I now realize that the majority of the movies I watched as a child gave me a lot of false perceptions on how life actually is. Once I began to notice that a lot of what was being portrayed in these films I began to use them as a way to get away. I guess that's why I love watching movies today, simply because they often times make me forget about my reality for a brief moment.
This course however, has caused me to look at films in a completely different way, from bell hooks' interpretation to Ava DuVernay's. I now don't look at films as I did before, or television for that mater. Any time I see a black person in a movie I immediately want to know who the director is and all about him or her. Any time I see a black person in a movie I often times wonder what the real reason is for casting that black person for that particular role, because there's always a reason right? Whether it be to sexualize our black men and women or to use us as jesters for white entertainment. It is now a little hard for me to be as happy as I once was to see a black face on the big screen because I always wonder 'WHY?'. Only when I see my people playing powerful roles do my thoughts go to rest...some what.
This movie for example, Jamie Foxx plays a black president, which is great, but then I begin to wonder. Well why is it that the white has to be the one to always come to the rescue and bail the black man out of trouble? One movie comes to mind where this did not happen and that is Coach Carter with Samuel Jackson, for once little black kids weren't being saved by some white man, and that's one of few.I wish we had more directors like Ava DuVernay that make movements like AFFRM because images are so important and we don't have enough of them in our shades of brown to bring up the children on.
This course has taught me to look beyond what the screen portrays because films have taught me that women's only existence is for a man, and that black men are only thugs, or jesters.
