Blog #2

Bogle discusses many servant types in his book and two actors humanized these roles. Clarence Muse brought dignity and self pride to his demeaning roles in feature films. He was a companion to whites in his popular films and even though his role called for a lot of tommery he still managed to reach out to the hearts of the audience. He walked upright with his head lifted and eyes forward indicating a self respect that he had as a black man. He went on to expand his accomplishments and star i many more roles and even write a script.
Louis Beavers also humanized her role as servant to the white household by being a woman of god. She was your typical civil rights activist as in wait for your pie in the sky, show nothing but love and god will lead the way. She was loyal to her white "friends" or employers or masters and in one film, her character stated that she wished the civil war would have never happened and that she were still a slave. However, her portrayal of her characters helped people sympathize with something that is very demeaning.
Due to Robesons political affiliation and comments on life in america, he was silenced. People began to look at blacks as communist and that obviously led to in increase in hardships for blacks so they shunned Robeson as well. Along with the great depression, there was a lot of tension towards blacks.

Blog #1

Hollywood is the entertainment of the man. Just as today as we have certain blacks who are puppets to the man, you had certain blacks who were puppets to hollywood back then. Hollywood was white entertainment and white entertainment included the image of black people that they wanted to see; The toms, coons, mulattos, mammys and bucks. They started out with these basic, demeaning characters because that is how they saw black people at the time. They also did not want to give blacks empowerment on the screen because of course it would translate over into the real world and it is naturally in the american white man culture to feel entitled to superiority and they display that by having blacks on the screens acting a fool. It started out with white actors and black face, to outlandish black characters, to black characters in small roles but still limited, so on and so forth. The white man always gives a crumb to the begging mouse after good behavior. It socially impacted the black community by forcing them to advocate for better roles and such things that we see today where we have black films however negatively, it impacted blacks with low self esteem. Instead of having films and tv portray blacks as equals, they weren't, and that could have affected any black person with the lesson that if you kiss the white mans ass then thats the only way you will make it. These issues still exist today except you even have blacks making the demeaning films. Tyler Perry is a great man in the fact that he writes, directs and produces his own films but most of his films play to black stereotypes. The light skinned male hero, the dark skinned villain, and the generic black jokes are common in all his films and stage plays. In truth, it is sometimes hard to get away from these stereotypes in real life as well.