Week 3 (9/12/15)

This week in class we talked about Josephine Baker and fetishism, which reminded me of a fairly recent Huffington Post interview featuring Sanaa Lathan that I read a couple weeks ago. Her film “The Perfect Guy” was released on September 11, but during the promotional period, she touched on the lack of diversity in Hollywood films. Since the beginning of Hollywood films, Black actors, although popular, were depicted as out of the ordinary and animal-like. They were never considered normal, but rather romanticized and fetishized.

Although much progress has been made regarding the lack of diversity in film, Hollywood still appears to be missing the point. It seems as if their versions of diversity are for the sake of being diverse and making the statement that they are open-minded. It is meant to give these Hollywood executives a better image, but the main motivation should be to eliminate the concept of the Other. We should be welcoming people of all different backgrounds in films because of their talent and ability to entertain, not because they make the product more diverse. Sanaa Lathan perfectly summed up this point when she remarked, “"I think Hollywood has a ways to go. Certainly in the last couple of years with 'Think Like A Man' and even recently with 'Straight Outta Compton' doing well," she said. “But I think the language needs to change, the language about ‘Oh, this is an Urban film or this is a niche film.' No, these are Hollywood films. And it's to marginalize us because it's like some kind of a freak thing that we’ve made all this money off this movie. That’s a problem for me.”

Instead of looking at films featuring Black actors as “Black movies” they should simply be viewed as Hollywood films. By categorizing movies featuring black actors, Hollywood is completely misunderstanding the meaning of diversity. People of all races are willing to watch these movies, and their numbers at the box office prove that people of all backgrounds are enjoying the film for its art and content. We need to reevaluate what it means to be diverse and give all races the same level of recognition.