On Racialism In American Movies.doc

论美国电影中的种族主义on racialism in american moviesabstract except for its domination in politics and economy, america also dominates the world culture. it must be acknowledged that american movies, especially hollywood movies, contribute a lot not only to the spread of american culture but also to the influence of american outlook of value on every corner of the world. however, every coin has its two sides. instead making any superficial praise to any merit of american movies, this paper mainly focuses on an evident defect in them, racialism. it develops with representations, reasons and influences of racialism in american movies. with the help of some typical movies, historical evidences and social elements, this paper will make a specific delineation and explanation to the central point, ending with a brief but general conclusion that it is of great importance to make a deep research on this problem and find solution to reduce unnecessary conflicts and to preserve the difference of races. key words: racialism; american movies; white supremacy; minoritiesoutlinethesis statement: most american movies advocate the domination of white people while discriminating against other nations and races.，therefore, we should look into the historical and cultural reasons to explain such phenomenon.i. introductionii. expressions of racialism in american moviesa. the domination of white peopleb. showing no respect to other racesc. imposing virtues on american hegemony iii. reasons for racialism in american moviesa. the historical reasonsb. the support from theories of racialismc. the social and political currents in america 1. the leading role of u.s.a. in politics, economy, and culture2. the exaggerated negative image of minorities in american society iv. influencesa. leading conflicts among nations, races and religionsb. the obliteration of differencesv. conclusion2i. introductiondespite the position as a superior form of art, and an industry bringing about billions of dollars per year, movie deserves more applause for it is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of culture. with a more direct and vivid method, movie has played a growing significant role in describing different cultures, thoughts, and outlook of value. in other words, just as eyes are the windows of heart, movies of different countries can delineate the specific culture of those countries, which increases the understanding of people over the world to other places. as the representative of american movies, hollywood puts thousands of movies into global market and absorbs thirty billion dollars from them. there is no denying that in the recent decade american film industry has made remarkable progress in increase of production output and audiences with the help of advanced technology. with the process of globalization, the influence of american movies expands rapidly around the world. that is to say, it takes no pain to admit that the advancement of american culture is indebted to american movies. although american movies enjoy such grand reputation, there pervades much sex, violence and a lot of f words in american movies, which arouses wide public complain. even though the film censorship and rating system have largely reduced these defects, racialism, as an exception, still exists. it cannot be attributed to some individuals. racialism is a social problem, which has a long history and deeply rooted in american society and culture. it is expressed unconsciously in american movies. although many stories are of different cultural origins and of all geopolitical spaces such as europe, the middle east, china, and latin america, once adapted and cast by hollywood, they serve unanimously the interest of the white supremacy. nobody doubts that either out of economic concerns or racist ideology has functioned to help the dominance of white supremacist capitalist ideology among the movie viewers and eventually naturalize and perpetuate the racial inequalities between the white and non-white people. if not be paid enough attention, this problem may lead cultural and racial conflicts, the disappearance of cultural differences, and the loss of identity of minority groups, which eventually will block the development of modern movies. therefore, it is not possible to find the solutions with an incomplete picture of racialism in american movies. in order to achieve this goal, the author first looks into the typical representations, including the domination of white people, showing no respect to other races and imposing virtues on american hegemony. then, with the help of historical and social views, the reasons for racialism in american movies also help build a general understanding of it. the last step is to conclude the negative influences exerted by racialism in american movies. these factors not only compose a whole picture of the theme but also pave for the further research on the solutions. ii. the representations of racialism in american moviesa. the domination of white peoplethe first point to notice regarding the representation of racialism in american movies is that nearly all of the movies have been dominated by whiteness, which was so obvious and pervasive that its normalcy has been rarely explicitly addressed. on one hand, since a long time, the media has too long masked in a white world, observing the rest world with white mens eye and a white perspective. as the process of civil rights demonstrations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the usa black people and other minorities were being seen more frequently in movies; on the whole, most of the leading characters in the famous movies in general have been exclusively whites. even today, the presence of the minority ethnic groups on television is still unfavorably disproportionate to the distribution of their population and their viewing hours of movies. thus the other “colors” in movies have generally been either ignored or marginalized. on the other hand, although more non-white faces are seen in american movies, the white people always occupy the positive roles, and the destiny of being the savior always befalls on a white man, who possesses a so-called anglo-saxons blood. according to stereotyped plots, whenever the country or even the earth suffers the doom day, it is for certain that american white people will act as the leaders, and make every attempt to find the solution to eliminate crisis. the movie, year of the dragon, is a typical example. in year of the dragon, the director, michael cimino, insisted that this was no racialism in this movie as they had more asian american actors than any other film before, but he couldnt deny the fact that the positive images of asian americans never be expressed by this movie. year of dragon tells a story: stanley is a capable sheriff in new york. he is ordered to make an investigation of a series of murder in china town in order to recover the peace there. in china town, gun fight, illegal drug selling and killings are common occurrences. through the cooperation with smugglers and illegal immigrants, those gangsters are engaged in illegal businesses, assassination, and beheading the policemen. after a fierce fighting, the white sheriff obtains the final victory. all the asian americans get the punishment they deserve. like any american before, year of the dragon still establishes the stereotypes: a strong, brave, and moral white hero and a group of cruel, greed, and immoral asian americans. b. showing no respect to other racesone of the most frequently used terms in the discussion of ethnic minority representation is stereotype. historically, the races of color have been ghettoized, marginalized and stereotyped. although most of the debate in this respect derived from the representation of black people, the same treatment can also be detected and visualized in the presentation of other ethnic minorities including latinos, asians, and native americans. while discussing the racist stereotypes of black people, christ baker, he suggests that the five distinct stereotypes in films proposed by donald bogle.1 with their origin in plantation and slavery images, these four types are:l coons: slapstick entertainers, gamblers, no-account niggersl tragic mulattos: beautiful, sexy, exotic mixed race women forever stained with black bloodl mammies: female house servants, big, strong, bossy but devoted and subservient to the white family l bad bucks: big, strong, violent, oversexed male renegades the “native savage” figure can be found in the representation of blacks as criminals or source of “problems”, such as prostitution, gambling, drug addicting, mugging and urban riot.while these images are more focused on the black people, they are equally applicable to the stereotypical depiction of other minorities. in the case of asian americans, the negative stereotypes have reappear on the big and small screen to shape and reshape the audiences perception of asians.2 american movies, similar with many other forms of mass media, has helped to sustain, naturalize, and perpetuate these stereotypes of minor ethnic peoples and consequently define and establish them as the abnormal, deviant, deficient, subordinate and inferior, while the whites are the center, the master, and the superior. partly for the globalization, and partly for multiculturalism, americans would like to assimilate some elements of different cultures and different nations history to their movies. to some extent, some of these movies have achieved an instant success in not only the market but also in the critics. nevertheless, some movies may arouse the complain from the public. in 2001, american nbc channel broadcast the monkey king, a movie which was made from the famous chinese myth, journey to west. it tells a story about an american white man named nick and how he makes trial and efforts to save the world. nick takes a journey to look for the author of journey to west, wu cheng en, and to protect the manuscript of this myth. after experiencing all kinds of hardships, with the help of the guanyin bodhisattva, successfully saves wu cheng en from enemies and brings him to the 21st century. at the end of the movie, nick and the guanyin bodhisattva fall in love with each other. in most american audiences eyes, the monkey king could just be classified into a fantasy film, no than other american movies. but to chinese people or american chinese, this movie totally distorted the chinese famous myth, the image of chinese people, and buddhism. in this movie, chinese people are delineated to a group of people who are stuff, immoral and greed for money. whats more, chinese communist party becomes the enemy of the hero. what the most intolerable is that guanyin bodhisattva, the god worshipped by the buddhists, is designed as a woman desiring love from the hero, which is a bare insult to our asian religion. c. imposing virtues on american hegemonyin the 1980s, america supremacy expands greatly. the military competence had ranked first in american foreign issues. it was the main task for american media during that period to exaggerate the superiority of america and create a new american fairy tale. the media will take the racial problem as sources so as to establish a typical american, who must be a white man, in peoples mind. inevitably, a lot of american movies produced since the 1980s have obvious political purposes, which spare no effort to promote the international image of the united states. in these movies, america is delineated into a nation where there is no injustice, inequality, and people have been far away from the evil day when their possessions shall become unequal to their wants. on contrary, in nations from the third world, people there live a misery life with scarce food, clothes and shelter and be heavily exploited by the bourgeois; diseases and pollution are everywhere; the government officials are corrupt and control peoples speech and behavior. then america will bring justice, equality, freedom and wealth back for the people there in a way which cannot be considered peaceful. the movies that we are familiar with, such as the series of first blood, all rationalize western values and mindsets such as white supremacy, eurocentrism, masculinity, imperialism which consciously justify and dress inequity, inequality, repression, exploitation, prejudice, transgression, appropriation and hegemony that are pervasive of all the present social relations. iii. the reasons for racialism in american moviesfrom the aspects about how racialism performs in american movies, we should look into the reasons why such a phenomenon appears. as the medium is always located within a broader system of social-political relations and forces, what is shown and seen in movies, directly or indirectly, is apt to the changing social and political currents in reality. in this sense, a generalization of the social and political context in which representations of racialism were produced becomes a prerequisite for the understanding and interpretations of these images on the big screen. there are the historical, ideological, social, economical, political and cultural implications behind these constructions of the images of the ethnic minorities.a. the historical reasonsamerica, also named melting pot, is a multi-ethnic country where different cultures interconnect. however, racial relations in the united states have ever remained the most controversial issue in reality and a terrain of contestation in mass media. in fact, it is common to trace racialism in american history. in different periods, racial problems would be focused on different minorities. for example, the trend of anti-german americans was prevailing in world war i; outrage committed by ku klux klan and the detention of japanese americans in world war ii.3 in fact, racial problem was very common through american history as the united states developed. during the westward movement, american troops massacre hundred and thousands of native indians in order to obtain more territories and resources. before the civil war, it was estimated that there were totally 39, 9000 africans transported to the plantations in the south of america as slaves. at that age, it was a public opinion that negroes were slaves, and slaves were negroes. in the late of 19th century, the labors from china emigrated to america and sacrificed a lot in the development of the american capitalist economy and the construction of the continental railway. for the low salary for chinese labors and their hard work, chinese labors got more jobs than their white counterparts. however, chinese labors suffered from torture and hostility from white people and other minorities. historically, indians, blacks, and asians cannot enjoy the same civil rights as white people. indians faced the destiny of being exterminated from the earth. even after the civil war, the african americans, for a long time, were still marked as the generations of slaves. compared with indians and african americans, the chinese americans was no better than them in any aspect. in the late 19th century, american government launched issues which forbidden chinese and some relative acts to limit the development of chinese. roosevelts administration abolished all laws against chinese in america and permit them take on american nationality, but it was not until 1965 that the immigration act ended the exclusion of asian immigration. from the end of the civil war to the 1950s, american government has made adjustments to the policy to the minorities, but these minority groups, such as indians, american africans, and american chinese, are still suffered psychological discrimination from the government and the mainstream society, which are mainly composed of white people. inter-marriage was forbidden by laws. in some states, the state government even carried out racial segregation in schools. although such laws against the minorities have been abolished, the racial contradiction is still acute in todays america. it is still a long way for american minorities to fight for the civil rights.b. the support from theories of racialismracialism is a modern social phenomenon which originated from europe. with the advent of the 18th century, in europe, there sprang into life a public movement known as the enlightenment. the influence of the enlightenment on social life was inevitable from ideology to literature. the enlighteners placed all branches of science at the service of making by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people. they made emphasis on individuals and the nature. the peoples sameness stated in the bible was challenged. in addition, with the public acceptance of darwins theory, some anthropologists and philosophers proposed some theories that grouped human beings into different classes according to biological and cultural elements. these theses provided so-called “scientific proof” for inequality among different human species, which, to some extent, betrayed the doctrine of “liberty, equality and fraternity” in enlightenment. that all people with the same ancestor, which was the cultural foundation of christianity, turned into legend and fairy tale. during the colonial age, the western colonists held the opinion of the superiority of conquer and the inferiority of conquered races. the rebel against christianity also treated as a method to measure whether an ethnic was civilized or savage. some famous european philosophers, represented by voltaire，hegel，kant, supported the relative theories about different human races. wit