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UNFAIR
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CLICHÉ
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!SPOILERS AHEAD!
THE UNFAIR
RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT
Deadicated to Scatman Crothers
1900 - 1960 - 1970 - 1980 - 1990 - 2000
85 coincidences and counting!
The Unfair racial Cliche really got moving in the 1980s.
Read HOLLYWOOD RACISM
For a complete explanation of what this page is about, please go to the
UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT
main page.
"I've
seen this in the movies before! The black guy dies!"
- Harry Block (played by Orlando Jones): EVOLUTION (2000)
The 1980s is where it seems that the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHE ALERT really took off and hasn't stopped growing. there have been more movie deserving of the URCA since 2000 than all other decades. But it really got moving in the 1980s.
The UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHE ALERT doesn't address the many wide ranging forms of racism seen in Hollywood movies. I take a very narrow slice, Horror Thriller movies, and comment on them. But even within that wedge, I take an even thinner slice and comment only on whether or not any minorities are left alive at the end.
I'm not counting all of the many Horror Thriller movies that take place in our day or the future where there are seemingly no minorities at all. How many minorities did you see in ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE EXORCIST, JAWS, THE OMEN? I've no problem with an all white bunch of friends in a secluded cabin story. I'd expect a clutch of friends could be all of one general purpose color as we've seen in THE EVIL DEAD, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, CABIN FEVER, HOSTEL. I can even accept small towns that may be predominently white like in CARRIE, HALLOWEEN, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE FOG, CHRISTINE, CUJO, CRITTERS, CHILDREN OF THE CORN, THE FLY. But the big Hollywood movies where the story takes place in a major city - and there are just no minorities?.
I'm also not counting the many Hollywood Horror Thriller movies that have minorities cast as extras in the servant or criminal role. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS [1978], THE HOWLING, ALTERED STATES, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, THE RING, WHITE NOISE, CLOVERFIELD, MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D: The gangs, pushers, pimps and prostitute; the wiseman, doctor, nurse, orderly, taxi driver, convenience store clerk, maid, nanny, or cop who is only there for a moment to angrily wave his hands around ineffectually and bark orders to no one, or maybe just stand around while his superior officers lead.
Nope, I'm just counting those Horror Thriller movies where all of the minorities die.
In the 1980s, White Hollywood decided to show how progressive and racially tolerant they were, by making some of the most racist movies you have ever seen this side of D.W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation.
1989 was the year that Driving Miss Daisy won a treasure trove of awards. It's the story of a black man named Hoke (Morgan Freeman - nominated for an Oscar), who drives a bitter old racist lady named Daisy Werthen (Jessica Tandy - won an Oscar), and the nice genteel white folks (the Werthen family) who take kindly to an old black man sitting in the same car as a white woman. From the pen of Alfred Uhry (won an Oscar, script based on his play) and in the hands of director Bruce Beresford (went on to direct a number of "racially sensitive" movies like Mister Johnson, Black Robe, and A Good Man In Africa) the lesson of Driving Miss Daisy seems to be that, even while you are keeping your servants repressed beneath your boot, you don't have to press so hard. The kindly white folks like Daisy's son, Boolie Werthen (Dan Ackroyd - nominated for an Oscar) are the ones who give black folks low-wage jobs in their homes as servants (mainly because they're cheap). The bad white folks are the ones who don't hire black folks and call them the N-word. The main rich white folks in Driving Miss Daisy, who do absolutely nothing to alleviate the minority suffering they see all around them (other than take advantage of the low cost of services such racism provides), are also Jewish. You wouldn't know this except in one scene where some white cops make the remark about Miss Daisy being a Jew. I've no idea how they could have possibly known that. Even Nazis couldn't figure out who was who and had to go through birth records and force Jews to wear yellow Stars of David on their clothes so that the Nazis could tell them apart (and yes, Theodor Seuss Geisel aka Dr. Suess used this yellow star wearing device in his story, The Sneetches - the ones who wore stars upon thars). But by saying Miss Daisy was a Jew, the story then turns on the idea that, even though Daisy's family is wealthy and enjoys all the privilege that their skin tone brings in early 20th century America, she in a sense is just as discriminated against as Hoke: the guy who spends years putting up with her bitter shit, because he has no other choice. But that's okay because the kindly Werthen's will take good care of Hoke in his autumn years. Oh wait. The movie starts in his autumn years. Well, they'll take good care of him in the nursing home.
Driving Miss Daisy swept the Oscars, winning 7 in all with another 6 in nomination. If you watch the movie these days it just makes you wince. What the hell were they thinking back then?
If you really want to put this all in perspective, consider that there was another movie the same year that addressed race in America. Except it take the old Hollywood bromide of going to the South or Away Back When to make its point. Do The Right Thing was set in the modern day in the very liberal state and city of New York.
Do The Right Thing is a story that takes place on the hottest day in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn. In Spike Jones movie, everyone is a bigot. Every person and every color, though some folks are worse than others. And of course, where racism is concerned, the trump card in the race deck belongs to whomever has the authority or power. In this case, the cops. Jones movie addressed the outdated dinosaur of everyone's bigotry. Everyone who, in looking out for only themselves and their family or their people, set up lines of tribal demarcation. Salvatore 'Sal' Fragione (Danny Aiello - won an Oscar) doesn't like the young mouthy black men on his block, with their rude music, but he dotes on the young black women in a sweet, sweaty way that makes his own sons tilt their eyes. Sal employs Mookie (Spike Lee) and tells him that he'll always have a job with them. But Mookie is fully aware that Sal's sons don't like him, and thinks it's because of the color of his skin. He also thinks Sal only keeps him around so he can spend time with Mookie's sister.
Nobody is really a good guy here, save perhaps for the old folks, Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) and Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) who can only sit by and watch as rage, frustration, and racism rise with the mercury.
That the movie will end explosively is a given. Who will survive is the question. Spike Lee left no stone unturned and no characters unscathed as contributors to the overall anger and impotence of the block. They all contribute to the wrong thing, but all are responsible to greater and lesser degrees. In Do The Right Thing the police, as in Driving Miss Daisy, aren't symbols of order, but of destruction. Other than that, the two movies couldn't be more far apart. Do The Right Thing crushes everything Driving Miss Daisy tried to say. In Do The Right Thing, there's no value in kindly privlileged white folks promising to take care of poor black people - it's simply another facet of oppression - keeping a people down in order to care for them on your terms. That's what parents do to ignorant, naive children, and there comes a time of anger when the child rightfully rebels to assert their independence. Do The Right Thing, which addressed the here and now of American racism, won an Oscar for Danny and another for best original screenplay for Spike Lee. Everything else largely went to Driving Miss Daisy and it's romantic view of the good old halcyon days of racism.
In case you think I'm the only one to notice ..
The 5 Most Unintentionally Racist Movies About Racism |
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LEGEND
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HOLLYWOOD
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NON-HOLLYWOOD
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