Topic > Black Stereotypes - 1718

There have been many twists and turns in the ways the black experience has been portrayed in mainstream American cinema. But the repetition of stereotypical figures drawn from the “days of slavery” has never completely disappeared (Hall, 1997). A stereotype can be described as a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of ​​a particular type of person or thing (Oxford University Press, 2014) and can influence the target by grasping some simple, vivid, memorable, easily groupable and widely recognized characteristic of a person and reduce everything to specific traits and exaggerate them (Hall, 1997). One of the most well-known stereotypes is certainly the "black stereotype" which can be seen in all media productions ranging from news, films, music videos, reality TV and other programs and forms of entertainment. Since around 1830, the history of African Americans has been a centuries-long struggle against oppression and discrimination, and because of these important issues, popular representations of racial "difference" during slavery have caused two major themes that today they are seen as blackface stereotypes. the first is that all Blacks contain a subordinate status of laziness and are naturally born and suited to servitude and the second is that they are reduced to the signifiers of their physical difference, such as full lips, kinky hair, broad face and nose (Hall, 1997 ), as well as the fact that they are just a tool used in "white" entertainment. Soon stereotypes of blacks in popular representation became so common that cartoonists, illustrators, and caricaturists were able to create an entire gallery of “black types” with a few strokes of the pen (Hall, 1997). A world famous example would be 'B...... in the center of the card ......f. Thomas Dunwitty, the white leader, identifies with this stereotype as he is so blinded by the concept of blackface that he fails to see the fetishism happening around him and therefore becomes an object himself as he plays a swapped role in the film. In the 1830s this stereotype gained popularity between the 16th and 19th centuries and spread like wildfire elsewhere, particularly in Great Britain. Blackface was an important performative tradition in American theater that presented the black as castrated, missing, wounded, and an object on display for the visual gratification of whites (Gubar, 1997). Thus Halls' views, on all four of his theories, are reinforced in the film Bamboozled and the film received excellent reviews as it was seen as one of the most moving and enlightening pieces of satire on Hollywood's portrayal of African Americans until Today..