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The Blind Side

The Blind Side, directed by John Lee Hancock, is a cinematography that was released back in 2009 featuring Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron. It was based on the true story of Michael Oher and his rather difficult rise to success in the NFL. Oher was taken in by Leigh Tuohy, a wealthy white women, and her family. Prior, Oher was a homeless black kid that struggled with academics. When Oher became apart of the Tuohy family, he was equipped with a significantly larger map of opportunities. This lead him to the realization that he was talented in many areas, but was unable to pursue them in his prior life. He ended up attending the University of Mississippi along with landing a spot on their football team. It is eye-opening to compare the life that Oher had as a young black teen with no home versus his life being part of the Tuohy family. It took guidance and unconditional love to understand the talent and skill he had possessed. Growing up, given unequal opportunities build a wall between him and this talent for years and years. In our course, specifically the civil right unit and study on the March of Milwaukee, the amount of protesting that went into such small steps towards change in the black community really showed how far we have come along with how far we still need to go. Within that study, I remember finding an article titled How One Milwaukee Zip Code Explains America's Mass Incarceration Problem, and found that by the age of 34, 38% of men in the zip code have not spent time in an adult state correctional facility. Another article I found upon my research was  called What it’s like to be black in Milwaukee that included a eye-opening quote from a residing citizen, “The kids, they have more weapons than the cops. They don’t have the skills to navigate life without violence, which rules here” (James Miller). Contributing factors that the articles conveyed was that there is a lack of jobs along with poor education that is given to these kids. “We tell them...get your life back on track. But then we attach an anvil to their back when they came out that will keep them hindered”. (Willie Brisco) All of these are weights put on a group of people that pull them down and make the reach and achievement of opportunity significantly more difficult. Some of these problems Michael Oher faced before becoming part of the Tuohy family. These reasons held him back from reaching his full potential and becoming his best self. It is incumbent that we talk about these anvils in order to bring light to the unequal level playing field between groups of people. The Blind Side is a prime example of not only how these anvils affect lives, but more importantly, the effect it has on a person's life to take them off. I definitely recommend The Blind Side for anyone who has not seen it!

Citations:

Leichenger, A. (n.d.). How One Milwaukee Zip Code Explains America's Mass Incarceration Problem. Retrieved from https://thinkprogress.org/how-one-milwaukee-zip-code-explains-americas-mass-incarceration-problem-66a6535d1c4/

Sanchez, R. (2016, August 16). What its like to be black in Milwaukee. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/16/us/milwaukee-sherman-park-community/index.html

Gajewski, Ryan. “Blind Side Subject Blames Film for NFL Career Decline: ‘I Dont Like That Movie.’” The Hollywood Reporter, 19 June 2015, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nfls-michael-oher-blind-side-803378.

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#OscarsSoWhite

The popular hashtag titled #OscarsSoWhite became well-known soon after the 2015 Oscar Award Show. This show gives academy awards to the most pronounced actors, writers, producers, etc. in the film industry each year. The year 2015 had stuck out like a sore thumb for a very obvious reason, that is, the highest awarded actors and actresses that night seemed to be racially homogenous. It seemed to catch many people’s attention that none of these individuals were minorities. Below is a picture of all 20 actors and actresses that were nominated for major roles. Now it is important to understand that the majority of white’s nominated was not because they made up a large majority of films made from 2014, for there was a great portion of movies that starred other races. Such films include Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation, and many others starred minorities, but did not receive fair recognition. Many famous celebrities including Spike Lee and Jada Smith publicly boycotted the event due to the fact that all 20 of these nominees were white and no minorities were chosen. In an MTV interview, April Reign explained the background of the academy award voters stating, “They are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old … and they might not be as interested in seeing ’Selma.” It can only be fair to assume that such a panel of judges must lead to bias voting (judges pictured below). This exact situation can be tied to our class reading, specifically Kiri Davis’ doll experiment as well as Willis’s pictures in Picturing Us. Davis’ results came back with 15 out of 21 of the children picking the white doll because it was “the nice doll” and Willis in Picturing Us describing his family albums asking his mother, “why, in all the photographs in the album that included dolls, mine were black and Yvonne’s were white”. It seems that she preferred the black dolls, while his sister preferred the white dolls. It seems that some had a set standard of beauty instilled in their minds and others didn’t. Could most of these academy award voters have this notion in mind when picking individuals to achieve such high standing awards? it is very surprising that this set idea of beauty that was tested in Davis’s experiment was already instilled in such young children. Could this installation truly be inside these voters heads? I mean it is quite clear that there were a large portion of quality films that starred people of color, so if most of the awards went to white’s, then these awards were not achieved based on solely talent. This is why #OscarsSoWhite became a powerful movement to end such bias power. This voting must be broken up into a fair-level playing field or the academy awards will soon lose all credibility that have taken years upon years to build up.          

Citations:

Sinha, Bhaavya. “#OscarsSoWhite: The Call for Racial Diversity in Hollywood.” Berkeley Political Review, 6 Apr. 2016, bpr.berkeley.edu/2016/04/07/oscarssowhite-the-call-for-racial-diversity-in-hollywood/.

Ryan, Patrick. “#OscarsSoWhite Controversy: What You Need to Know.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 2 Feb. 2016, www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2016/02/02/oscars-academy-award-nominations-diversity/79645542/.

Spool, Ari. “Oscars So White.” Know Your Meme, 20 Sept. 2018, knowyourmeme.com/memes/oscars-so-white.

Willis, Deborah. Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography. Diane Publishing, 2006.

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Fresh off the Boat

Theres no episode that goes by of Fresh of the Boat that shows the ups and downs of America’s melting pot. It can be hard sometimes for main character, Eddie Wong, growing up as an Asian American in the suburbs of Orlando. He struggled with try to fit in, in other words, “be white”. Rhythm and poetry, or Rap, played a huge role in being a stepping stone for Eddie to not only show, but be proud of his true self. You see, “hiphop was an anthem for an outsider” to Eddie, both in the show and in real life. Many Asian Americans today are identifying themselves with this media. It brings about this conversation of conforming to popular belief and the struggles that come with it. The Wong family is viewed as a traditional Chinese family who meet all of the stereotypes applied with a group of people. For example, in the episode called Driver’s Eddie, Louis, Eddie’s father, pulls to the side of the street to help out some people with their car. Soon after, a cop drives by and stops his car and he see that they are stalled on the road. He immediately predicts that Louis is the person to blame for the car accident because he is asian. Without knowing once piece of evidence from the situation, the officer is using a stereotype towards Louis. Even outside of the show, actress Kristina Wong shares a true story from her past, “As I’m watching these episodes of Fresh Off the Boat, I’m thinking a lot about my own family, and how when I was in college, people didn’t understand how my father could be into Elvis, or capable of being charismatic and social.” (Wong 2015) Recently, the song Chun Li, by Nicki Minaj, has become a challenge for individuals to video themselves lip singing to the song. It seems quite innocent as first, but as the challenge began to grow, stereotypes began to fall into the media. People began wearing their hair in two buns, like Chun Li, along with anime hair styles, kimonos, and even a rapper asian doll. This challenge belongs to the hashtag #ChunLiChallenege and is empowering this asian stereotype. Although many believe it is harmless, it does just the opposite. When we pair up these appropriations with a certain group of people, it becomes cultural appropriation. The negative mentalities that come about with this is that we generalize many groups of cultural and ethnicities into a dominant one, which misrepresents so many of these people. It also creates these stereotypes that Fresh off the Boat writes about, such as Driver’s Eddie stereotype that I explained earlier. In order to fully appreciate the melting pot respect one another’s beliefs, affiliations, background, etc. we need to end such negative hashtags and stereotypes associated with groups of people.

Sources:

Yi, D. (2018, April 27). Nicki Minaj's Chun Li Isn't an Excuse to Perpetuate Asian Stereotypes. Retrieved from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/chun-li-challenge-asian-stereotypes

General, R. (2018, May 07). Nicki Minaj's 'Chun Li Challenge' Accused of Perpetuating Asian Stereotypes. Retrieved from https://nextshark.com/nicki-minajs-chun-li-challenge-accused-perpetuating-asian-stereotypes/

Lai, J., Yu, P., & Wong, K. (2015, March 27). It's Refreshing That Fresh Off the Boat Doesn't Show Hate Crimes. Retrieved from https://slate.com/culture/2015/03/fresh-off-the-boat-conversation-why-it-s-refreshing-that-show-doesn-t-show-hate-crimes.html