http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/01/sundance-film-festival-spike-lee-red-hook-summer.html
This article reminded me of the discussion we had in Dr. Johnson's class on Friday. When Spike Lee was on stage at the Sundance Film Festival answering questions about his newest film, "Red Hook Summer," Chris Rock asked him how the movie would have looked if it had been produced in a studio. Spike Lee proceeded to go on a "tirade" about the studio world... at one point saying that they "know nothing about black people." I was wondering what other people think of this comment... do you agree or disagree? I feel as though it is true in a lot of ways, but too much of a sweeping generalization to fully agree with.
Also, in terms of genre, how do you think Spike Lee would differentiate between African-American based films made in major studios vs. those made independently like his own? Is there potential for two separate genres to emerge based on how race is handled differently in the varying forms of production?
3 comments:
My usc course is called "Media Effects" and it's in the communications school. Even in the first week, our professor was already emphasizing how homogeneous the group of executives of major media distributors. For example, in the nine major media distributors of the US (ex paramount, nbc, etc), only 15% of the execs are females. And the stat for minority execs is even lower (I can't remember the exact # she said sorry). I think that the consequences of having a homogeneous group of producers is what Lee might be referencing. Having mostly straight, white men produce content could mean the content also is not diversified, and that there is no plurality of opinions/ideas being articulated to the mass audiences. I'm sure the perspectives of the studios heads, being mostly white themselves, means the movie would be less accurately representative of minorities and less diversity-friendly than if the message came from a producer who did not grow up with socially-assigned privileges. Not to say it's not possible for white content-creators to engage with different perspectives and create diversity-supporting works...just that, historically speaking, the messages from media have sent some pretty sad messages regarding race. For example...in psych of gender I learned that of all races, only the black women demonstrated a significant resilience to body image disturbance (the phenomenon in which women, objectified, suffer severe body image dissatisfaction). This is hypothesized to be because of black women's appreciation of larger, curvy body types. However, with the recent Disney film, Princess & The Frog, the results have been really sad. Young black girls are showing strong symptoms of body image disturbance which were NOT there before the introduction of Tiana. :(
I think that's a pretty strong piece of evidence that there are negative consequences to having a homogeneous group of content creators.
I assigned Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman and The Blind Side last semester in another class. My students (mostly caucasian and Latino) thought Blind Side was inspiring and resisted any criticism while they though Perry's film was racist. I wonder if audiences are therefore the core problem as much as the producer. This is the perfect lead-in to the question of ritual vs ideological approaches,
Lee,by the way, judges Perry very very harshly as well.
I think the disparity of opinions comes from ignorance. There is little communication about the personal experiences of people based on social privileges, so there can be no understanding, let alone consensus. Not having been on the inside of studio workings, I can't say I agree or disagree completely with Lee's comment. From what I do know, though, I'd tend to think he's onto something. I can elaborate on a small story in class if someone reminds me.
As for the question of genre...I think it's entirely possible for different genres to emerge. And I think they kind of already are. When you have two different rubrics, there's bound to be different products. And there are clearly different rubrics out there on how to treat racial topics.
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