Ethnic Notions

At the beginning of ethnic notions i couldn't help but laugh at the characters that were being portrayed. The cartoons in the film that were representing the black culture at the time created an image that wasn't true. First, they portrayed a mammy to be an unattractive lady so that she wouldn't temp the husband of the household and the mammy would take care of daily tasks as well as the children if the parents couldn't do it for some reason. The next image portrayed was the ugly type. These characters were used mainly for entertainment. The next character that was reprensented in this film that was savage black characters. This image is completely false but in this time period this is what hollywood portayed black characters as.
Classified X was a film that really brought my attention to all of the criticism. Mr. Van Peebles made a great point that hollywood protrayed the new and the old black people. In most movies that black acters were in were based of a setting of the a church of some type of entertainment. After the first week of class and these two film has opened up my mind on how hollywood and reality are completely different. I look forward to learning new things about film and what to learn from a film other than just entertainment pleasure.