Plaza.ufl.edu



Barron Martin

9-21-07

Enc1102

Fear of a Black Cinema

The author and film critic Amy Taublin wrote Fear of a Black Cinema in 2002 with the purpose of showing how the criticism of movies and what is allowed to be shown in the media has changed. Taublin focuses on the issue of racial relations between the media of the past and the of present day.

Within the first part of the article Taublin gives a background of past cinema and how it contained only about 10 categories of cinema. During the period of the twenties and thirties the amount of different types of cinema were strictly regulated by movie industries to narrow down the point of views that could be expressed. Taublin goes onto express that in todays media and cinema the categories have jumped up to the high twenties and the ways in which media is being processed and delivered are a large reason for this occurrence. The author does this to show the relationship between the white controlled media of before and the diverse nature of what the media has today.

The body of the article focuses on director Spike Lee’s movie Do the Right Thing. Taublin uses this movie as a way to portray the time period of the late 1980’s and the trouble that the black community was having being portrayed through the media. Within this section of the article the author gives the background of the 80’s and how their was a transition from the Reagan period to the Bush administration. This was a time for Lee to stir things up politically and the best way to do that is through a movie. Taublin gives background of the characters and how it’s a white Italian pizzeria in the middle of a black Brooklyn neighborhood. She points out that events occurring at this time in LA , such as

Martin 2

police violence and the Rodney King beating were being portrayed throughout the movie, but in subtle manners. During this period riots were occurring in LA and New York and Lee wanted to show that the black community wasn’t going to take police brutality and government control quietly. Taublin relates Lee’s point of view to other political events occurring at the same time in New York and how the people were reacting as a whole. She goes into depth about the situation at that time to support the reason why Lee made the movie in the first place.

Taublin then goes into depth about the movie. The setting is white America in the middle of a black community and yet somehow the small white group in the movie has the upper hand. With the white pizzeria owners having black help and bossing them around she uses this as a transition into the real world. Lee uses Public Enemys “Fight the Power” as a theme song to add even more effect to the movie, which in turn supports Taublins’ article.

The author points out that Lee came under fire from the media because of the way he portrayed the black community to reacting to police violence. Many questioned the purpose of the movie itself wandering if it was to portray what was happening in the world or to instill an underlying hostility to the black community. She points out that Lee only made the movie to show what was happening in the world through the eyes of someone in the community. Taublin points out that Lee had an extreme effect on the black and white community because of the underlying themes of “stand up for what you believe in”, which I think many would agree is right.

I believe that the timing of this article and the way it relates a uneasy time period

Martin 3

and a movie relating to it were very important to the author. She wanted to show that even though there are still color barriers in a since, that media and what can be put out isn’t any more.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download