Tarzan's children: Why movies about Africa require white saviors"White Folks to the Rescue!" is a glorious tradition that stretches back at least as far as the Tarzan movies, in which a selfless Caucasian—for mysterious self-actualization reasons—has taken up residence in the bowels of the primeval forest and repeatedly ensures that truth and justice prevail in sub-Saharan Africa, something the local black community has been unable to effectuate.
In all these films, the underlying theme is the same: If you're black and you're poor, and your nation is torn by horrendous strife, and your neighbors are dropping like flies, there's no reason to get down in the dumps because sooner or later the Great White Hope will come through for you. Which, of course, is exactly the way things happen in real life.Comment: This applies to many mainstream movies about Natives, too.
6 comments:
Writerfella here --
Unfortunately, yes, the principle exists that films and television in the English-speaking world mainly are aimed at their majority core audience --Caucasians. writerfella long has been a veteran of the TV and movie writing wars and never once did he win even a skirmish in all those years. So, he did the next best thing: ordinarily, a writer must bend his story to fit a particular television series; but writerfella found ways to bend the various television series to fit his stories. The results worked so well that only a couple ended up unsold. In an industry where one is permitted to work well only once in a while, that's a pretty fair record...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Roughly 30% of the US population is minorities. Therefore, shouldn't 30% of US movies star minorities? Yes, in a rational and unbiased world.
Writerfella here --
Rob, you do not know how hard the film industry fought against what they called 'quotas'. Even now, the word strikes fear in the hearts of those whose nepotistic scions want matters to remain as they always have been. And, therefore, those will remain...
All Best Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I'm not advocating quotas, I'm advocating common sense. If studios want to grow their flatlining audiences, they should make movies that reflect the nation's changing demographics. That means more movies starring minorities, especially Hispanics, Asians, and Indians.
Writerfella here --
But, once again, that is not how the film studios operate. Demographics are important only in reference to how similarly one movie product performs in comparison to other like films or what the age ranges were in the audiences that any particular film product attracted. PERIOD. Even in television, peformance is everything and product content is secondary at best. Not even in that oft-mentioned but never realized 'ideal world' do such interpretations apply. Remember that, each year, there are more and more idealists being born, but there also are fewer and fewer ideals remaining...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
"That is not how the film studios operate"...which is why their audiences are flatlining. You're talking about the way the industry does work while I'm talking about how it should work. That is, if the industry wants to reverse its stagnant or declining fortunes.
You're not paying attention if you think movie and TV producers aren't aware of their audience demographics. They clearly produce movies for different age groups and for one gender or the other. They've produced enough successful black-oriented movies and TV shows that that demographic can hardly claim to be underserved. Now we're talking about doing the same for Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, who still are underserved. Hispanics are America's largest minority, so why aren't there as many Hispanic-themed shows as there are black-themed shows?
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