If there are to be real changes in just about any major industry, hollywood certainly included, people need to vote with their wallets. Don't support films that marginalize african americans or make stereotypes of them. Support writers, directors etc that provide a real to life realization in their work. I was looking through HBO categories for movies the other day and "Gay and Lesbian" was a category. It sucks that this has to exist, just like it sucks that BET has to exist. Hopefully, someday our art really will reflect life and there will just be #thehumancondition channel. Why? Because we're all in this together; gay, black, white etc. On a personal note, I'm half mexican and half german and I've never felt "white", I've never felt "hispanic". I don't fit in to any category and growing up I really struggled with that. I can see why black people, hispanics and even whites would want a self-identifying presence in film/tv. I think the point is that the "default" is white and therefore #whitegirlsrock is redundant. -Yes, you are already ubiquitous, we know. I'm holding out for #germicanmenrock humanodon, we've broached this topic before. Remember the post about asian's in film?
I remember. When it comes down to it, this is true although I would like to point out that advertising is designed to get people to like things and billions of dollars have gone into research on how best to appeal to the consumer. Furthermore, such research was going on as early as the 1960's (yeah yeah, Mad Men but some of that stuff is real). That said, it can be hard for consumers to find the writers, directors and actors whose work they might like to support as those people tend to be part of a system that favor certain things and is informed by its own research and decision making and may be less than visible to the casual consumer. I agree that in general, media needs to become more human. One of the chief things that I would love to disappear is the treatment of women of color as overly sexualized and exotic. I mean, everyone likes variety, but no need to be weird about it, you know?If there are to be real changes in just about any major industry, hollywood certainly included, people need to vote with their wallets.
this might be sort of away from your point (which was good), but man weren't there all kinds of problems with BET? The narrative I had been given was that things got bad with Viacom in charge. Basically instead of being any kind of positive thing, it's become the result of a bunch of white guys in a room strategizing how to make money off of a black audience (that image in my head probably has a lot to do with the boondocks episode). BET on wiki, #criticism again, your comment is right and everything, it just reminded me of this and I'm not sure what other people think.just like it sucks that BET has to exist.
In a 2010 interview, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson said she herself is "ashamed" of what the network has become. “I don’t watch it. I suggest to my kids that they don't watch it," she said. “When we started BET, it was going to be the Ebony magazine on television. We had public affairs programming. We had news... I had a show called Teen Summit, we had a large variety of programming, but the problem is that then the video revolution started up... And then something started happening, and I didn't like it at all.