travesty?
It all boils down to a win-win situation for the Hollywood “elites” and freaks, this being that “whitey” gets the tar and feathers all around. The Marxist propaganda mill of anti-white hate can yet again portray us as inherently wicked, while indulging in class warfare. This is because the victim is “homeless” and can act as a mechanism for demonstrating white bourgeois indifference to the suffering of the “disadvantaged,” while living (or wallowing) in self-indulgence, as the perpetrator is a drunken nurse who is also addicted to drugs. Then blacks (who am sure would be besides themselves with fury, if the truth were really portrayed) can do exactly what they are doing here, which is to cry “racism.”
Then, comes the feedback loop of white Hollywood’s groveling and self-flagellation, over their misguided neglect of those of color. As if honestly telling the truth of the Chante Mallard atrocity (with the races fully intact for all the players) is what anyone from any of the camps would desire. The only real mistake here for white Hollywood, was not casting Samuel L. Jackson or Lawrence Fishburn as the victim.
As always, God help us all!
Posted by John PM at 9:09 PM on June 9
If more people were like me Hollyweird would go broke.
I don’t watch revisionist films or those with a black in one of the central roles or those that depict blacks as high level people or professional ones.
In other words, I don’t watch Cultural Marxist propaganda.
Posted by Ranger at 9:15 PM on June 9
“Rechtshaffen wonders if the producers of “Stuck” actually decided against casting a black woman and changed a lot of the facts of the case because they didn’t want it to be offensive to blacks.”
Ya think????
You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Posted by at 9:17 PM on June 9
Just look any episode of the Law & Order series. Major news cases are constnatly re-written to make whites the bad guy.
Posted by at 9:19 PM on June 9
Although way older than the target demographic, I see a lot of movies. A LOT. But, if the stars in a film are black, I will almost always give it a skip. Same thing with TV: too many black faces, “click.” That even includes the only 2 black actors I like, Will Smith & Denzel Washington. They’re just not getting any more of my money.
I often wonder how many people like me are simply not interested in paying to see blacks in major roles. It would explain why you can count the major black stars on one hand, & why Hollywood re-writes black stories with white actors.
Posted by JustPlainMean at 9:30 PM on June 9
Rules of character engagement:
(1) African - Americans are smart, Whites are not!
(2) African - Americans are rich, Whites are not!
(3) African - Americans have pretty women (many of whom are
white), Whites do not!
(4) African - Americans are in charge, Whites are not!
(5) African - Americans are the heroes, Whites are the criminals!
(6) African - Americans are professional, Whites are blue
collar!
(7) If African - Americans are criminals they are still somehow
noble, and it’s the Whites who are the real criminals!
(8) African - Americans are young and in shape, Whites are all
old and fat (except for the pretty white girls who all love
the African - American heroes or anti - heroes)! However in
all black comedies its O.K. for an occasional African -
American to be fat; but even then, he or she is invariably
smarter than his or her White counterpart!
(9) African - Americans are all sexual athletes and magnets
for the opposite sex, Whites appear either asexual or
impotent!
(10) African - Americans are always right, Whites are seldom,
if ever, right!
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 9:40 PM on June 9
“Is Hollywood Whitewashing Ethnic Roles”
Hollywood has been misrepresenting and unjustly stereotyping people for years and years. They know they do this, hence, all the craziness that results when they try to make up for it. Italians are all mobsters, Germans are all evil scientists, Pollocks are dimwitted, Japanese are sneaky people, all blacks like chicken or ribs, etc. etc. etc. In fact, I would say that Hollywoods record has been one of mass deception and illusion since it began as an industry. Movie making has mostly been agenda driven.
Posted by Bobby at 9:41 PM on June 9
“Nia Hill, a black producer working in Hollywood, says the casting of Suvari in “Stuck” is indicative not just of the current state of racism in Hollywood, but reaches back to the very beginnings of the industry. “Unfortunately, the idea that roles that were specifically created for women of color have consistently been offered to white actors, spans at least a century back.””
Not only would Hollywood likely lose money on an unknown non-White star, they would also be missing an opportunity to show Whites as evil people.
They are not that stupid.
Posted by True Resistance at 9:44 PM on June 9
Outside of Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Latifa and possibly Samuel Jackson, there are very few Black actors who would be a box office guarentee.
Posted by Larry at 9:53 PM on June 9
The camera doesnt lie… Check out the Reality TV shows where the bad guys are caught on tape.. and note the racial realities. Time after time the bad guys are Black… not that it is ever pointed out!
Posted by at 9:59 PM on June 9
At first I was curious how they would explain away such obvious attempts at historical revisionism of the decidedly “PC” variety…then they just resorted back to the same old canard, turning reality on it’s head. Yes, it’s just still MORE white wickedness and racism after all.
Posted by HH at 10:04 PM on June 9
This is not new. The movie “Casualties of War” released in 1989 was based on a very ugly war crime that occurred in Vietnam. A squad composed almost entirely of blacks wishing to play ‘Genhis Ghan’ took a young vietnamese girl from her family and raped and brutalized her for several days before finally killing her. In the movie they were all portrayed as whites except for a hispanic as one of the two privates that tried to prevent and lessen the crime.
When the movie was released I was outraged by the dishonesty of hollywood and havnt had any respcect for the movie industry ever since.
Posted by LJR at 10:54 PM on June 9
Putting a black actress in the role of a black killer would portray black women in a negative light, and Hollywood would not tolerate that. There have been a number of fairly recent movies starring black actors, and they are always shown as saviors. This is ridiculous. If Chante were a heroine, a black actress would be playing her.
Posted by Ginny at 11:06 PM on June 9
An especially grievous example of this sort of thing is the “Law and Order” franchise, which I used to enjoy. In recent years they’ve increased dramatically their “ripped from the headlines” plots, taking inspiration from Michael Jackson’s myriad problems, the Hmong shooting incident in Wisconsin, and many similar news stories; without exception the black or (less often) Asian or mestizo criminal is recast as a white.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 11:24 PM on June 9
“[I]t’s not uncommon for white actors to be cast in ethnic roles or for real-life stories to be ‘whitewashed’ to make them more mainstream.”
What a bunch of baloney. Hollywood has been shoving minorities down mainstream America’s throat from the silent film days. Blacks must be seen in such make believe roles as computer geniuses, life saving surgeons, and rocket scientists. They specialize as the innocent victim brutalized by whites.
Studies have shown the people like to see faces of people like themselves; the more attractive the better. Yet Hollywood insists on plastering full screen close-ups of unattractive black faces. This forces sensitive whites like me to stop watching.
The only time you can watch a movie, is if it’s a period piece where blacks don’t figure. Films about WWII, ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval England, (except for Robin Hood, Kevin Costner, who needed the help of a black guy, Morgan Freeman, to save England) are a good bet.
Hollywood griped about the Legion of Decency that monitored movies for promoting immorality. I hope they bring back the Legion and add a race realist.
Posted by P Noctura at 12:02 AM on June 10
“Outside of Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Latifa and possibly Samuel Jackson, there are very few Black actors who would be a box office guarentee.”
I wouldn’t go that far to say these actors you’ve named are box office guarantees but I will say they recycle these same people in one picture after another over and over again.
Posted by at 12:04 AM on June 10
JustPlainMean wrote: “But, if the stars in a film are black, I will almost always give it a skip.”
Ranger wrote (the same thing, saying): “In other words, I don’t watch Cultural Marxist propaganda.”
Count me as one more person doing this. In the video store, while picking out movies that I might want to rent, I find myself putting the DVD back on the shelf if it has prominant black actors on the outer jacket.
It comes from a “Just Say NO to Propaganda” attitude, one small thing I can do to fight that creeping sense of disgust. (Reading Amren comments gave this attitude a big boost.)
Posted by Reader-1 at 12:18 AM on June 10
I was watching Titanic and I realized one thing I really like about the movie is that the cast is 100 percent white! No gutter languge. Just people acting like good, honest people under tragic circumstances.
I just can’t abide black culture. I don’t deserve to have it inflicted on me. I’m a good person. I haven’t done anything to anyone. I don’t want that type of garbage in my life.
Posted by at 12:21 AM on June 10
It´s just like those “ripped from the headlines” Law & Order episodes which switch races all the time. Some time back a black city councilman in NY was shot by the guy that lost to him, in City Hall. L&O did it with, get this, a white evangelical politician as the murderer. A few years back there was a spate of murders of chinese food deliverymen, all done by black teens. The show did it with white teens.
Why do I always hear people griping about “Law & Order“‘s bias? My reaction to such people is this: if you don’t like it, stop watching the show. I sure don’t. TV’s mostly a waste of time anyway.
As for “21”: sad that they had to remake the story. An all-Asian cast would actually have been interesting and distinctive (not to mention truthful). I haven’t seen it yet, and would be far likelier to if it had such a cast (and I’m white).
Posted by Alan at 1:34 AM on June 10
Blatant and disgusting hypocrisy — and all-too-typical of latter-day Hollyweird. Villains in movies are inevitably portrayed by whites — even when all logic says they should be black. Or, as in this case, when the story is based on true events and the perp actually WAS black.
But then, producers know what hits the fan when they DON’T follow this unwritten rule. They remember what happened to director Mike Nichols in the ’90s with the movie “Wolf.”
In that film, some young criminals attempt to rob Jack Nicholson’s character at an ATM. Standard operating procedure in such a situation demands that the crims be either an all-white gang (highly unlikely) or a Rainbow Coalition of various races working (absurd). Mike Nichols — despite being a lifetime liberal Democrat — felt that either of those options were bogus, and would damage his story’s believability. So the director took the bold step of making Nicholson’s cash-machine muggers exclusively black.
The liberal media and race pimps like Sharpton repaid the director’s sociological honesty by accusing him of stereotyping, raking him over the coals, and generally giving him holy hell.
Posted by at 1:43 AM on June 10
How anybody could claim that Hollywood is either consciously or unconsciously anti-black and pro-white is beyond me.
I mean, how many more times does Will Smith have to save the universe before blacks will stop complaining?
If anything Hollywood is anti-white and pro-black.
I can’t even remember the last time I saw a Hollywood film where there wasn’t at least one scene in which an ugly, bigoted, impotent, dumb, old, and inarticulate white character was “put in his place” by a good-looking, enlightened, virile, intelligent, young, and articulate black character.
That’s one of the main reasons why I stopped watching Hollywood films.
Now I only watch indie films.
It’s the only place you can find talented white actors in films that don’t cater to the self-esteem of non-whites today.
Posted by Mean Gene at 2:16 AM on June 10
The worst Television series that uses “artistic license” in it’s stories is Law & Order.
By watching that show, you’d think that Manhattan was constantly teeming with White predators and criminals and that blacks are these saintly members of the NYPD just trying to get by.
Hardly ever do you see a black portrayed negatively on that series, despite that blacks are responsible for the VAST majority of crime all over New York City.
Posted by at 2:42 AM on June 10
Those black bloggers are right.
Hollywood is pro-white and totally racist.
I can’t even remember the last time I went to a movie and didn’t have to sit through over 90 minutes of hip, good-looking, young, and intelligent white actors arguing on and on about how white people have ethnic genetic interests too — and that immigration, affirmative action, feminism, consumer capitalism and the welfare state all threaten the very existence of whites as a distinct people.
I mean, can’t those racists out there in Hollywood come out with something new for a change?
Posted by Mean Gene at 2:44 AM on June 10
McCarthy was right, Hollywood is simply the place that the
leftwing has its propaganda made. A job shop.
Posted by at 6:30 AM on June 10
One of the conventions I have noticed in my very rare viewings of popular shows is that while in many shows the hero may be white, his boss will be a black male, the judge will be a black female. In advertisement, a non ethnic white will act very goofy and we will see a black looking on with amazement or disdain.
On another level we see cases in movies and TV where, if there was a role reversal, there would be howls of racism. My favorite example is the book/movie “A Time to Kill”. As I understand the plot, a nice black girl is raped/murdered by a couple of rednecks. The girl’s father kills them. The father goes to trial and the goodguy lawyer gets him off. Turn this all around, white girl, black rapists (statistically more the norm in this country), and it would be called a lynching! The white father’s lawyer would be seen as a slimy creep (John Edwards would be perfect for the role!)The guys who got lynched, their parents would be played by James Earl Jones and Denzel Washington etc.
Posted by at 7:18 AM on June 10
Well, according to inside circles if this movie is not rejected by the dumb white public the next production along these lines will be the Deborah Evans story. As the movie goes Deborah a black woman who is working her way though college with two little black children and also a white baby by a white man is again pregnant by a white man. A gang of white racist (are there any other kind) murders her and cut the white baby out of her body, kills her two black children in theirs beds but takes the the white child she had already had along with the white child torn from her body.
If you want to read the real story on which this screen play is based go to the January 1996 AR on line. Hey if they can do this, “Stuck” they can do anything.
http://www.amren.com/ar/1996/01/
Posted by mAX3A at 7:26 AM on June 10
One of the few movies where black criminal thugs are realistically depicted is Jackie Brown. Of course, the star of the film is Pam Grier.
Posted by Sardonicus at 7:51 AM on June 10
“This is not new. The movie “Casualties of War” released in 1989 was based on a very ugly war crime that occurred in Vietnam. A squad composed almost entirely of blacks wishing to play ‘Genhis Ghan’ took a young vietnamese girl from her family and raped and brutalized her for several days before finally killing her. In the movie they were all portrayed as whites except for a hispanic as one of the two privates that tried to prevent and lessen the crime.”
Posted by LJR at 10:54 PM on June 9
I watched that movie of what was an extremely harrowing event on TV here in the UK about 6/7 years ago in which, if I remember, the hapless girl, half starved and heavily bruised and lacerated by now eventually jumped into a ravine or something like that, to get away from her tormentors who at this point were arguing over whether to finish her off while the soldier who had been trying to protect her all along, kept trying to talk them out of it.
I had no idea the real perps were African-Americans. That’s quite a revelation to me as I’m sure it will be to half the world who happen to tune into AmRem.
Posted by A Swain at 8:39 AM on June 10
The producers of the movie “21” never intended for a black actress to play the part. Some part of their thinking was, of course, revenue but the bottom line is that they were not going to put a black woman in the part because it would offend blacks.
When was the last time any of us saw a movie where the bad guy was black. I think the last one I saw was “Witness” with Harrison Ford and Danny Glover was actually one of the bad drug dealing cops.
Whether it’s the movies, television or even commercials, you can’t find a white guy who isn’t being portrayed as the murderer, drug dealer, pedophile or rapist. Even the white guys in commercials are almost always (and I’d say 99.99% of the time) portrayed as dunderheads, stupid, unshaven morons. Two commercials come to mind that seem to be shown quite a lot. The windex commercial and the the trashbag commercial where the 2 fat guys are trying to hoist a grand piano up the side of a building. I’m sure lots of people have seen that one. I can’t think of one commercial I’ve seen in the recent past where the guy isn’t some stupid jerk.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 10:03 AM on June 10
Have they made a movie about MLK yet? Let’s see if they pick a white guy, who is “bankable” to play that part.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 10:04 AM on June 10
“(note that when blacks are cast as villains, it’s often via the surprise ending (Underwood in Just Cause; Dutton in Gothika; Jackson in Unbreakable. This allows filmmakers to give us 90 minutes or more of the white bad guy (programming is more effective over time) and 1 minute of black bad guy, and allows them to take advantage of the racist (anti-white) conventions of Hollywood by “shocking” the audience with a black villain (in Hollywood’s Bizarro World, a black villain is a surprise ending). The reverse of this can be seen in Frailty, where the audience gets 90 minutes of insane fundamentalist Christian villains, and 1 minute of “twist ending” fundie Christian heroes.)”
Yes they made Samuel L. Jackson the villain in the end of “Unbreakable” BUT, he also had a debilitating disease and was in a wheelchair. Anytime, a black man is portrayed as the villain, there are usually extenuating circumstances. However, whitey is just plain out evil.
Posted by at 10:08 AM on June 10
“(note that when blacks are cast as villains, it’s often via the surprise ending (Underwood in Just Cause; Dutton in Gothika; Jackson in Unbreakable. This allows filmmakers to give us 90 minutes or more of the white bad guy (programming is more effective over time) and 1 minute of black bad guy, and allows them to take advantage of the racist (anti-white) conventions of Hollywood by “shocking” the audience with a black villain (in Hollywood’s Bizarro World, a black villain is a surprise ending). The reverse of this can be seen in Frailty, where the audience gets 90 minutes of insane fundamentalist Christian villains, and 1 minute of “twist ending” fundie Christian heroes.)”
Yes they made Samuel L. Jackson the villain in the end of “Unbreakable” BUT, he also had a debilitating disease and was in a wheelchair. Anytime, a black man is portrayed as the villain, there are usually extenuating circumstances. However, whitey is just plain out evil.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 10:09 AM on June 10
I’m from Texas and I remember this case about 5 years ago. The woman driving the car was black and high on drugs when she accidentally struck a white man late at night. The white man was seriously injured and was stuck in her windshield. Instead of calling for help, she drove home with him lodged in her windshield, put her car into her garage and went inside and had sex with her boyfriend. Badly injured , he died 3 days later in her garage, still stuck in the windshield. She got some friends and secretly buried the body but was tipped off to the police when someone heard her bragging at a party that she had run over a white man. An autopsy determined the man could have been saved had he gotten early medical attention. The woman claimed she was sorry and had apologized to the man, yeah right. Anyways, she got 60 years in prison. Of course in the movie version, the woman will be white and I’ll bet the victim will be black.
Posted by Jo at 10:15 AM on June 10
The media can always do this in good conscience, because in a nation of 300 million people, they can always find a white person somewhere who has committed an unspeakable crime of the kind blacks do as normal, such as youths beating up a homeless person. If not, they’ll just make one up or stage the crime, or incident.
In fact with all this hate-crime and ‘racism’ stuff, you could say that is exactly what has been happening for the last 50 years or more.
Lifetime is one of the biggest purveyors of this telling a true-story but switching the races for the film. They do have some good movies though.
Posted by LHathaway at 10:34 AM on June 10
My favorite is the portrayal of black families in commercials.
I almost feel like I should genuflect when they appear on screen.
These faultless black people are of course always led by the ever present, benevolent black father.
Posted by Dennis at 12:45 PM on June 10
Just wait till Summer! A new movie coming out is called “LongShots”. Basic plot is: African American girl is better than white male team in football after father who abondoned her mother shows up and gives her some “street smarts”. White males in team are all out of shape, short, fat and clumsy. Clips shows the film is full of “football in the balls of the fat kid” type jokes. White males are all insecure about their sexuality because they don’t want to shower with her in the locker room. You get the idea. Coming to a theater to brainwash your children this summer.
Posted by Gun Runner at 1:19 PM on June 10
I remember when this story actually happened. As I heard it, the woman was on X, and she was kind enough to bring the man some magazines to read while his life bled out in her car. I don’t think “hate crime” is proper for this situation due to the offering of reading material.
Posted by at 1:36 PM on June 10
“Why do I always hear people griping about “Law & Order“‘s bias? My reaction to such people is this: if you don’t like it, stop watching the show. I sure don’t. TV’s mostly a waste of time anyway.”
We point it out because propaganda must be challenged everywhere.
Actually I don´t watch these shows but a lot of young whites do. That´s why we should challenge them. We here on Amren are not “griping”, we’re trying to correct the lies that the main purveyors of pop culture are spreading about white people. This is not just some matter of choice issue. It’s quite a bit more serious than that.
Posted by at 2:07 PM on June 10
Why do I always hear people griping about “Law & Order“‘s bias? My reaction to such people is this: if you don’t like it, stop watching the show. I sure don’t. TV’s mostly a waste of time anyway.
LOL. Standard know-nothing response. Do you say similar things to blacks when they complain? I doubt it.
Let me explain propaganda to you: it works to the degree that it goes unrecognized. So we’re pointing out the propaganda in the hopes that word of it will spread and the ignorant will stop absorbing it.
Know-nothings always like to downplay the power of the media; will that be in your next post?
I mean really, think about what a hypocrite you are! I guarantee that if we look long enough we could find some kind of programming that would offend you, that you wouldn’t want aired: A holocaust flick with the Jews as the bad guys? An Apartheid flick with the blacks as the bad guys? A television series where every story is “ripped from the headlines,” but the villains are recast as (blacks/Jews/Hispanics/Asians/whatever)? A WWII flick with the Nazi as the heroes? A Cold War flick with Americans as villains and Soviets as heroes? How long do we have to theorize like this before we get to your tender spots, and you start “griping”?
Posted by Svigor at 2:15 PM on June 10
It’s hard for me to sit through most TV and movie shows nowadays. Sure, I can enjoy watching King of Queens and like Deacon and I like Will Smith and the occassional black movie.
But what annoys the heck out of me is the multi-cultural propaganda. For instance on the Saturday morning kids show, “Raven” they once had an episode where this girl visits the school and she’s supposed to be Russian. One problem. The girl is black! Then there’s Seasme Street which my kids sometimes watch. They’re always doing some piece on Jamaica or some African country and celebrating diversity. I notice that with most CSI and docu dramas that the bad guy is almost always white. In the TV commercials there’s always a black couple hanging around with a white couple, always.
Last night on “Nashville Stars” (a country music version of American Idol)I noticed they had 12 candidates competing to win. Guess what? One of them was a black guy and then there was a hispanic guy. Maybe the hispanic guy I can understand but still they have all of their Aztec America shows to compete on.
Lately we’ve been watching some 1950’s movies and boy, it was an entirely different world back then! When the movie ends, I feel I’ve been entertained, I don’t feel frazzled, “dirty” or melancholoy like many of today’s movies make you feel. I also now enjoy watching those “period movies” featured in England back during Elizabeth’s day and movies like Pride and Prejudice and I’m a guy!
Posted by RealityCheck at 2:40 PM on June 10
One reason I rarely watch any TV crime shows, including 24, is the preponderance of white villains and black heros/victims. This is being done in my view, in a concerted effort to continue to obscure the general population from real crime stats and the realitiy of our state of disunion, due to the very real fear they have about what would happen if the white majority ever realized the truth. They hope to finish breeding out the white majority first.
Posted by Whiteplight at 2:54 PM on June 10
All of the Charles Bronson movies based on the NY subway vigilante (Name withheld) who shot black perps - show mostly whites as the criminals.
Posted by Whiteplight at 2:56 PM on June 10
If Hollywood was willing to accurately portray the racial aspect of crime (black perps, white victims, etc.), black actors might suddenly find themselves getting a lot more work.
Posted by Kevin at 3:49 PM on June 10
“Racism’ for many Blacks has often come to mean anything that isn’t totally permissive of anything they want to say or do, or anything that somehow frustrates their wishes, whether reasonable or otherwise.
Posted by at 3:54 PM on June 10
For decades businessmen and Christian leaders have been public enemies Nos.1 and 2 in Hollywood. They are usually portrayed as crooks and hypocrites, if not murderers.
Posted by Middle-aged Magnolia at 4:14 PM on June 10
I have seen bits and pieces of the movie “Casualties of War”. Isn’t that the one with Michael J. Fox. I’ve never seen it from start to finish but I never knew that the real soldiers were black. Isn’t that interesting but not surprising.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 4:18 PM on June 10
Ugh… What is with the mainstream media saying a girl has blond hair when her eyebrows are clearly darker than tyrone’s.
Dying her hair blond does not make her genetics blond. Also, her eyes are green.
Posted by at 5:15 PM on June 10
Several years ago, Nicholas Stix documented several cases of Law & Order casting white villains in the role of real-life black criminals.
http://geocities.com/nstix/lawandorder.html
When Law and Order Criminal Intent did the Duke lacrosse case, they pulled a double switcheroo. The false accuser wasn’t black, but the sympathetic athlete was. And for the viewers who realized the races had been reversed and were reluctant to swallow their weekly dose of white guilt, the athlete’s black father was gratuitously confined a wheelchair, having been attacked at a bar (presumably by white men) for defending a woman’s honor. Even the best students of the Duke lacrosse rape hoax would have empathized with that.
Posted by at 7:33 PM on June 10
Bet Spike Lee won’t be complaining that a white woman was cast in the role of a true life crime that a black female was guilty of. But will continue to lambast Eastwood for not rewritting history, and making it seem as though Black fought on the front line in Iwo Jima.
Posted by at 8:14 PM on June 10
This is done over and over. If they opposite had been done, even once, if heinous true crime deeds committed by hateful whites were to be acted out onscreen by black actors, it would be very racist.
It seems the enlightened do think having white actors portraying evil deeds committed by non-whites is racism… racism against people of color of all things.
Posted by at 10:13 PM on June 10
I’m sure amren readers will remember the story a while back about the two lesbians in Minnesota who took in the black Katrina refugee and her young son. The black refugee was arrested for assaulting the lesbians because they wouldn’t let her son use their computer to download hip-hop music (they were afraid that their computer could get infected with viruses and malware.) Anyway, just yesterday, I was thinking to myself, “I bet someone will make a movie about that, but they’ll make the lesbians black and make the Katrina refugees racist rednecks who wanted to download Toby Keith songs.”
Posted by qwerty at 11:22 PM on June 10
“Lately we’ve been watching some 1950’s movies and boy, it was an entirely different world back then! When the movie ends, I feel I’ve been entertained,”
That’s because back in the 50’s, unlike today, shows and movies were for entertaining. They didn’t try to push, either openly or subtley, some political agenda.
Posted by at 7:46 AM on June 11
Posted by Svigor at 2:15 PM on June 10
By way of addendum: I actually LIKE watching the most propagandistic shows now, the same way a virologist likes examining viruses under controlled conditions.
Posted by Svigor at 11:20 AM on June 11
More blatant racism against Whites: in “Walker, Texas Ranger” the bad guy is ALWAYS white. And oftentimes he is an Evil White Supremacist.
To Alan: I recommend “21.” (Just don’t watch it with your kids.) I wouldn’t have liked that movie with Asian characters, myself. I couldn’t have sympathized with the main character.
Basically, your best bet for entertainment is watching old movies that were made back in the days when more people knew and did what was right. The stuff that passes for “entertainment” today usually has more minuses than plusses to it…
Posted by Mai Opinion at 11:21 AM on June 11
“Studies have shown the people like to see faces of people like themselves; the more attractive the better. Yet Hollywood insists on plastering full screen close-ups of unattractive black faces. “
Did anyone ever see that version of Othello with Lawrence Fishbourne and Kenneth Branigan?
The Director of Photography decided to go with wat are sometimes called “nostril shots” extreme closeups of just lips nose and eyes. It is supposed to creat intimacy. But Fishbourne and Branigan are 2 of the ugliest men ever.
It was horrible looking at those 2 ugly faces for 2 hours.
Posted by at 2:59 PM on June 11
Marianne Pearl family is from Cuba. She looks about 1/16th black. The only feature that appears black is her hair. Her skin is a very light tan. She has a big caucasian medieterran type nose and the rest of her features are white.
She doesn’t look black at all. She looks like a lot mixed race cubans and S. Americans.
When I first saw her, I assumed she was an arab.
Posted by at 3:11 PM on June 11
Before Daniel Craig was settled on as James Bond, after Pierce Brosnan’s exit; there was some talk that Will Smith would play James Bond. Yech!
To Gayle Sollenberger:
The last movie I remember that had a Bantu villain in it, was Ving Rhames in “Pulp Fiction” - with a white wife (Uma Thurman).
Don’t know if you remember, but, a few years ago on Fox, there was a (mercifully short) series called “Roar”. It took place in medieval Ireland, but it actually had Bantus portraying Irish warriors in it!
Talk about political correctness gon haywire.
Posted by Soprano Fan at 4:04 PM on June 11
“Ignoring a problem does not make it cease to exist but the Marxists also thought that forbiding mentioning an obvious truth would make the real world conform to Marxist theory. “
Posted by Oldman at 6:38 PM
——————————-
Beverly Hills Marxists! A real irony, isn’t it? But nevertheless, it’s the truth.
Just because they’re wallowing in money doesn’t mean they’re any less faithful to their Russian grandparent’s ideals.
Posted by at 12:54 AM on June 12
“Lately we’ve been watching some 1950’s movies and boy, it was an entirely different world back then…” That’s because back in the 50’s, unlike today, shows and movies were for entertaining. They didn’t try to push, either openly or subtley, some political agenda.
Posted by 7:46 AM
- — — — — — —
Actually, for those of us who can remember, they DID [push propaganda]. But they did so more carefully. Just look at any of the WW2 movies. And all the race-oriented movies that followed after that: those with Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte as your typical black saints.
Hollywood ALWAYS had an agenda. It served a purpose going beyond entertainment. But back then it was just less brazen, less blatant than it is now.
Posted by browser at 5:22 PM on June 12
Regarding “21” - most of the card counters in Vegas and in fact most of those out of MIT etc have been, and are, white. The reason the movie “21” was made is because they were able to cast Asians in the first place, even if not the leads. The Discovery Channel (or maybe A&E) did a program on the kids from MIT and they spoke with one Asian kid and one white young man of Russian extraction.
Yes, Hollywood is run by Beverly Hills (and Malibu) Marxists. Socialism is for YOU, to keep YOU in line. Not for them. They’re better than you. They’re supposed to be in charge.
Posted by Tired of L.A. at 7:06 PM on June 12
I got a big kick recently from ads for the film “The Debaters” where apparently Denzel Washington leads a team of young black academians to kick lilly-white Harvard debaters’ butts. Or at least thats how the ads look. I’ll never go see it- just more lunacy from the left. In reality, they’d have to comb the entire country to put together a team of black academians who are that far above the black average IQ to be able to shut down even normal white debate teams. And we’re talking about a top-notch white debate team. Was there a secret government search for Martian blacks when they sent the Mars Rovers up or something that we don’t know about?
Posted by Winston Smith at 2:49 PM on June 15
Yes, I remember this case. The black woman got three black male friends, one an ex-con to get rid of the body. In the new and improved politically correct Hollywood version however, the woman is of course white. She’ll likely be portrayed as hard partying, sexually promiscuous “white trailer trash” complete with a horribly fake Texas twang(Hollywood can never do southern accents) and the three men who help her discard the body will be shown as a bunch of evil, white, beer swilling rednecks sporting mullets and “wifebeater” shirts. Of course the victim will likely be shown as a noble decent black man, in the wrong place at the wrong time who falls victim to evil white trash.
Posted by at 2:39 AM on June 16