Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Discuss the Ethnicity, Race in new cinema and how these elements Essay
Discuss the Ethnicity, Race in new cinema and how these elements represent the nicety identity in new cinema - Essay ExampleCountless movies have been made that placed the white race impression atop the pedestal. This is unmixed in many genre, setting and context. Films strengthen the existing prevailing sociable concepts (Kellner, 1995, as cited in Brayton, n.d.) that refer to a middle class white heterosexual person male as the normative figure (Brayton, n.d.). The concept of race is a social construction and originally defined by western people. The general ideal brought by this concept is that the white people are superior over those with colored skin. This prevailed during the colonization period where the colonizers were white people. Whiteness reached its peak after the colonial era though (Lopez, 2005). Thus, having colonized lands with black people, the latter were treated as inferior and were made slaves. The same treatment is accorded to people with brown skin. The c oncept of pureness was perpetuated even after colonialism as desirable and utilized to repress and marginalize the others (Lopez, 2005). The concept of personal whiteness referred to by W.E.B. Du Bois has been readily and systematically accepted by roots which were racialized, enslaved, conquered and colonized, but who regard white power and white pretense as critical concerns (Towards a Bibliography 2006, p. 5). Although numerous groups are working to counter this unequal social construct, there are still segments in society as well as individuals who retained such white supremacy notion. Even those not belong to organized groups, their individual attitude towards colored people show antagonism or disgust. Individuals who do not belong to the whiteness group are reason as belonging to the other (Performing Whiteness n.d.). The concept of race can be found in many cultural materials such as stories, narratives, habits, and so on and perpetuated in cinema (Critical Race Theory 20 11). Although socially constructed, race has been institutionalized in the US through systematic and deliberate actions, thus creating social structures and consequences (Lipsitz, 1995). In cinema, race is constructed continually as a performance and understood as a set of cultural tastes, but not in relation to biologic or cultural existence (Brayton, n.d., p. 63). The lifestyle of the rich upper class whiteness is portrayed as the proper norm (Johnson and Roediger, 1997, as cited in Brayton, n.d.). It is contend around the concept of consumer choice (Brayton, n.d.). Academic debates on race focus on cultural identity, the roots of the group, and how members see themselves as a cultural group (Bernardi, n.d.). Identity does not remain the same. It undergoes continuous change and transformation (Hall, 1989, as cited in Bernardi, n.d.). White dominance as a performance is aptly set forth by Orwell (1936 as cited in Lopez, 2005) in saying that by wearing a mask, the face grows to f it with it. Shifting Focus of Whiteness Racial formation, consort to Omi and Howard (1994, as cited in Bernardi, n.d.), is a divide grounded on cultural and physiognomic parameters that tells who should have access to institutions. Racial formation changes like identity (Bernardi, n.d.). During the early developments in cinema, the concept of race was dominated by social Darwinism and eugenics wherein humanity is placed in a hierarchy of human cultures and histories with the Anglo-Saxons at the top, followed by the other Caucasians, the
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