Non White Characters example essay topic

Let's go to the movies! Let's go see the stars! By Navi rah Zafar Ji lani Silver screen is one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world today. With such a wide audience base, movies can touch and influence lives in ways no other forms of media can do in their attempts to entertain the audience.

It is no wonder that producers and filmmakers fill their movies with messages that can and do strike sensitive chords in society. Movies cannot solely be confined to entertainment, but an in-depth study helps understand what baggage is brought with them: a whole setup of ideologies, attitudes and mechanism of the controlling power. Media organisations and filmmakers start developing movies with preconceived notions of communities, races, religions and genders. There are many factors such as script, dialogues, characters, shots, wardrobe, lighting, makeup and many more which constitute the build up of any portrayal. It is through these units, one can understand how downplay of various non-white characters results in positive and negative portrayals. A handful of firms dominate the globalised part of the media system.

Many media organisations lack in delivering social values and responsibility, they merely serve the purpose of exploiting consumers' minds in order to instigate a stereotypical image of anything which is not white. These were the findings of a research carried out by Mehta b Ismail, a media student at the University of the Punjab. Her research revolved around the premise that non-white characters are always portrayed in negative connotations against their white counterparts. American cinema has always been a pioneer in creating, sustaining and reinforcing imagery of non-whites.

Race for many may vary, but it is a complex term defined not by biology as much as by politics, history, fear and social hierarchy. Often these forces are disguised as scientific truths, in order to assert their authority as objective. The objectivity, assumed to reside in photographic media including film, makes it apparent as to why images of races have such authority on the minds of ordinary people. Race is an ideological term bearing imagined, stereotyped social and behavioural qualities or as an ever changing socio-cultural construction. The portrayal of white and non-white characters in movies is always in opposite. The white muscular male is always shown as law abiding, down to earth, protecting environment and looking to benefit everyone in his surrounding.

On the other hand, the evil non-white, be it black, Asian, Native American or Caribbean, is in one way or the other trying to create menace and destruction in society of the white. When black men appear in Soderbergh films, such as Out of Sight, Traffic and Full Frontal, they frequently threaten white nuclear families or white heterosexual couples. Such a portrayal of black masculinity corresponds to long-standing national hysteria about perceived black threats to white bodies. Mah wish Shaheen, an adminstrator at an accountancy institution, believes the stories of black characters are always in secondary plots and the stars of the plot evidently remain the white main lead.

Actually, it's very disturbing to see that any film with a black subject matter that receives great reviews from the film establishment invariably perpetuates and reinforces stereotypical images and contrived messages about black people and their place in the world. As one moves forward to other ethnic groups such as Chinese, an eye opening plot is seen in the movie Around the World in 80 days. When Passportaut (Jackie Chan) reaches his village, most of the village people and Passportaut Grandmother are shown excessively inducing themselves and the protagonist (Steve Coogan) with liquor / alcohol, thus demeaning the depiction of Asian Chinese. Also in the movie Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, the monks were depicted as an oddity.

There were two different shots of the Asian Monks. In the first shot, they are seen mediating and in the second shot, when they come to know about Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey) leaving their temple, they celebrated. The audience first saw the monks in the temple while they were meditating. In the next scene, he monks were shown dancing, jumping in the air, drinking champagne and yelling with joy. These exaggerated depictions of Chinese monks reflect how contemporary American popular movies make a spectacle out of ethnicity.

In this race of image construction, we can't leave the ever famous and always in the limelight Muslims, it is the new found hobby of filmmakers to categorically scrutinise Muslims in any form or stature. The movie Hidalgo (2003) which Disney claims to be made on a true story is not. The movie has some alarming dialogues spoken by Al-Riyadh (his royal excellency played by Omer Sharif). In a dialogue, "On cold nights, my wives sleep in the stable tents so that Al-Hatta l (stallion) is comfortable and appeased", Muslim women are depicted as subject to Muslim men's cruelty. Other dialogues such as one in which Katie (villain) refers to the Prophet as "even the blessed Prophet was a raider in his time" are blasphemous towards Islam. Hierarchies are structured on the ground of social, economic and historical power relations between dominant and subordinate groups.

The struggle for power has long been an unresolved issue among the power elites. Race demarcation has always been done on socio-cultural beliefs and prejudice of people, society, organisations and media. By racial hierarchy, one contends that race in media is divided into levels and divisions on the basis of colour. Movie reviews further unveil that Blacks, Chinese, Muslims and Red-Indians as seen on the screen have been objectively and subjectively signified as rapist, drunks, fundamentalists and savages.

By placing coloured groups with the above mentioned connotations, media systematically, without making it seem irrational or illogical, frames non-whites as the race inferior to white masses.