Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and author. His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Peabody Awards. He has also been honored with an Honorary BAFTA Award in 2002, an Honorary César in 2003, and the Academy Honorary Award in 2015.
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film ; other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a camera, projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335. RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935.
Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The character was seen in the Victorian era as a ground-breaking literary attack against the dehumanization of slaves. Tom is a deeply religious Christian preacher to his fellow slaves who uses nonresistance, but who is willingly flogged to death rather than violate the plantation's code of silence by informing against the route being used by two women who have just escaped from slavery. However, the character also came to be criticized for allegedly being inexplicably kind to white slaveowners, especially based on his portrayal in pro-compassion dramatizations. This led to the use of Uncle Tom – sometimes shortened to just a Tom – as a derogatory epithet for an exceedingly subservient person or house negro, particularly one accepting and uncritical of their own lower-class status.
Michael Ray Charles is an American painter born in Lafayette, Louisiana. He won the Rome Prize in 2018.
The Magical Negro is a trope in American cinema, television, and literature. In the cinema of the United States, the Magical Negro is a supporting stock character who comes to the aid of the protagonists in a film. Magical Negro characters, often possessing special insight or mystical powers, have long been a tradition in American fiction. The old-fashioned word "Negro" is used to imply that a "magical black character" who devotes himself to selflessly helping whites is a throwback to racist stereotypes such as the "Sambo" or "noble savage".
Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, especially by recruiting people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or gender equality within a workplace or educational context. The effort of including a token individual in work or school is usually intended to create the impression of social inclusiveness and diversity.
40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, sometimes shortened to 40 Acres, is an American production company founded by filmmakers Spike Lee and Monty Ross in 1979. It has produced all of Lee's films.
A mammy is a U.S. historical stereotype depicting Black women, usually enslaved, who did domestic work, among nursing children. The fictionalized mammy character is often visualized as a dark-skinned woman with a motherly personality. The origin of the mammy figure stereotype is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States, as enslaved women were often tasked with domestic and childcare work in American slave-holding households. The mammy caricature was used to create a narrative of Black women being content within the institution of slavery among domestic servitude. The mammy stereotype associates Black women with domestic roles, and it has been argued that it, alongside segregation and discrimination, limited job opportunities for Black women during the Jim Crow era.
The Legend of Bagger Vance is a 2000 American sports fantasy drama film directed by Robert Redford, and starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron. The screenplay by Jeremy Leven is based on Steven Pressfield's 1995 book The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life. The film is set in 1931 Georgia. It was the final film starring Jack Lemmon and Lane Smith.
Sexualization is the emphasis of the sexual nature of a behavior or person. Sexualization is linked to sexual objectification, treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. According to the American Psychological Association, sexualization occurs when "individuals are regarded as sex objects and evaluated in terms of their physical characteristics and sexiness." "In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner and are objectified. In addition, a narrow standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate."
Rastus is a pejorative term traditionally associated with African Americans in the United States. It is considered offensive.
Stereotypes of African Americans are misleading beliefs about the culture of people with partial or total ancestry from any black racial groups of Africa whose ancestors resided in the United States since before 1865. These stereotypes are largely connected to the racism and the discrimination faced by African Americans. These beliefs date back to the slavery of black people during the colonial era and they have evolved within American society over time.
Hood film is a 1990s film genre originating in the United States, which features aspects of urban African American or Hispanic American culture. John Singleton, Mario Van Peebles, F. Gary Gray, Hughes Brothers, and Spike Lee are all directors who have created work typically classified as part of this genre. The genre has been identified as a sub-genre of the gangster film genre.
There are stereotypes of various groups of people which live within the United States and contribute to its culture. Worldwide, a disproportionately high number of people know about these stereotypes, due to the transmission of American culture and values via the exportation of American-made films and television shows.
African Americans, and African American males in particular, have an ethnic stereotype in which they are portrayed as dangerous criminals. This stereotype is associated with the fact that African Americans are proportionally over-represented in the numbers of those that are arrested and convicted for committing crimes. It has appeared frequently in American popular culture, reinforcing the negative consequences of systemic racism.
The presence of African Americans in major motion picture roles has stirred controversy and been limited dating back decades due to lingering racism following slavery and segregation. "Through most of the 20th century, images of African-Americans in advertising were mainly limited to servants like the pancake-mammy Aunt Jemima and Rastus, the chef on the Cream of Wheat box." While African American representation in the film industry has improved over the years, it has not been a linear process; "Race in American cinema has rarely been a matter of simple step-by-step progress. It has more often proceeded in fits and starts, with backlashes coming on the heels of breakthroughs, and periods of intense argument followed by uncomfortable silence."
The exploitation of women in mass media is the use or portrayal of women in mass media such as television, film, music, and advertising as objects or sexual beings, in order to increase the appeal of media or a product to the detriment of the women being portrayed, and women in society. This process includes the presentation of women as sexual objects and the setting of feminine beauty ideals that women are expected to reflect. Sexual exploitation of women in the media dates back to 19th century Paris, in which ballerinas were exposed to harassment and objectification. The most often criticized aspect of the use of women in mass media is sexual objectification, but dismemberment can be a part of the objectification as well. The exploitation of women in mass media has been criticized by feminists and other advocates of women's rights, and is a topic of discussion in feminist studies and other fields of scholarship.
African American cinema is loosely classified as films made by, for, or about Black Americans. Historically, African American films have been made with African-American casts and marketed to African-American audiences. The production team and director were sometimes also African American. More recently, Black films featuring multicultural casts aimed at multicultural audiences have also included American Blackness as an essential aspect of the storyline.
Depicting African-American children as alligator bait was a common trope in American popular culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. The motif was present in a wide array of media, including newspaper reports, songs, sheet music, and visual art. There is an urban legend claiming that black children or infants were in fact used as bait to lure alligators, although there is little evidence that children of any race were ever used for this purpose. In American slang, alligator bait is a racial slur for African-Americans.
