Leading black actresses have been portrayed as people with either no literacy or very little. More often than not in many movies they have either been stay-at-home moms or maids with little or no economic literacy and were dependent on someone in their lives. Especially the times that the women were portrayed as drug addicts.
In this passsage, Kilgour Dowdy shows how in about 9 movies how these leading actresses have to play certain characters while most of the time there is someone white that has to come along and help them out. For example in the movie "Losing Isiah" Halle Berry plays a crack addict that had to give up her baby and is barely literate. Also Meryl Streep comes along and takes care of the baby and Berry basically has to prove that to her that she can take care of the baby now. It was determined that Halle Berry's character had to improve her level of literacy in the book sense or else there was no possible chance to get her baby.
In all the other movies that they chose also there was something wrong with the Black women characters that they needed to improve their literacy in order to make their situation better, which sort of portrays how many view black women.
Brittney L. Echols
ReplyDeleteYou made a good point in your blog, however this is not always true. It solely depends upon the mindset of the playwright. If you watch a film written by a black person the film is told through a different point of view, take Tyler Perry for example. The point you made is very valid when it comes to black actor/actresses, they do tend to be uneducated but you have to look at this being it coming from the eyes of white people and their perspective of classifying all blacks into the same group.