@mraspiringactor
I Helped Make That Episode#5 After Hours, with Tommy Chong
April 2, 2022 in Blogs
I Helped Make That Episode#2 Madam Secretary, with Noel Ramos
March 28, 2022 in Blogs
We continue our discussion on background acting with character actor, Noel Ramos, who talks about his experience filming two episodes of Madam Secretary back to back. We talk about how he got to work with Morgan Freeman, how he got to work with the show’s stunt crew, and how he’s been working on moving past being a background actor.
You can follow Noel Ramos on:
Noelramos.com
https://www.facebook.com/noelramos
Indepentmusicconference.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/IndieMusiCon
Clips taken from:
Madam Secretary-Opening and Closing Theme
Written by Transcenders
I Was in That Episode#1 She’s All That, with Naomi Grossman
March 27, 2022 in Blogs
In the premiere episode of I Was in That, Kevin Higgins talks to Naomi Grossman, a.k.a. Pepper from American Horror Story, about the time she was an extra in She’s All That. We talk about the realities of being an extra and teen movie cliches.
You can follow Naomi Grossman here:
https://twitter.com/naomiwgrossman?re…
https://www.instagram.com/naomiwgross…
https://www.facebook.com/NaomiWGrossman
https://www.cameo.com/naomiwgrossman?…
Clips taken from:
Not Another Teen Movie, which is owned by Columbia Pictures
The 2020 Backlash to 2000’s-early 2010’s Celebrity Backlash
September 24, 2020 in Uncategorized
I don’t know how aware you are of this but Paris Hilton just released a documentary about her life, specifically her troubled childhood. Now you may be thinking, “What troubled childhood? Growing up with millions and living a spoiled, pampered life? Oh no!”
Well it turns out she had controlling parents who forced her to go to a school that frequently did stuff like hit her and make her huddle in a cold room, among other things.
This documentary is called The Real Story of Paris Hilton: This is Paris. If you’re interested, you can watch it here:
If you read the comments section or search Paris Hilton on twitter, this documentary has led to something of a re-examination of Paris Hilton’s reputation. As we probably all remember, back in the 2000’s, she was basically the butt of the joke, someone who almost EVERYONE made fun of because they saw her as nothing more than a bimbo who did nothing to deserve her fame.
But, after she bravely came out to talk about her past, it seems like the tables have turned and many of us commoners have more respect for Ms. Hilton.
And this isn’t the only time something like this has happened. Britney Spears has been in the news a lot lately because many of her fans’ feel like she is being held captive by her father. There is even a movement going called #FreeBritney. If you remember, back in the 2000’s, though, she was, like Paris, treated like a joke. This was especially true in 2007, the year it seemed like something bad was happening to her every day. And the media just kept making fun of her again and again. It went to the point where one of her fans, Chris Crocker, was made fun of for making a video chastising people for making fun of her when, in hindsight, she clearly had a lot of mental problems that perhaps wasn’t worth the media hounding her on.
Shia Labeouf is another example of this. He went from being a popular Disney Channel star to someone who nerds all over the internet hated because he was in movies that “ruined their childhood” like the Transformers series and Indiana Jones. And then, in the early 2010’s, his stardom fell considerably and he had a mental breakdown, which again made him ripe for mockery by so many people. Remember the memes? Remember?
But then in the mid-late 2010’s, he’s sort of reinvented himself as an indie actor whose movies tend to be good and all has been forgiven. We have forgiven Labeouf for Transformers or “I’m not famous anymore”. And, with his movie Honey Boy, that gave us an interesting and complex look in his childhood, he, like Spears and Hilton, is someone who went from being a subject of mockery for his problems to someone who people are more sympathetic towards.
To a lesser extent, there’s also been a re-evaluation on his Transformers co-star, Megan Fox. Unlike Labeouf, her movie choices haven’t exactly gotten better but I have seen a lot of people on Twitter and the internet admit recently that maybe they were harsher on her than they should’ve been.
Megan Fox Was Ahead Of Her Time But The World Was Not Ready For Her
Back in 2009, she had given an interview in Empire (http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/2317985/Megan-Fox-hates-sexy-symbol-status) where she said:
“You can’t be a sex symbol 24 hours a day. I can’t be a professional celebrity or a professional sexpot. I can’t do that to myself. I just want to work and make the right choices, and study and develop as an actress.”
At the time people laughed at her for wanting to be a “real actress”. What didn’t help was when she criticized Michael Bay in an interview and her follow-ups to the Transformers movies, like Jennifer’s Body and Jonah Hex, failed at the box office. Yet, as the article above demonstrates, there are people who are now behind her when they maybe weren’t 10 years ago.
So this is sort of an interesting phenomenon going on, where celebrities we judged as being vain, “bimbos”, untalented, wastes of space, you name it, are telling their stories or we’re starting to see more of their stories, which leads us to realize that the backlash towards their success might have been unwarranted.
But what do you think really caused that?
Well, there’s probably many reasons.
First off the #MeToo movement happened. After Me Too, I think we have started to take accusations of abuse in the entertainment industry more seriously overall. Granted it hasn’t fixed a lot, as there are still celebrities accused of abuse being allowed to work, but I do think it has caused people outside of the entertainment industry to be more empathetic towards abuse in the entertainment industry than they may have been beforehand.
Not only that but there has also been more discussions about representation in the entertainment industry. When it comes to representation, there have even been discussions about fixing sexism within the entertainment industry. Many of the examples I mentioned are from women facing not just abuse but sexism as well. And, as recently as the 2000’s, sexism in the entertainment industry just wasn’t something we took that seriously.
At the time we judged these women because of preconceptions we were taught to judge them by that are kinda sexist if you stop and think about it. This, in turn, is probably what led people to judge Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or even Megan Fox because, to us, they seemed to fit the bimbo mold to a T. So we didn’t really see them as people at the time, just caricatures to point and laugh at because we thought of them as nothing more than spoiled, pampered celebrities that we wanted to see get taken down a peg. And their problems gave us the perfect reason to take them down.
So I think the 2020’s backlash to the culture of 2000’s-early 2010’s celebrity backlash is because we’ve grown and learn. Thanks to things like the MeToo Movement, we’re starting to see these celebrities as people. For once, social media might have also helped as we now have access to more information to see more than one side than we did in the 2000’s or even early 2010’s.
What bugs me about The Greatest Showman
September 6, 2020 in Blogs
As sad as Manic Expressions’ whole situation is, I’ll have to be honest, I’m fine with most of my blogs being gone. I never really took them all that seriously, they were just fun to make but they weren’t something I was passionate about.
There is one blog though that I was really proud of and it was this one, What bugs me about The Greatest Showman.
However, looking back, there were some things I’d also change about it so I’ve decided to rewrite it. Yet it probably won’t be word for word because I was stupid enough not to save it.
Woops.
Anyway here it goes.
Now I have no problem with movies talking about prejudice, racism, or just simply movies talking about “being yourself”. In fact that there are many good to great movies that touch on one or more of these issues; Black KkKlansman, Boyz N The Hood, Do the Right Thing, Hidden Figures, 12 Years A Slave, Black Panther, I could go on.
What I do have a problem with, and this goes for any message, is when it feels like the movie itself doesn’t really care about the message it keeps trying to push. The Greatest Showman is one such movie as it is one of the most disingenous, if not THE most disingenuous “racism and/or prejudice is bad/be yourself” movies I’ve ever seen.
The moral of the movie is basically centered around how the circus troupe, a mix of physically disabled people, physically disfigured people, people who just have done weird things weird things with their bodies or wear weird costumes, and people of color, are continually being shunned for who they are. And the movie’s whole message keeps presenting itself as “it’s okay to be who you are”.
However this message has nothing to do with the main plot of the movie as no one in the circus troupe is the main character. P.T. Barnum is. It’s literally called The Greatest Showman.
And the main plot of the movie is basically P.T. Barnum trying to climb the social ladder anyway he can and, in the process, abandoning his family and friends. How the hell does that relate to the more serious message of “racism and ableism are bad” or even the more uplifting message of “be yourself”? Barnum being a social climber and trying to impress rich people is already him being himself, as the movie shows he’s always been a very ambitious guy, so if anything the main moral should be more “don’t forget the important things in life”.
However, even though that’s more the message that is actually relevant to the plot of the movie, that’s not the message the movie tries to frame itself around. In interviews the cast and crew kept pushing the movie’s message as it being about “accepting those who are different” and “being yourself”. Just look at this quote from an interview Michelle Williams gave about the movie:
“I think that is a big message in the film, that everyone is important”.
Plus This is Me, the “Be Yourself” anthem from the movie, played in all of the commercials. And you may think that’s just the adverts, not the movie itself, but IT IS LITERALLY THE FIRST SONG THAT PLAYS IN THE END CREDITS.
So first of all there’s a big gap between the message the movie is trying to tell and the actual plot of the movie. But it goes deeper than that. This movie tries to promote itself as a “Be Yourself and Prejudice is bad” movie, right?
But it is also the movie where the outcasts, the characters the main message is centered around, not only aren’t the main characters…but they don’t get much to do in general. And they’re also barely in it.
Most of their screen time is centered around them singing self-empowerment songs. When they’re just talking, they have about 5 minutes of screen time. And this is a movie that is an hour and 40 minutes. And, when they do get to talk, hardly any of them get much of a chance to display any personality. Only three or four of them really get any sort of character. And even they’re pretty one note.
The Bearded Lady I guess is sort of given a mini-arc of being a shy outcast turned outspoken leader of “The Freaks” but this arc is pretty much relegated to her being the first character the movie cuts to anytime we see the troupe reacting to anything Barnum is doing. So if Barnum does something the troupe likes, we’ll cut to her being happy first as if she’s finally coming out of her shell. If Barnum does something the troupe doesn’t like, we’ll cut to the Bearded Lady looking sad as if she feels like all hope is lost.
Then there’s Tom Thumb who…is a snark machine. Whenever the circus troupe is in a scene, the movie will cut to him saying something snarky. The Fat Guy is always laughing for some reason. In every scene he is just laughing. Even in the big fight scene towards the end, where they are fighting protestors who hate their very existence, he’s laughing. And Zendaya’s brother is a mostly silent brute who is always giving angry looks to people who threaten his family and friends.
But other than those quirks, we don’t really know much about any of those characters. We know The Bearded Lady had a job and Tom Thumb lived with his Mom and had some vague fascination with the military I guess because Barnum finds a toy soldier in his house (and, really, movie, you’re going to characterize the dwarf’s interest by giving him something a child would have?) but that’s literally it and we really don’t know ANYTHING about the fat guy’s past or Zendaya’s brother other than it being implied he faced the same things Zendaya faced.
Even though those characters have something vaguely resembling a personality, they still, at the end of the day, don’t really have lives of their own (well, as the movie shows, I’m not talking about the real people they’re based off of). But they don’t have any real dreams or hopes or interests outside of just being accepted by society. So at the end of the day they still just exist to react to whatever Barnum is doing or sometimes people treating them like crap.
Or, in the brother’s case, he also reacts to Zac Efron trying to hit on his sister.
And the rest of them have zero personality and just exist to react to things. And, what’s more important here, is that, personality or not, for a movie that keeps pushing the message of “don’t judge others for being different” or “be yourself”, by letting us not get a chance to really know the circus troupe, the movie ends up being rather hypocritical as it feels like it’s ashamed of the very people it keeps telling us it’s supposedly championing.
By not giving them a major part in the plot, not giving the audience the chance to know these characters a bit better, and also giving them very little screen time, and really only having them come out whenever the movie decides it wants to be a “Be Yourself” movie, it just leads to the feeling that those behind the movie didn’t really care about these characters or the message they kept saying the movie was about. Instead it feels like they decided to make the movie an anti-prejudice and/or racism movie because it’s a hot topic in the news and they wanted to capitalize on the timeliness of that message.
It doesn’t help that The Bearded Lady and Tom Thumb get their own introduction scenes, almost as if the movie is building them up as major characters, and then give Zac Efron and Zendaya, both of whom are introduced very late into the movie, a romantic sub-plot instead so the movie can not only be about ableism but racism as well, as the whole conflict of their sub-plot is how people object to their interracial relationship. And, again, it just makes the whole thing feel forced because I don’t feel like I know much about either character.
I guess Zac Efron and Zendaya kind of have their own separate, individual (though very generic) personalities but these characters don’t have any real connection with each other. They spend more time either flirting with each other or looking nervously at each other than actually talking to each other and we never find out exactly why they are in love in the first place. So when their relationship is being threatened, it falls flat because, as sad as it is that they can’t be together considering the time they grew up in, how am I, the viewer, supposed to know they’re good for each other in the first place? It hasn’t given me any evidence that they could work as a couple.
Sure it’s good on the movie that it acknowledged that interracial relationships were basically illegal (or at least treated as illegal) back then but, without any sort of connection between these characters, why should I care? It just ends up feeling like this sub-plot is here not because they actually wanted to write an anti-racism love story but, again, because they wanted to capitalize on how much of a hot topic racism was (and continues to be) in 2017.
And, yes, what really makes the movie’s attempts at covering ableism, prejudice, and racism even more disingenuous, besides what I just mentioned above, is the use of P.T. Barnum as a protagonist.
Barnum was a very complicated man, especially in regards to how he treated those with physical disabilities or disfigurements and people who, well, weren’t white. In his political career, he did help abolish slavery and he did make some of his talent much more beloved and respected than they might have otherwise been. And he did have good relationships with some of his talent like Tom Thumb.
But, on the other hand, he also bought an African-American slave, lied about her age, and then held a public autopsy of her. He also abused animals, frequently gave Tom Thumb alcohol when he was 5, and also exploited the real Bearded Lady and put her out on display when she was a baby. Oh and look up Zip the Pinhead. I could go on. And none of these things are in the movie.
Yet, to the movie’s credit, I guess it doesn’t completely make the guy out to be an angel like people feared it would. But it does try to make us not only sympathize with but sugar coat the guy. And, at the end of the day, the movie makes him out to be the savior of people he mainly exploited and abused in real life.
At first, the movie actually does make him flawed. It seems like he’s only telling his troupe to accept and love themselves just to get them to be part of his circus, not because he actually cares about them, which is highlighted when, in another scene, his reaction to finding out people are protesting giving these people a venue to be seen is to promote that fact and how, when he starts being accepted by rich people, he pretty much ditches them so he can manage Jenny Lind. All of these things are portrayed as wrong by the movie itself.
But then the ending of the movie happens. Near the end of the movie Barnum has been fired by Jenny, everyone thinks he’s cheating on his wife with her, and his family won’t speak to him. It seems like all hope is lost and then the circus catches fire. He then saves everyone from that fire. Then, after that happens, he reunites with the troupe. Now does he apologize to the troupe for ditching them and not treating them like human beings? Surely that happens in a movie with this song:
NOPE that doesn’t happen. The troupe tells him it was okay that he exploited them because, by bringing them together, he made them a “family”. And then, later on, the mean ol’ Critic who kept criticizing him in the paper, tells him that not only has he changed his mind on the circus but that his circus, which the movie shows came from a place of him wanting to exploit these people, was a “celebration of humanity” all along. So the movie gives the literal EXPLOITER who, while not as bad as his real life counterpart, still came in with the intent of exploiting these people (he literally promoted them as “being something you’ve never seen before”, what does that sound like?) as a literal champion of the rights of people of color, the physically disabled, and the physically disfigured.
This in general points out even more how disingenuous the whole message felt. And the people behind the movie, while I don’t hate them, aren’t really helping as they said this movie was never made to be a biopic of Barnum. As they say, it was made to be the type of movie Barnum would make about himself. So, what they’re basically saying is, their movie, that is trying to have the message of “Be Yourself” and “Don’t hate yourself for looking different” is also the movie the man who ran a business making fun of those who were different would make to make himself look good? To me, that just seems very contradictory, like they didn’t think this creative decision (or the decision to use Barnum in general) through.
It also doesn’t help that they try to make the movie seem progressive and woke while making not only Barnum the hero whose story this apparently literally is but Jenny Lind, a progressive woman in real life who also started many charities, the villain.
Though I guess this is not that surprising. Apparently the movie had been in development hell for years. Hell it took 8 years for this movie to get on the big screen. And, when movies are in development hell, there will probably be a lot of cooks in the kitchen, some who have different ideas for what the movie should be about.
And, while there are many movies that have been in development hell for years that still end up being consistent, sometimes you do get cases like this where it just ends up feeling like too many people wanted too many different things and we end up with this weird compromise where things contradict with each other.
But, at the end of the day, all you can look at is the movie itself. And what bugs me about The Greatest Showman is that, with its usage of an extremely problematic figure as the hero who many times went against the message the movie is trying to push, the underdeveloped anti-racism romantic sub-plot, and the usage of physically disabled people as more characters to cheer the lead on or sing about the message of the movie than characters with their own lives, it ends up feeling like the most phony, fake attempt at a progressive movie I’ve seen in quite a while. For a movie that has songs like this, it should’ve listened to its own message:
Why do we still have white savior movies?
June 12, 2020 in Blogs
Why do we still have white savior movies? June 12, 2020
by mraspiringactor
So I’m a pretty liberal person but I don’t agree with everything progressives say, mostly in regards to movies. But there is one thing I do agree on…why do we still have white savior movies?
The Blind Side.
Avatar.
Dragonball Evolution.
The Last Airbender.
The Help.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
By that, I don’t mean movies where black and white people team up and help each other out.
I mean movies centered moreso on the white person that has them saving the person of color or other type of minority (or the analogue for people of color or other type of minority) from being oppressed in one way or another.
If these narratives were from movies from 50 years ago, it would be one thing. But there are movies that are only a few to ten years old that have these narratives.
The Blind Side is based on a true story. But the movie makes it look like Michael Oher was completely useless, did everything people told him to do, and had no ambitions of his own until he was adopted by Sandra Bullock and she and her family convinced him to get into Football.
In real life, yes, Michael Oher was adopted by a white family but he was a much more independent, extroverted person than the movie portrayed him as and he got himself into Football. You can read more about how the movie fumbled Oher’s story here: https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/blindside.php https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-blind-side-michael-oher_n_7608988
They took the inspirational story of a real man, a famous football player, about how he himself worked hard to get out of poverty and turned it into a story about how white people saved him from being poor. In 2009.
And unfortunately, this trend hasn’t really ended.
In 2017, Hidden Figures was mostly able to subvert the white savior narrative and had the three main ladies as much more extroverted, intelligent, independent women who were not afraid to fight for their rights to be treated as equals at NASA. And, mostly, the movie shows them enacting change.
BUT the movie kinda flirted with having a white savior character in the form of Kevin Costner’s character, who was shown having to be the one to give permission for them to use the bathroom and watch the spaceship landing in the control room. If this was true, it would be one thing, but his character didn’t exist. Katherine Johnson basically used the whites only bathroom herself one day and she nor her team were ever able to go into the control room.
While the movie wasn’t a complete white savior narrative, it’s kind of sad they had to have a white guy be the one to save them in albeit just two scenes, rather than just show the events as they existed, which would’ve been much more impactful.
And, of course, there’s The Greatest Showman, where circus performers that are a mix of physically disabled people and people of color are shown as basically having a shitty life and are only able to get the respect they deserve when they are employed by…P.T. Barnum?
And, like The Blind Side and, to a lesser extent, Hidden Figures, that movie made its characters seem a lot more reliant on P.T. Barnum than they really were. In real life, some of these performers, like Tom Thumb/Charles Stratton and Chang and Eng, the two conjoined twins, actually managed to find success outside of Barnum’s management. Look it up. Hell, remember the scene in that movie where the circus burned down? Remember how Zac Efron, whose character, like Kevin Costner’s, didn’t even exist in real life, was the one to pay for a new building? Well in real life it was actually Tom Thumb, who had become so successful he used his fortune to be able to pay for the damages and get a new building for Barnum.
Weird how a movie that claims to promote body positivity can’t possibly imagine someone who doesn’t look like Zac Efron being able to save the day. Even when it’s true.
Now granted this is technically more an example of an abled savior than a white savior, given both men are white, but still, no matter who it is, it’s one thing to be historically inaccurate. But it’s another thing when you take both the struggles or achievements of one person and either erase them or give said achievements to another person entirely. Yet when it’s the achievements of an actual person who is considered a minority, be it they are people of color, they’re not a man, they have a disability, what have you, and not only give it to someone else but someone who else is not considered a minority, like Kevin Costner, Zac Efron, or even Sandra Bullock despite being a woman, it gives off the feeling that the filmmakers themselves think general audiences can’t possibly imagine someone who isn’t a good looking white person, usually a man, being the savior.
It’s even worse when they take a true story that kind of comes off as a bit white savior-y and make the person white.
Look at Freedom Writers. The character Hilary Swank played was actually Latina. However, they made her white. And the plot is a teacher inspiring her students, thus kind of making her a white savior. Especially when, in real life, it was more a Latina woman saving a class filled with people of color not a white woman.
Of course, white savior narratives have also popped up a lot in fiction as well.
People could point to Avatar as a movie where a white guy saves a bunch of aliens that are obvious stand-ins for Native Americans.
But there are also two anime adaptations, Dragonball Evolution and The Last Airbender.
In Dragonball Evolution’s case, most of the main characters were Asian but Goku was changed to a white guy. And, remember, he’s supposed to be the guy that’s going to save the world in this movie.
The Last Airbender really doubled down on the white savior narrative as most of the supporting actors and extras were of either Southeast or East Asian descent yet the three main characters, the three characters that were going to save everyone, were played by white people.
This movie is only 10 years old.
And of course, anime adaptations are hardly the only examples. The Help is technically a fictional movie. Granted they might have stolen the likeness of a real woman for one of the characters (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/lawsuit-black-maid-ablene-cooper-sues-author-kathryn/story?id=12968562) but most of it is fictional.
And, while I can’t say I’ve read the book, I have seen the movie. And Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer’s characters are depicted as intelligent, independent women not afraid to call out their employees on their bullshit, even before Emma Stone steps into the picture.
Hell, remember the poop pie scene? That happened pretty early in the movie.
But nothing they say or do has much in the way of social change. It’s only when Emma Stone writes a book about their experiences does any sort of social change starts, as it becomes a bestseller, and people become more aware of the abuse the maids are facing.
And the movie ends with the implication that big changes are going to start thanks to Stone’s book. I love Stone and all but, if it wasn’t for her character, racism would’ve still been utterly and completely alive and well where she, Octavia Spencer, and Viola Davis, amongst others, live.
Emma Stone pretty much starts a Civil Rights movement. Think about that.
I don’t think the filmmakers mean anything when they portray the white person as basically saving minorities or anyone else considered a social outcast. Many of the movies I mentioned paint themselves as feel-good movies about how racism or prejudice is bad.
But it comes off as condescending. I think they’re trying to portray these issues as “we can work together, no matter what race we are”. But when you paint one member of a certain race, gender, etc. as the savior in the scenario, it comes off less as equality and more as if you’re saying that it is up to one race, gender, to pretty much save the day. And, saying this as a white person, when that happens to be a white person (albeit a cognitively disabled one), it gives off really unfortunate implications considering we are right now the majority of the population.
And when these narratives are fictional, it’s bad enough. But, again, when you are taking the stories of a real person and giving their accomplishments to an abled, white person, it does come off like they can’t think the audiences could stand seeing someone who isn’t a white, abled, good looking person come out on top once in a while.
And, well, this is bullshit because we have been getting more stories with people of color where they don’t need white people to come in and save the day but rather are able to save themselves. Or we just get movies where they’re portrayed as people and they are able to save the day.
Black Panther didn’t need a random white guy to save Wakanda.
Crazy Rich Asians didn’t need a random white guy to bring Constance Wu and Henry Golding together.
Girls Trip didn’t need a random white guy to…umm…bring the ladies to Vegas?
Point is there are plenty of examples of successful movies starring people of color where they have plenty of agency and are able to help themselves out. So the fact that there are still filmmakers today out there who think they need someone from the majority race to help save them from racism or poverty or what not is kinda sad honestly.
The same thing is true for anyone, not just people of color. Again why does The Greatest Showman, a movie where disabled people have to be saved by two white guys exist when literally the same year brought us Wonder, a movie where a physically disabled kid (albeit one played by a non-physically disabled child) was able to fight for equality mostly by himself, with only minor assistance from his family and teachers?
It’s just not necessary.
Again, as a white person, I have no problem having white people and people of color being portrayed as working together to fight racism or help each other out with whatever situation they are in. This is true for any minority population. As long as they are portrayed as equals, of course that is a-okay with me. But when the movie presents someone as a “savior”, it doesn’t come off as equality.
And many times it comes off more as a white person acting as a “savior” than it does true equality. It says something that Blazing Saddles, a movie people keep saying is “too racist to be made today” (despite the fact that all the white people saying the N word are the bad guys) has a more respectful way to show a black guy (Cleavon Little) and a white guy (Gene Wilder) fighting racism as they fight racism together rather than Wilder being seen as the hero.
Also, the white savior trope is just a really dated narrative device that, honestly, we should’ve stopped using decades ago.
Comments:
chris-lang says: June 14, 2020 at 2:03 am I tend to agree. When we see lots of movies where minorities are able to take the lead and save themselves, the ‘white savior’ trope no longer makes sense. It might have made sense decades ago (just as rose-tinting the old American South might have made sense back in the days of Gone With the Wind and Song of the South), but it certainly doesn’t today.
Of course, the Oscars have been especially insulting. In a year where there were several movies (including ‘Black Panther’) where the black people save themselves, it was a white savior movie (‘Green Book’) that won Best Picture. Seemingly, keeping a condescending trope alive won it the extra points needed.
mraspiringactor says: June 14, 2020 at 2:33 am Here here! I agree with everything you said!
Cinematic Soundtracks episode 23: Kiss from a Rose by Seal
July 10, 2015 in Uncategorized
I finish celebrating The Dark Knight Rises by looking at this…love ballad for the Batman Forever soundtrack!
Also sorry about the noise in the background-it was raining the day I was filming!
Cinematic Soundtracks episode 22: Hitoshizuku by Zone
July 9, 2015 in Uncategorized
Liam finishes celebrating his 20th birthday by looking at Hitoshizuku, a song from the Ice Age soundtrack in Japan!
If you’re wondering why I’m reviewing a music video for a kids movie to celebrate my 20th birthday it’s because the new movie came out on the same day!
Also I’m sorry I got this in late-their was some footage I needed to get!
Cinematic Soundtracks episode 21: What is Love? by Haddaway
July 8, 2015 in Uncategorized
Liam Higgins looks at the video for this HIGHLY memorable song!
Cinematic Soundtracks episode 20: Hero by Nickleback
July 7, 2015 in Uncategorized
To celebrate the new Spider Man movie coming out, I look at the music video for the first movie’s theme song (and, in the process, look at one of the most hated bands of all time!)
Cinematic Soundtracks episode 19: City of Crime by Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks
July 6, 2015 in Uncategorized
At least Yogi Bear isn’t the worst thing Dan Aykroyd has done.
