#racist #hollywood #film #movie #chrisrock #anthonyhopkins #blm
Bad Company (2002)
The description for this film reads, “...a streetwise punk is recruited by a CIA agent to stop an arms deal from going bad.”
Anyone want to guess which one is the CIA agent and which one is the “streetwise punk”?
In case you missed it, the accessibility description I added for the movie poster reads,...
“movie poster showing portraits of Hopkins (a white man) and Rock (a black man) Rock's eyes are asymmetrical and slightly squinted, and his mouth is tilted. Hopkin's are neutral and even.”
@Pat A bit cheeky, but guessing Rock for both wouldn't be wrong - he has two roles in the film, one a CIA agent and one his twin brother the streetwise punk.
More seriously though, I suspect you could identify them as Hopkins (64 years old) and Rock (37 years old) and have people draw similar inferences with no mention of race at all.
Yes, Hollywood filmmakers are not only racist, but ageist, too. They are also sexist. My focus is in on racism in media, particularly against black people – and I don’t have enough resources to even began to do the research necessary to cover that limited topic.
I’ve touched on the topic elsewhere here on qoto. Here’s a thread where I had previously commented that 80% of films have bias, and another qoto user challenged me to find racism in ten randomly selected films. The result was that all of them contained racial bias.
https://qoto.org/@Pat/107140410303609143
Years ago racism in film used to be very apparent. First they didn’t include black people at all, (or very rarely). Then after the civil rights movement heated up in the 60’s they started to include black people in film but soon began to depict them as pimps, drug dealers, criminals, ignorant, or in menial occupations. Then when people called out filmmakers on that, they got more subtle about the racism, using techniques that promote racism unconsciously, in a way that people don’t really notice until it’s pointed out to them.
Here’s another example that I haven’t yet mentioned here on qoto:
Look at all of the titles of movies that use incorrect spelling or substandard grammar/pronunciation (e.g., Mo’ Money (1992), Gimme a Break! (1982)). An out-sized proportion of those films are about black characters or are targeted to black audiences.
There are literally scores of these subtle techniques that filmmakers use to promote racism, stereotypes and racial bias.
(You mentioned that Chris Rock actually played a CIA agent as his twin brother, but notice how that character was immediately killed off at the beginning of the movie, limiting the impression of that favorable depiction, and focusing on the unfavorable depiction. This is a very common technique used by filmmakers – kill off the black guy early to limit favorable screen time for black actors.)
Let me preface this by saying I see it's your hobby and I don't want to minimise the work you've put into it.
But I think you could just as easily spin your example the other way - Rock was cast in the punk role to identify him with society at large, younger and more diverse than the gov't. The crotchety old white CIA agent gains respect for him over the course of the film, because that's the example Hollywood wants real crotchety old white guys in positions of authority to follow with black people in general. So I think you need to be very careful about interpretation - you and I can observe the same film but come to opposite conclusions on its role in movie racism.
I also want to point out that films set in the present are reflective of present society. If nonwhite people are actually overrepresented in menial roles/criminal activities/etc., is it worse on the filmmaker's part to cast his actors in ways that reinforce the audience's awareness of that, or to pretend the society in which his work is set doesn't have those racial disparities?
>”… I think you could just as easily spin your example the other way - Rock was cast in the punk role to identify him with society at large, younger and more diverse than the gov't.”
The vast majority of people are neither “street-wise punks” nor CIA agents, so I don’t think the film is trying in anyway to represent the average person’s experience.
>”... So I think you need to be very careful about interpretation - you and I can observe the same film but come to opposite conclusions on its role in movie racism.”
I agree, some of it is interpretation, but much of the bias can be clearly quantized. I’ve mentioned earlier here and elsewhere some other techniques that filmmakers use to promote bias which require virtually no interpretation at all.
>”I also want to point out that films set in the present are reflective of present society. If nonwhite people are actually overrepresented in menial roles/criminal activities/etc., is it worse on the filmmaker's part to cast his actors in ways that reinforce the audience's awareness of that, or to pretend the society in which his work is set doesn't have those racial disparities?”
Then the kid said, “But mom, Johnny’s parents let him be racist, so why can’t I be racist, too?”
Filmmakers make films about what they want, not what they see -- how they want society to be (unless they’re doing documentaries). They understand the influence that they have and that what they portray on the screen will nudge society in that direction. If they want people to fight among themselves, that’s what they show. If they want people to believe that black people have poor grammar or can only be employed in dangerous or menial occupations, that’s what they show on the screen.
Let me say that this particular film, Bad Company, is really not one of the worst. It’s actually pretty fair to black people, relative to many others. Rock’s character has a much higher-than-average IQ, learns very quickly in an impossible situation, and ultimately finds success. My main concern on this particular film was it’s marketing and casting. Many, many more people will see this movie poster/description than those who will actually watch the film. And after seeing the poster they’ll walk away with another negative impression about black people.
If you want to gain more understanding about racist techniques used by filmmakers, watch the film Hollywood Shuffle (1987). That was made 35 years ago, yet many of the techniques depicted in that film are still being used today by racist filmmakers. But a lot more suble techniques have also been added since then.
And if you want to watch some movies that demonstrate less bias, here are a few:
American Warship (2012)
2 Days in New York (2012)
Z is for Zachariah (2015)
Armed Response (2017)
Movement and Location (2015)
Black Coffee (2013)
Some of these have issues too, but they are much better than a typical major Hollywood production. There are race-positive movies out there, but you have to search for them, they usually aren’t promoted and they are a tiny fraction of the films produced each year.
