Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film by
In the "classical" Hollywood studio era of the 1930s to the 1960s, many iconic Asian roles were filled by non-Asian actors and some-like Fu Manchu or Charlie Chan-are still familiar today. In Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film, Karla Rae Fuller tracks specific cosmetic devices, physical gestures, dramatic cues, and narrative conventions to argue that representations of Oriental identity by Caucasian actors in the studio era offer an archetypal standard. Through this standard, Fuller shed light on the artificial foundations of Hollywood's depictions of race and larger issues of ethnicity and performance. Fuller begins by investigating a range of Hollywood productions, including animated images, B films, and blockbusters, to identify the elaborate make-up practices and distinct performance styles that characterize Hollywood's Oriental. In chapter 2, Fuller focuses on the most well known Oriental archetype, the detective, who incorporates both heroic qualities and darker elements into a complex persona. Moving into the World War II era, Fuller examines the Oriental character as political enemy and cultural outsider in chapter 3, drawing a distinction between the "good" Chinese and the "sinister" Japanese character. In chapter 4, she traces a shift back to a seemingly more benign, erotic, and often comedic depiction of Oriental characters after the war. While Hollywood Goes Oriental primarily focuses on representations of Oriental characters by Caucasian actors, Fuller includes examples of performances by non-Caucasian actors as well. She also delves into the origination, connotations, and repercussions of the loaded term "yellowface," which has been appropriated for many causes. Students, scholars of film, and anyone interested in Asian and cultural studies will appreciate this insightful study.
Crime and Racial Constructions: Cultural Misinformation about African Americans in Media and Academia by
Crime and Racial Constructions: Cultural Misinformation about African Americans in Media and Academia focuses on how film images of dangerous, hedonistic blacks have assumed greater significance since blacks protested racial injustice during the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It does so by reviewing a number of films that have been released from the 1970s until the present in which black males are depicted as violent and threatening. It likewise considers how these same films represent black females as prostitutes; drug addicts; and irresponsible, abusive mothers who spawn violence in their children. Because these on-screen images of a violent, apolitical, and immoral black underclass find their way into the criminological literature, the book also takes a look at how criminologists use these images to link crime to underclass culture. Both Hollywood and criminologists alike manage to ignore how black activism during the 1960s social movements actually sparked black opposition to the kind of black-on-black crime that is routinely depicted on-screen. By taking a critical look at these negative images, Crime and Racial Constructions seeks to correct some of the distortions that arise from the undue academic and cinematic focus on black criminals at the expense of racially conscious blacks.
Beyond Representational Correctness: Rethinking Criticism of Popular Media by
Representational correctness describes an implicit set of norms, including accuracy, purity, and innocence, that guide much of popular media criticism. In this provocative book, Edward Schiappa argues that representational correctness is unproductive, antagonistic to audience research, and typically disconnected from relevant social psychological or mass communication theories. Analyzing criticisms of such television shows as Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Schiappa argues that the norms of representational correctness can cause critics to miss the positive work such shows perform in reducing prejudice. He contends that too many critics focus on isolated scenes or interactions that perpetuate a stereotype without considering the larger work that films and television shows can accomplish. Schiappa concludes that pop culture critics need to engage in more audience research, draw from relevant research in social psychology, praise positive representations and programming, and promote critical media literacy in both classroom and public pedagogy.
Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film by
In this deeply engaging account Michelle H. Raheja offers the first book-length study of the Indigenous actors, directors, and spectators who helped shape Hollywood’s representation of Indigenous peoples. Since the era of silent films, Hollywood movies and visual culture generally have provided the primary representational field on which Indigenous images have been displayed to non-Native audiences. These films have been highly influential in shaping perceptions of Indigenous peoples as, for example, a dying race or as inherently unable or unwilling to adapt to change. However, films with Indigenous plots and subplots also signify at least some degree of Native presence in a culture that largely defines Native peoples as absent or separate. Native actors, directors, and spectators have had a part in creating these cinematic representations and have thus complicated the dominant, and usually negative, messages about Native peoples that films portray. In Reservation Reelism Raheja examines the history of these Native actors, directors, and spectators, reveals their contributions, and attempts to create positive representations in film that reflect the complex and vibrant experiences of Native peoples and communities.
Patterns of Bias in Hollywood Movies by
This work grew out of the observed frustration of film industry critics who have pointed out examples of bias and stereotyping in specific Hollywood movies over the years only to be rebuffed by the simplistic studio arguments that such films reflect the real world and that moviegoers vote with their pocket books. It can be shown that there is a consistent pattern to the choices Hollywood studio executives make with respect to the movies produced and released and the specific content of those movies, and it becomes obvious that Hollywood is selectively portraying reality. Movie goers only have limited options among all of the possibilities that could be portrayed on the silver screen. This book differs from other studies touching on bias in motion pictures. Most such books focus on the treatment of a single ethnic, religious, cultural, racial or other readily identifiable interest group, but this study attempts to provide an overview and to identify patterns over time. When the patterns of bias in motion picture content are sufficiently demonstrated and documented, it becomes easier to identify the source of the bias and to explain why such bias exists. The problem appears to be that most of the people who have green-light authority in the Hollywood-based U.S. film industry? share a common ethnic/religious/cultural background. Thus, the stories of all other ethnic, religious and/or cultural groups in the U.S. (whose members seldom achieve positions of power in Hollywood) are being filtered through the cultural sensibilities of a single group.
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