Websites Related to my Critical Investigation

The representation of black people in film

http://www.helium.com/items/398554-the-representation-of-black-people-in-film

The White Corporate Tradition: Hollywood Representation of Black People

http://www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=297:the-white-corporate-tradition-hollywood-representation-of-black-people&catid=136:race&Itemid=351

Balck British Films

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1144245/index.html

W'hat's at Stake When Representing Race?

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=Lhjf5VbWQMF22X1k7bGb4nk1kvkys4vgJV
1KMHpsycVxJZhpNL27!-1196327867!1517079229?docId=5001386632

Representation of Race and Ethnicity in Hollywood Films

http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2009/06/representation-of-race-and-ethnicity-in-hollywood-films.html

Blaxploitation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaxploitation

'Bibliography Books'

To help me with my Critical Investigation I will be using a wide range of information for books, as it will allow me to gain an understanding and different perspectives of my subject.

1) King, Geoff (2002): Film Studies. London, Wallflower

"If Whoopi Goldberg is one of relatively few women to have established a persona as a disruptive comedian-comic in Hollywood in recent decades- albeit somewhat sporadically- it is perhaps no accident that she should also be a black, African-American performer"

"Success has also come for a more recent generation of comic black performers such as Martin Lawrence, Christ Tucker and Chris Rock. To what extent might the success of these performers, in the format of comedian comedy, be explained by the degree to which their antics conform to racist stereotypes such as that of the 'coons'?"

"The same qualities might fit more easily into the parameters of long-standing racial stereotypes, however, most notably that of the 'coon': the racist version of the African American as black buffoon and object of amusement"

These three quotes and statement discusses the way black actors have been labelled in the film industry as the 'coons', this states that they have been treated differently to the norms of characters i.e. white actors and are subordinate within the film industry. They are more entertainers who play roles in comedy films rather than being take seriously in Drama films. This will allow me to assess the negatives that have been portrayed in the media against black actors and how this can change the way they are been seen as a whole and off screen.

2) Casey, Bernadette, Casey, Neil (2002):Television Studies The Key Concept, London, Routledge

"What it may possible to assert is that the media process of reducing human to stereotypes at the very least acts as a means of establishing boundaries between 'insiders' and 'outsiders. The audience is encouraged to identify with 'positive' rather than 'negative' characters. Put simply, viewers are asked to see themselves as 'us' and not 'them'."

This quote above can be interpreted as the explanation of stereotypes regarding audience, for example I can relate this to my topic as it puts forth the audience and the way they stereotypes 'black actors' as the others, rather then see them as a character. As stereotypes increase they become negative and have an impact upon characters roles and their outside appearance and I can relate this to how many people nowadays are able to identify with black actors/actresses rather then brush them off as 'them'.

3) Bennett, Peter, Slater, Jerry (2003): A2 Media Studies The Essential Introduction, Canada, Routledge

"The representation, for example, of minority groups often founders at a simple level"

This statement above discusses how minority groups often founders at a simple level and when referring this to my topic, I am able to discuss how black actors are that minority group and within films they are given a simple level, where they play roles that the audience can't really identify with.

4) Williams, Kevin (2008): Understating Media Theory, London , Arnold

"Analysis of hegemonic media representation Hall, claims that ethnic minorities are continually misrepresented by racial (and racist) stereotypes.".

This quote above states that ethnic minorities are misrepresented and I am able to use this in reference with my topic as I am able to discuss how black actors have been misrepresented and mistreated in films from historical era, and how that representation has changed over time.

5) Laughey, Dan (2009): Media Studies Theories and Approaches, Harpenden, Kamera Books

"Blacks are natural cause of tension within films"

"Racist stereotypes identified by Hall include the 'single slave'-devoted to his master but seen as a threat to civilised white manners and decorous-as represented in films like Gone with the Wind (1939)"[1]

"Then there is a 'native figure' who is dignified but ultimately becomes barbarism and savagery. This native figure is not unlike the black ghetto gangster in films like New Jack City (1991)"

"And there is also the 'clown and entertainer' figure who jokes about his ethnic peculiarities in such a way that (white) people laugh at him, not with him. Characters played by Will Smith and Eddie Murphy in various Hollywood films of the entertainer type".

These quotes above all indicate the way black actors can be labelled and now have become the stereotypes, this will allow me to investigate the certain genre black actors have been associated with i.e. comedy and have become the entertainers. According to theorist like Hall, I will be able to discuss the impact it has had on the black people are being treated within society and in reference in the media.

6) O'Sullivan, Tim (2008): The Media Studies Reader, London, Edward Arnold

"The Cosby Show is a half-hour situation comedy about an upper middle-class black family, the Huxtables"

"What makes the show unusual is its popularity, its critical acclaim, and the fact that all its leading characters are black"

"Henry Lewis Gates puts it ' black people are no longer black, in most respect they are just like white people'. Gates argues that these 'positive images' can be counter-productive, since they suggest to the world the myth of the American dream, a world where anyone can make it, and where racial barriers no longer exist".

"As long as all blacks were represented in demeaning or peripheral roles, it was possible to believe that American racism was, as it were, indiscriminate. The social vision of ' Cosby', however reflecting the minuscule integration of blacks into the upper middle-class reassuringly throws the blame for black poverty back into the impoverished" [2]

I would be able to use these quotes in my essay, as I am able to give relevant reference to a specific text into how black people were becoming identified in the media and having their own programmes. This shows the rise of level that black actors were beginning to have.

7) Hebdige, Dick( 1979): Subculture The Meaning Of Style, London, Methuen

"Hegemony is the power or dominance that one social group holds over the other"

This quote will allow me to discuss in my essay how white people in the media industry i.e. the producers and directors have had an influence in the way black actors are portrayed within a film for example I will be discussing the shortage of black people in being directors and the off-screen representations of black people. This will also allow me to discuss about how white people i.e. directors and producers are able to portray black people they way the interpret it to the audience.

8) Nelson, R (1997): TV Drama in Transition Forms, Values and Cultural Changes, Basingstoke, Macmillan

"Colonisation, slavery, war and economical or political migration recent centuries have witnessed a much greater mixing of ethnic groups within the world than was the case previously"

This quote will allow me to discuss how black actors have come such a way that now the way they have been represented in films is equal to white people and have been given roles greater than white characters.

9) Stevenson, N (1995): Understanding Media Cultures, Social Theory and Mass Communication, London, Sage

"While the terms 'black' or 'people of colour' are themselves open to doubt and dispute"

I would use this statement as it talks about the way the name black and people of colour has an affect on things and relate this to how black people can be portrayed in films in that sort of term.

10) Humez, Jean M (1994): Gender, Race and Class in Media, London, Sage

"Hegemony is not a direct stimulation of though or action but, according to Stuart Hall, is a 'framing (of) all competing definition of reality within (the dominant class's) range, bringing all alternatives within their horizons of though."

This statement will allow me to discuss Marxism's theory of class control and relate it to how white people are controlling black actors and portraying them their own way, to lower them.

[1] Hall, Stuart (eds) (1980): Culture, Media, Language;Working Papers in Culture Studies 1972-79, London, Hutchinson

[2] Henry Lewis Gates

3 Articles from Media Guardian: Critical Investigation

Ossie Davis: Actor and activist against racial stereotyping

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/feb/08/guardianobituaries.film1

Ossie Davis, who has died aged 87, was an actor, activist, director and playwright, who championed change for two generations of black performers on stage and screen, and fought tirelessly for civil rights.

Born Raiford Chatman Davis, in Cogdell, Georgia, he was the oldest of five children of Kince Charles Davis, a railroad builder and herb doctor, and Laura Cooper. The courthouse clerk who filed his birth certificate heard his mother's articulation of the initals "RC" as Ossie, and the name stuck.

He developed a love of Shakespeare in high school and, on graduating, set out to be a playwright; he once said that a Ku Klux Klan threat to shoot his father drove him to write. With a year's savings, and a $10 bill from his mother sewn to his underwear, he hitchhiked in 1935 to Washington DC, where he lived with two aunts and, helped by a scholarship, enrolled at Howard University.

Davis was drafted into the army in 1942, and for much of the second world war worked as a surgical technician in a military hospital in Liberia. His acting debut in 1946 won rave reviews for the title role in Jeb, a returning soldier who faces racism in his search for work. His leading lady was Ruby Dee, and, although the play lasted less than two weeks, it was the start of their professional and personal collaboration, which spanned five decades.

They performed together in Anna Lucasta (1946-47), and in 1948, they took a day off from rehearsals, boarded a bus to New Jersey and married there. The names Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were thereafter always linked; famed actors and activists, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a joint autobiography, In This Life Together.

They performed together in 11 stage productions, including Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun (1959), and Purlie Victorious (1961), a satire exploring racial stereotypes, which Davis wrote and starred in; it had later incarnations on the screen and as a hit musical.

Among the films he wrote and directed were Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970) and Countdown To Kusini (1976), co-produced with Ruby Dee, the first feature film shot entirely in Africa by African Americans. They starred in many television dramas, including Roots; The Next Generation (1978) and Martin Luther King: The Dream And The Drum (1986).

Davis reached wide audiences through films such as Grumpy Old Men (1993, with Jack Lemmon) and I'm Not Rappaport (1996, with Walter Matthau), and was also seen by a new generation in Spike Lee's films, from Do The Right Thing (1988) to She Hate Me (2004).

Artistically, Davis fought against the stereotypes that limited black roles and misrepresented black culture. Politically, he was a lifelong supporter of union struggles, and committed to social justice everywhere. Financially, he contributed to keeping the doors of many theatres open.

He helped organise the landmark 1963 March on Washington and was its master of ceremonies; in 1965 he delivered a memorable eulogy for Malcolm X (which was reprised in Spike Lee's 1992 film biography).

There has been much sadness at his death and many public tributes have been paid. Broadway theatres dimmed their lights just before curtain-up last Friday to honour him.

He is survived by Ruby Dee, their son and two daughters, and seven grandchildren.

· Ossie Davis (Raiford Chatman Davis), actor, activist, director and playwright, born December 18 1917; died February 4 2005.

Can it just be a black thing?

The original Shaft was aimed very specifically at a black American audience. But its new remake is a 'crossover' summer movie - a healthy sign of the times, argues Mark Morris.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/jun/25/2

The whole blaxploitation genre has had a vigorous afterlife: parodied in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, sampled and referenced in hundreds of hip hop records and videos, and copiously paid tribute to by Quentin Tarantino. And what actor is going to turn down playing a character who we all know is a 'sex machine with all the chicks'?

But the original Shaft was the product of a very particular moment in American history, and had a social significance that far outweighed its importance in strictly cinematic terms. The new film, starring Samuel L. Jackson, has survived a troubled genesis to rise to the top of the US box-office charts. But the 2000 version of Shaft has a different meaning - and possibly a very different type of audience - from the original.

Shaft came out in 1971, a particularly turbulent time in black American history. The civil rights movement had given black Americans equal legal status at last, which in time would lead to mainstream political representation, a growing middle class and a substantial media presence. However, civil rights had failed to end racism, the Black Panthers were in bloody decline, the decay of the traditional manufacturing base - which hit black Americans hardest - had begun, and there was a heroin crisis in the inner cities.

In that context, films like Shaft meant more than their basic crime narratives would suggest. Blaxploitation movies were born of the same rage that fuelled the civil rights movement, born of a wish to shake things up.

Shaft wasn't the first film in this upsurge. According to how you define it, that was either Ossie Davis's Cotton Comes To Harlem or Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (both 1970). And it's not the most typical: as blaxploitation films go, it's on the respectable side. John Shaft is a fairly traditional private detective, unlike the pusher and pimp anti-heroes of Superfly or The Mack. And while many of the later films were made by veteran white exploitation hacks, Shaft was directed by the distinguished photographer/writer/musician Gordon Parks (not to be confused with his son, Superfly 's Gordon Parks Jr).

Changing times: 30 years of black cinema

1970: The release of Cotton Comes to Harlem and Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song herald the start of the blaxploitation genre.

1971: Shaft is first big-budget blaxploitation film. Isaac Hayes wins Oscar for the music. Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa follow.

1972: Two of America's biggest pop stars provide the soundtracks to Trouble Man (Marvin Gaye) and Superfly (Curtis Mayfield).

1973-74: Pam Grier becomes Blaxploitation's First Lady, starring in Coffy and Foxy Brown.

1976: Blaxploitation genre fades. But ensemble comedy Car Wash attracts black moviegoers.

1982: Eddie Murphy explodes on to the scene in 48 Hours and becomes one of the Eighties' biggest stars.

1986: Spike Lee releases his first film, She's Gotta Have It, emerging as figurehead for African-American cinema.

1989: Denzel Washington wins Oscar for his role in Glory. Do the Right Thing sparks debate with its look at New York racial tensions.

1990: Whoopi Goldberg wins Oscar for Ghost.

1991: Boyz N the Hood inspires a host of gritty films depicting the black urban experience.

1992: The release of Malcolm X.

1994: Hoop Dream, about aspiring basketball players, is a critical hit.

1995: Success of Waiting to Exhale shows there is a large audience for middle-class 'female flicks'.

1997: Jackie Brown is a homage to blaxploitation.

2000: Singleton updates Shaft.

The suprise diamond of Hollywood

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/06/film-precious-lee-daniels-sidibe

Precious, the story of an obese and abused black teenager, is the year's most reviled as well as praised film in America. But director Lee Daniels is used to trouble, he tells Gaby Wood. He grew up gay on the streets of Philadelphia, after all, and is drawn to the most disturbing truths. That'll be why he's heading to America's Deep South for his next film…

Sidibe – a 26 year-old first-time actress – is the star of Precious. The film is both stunning and difficult, and has been met with awe and fury; it's already, in its first few weeks, the most talked-about movie of the year by a considerable margin. Some have accused its director, Lee Daniels (who produced 2001's Monster's Ball), of propagating negative images of African Americans, and suggested that making a "feelbad" movie about black people in the age of Obama is akin to taking several steps backwards. Armond White, chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, fumed: "Not since The Birth of a Nation [in 1915] has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious. Full of brazenly racist clichés… it is a sociological horror show." Others have argued that this is a narrow view, that we're beyond the point where it's The Cosby Show or nothing – or simply that the film should be appreciated for its aesthetic merits. What's more, feelgood people don't always have feelgood experiences. Tyler Perry, who has become one of the most successful African Americans in Hollywood by making movies at the opposite end of the grimness spectrum, signed on as executive producer after Precious was finished, and made it known that he too had been beaten by his father.

Daniels's response to this, offered in a tone of bafflement bordering on hurt, is that "Precious girls" really do exist. "These are people that I know," he says, "This is my family. My movie is the truth. It's absolutely colourless."

Though "I shoulda aborted your muthafuckin' ass!" is a fairly demure sample of the film's dialogue, Daniels brings a gloss of optimism to the general picture, if anything. Push, the novel on which it's based, is in many respects more harsh. Written in 1996 by Ramona Lofton, known as Sapphire, it was widely read by teenage girls in state schools. And as for reality: most girls of Precious's background do not have their babies in a nice clean hospital and stay there for days on end, shooting the breeze with nurses who are really Lenny Kravitz in disguise. Most of them get sent home because they don't have health insurance. Precious, on the other hand, is rescued by teachers and social workers and newfound friends. Daniels's film doesn't just say: Look how bad things are. It says: Look how much less bleak things would be if the system didn't fail us.

The Independent 3 Articles- Related to Critical Investigation

James Earl Jones: confessions of Big Daddy

http://www.independent.co.uk/stage/2009/nov/23/james-earl-jones-cat-roof

James Earl Jones has been breaking down barriers since the 1950s. As he prepares to star in an all-black Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he tells Maddy Costa about his absent father, elderly sex – and why his stutter was his salvation.

The septuagenarian walking slowly through the Novello theatre in London looks like an archetypal American tourist. Tall and wide, he wears a puffy gilet that makes him seem even bulkier, while a faded baseball cap shades his face. Yet this ordinary-looking man is one of America's pre-eminent actors: James Earl Jones. Over the last 50 years, he has won two Tony awards (playing a boxer in The Great White Hope, and for his role in August Wilson's Fences), an Oscar nomination (for the film of The Great White Hope), as well as multiple Emmy nominations and awards for his TV work.

You wouldn't know any of this to look at him, because what Jones is most famous for is his voice. Deep, rumbling, august: it's the sound Moses might have heard when addressed by God. No wonder George Lucas chose Jones for the fearful voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars.

Jones, who is about to star in Tennessee William's Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, likes to be anonymous. He thinks of himself as a "journeyman actor", quietly muddling along. "Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I'm just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, 'OK, I'll do that.'" He's not too grand to do adverts, either. "I love doing commercials! Usually, they have enough money that they can take time and photograph it well. I'd like to film a British commercial; they're better than American ones."

His stay in London is long enough – Cat is booked until April 2010 – that he may just get the chance. The production transfers from Broadway, where its four-month run was hugely successful with audiences, despite reviews that found it sentimental (the New York Times) and lacking in soul (the New Yorker). There have been some key cast changes: Brick Pollitt, the alcoholic around whom the play revolves, is played here by Adrian Lester, who hasn't been seen on a London stage since his electrifying performance as Henry V at the National in 2003. Jones plays Brick's father, Big Daddy, and while he's aware that the casting switch is having a subtle effect on his performance, he says one thing remains constant: "Big Daddy loves this other human being. It's not like the way I love my own son . . . " He glances warmly at Flynn, his 26-year-old son and assistant. "But I can experience the stage relationship because I have a real son, and that relationship has gone through all kinds of changes and conflicts, but is always enriching."

For Jones, it's the family relationships in Williams's play that count: the fact that this production features a black family, rather than the usual white family, is immaterial. A change of date has been necessary, because when Cat was written, in the 1950s, black people living in the south didn't have the freedom to be as prosperous as the Pollitt family. But apart from that, says Jones, "We're not doing anything to this play that a white family, or a Chinese family, wouldn't do." To argue that Big Daddy is written as a "redneck", a rough and generally rural white southerner, is spurious, as far as Jones is concerned. "I am a redneck, too. I am a Mississippi farm person. I can be foul-mouthed, I can be inarticulate. It's just that my neck doesn't get red. I've always felt that I understood Big Daddy more than the average northern-American Caucasian actor." The New Yorker agreed, relishing the way Jones relaxed into Williams's poetic language.

Britain's black actors now enjoy bigger, better parts. Still they go unrecognised. Is media racism to blame?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/britains-black-actors-now-enjoy-bigger-better-parts-still-they-go-unrecognised-is-media-racism-to-blame-588948.html

Only a few years ago, black British actors knew what to expect when they were offered parts on television or in the movies: a marginal role or, if their luck was in, the opportunity to reinforce a stereotype, perhaps as a gangster or a drug-dealer.

Now, though, that is all changing. Black actors are regulars on hit TV shows and some are beginning to make it through to Bafta and even Oscar nominations. Nominations for the black Baftas are announced today.

Just last week, the BBC said its first black family sitcom, The Crouches, would be broadcast next month. Lorraine Heggessey, controller of BBC1, hailed the innovation, saying: "This vibrant comedy will showcase the talent of some of Britain's best black actors and introduce new faces to a mainstream audience."

Perhaps, but precedent suggests that putting a mainstream audience in front of talent does not translate into wider recognition ­ not, at any rate, if the talent is black.

Charles Thompson, the organiser of the black Baftas ­ officially the Screen Nation Film and Television Awards, backed by The Independent ­ says the reason why black actors are not better known is obvious: "Mainstream actors are recognised because they are consistently used in publicity to promote the film and television shows they are in. All black actors want is the same shot at publicity as the other actors in the show."

That lack of recognition has prompted an unprecedented attack by some leading black actors on what they regard as the prejudiced culture of Britain's showbusiness media, from chat shows and breakfast television programmes to celebrity magazines, tabloids and broadsheet arts pages.

Kwame Kwei-Armah, best known for his role as a paramedic in the BBC drama Casualty, said black actors were being starved of publicity. "There are problems with the marketing of black actors in this country. What makes you into a media celebrity is being on the front covers of magazines and being on breakfast television," he said. "People in publicity try but find it very hard to sell the black members of the cast ­ they are not seen as sexy or newsworthy, whereas the blonde members of the cast they will run with."

Take the case of Marianne Jean-Baptiste. When she was nominated for an Oscar, the Londoner was supposed to change forever the working landscape of Britain's black actors and actresses.

Other than that, the most frequent response was to name Angela Griffin (17 per cent), who is best known for her role in Coronation Street.

The biggest black British male star was easily Lenny Henry (43 per cent), with the only other people mentioned being the newsreader Trevor McDonald, EastEnders actor Rudolph Walker and comedian Richard Blackwood.

Not one of 200 people questioned was able to identify a photograph of Chiwetel Ejiofor, star of the Bafta-nominated film Dirty Pretty Things. Only 7 per cent could name Colin Salmon, who played M's chief of staff Charles Robinson in the last three Bond films and who has been tipped by Pierce Brosnan to become the next 007.

Sources involved in the ceremony said that expected support of £30,000 from the 10 leading British broadcasters evaporated to a paltry £3,000. Mr Thompson said he was particularly surprised at the apparent lack of interest in Salmon, who was in Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day. "He's attractive and articulate. You'd think he would be used more in publicity but he's not."

Kwei-Armah said that although some broadcasters were showing programmes that cast black actors in challenging roles, that was not the case with ITV. He said he believed that ITV executives thought black actors did not suit its audiences. "I would say we all live in the same country at the same time," he said. Publicists confirmed they found it very hard to promote black actors. One publicist, who has represented black actors for 10 years, said: "It's not down to the efforts of the publicists but the narrow-mindedness of some of the people out there. They just say a person is not well known enough or they have got enough features at the moment."

Johnson, who has the starring role in a new black feature film, Emotional Backgammon, said he had become so frustrated at the lack of interest in his career by the showbusiness media that he had laid off his publicist.Some of the programmes that have been the most bold in creating roles for black actors have been axed because of low audiences, despite winning critical acclaim. Johnson said that the BBC's decision to drop Babyfather had been "a massive blow to the black community".

None the less, today's black Bafta nominations acknowledge Ejiofor's achievement in Dirty Pretty Things by placing him on the shortlist for best achievement in film (male). The actor, who will shortly star in a BBC adaptation of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale", is also nominated in a separate category for television drama.

Black actors in protest over Bafta awards

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/black-actors-in-protest-over-bafta-awards-1305763.html

Leon Herbert, who starred in Alien III, Scandal and The Paradise Club, will lead a demonstration against the absence of black actors from nominations for the Bafta awards tomorrow night.

The protest, coinciding with the awards ceremony, has the support of Jesse Jackson, the black civil rights activist. The actress Vanessa Redgrave is set to attend with her Oscar.

Other black actors joining the demonstration include Gordon Warnecke, the Asian star of My Beautiful Launderette, Steve Toussaint, of the ITV customs drama The Knock and Danny John-Jules, of the BBC sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf.

In the 27 years since the Bafta awards have been televised only a handful of awards have gone to black actors.

Mr Herbert said he was angry with directors and film-makers who were members of the academy yet refused to cast black actors in leading roles. "We are part of society yet we are not being given the opportunity to be part of the media."

Although he had enjoyed some success in Hollywood films, Mr Herbert said that each time he was typecast as a villain and had only been on screen for a matter of minutes.

"After I got famous in Aliens III, no one called me any more. That is what the industry does. When blacks get successful they drop them and get another young kid along," he said yesterday. "That is why there are no famous black actors and why they never get to the stage of a Bafta nomination."

Mr Herbert, who says lack of work led to him setting up a television production company, added: "The industry won't give black people leading roles unless they are blowing someone's head off. There's a big piece of cake and it's enough for everybody. All we're asking for is a slice of the cake - because we're starving."

A Bafta spokeswoman said it was impossible to find many black actors in leading roles over the past year. "This is a problem for the industry, not the academy," she added.

MEST 4 Courswork Titles

Critical Investigation

An investigation into the way black characters are represented in comtemporary films such as "The Pursuit of Happyness". How does this contrast with dominant more negative representations of the 70's?

Linked Productionn

A current affairs magazine front cover and features article(s) discussing ways in which black people are represented in contemporary media.

3 Articles Related to my Critical Investigation

Article 1

From Fresh Prince to Saint Smith

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/10/will-smith-seven-pounds

Will Smith has gone from getting jiggy with it to being the chosen one - in every single film. What's he after, sainthood, asks Steve Rose.

Why doesn't Will Smith just come out with it and admit he's really the Messiah? He's too shrewd to say it out loud, of course, but he's been hinting at it for some time in his movies. In his latest, Seven Pounds, he stops just short of pulling out a crown of thorns and humming I Am The Resurrection, but the entire movie is one gigantic nudge towards Smith's increasingly Jesus-like quality. He plays an enigmatic but undeniably very earnest fellow - ostensibly working for the IRS - who seeks out seven strangers who have fallen upon desperately hard times. Upon them, he selflessly bestows a reward that will put their lives back on the right track, at great sacrifice to himself. Who is this modern-day martyr? Why is he doing this? The mystery doesn't actually have a mystical solution, just a calculatedly poignant one, but still, the passion of the Smith is in no doubt.

Looking back, he's been doing this for some time. In recent times he's been drawn to roles that squarely distinguish him as The Special One, but show us he's suffering with it too. In Hancock he was the only superhero on Earth (well, just about) and it made him lonely, miserable and alcoholic. In I Am Legend he was the only surviving person on the planet (well, just about) and again, lonely with his special status. We had to feel his pain; there was nobody else's pain to feel. In The Pursuit Of Happyness, directed by Seven Pounds' Gabriele Muccino, he was the salt of the earth, the common man, suffering the hard knocks of life on the bottom rung of the ladder - but not just any common man. Oh no, Smith's common man pulls himself up by his bootstraps, 'cos he's actually special.

Even his detractors would have to admit, Smith is irritatingly good at everything: acting, singing, dancing, even rapping. He's a solid, $100m-a-picture proposition. He can do comedy, romance, action, serious drama. He's a great dad, husband, friend; he's probably brilliant at grouting.

In the early "Slick Willy" stages of Smith's career, he went out of his way to impress his talents upon everyone on the planet. It was all about "look at me. I'm the greatest!" (Oh yes, let's not forget he played Muhammad Ali). But this new, mature Smith seems to be more saying, "I have transcended your earthly concerns. I exist on a solitary higher plane, just one step below God, and maybe Gandhi." It wouldn't surprise me if he announced he was retiring from acting and taking a post as Barack Obama's chief advisor on hydrogen power, or going off to start a new religion, or something. It's all getting rather tiresome. Come on, Will! What happened to just getting jiggy with it?

If Smith really is that lonely at the top, perhaps it's time he was taken down a rung. He could always emulate his Seven Pounds character for real, and give up all his wealth to support his needy compatriots, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps he could just refresh his box-office appeal by returning to the real source of his power: Bring on Bad Boys III!

Article 2

Smith finds box office Happyness

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/dec/18/willsmith

Will Smith once again proved his box office credentials as his new comedy, The Pursuit of Happyness, took the No 1 spot in the US with a haul of $27m (£13.8m) at the weekend.

The father-son tale, in which Smith stars with his own son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, beat off competition from Tolkien-lite fantasy Eragon and an adaptation of the much loved children's classic Charlotte's Web for the top spot.

Eragon, a special effects-laden tale of dragons and elves aimed at those with withdrawal symptoms for the Christmas openings of Peter Jackson's films, opened in second place with $23.45m. Charlotte's Web, however, managed only a disappointing $12m for third place, despite featuring the vocal talents of Julia Roberts, Robert Redford and Oprah Winfrey to animate the beloved children's tale of a pig, Wilbur, who takes advice from a spider on how to avoid the dinner table.

The top five was rounded out by two previously released movies, the animated adventure Happy Feet, about an outcast penguin, and romantic comedy The Holiday, both taking just over $8m. It was a poor weekend for Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's Mayan language tale, which fell from first to sixth place, taking $7.7m in its second week.

Analysts said Smith's success proved that the actor remains a powerful force at the box office, no matter what genre of film he appears in. Happyness, the story of a struggling dad who becomes homeless along with his young son, followed the likes of Independence Day and I, Robot to No 1. "Audiences around the world love him," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution at Sony, which produced Smith hits Men in Black and Hitch. "Everyone who sees Will Smith or meets Will Smith feels like he could be their best friend," Bruer said. "He has that type of charisma that resonates throughout whatever room he's in."

It seems that Hollywood has failed to produce an obvious festive blockbuster this year. Overall box office was down 8% on the same weekend in 2005, when King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were in first and second place.

Article 3

It's who's behind the screen that matters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/oct/01/raceintheuk.comment

It's not who's on the screen that matters - but who's behind it

When you turn on the television, do you want to see a mirror, a window, or a vision of how life should be? Wait a second, that sounds like a teaser for Changing Rooms. What I mean is, what do we expect from TV, and are our expectations too contradictory?

The question arises from a few lines written by the veteran broadcaster, Ludovic Kennedy, at the end of a book review about the BBC in the Oldie magazine. Apropos of not very much, Ludo suddenly makes the - some would say ludicrous - observation that there are too many black faces on the Beeb.

"I am all in favour of black advancement," he states, "but there's now hardly a TV, pub, police station, soap, vox pop or ad without rather more than its fair share of black participation."

Leaving aside the obvious problem with that sentence (what does he mean "hardly a TV"?), the gist of it is that black people - by which he means non-white people - are over-represented on screen. Kennedy quotes the Office of National Statistics figure of all ethnic minority groups together making up just 7.5% of the nation's population.

Perhaps he has been meticulously counting and found that black and Asian people now make up 8% of the BBC's output. My heart shrinks at the mere contemplation of this kind of quota system.

From where I sit, in the borough of Brent, with its majority non-white population, the BBC is a long way from reflecting the racial mix of contemporary urban life. And I imagine that EastEnders does not speak directly to too many Bangladeshis living in Newham.

But then no one really wants TV, and in particular the BBC, to mirror life as it actually is. The commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ripped into "bigoted" Kennedy and the Oldie, which she dismissed as "a repository for blimpish fogeys who cannot bear to watch the irresistible and dazzling transformation of the media." I'd like to catch that programme myself, but she didn't mention which side it was on.

Kennedy would have reasonable grounds for complaint if he were to argue that there was a gross under-representation of blimpish fogeys in TV drama, indeed a conspicuous under-representation of old people in general. To this group, you could add fat people, ugly people, disabled people - none of them get much of a look-in.

Then, of course, there are the ways in which the minority groups that are represented are, as it were, represented. For example, if the aim was an accurate depiction of reality then one in six actors in prison dramas would be black, and white actors would struggle to land the part of a street mugger.

No doubt some readers will think that such a crass observation does nothing but reinforce negative racial stereotypes. Perhaps, but the point is that in other media such provocative social realism doesn't appear to be a problem. Take music, for example. The lyrics of rap and reggae are filled with violence, avarice and sexual braggadocio. Yet they are often praised by liberal critics, as well as consumers, for the honesty with which they portray "life on the streets".

So, television is different, and the BBC is more different still. Everyone from the government to the Catholic church is on its case about how unfairly it represents them. And if that was not enough, Alibhai-Brown has joined in too. "The BBC will still not see me as an equivalent of, say Peter Hitchens, or Jonathan Freedland," she claims.

One reason why the BBC may not see Alibhai-Brown as an equivalent of that pair could be that it does not rate her as their equal as a writer and thinker. Another explanation is that the BBC is racist and/or sexist. A third option is that the BBC is racist and sexist, and that Alibhai-Brown is not that good. Who can say?

Greg Dyke famously declared that the BBC was "hideously white". It has undoubtedly become less hideously white under his control, but that's down to cosmetic work rather than major internal surgery. Jon Snow, the Channel 4 newscaster, recently noted that when black and Asian trainees enter the newsroom, they are quickly encouraged to become reporters, where they can be seen by the viewers.

At the moment we have the increasing presentation of non-whites, but not necessarily their proper representation. While it is of symbolic importance that licence payers are reflected on screen in all their myriad colours, shapes and wheelchair-friendly sizes, it is more vital that this process takes place behind the screen, where the power lies. Only then can it be said that TV, which went colour over three decades ago, will have finally stopped broadcasting in black and white.

Until such time, we must look for the egalitarian spirit wherever we can find it. And where better to start than The Crouches? The new black sitcom has been derided as "embarrassing" and "clueless" (Alibhai-Brown) and "unadulterated rubbish" (Darcus Howe). In other words, a non-discriminatory success story - for in these respects, it is just the same as white sitcoms.