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So Ya Wanna Be A Star, Boy?
When Hollywood reached out to stage-star Danny Hoch for his urban cachet, he had no idea the gesture was purely about backhanding the minority communities the actor so powerfully connects with. In this artist's account of the moral compromises demanded in return for access to big-media audiences, we learn a different side of the racial stereotype game. From The Nation magazine, April 3 2000.
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A Half-Filled Theater
Oscar wants you to believe the entire civilized world has stopped to pay homage to the middlebrow films released by major studios residing in Hollywood. But there's no Nielsen-quality gauge of exactly who's tuned in outside the United States. An examination of the international audience-measurement devices for the Academy Awards — and its sibling rival the Golden Globes — reveals an approach that's wildly speculative at best, and, at its worst, ignorant of the world beyond America. From Salon.com, March 22 2000.
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Do Your Best Mexican
If you want to work in movies, bring your swarthiness. You will not lack for work. The all-purpose "ethnic type" is a time-honored staple of casting, extending from Chico Marx to Marisa Tomei. If you missed Marlene Dietrich playing Mexican in "A Touch of Evil," you'll benefit from this "Who's Who" guide to outrageous choices for roles minority actors would die for. From Stay Free!, December 1 1999.
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Reading The Movies
The cinematic experience has been preoccupied with entertainment since its inception. That fact doesn't mean that audiences ought to let denigrating racial imagery wash over them uncritically. Hype's guide to monitoring the images of blacks in the media offers basic ways of questioning the films put in front of you. From Center on Blacks and the Media, June 1 1997.
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Art As Commerce In The "Yellowface" Follies
Matters of "artistic freedom" are often enmeshed with financial matters, so there's more to the issue of white actors playing Asian than first meets the eye. Sometimes portrayals rooted in cultural ignorance sow the seeds of future prejudice. "The notion of Chineseness," wrote James May, "became familiar to the American spectator long before sightings of the actual Chinese." The phenomenon remains popular. Here's why "yellowface" thespians — for instance, John Wayne performing as Ghengis Khan — deserve a specific scorn apart from the popular "blackface" associated with Al Jolson. From Bright Lights Film Journal, March 1 1997.
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From Selma To Hollywood
Perhaps no more illustrative struggle for people of color in Hollywood exists than their fight for recognition from members of the Motion Picture Academy, which is 95 percent white. Long a disproportionately large segment of the paying movie-going audience, minorities are growing accustomed to being shut out on Oscar night. In his groundbreaking 1996 "Open Letter to Hollywood," the Reverend Jessie Jackson drew mainstream attention to an issue the studio execs would have preferred stay hidden. From In Motion Magazine, March 18 1996.
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Oscar's Agenda
While the Oscars go out to the world, no foreign equivalent is beamed back to the United States. It is the most visible example of U.S-dominated cultural imperialism. Derek Boles' deconstructing essay from 1994 tells us who's behind the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and explores the basic premise for the business of the Oscars. Remarkably unchanged even six years after the publication of the Boles essay, the present-day state of the academy can be checked out at www.oscars.org. From Media Awareness Network, February 1 1994.
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