For this Journal I decided to choose movies as digital media because movies have a huge impact on our entertainment, they also can have a big impact on us as a whole. Some people drive inspiration from movies or create an emotional connection with them, they can be powerful acts of bringing attention to problems in the world such as racism. Something that has majorly lacked in film history is a positive/ actual representation of minorities that are not exaggerated stereotypes or that have negative connotations attached to them. These movies are examples of how they go about these issues of racial representation and identity within films. Films more recently have been breaking this racial stereotype and representation issue.
SUPPORTED RACIAL IDENTITY
I took this movie poster for Black Panther off of google. I choose to put this movie in my gallery because it supports and celebrates the African American community by having a cast full of African Americans.
I also got this Image from google. I decided to use this picture because it depicts the main characters met in the movie. This movie also made huge impacts because it is the first movie to have a whole asian cast.
This picture was also taken from google. This movie brings light to the topic of racism. A football team becomes multi-racial and gains a new African American coach. By the end of the movie the team is able to overlook each others skin colors and come together as brothers, as a family. This movie celebrates the idea of overcoming racism and how we can look past our differences to become connected in ways we may not have thought of before.
UNSUPPORTED RACIAL IDENTITY
I got this image from google. I decided to pick this movie as an unsupported representation of race and racial equality. This movie essentially looks at African Americans as an object. They are captured,manipulated, and sold. Almost as though it is a horror take on a modern take of selling slaves.
I got this image from google. I decided that this movie is also a representation on unsupported racial equality because it also shows African Americans as dangerous or bad. Even this poster is primarily showing white people while there are more African American characters that are important to the story that could be pictured here as well. Even though they have dancing skills just as good as the other kids they still are not welcome on the show and are forced Mohave their own dancing show.
I also got this image from google. This episode of Black Mirror a young woman named Nish is stuck in the dessert and comes across a horrific museum called The Black Museum. This is almost a futuristic idea of how our world may turn out because of racism that still exists today. The main attraction of the museum is a African American man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and his live is now digitally encased within the museum. This just seems ethically wrong to have a museum depicted around African Americans showcasing hardships and wrongful convictions based on the color of their skin.
Throughout the years there have been movies such as 12 Years a Slave or The Help which I feel as accurately showed struggles of being African American in the past what they have gone through to shed light on how we treat people today. These films gave me a greater appreciation for how far we have come as a society and to better understand the struggles some people have gone through. This adds to my sense of self in reference to how I treat other people or even implicitly think of others, I’m more aware of skin color or race doesn’t matter but they should be respected because of lack of representation and struggles each has gone through and still go through today.
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