#i am however ignoring the implications of the movie characters watching their lives be led

[starstruckodysseys]

btw i am literally always enamored with ify’s roleplaying choices this season !! he keeps setting the bar and it’s so fucking cool to watch

[armorbirdpress]

Armor Bird Reviews: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - A One-And-A-Half-Year Retrospective

If you have been following my writings and ramblings and original works and DeviantArt favorites for long enough, you'll know that I am unashamedly a dinosaur fan - I never outgrew the phase because despite what people have told me both online and off, palaeontology, like other sciences, is not specifically a child's thing - obviously dinosaurs are cool, but there is a lot of technical stuff that you'd need college degrees to understand in the field, too. While I certainly am a stickler for accuracy when it comes to dinosaur portrayals, however, I am also not ashamed to admit that I have a love for fictional portrayals of them as monsters, too. Jurassic Park, which was - for its time - pretty much a reconciliation between the "prehistoric monster" imagery of dinosaurs in popular culture and the latest discoveries about the actual fossil animals during its production, is my favorite movie of all time, partly for this reason and partly because there's a lot of depth and sophistication to it as well - a sophistication that modern movies seem to be utilizing less and less. Even the Jurassic Park franchise itself was not immune to this trend, and although it still remains my top favorite franchise of fictional media, the changing conceit of what audiences want in an entertaining film has dragged it along for as much of a long and bumpy ride as just about everything else Hollywood has to offer. Still, even in spite of it all, there are a lot of things to like about the sequels we got since that groundbreaking original - I'm admittedly one of those people who actually enjoyed Jurassic Park III, though in fairness I was too young upon first watching it to really pick it apart and analyze its numerous flaws, and I also heaped a lot of praise on Jurassic World upon my first review of it... in hindsight, perhaps a little generously. Although I won't pretend that everything since The Lost World (including TLW itself) is flawless and that the complainers are wrong, even the infamously controversial JP3 had some enjoyable moments in its own right, despite being seen by many as the worst installment of the franchise by quite a margin.

Which leads us to the most recent film of the franchise, 2018's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

I had intended to review this movie for a good, long while - back when I was a more prolific writer I used to write film reviews shortly after seeing the movies in the theater, though schedule concerns have obviously made that too difficult. But there's a silver lining here, in that by not reviewing a film I've seen until much later (...well, much, much, much later as the case may be), I have the time to really sit down and think about what made the movie tick or not, and oftentimes have come down from my rush of excitement by the time I actually get off my tail and write the review itself. There are exceptions, of course, with certain films actually leaving me disappointed as soon as I left the building, but these cases are mercifully rare. I'm happy to say that despite being horrendously imperfect, Fallen Kingdom wasn't one of those cases. I was genuinely entertained by it more than 50% of the time - which is, for better or for worse, the highest compliment I can give the film because, as we shall see, in some ways it really is quite terrible.

As always with my movie reviews: SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!

I watched Fallen Kingdom twice since its release - first in the theater at my home town, and then on rental DVD - and both times, my impression was the same: this movie, in retrospect, plays out much like a big-budget, cinematic fanfiction of the Jurassic Park films or even of Jurassic World (the latter of which I actually consider darkly hilarious for reasons that are highly specific to me exclusively, which you'd only understand if you know what I've written in the past - I'll get to that shortly). This is perfectly understandable, seeing as the director, screenwriter, and production crew have changed considerably from the team that helmed the original trilogy during the ten-year gap between JP3 and JW. Even if the work is canon, it's essentially someone else taking a look at the original franchise material, picking out what they liked about it, and building an original story off of it, oftentimes borrowing characters from the original work and inserting them in (most notably Rexy, and yes, I consider her as much of a character as the humans she menaced in the original movie). Across the board, in all kinds of franchises, this approach tends to fall flat if you don't know about the original work, though I do have to say that there was one very notable exception in the case of Jurassic World, that climactic fight scene with the Indominus rex, which is my favorite part of the movie even if it isn't entirely perfect. Now, I realize that I'm being a bit of a hypocrite by saying that these films are imperfect, because almost a decade ago, a friend and I co-wrote a megacrossover fanfic where Jurassic Park was the most prominent franchise by quite a margin (and didn't even start out that way to boot - my own selfish preferences caused elements of the franchise to slowly bleed in until a recycled plot of the second and third movies took over the whole thing). What makes it truly embarrassing to me is that the fic didn't even need the series' involvement in the first place, and my choice to shove it in anyway was one of the numerous factors that led to it going completely off the rails and turning into a tremendous tangled mess of clumsy writing and mishandled characterization, not just with JP itself but with almost all of the dozen other continua that got dragged in as well. Obviously, the fact that Fallen Kingdom is restricted by its very nature as a sequel to the one franchise only thankfully precludes the sheer absurdity of what my co-writer and I had inadvertently wrought back then, but upon rewatching the film I couldn't help but notice that in a few ways, it does ironically come off as being quite similar to my own old shame, albeit coincidentally, though it still earns points for choosing to be a Jurassic Park/World film and sticking with that conceit, rather than an entirely different film with JP elements shoehorned into it. I've harped on my stupidity as an immature fanfic writer back in the day for long enough, I think, but I felt this was worth mentioning regardless, because like the fic I touched upon above, this is a work I only started having issues with long after the fact, but these days I can't unsee these issues now that I've considered them.

One of the biggest things that stood out to me regarding Fallen Kingdom was that no matter how you slice it, it was trying to be two films at once, and had less time for both than most would have desired. The first half of the movie concerns Isla Sorna being destroyed by a volcano, and everyone trying to get the dinosaurs off of it before they are rendered extinct once again, with another island being noted as their new sanctuary (though of course, one of the antagonists quickly screws that plan over, but more on that later). You could easily make an entire film out of that - exploring the island one last time, dodging potential threats from both the volcano and the dinosaurs themselves, and coming to terms with the fact that not every creature can be saved, and that the end is coming for everyone eventually. The scene with the Brachiosaurus being overtaken by the eruption, with its plaintive wails and iconic rearing silhouette, is proof that such a moral could make a solid closing for this kind of movie, and heck, you could even have the subplot with the executives hoping to exploit the dinosaurs bleed into the movie until, at the very end, you get a scene where their true intentions with the animals are revealed as a sequel hook, rather than being resolved over the course of like half an hour or so in a rushed manner that gives people too little time to consider the implications. And this brings me to my next point.

Remember what I said about that dumb fanfiction I co-wrote having the elements I personally wanted more than my co-writer did slowly fester in true plot tumor fashion until they took over the entire story like literal cancer? As it turns out, what I witnessed in Fallen Kingdom wasn't quite as ridiculous, but kinda sorta similar in its own way. Obviously, Fallen Kingdom isn't so audacious (or ignorant of copyright laws and plain old common sense for that matter) as to let an entirely different franchise stage a gradual hostile takeover of itself, but the somewhat cliched plot of capitalist exploitation being the absolute worst roommate imaginable with a whole franchise's worth of temporally misplaced creatures that can and will kill you if you look at them funny - already done in both the original movie and TLW, and to some extent in JW as well, but still relatable in our current social climate even after so much repetition - still manages to... well, stage a gradual hostile takeover of the movie, and enforces itself in full force during the remaining third or so of the runtime. The antagonists, a pair of cartoonishly evil and somewhat flat executives, sabotage the plan so that the dinosaurs are diverted to the Lockwood Mansion instead of the sanctuary island, and then things escalate when the prototype Indoraptor is bought in and, inevitably, raises hell for everyone involved. As with my previous pitch, the idea of bidding wars over the dinosaurs and the moral debate over the ownership and exploitation of living creatures - something which does happen in the real world - could have made for something interesting, again, if the script wasn't so rushed. Continuing where the hypothetical sequel hook left off, we could open with a discussion between the villains about the implications of what they are doing, followed by the heroes having to deal with the ramifications of such actions along with the involvement of Dr. Wu, the Indoraptor, and of course Blue as a potential prize-winner. Of course this runs the risk of becoming the original Jurassic Park except on the mainland, and thus not really trying anything new, but it could at least give audiences the time to digest the film and appreciate the moments where it makes a genuine impact, even before the dinosaurs end up getting released into the mainland like what happened in the movie itself, complete with the insane amount of ramifications thereof. The Stygimoloch plowing its way through the bidders on its way to freedom was almost as cathartic for me to watch as the climactic fight in JW, and I wish it could've gotten more screentime, or even plucked up the guts to fend off the Indoraptor in a situation that doesn't seem forced, e.g. the hybrid and the Stiggy getting trapped in the same complex, or even Owen luring it over as backup (which is stupider but, given how he got it to bust him and Claire out in the movie itself, isn't entirely unreasonable). As for the Indoraptor itself, I feel like they could have done a bit better with its design, as even underneath the paint job and altered proportions it's still more or less "Indominus 2: Genetic Boogaloo", as I have called it at least once. Still, it has its own appeal as a monster design and, if it weren't for the presence of similar-looking creatures in previous installments of the series, it would certainly have made an impact as a monster. It's almost wolf-like in movement and mannerisms, even werewolf-like, which is intentional given the vintage horror movie homages the production team was going for. The way it menaces Maisie - who has her own set of plot-related craziness to her, but that's a can of worms I'd rather not open - makes you worry for her life, and even fear for Blue when she engages it in battle. I know I'm one of those who actually prefers antagonistic Velociraptors (the inaccurate variety from the films, not the smaller and fully feathered real-world version which I would absolutely take home with me if I could find a way to retrieve it from Cretaceous Mongolia and have it housetrained and okay I'll stop now), but Blue as always is awesome, and after seeing her actually manage to hold her own in her fight against the Indoraptor if only for a short while, there's no denying that anymore - even if that scene with her outrunning the explosion in the boiler room is a bit over-the-top even by the standards of this movie. There is of course no way a spectacle-driven, plaid-speed-paced romp like Fallen Kingdom could surpass the bar set by The Big One and the legendary kitchen scene, but on its own merits, the Indoraptor is a wonderfully serviceable and formidable threat that I just wish could've gotten more screentime and room to develop as a character, rather than just remaining as an unhinged killing machine that exists just to terrorize everyone before exiting the film (the same is true for all the dinosaurs here besides Blue, really, which is sad because, again, I much prefer when films develop monsters as characters rather than mere plot devices). With a little more design work to make him stand out more among the other critters in the franchise and more time to explore his nature, he could easily have become almost as iconic as The Big One as movie monsters go, or at least as much as the I. rex, though the latter bar is admittedly a good deal lower in the wake of how the movie industry has, ahem, evolved.

With that thought in mind, I will now spell out the biggest problem I had with this movie: the fact that it was trying to do so much in such a short space of time. Humorously and ironically, I know almost enough about the issues with my own writing to recognize the signs of that, with significant events being spaced too close to each other, too many characters at once (though admittedly, Zia and Maisie are a treat to watch, Franklin a bit less so but far from unbearable for my taste), and at least one questionable decision on the part of everyone at some point or another, up to and including the writers. There are a lot of things I liked, but not enough time for me to let them sink in, like I was being bombarded with one spectacle after another. It feels like overkill more than anything, and alas, far too many films in recent years have tried to shove that method into people's faces as though trying to say, "Here's your action, here's your fanservice, here's your whatever the whoopity-freaking-doo you consider entertainment, are you happy now?!" (Well, not quite as vitriolic and sarcastic, but you get the idea.) If the filmmakers and the owners of the franchise rights had been willing to accept four movies in the newer series rather than just three, and let Fallen Kingdom be broken up into two separate, slightly slower-paced movies, the problems with each individual portion would likely not have been as significant, and audiences would not have noticed them so readily. Sadly, though, the rapid-fire, dozen-blockbusters-a-year rush-job environment of the modern movie industry was not kind to this film, which is a crying shame. We need more movies that are more relaxed and subdued half the time, the way the original JP film was, and while audiences may have to take the time to once again get used to movies like that, I think it would be a welcome change of pace from the current influx of chaotic, nonstop slugfests and pyrotechnic displays we've become so familiar with.

In tl;dr form, it is with a heavy heart that I have to say that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is, in fact, the worst film of the entire Jurassic Park franchise, even more so than JP3 - though don't get me wrong, as with JP3, I still very much enjoyed it as its own movie, as clumsily handled as it was at times (though even then, the movie itself isn't entirely at fault for it). There's a difference between a movie being the low point in its franchise and a low point among movies in general, a difference which a lot of reviewers need to understand before taking an undeserved dump over movies that could've been so much better if Hollywood had worked just a bit differently. You have to actually try to make a work of entertainment media I consider genuinely terrible, and it was actually a relief to me that even the lowest points of Fallen Kingdom still ranked somewhat midway between "meh" and "shakes hand eeeeehhhhhh" from my own subjective standpoint. I truly hope that the next and presumably final JP film will turn out for the better, especially given that Alan, Ellie, and Ian are all slated to have major roles in it, but I'm not going to dismiss Fallen Kingdom off the bat just because of the issues I have with its writing. If nothing else, it's a perfectly decent popcorn flick with prehistoric monsters in it - and hey, that was pretty much what everyone was there for, wasn't it?

Grading Scheme:

96 - 100: A+

93 - 96: A

90 - 92.9: A-

87 - 89.9: B+

83 - 86.9: B

80 - 82.9: B-

77 - 79.9: C+

73 - 76.9: C

70 - 72.9: C-

67 - 69.9: D+

60 - 66.9: D

Below 60: E

Grades:

Writing: 6

Characterization: 6

Pacing: 7

Creativity: 8

Consistency: 8

Cinematography: 9

World Building: 7

Music and Sound: 8

Effects: 10

Engagement: 9

Final Grade: 78 (C+)

[violetlunette]

Tropes/Cliches I Hate

So there are a lot of lists stating cliches people hate and this is another one. If you like these, that’s fine, I just get irked when I see them myself and want to rant a little. This isn’t a top ten list, just a list of things I dislike. There won’t be any romance tropes here as they deserve and have their own list. Also, most of these are story telling tropes, so just a heads up. Anyway, let me know what you personally think and tropes you hate and why. Oh, and SPOILERS! Before warned.

Tropes/Cliches I Hate

Too Much Drama/Unearned Drama: My most HATED trope. Don’t get me wrong; I like drama okay, but if it’s over loaded or feels like it was just thrown in for by the writers I get frustrated. Yes I know that writers do that to keep people interested, but can’t they make it feel natural or earned?

I liked “Finding Carter’s” drama; This is a story about a girl who discovers she was kidnapped as a toddler by the woman she called mother all her life and being reunited with her birth family. The drama makes sense and is earned by the whole family; (SPOILERS)

Carter’s whole world is turned upside down so her attitude, while mean at times is understandable.

Taylor has spent her whole life terrified of disappearing like her sister and has had her fear fed by her parents, so has lived a sheltered life.

Their mom lost a kid which has affected her marriage so she started to sleep with her partner and was even planning to leave, however when she found Carter she didn’t want to break her family again. Hell, even the drama with the villain is understandable as Carter and Taylor came from her eggs/she was a surrogate mom who was sleeping with the father at the time. You can see why she might think the twins were hers and that she had a right to take one. This is great drama and I would have loved it, but then they had to give the side characters the angstiest backstories they could which distracts from the family at times and felt unneeded.

And I know; that what drama are about. Angst central, I know, but that’s why I don’t watch a lot of drama. At the very least I want it to be earned an in character or story.

The fifth book of Harry Potter did this fairly well as all the drama came from the characters and their actions. Sirius died due to Harry’s impulsive actions and Dumbledore want to keep Harry in the dark to “protect him.” And the drama hits all the harder because it’s something that could happen in real life (minus the magic stuff.).

A bad example is Gilmore Girls where they force the character April in with a bunch of random drama just to keep Luke and Lorelei apart. There was a legitimate way to put off the wedding; have Luke be afraid of rushing things and feeling like he’s the one who has to make all the compromises and give up things and he runs away for awhile. Hell, they could have kept the plot line of her jumping into bed with Christopher because as terrible as that was it was still a very Lorelei thing to do. But the plot with April and everything after? UNNEEDED AND UNWANTED.

We’re not together, but I’m Pregnant/The Baby Plot: Okay, I love babies—when I don’t have to change them or be woken up at 3:00 in the morning. They’re soft, cute, adorable, and squishy! However in TV the baby is usually born to a “will they won’t they” couple as a way to force them together when the writers made the audience believe they were separating them or for drama. News flash writers; if the only way you can keep a couple together is to throw a baby in the mix, then just give up on the pair!

Babies are used for like one arc to cause drama, then are tossed to the side with maybe a passing mention so it’s like what’s the point?

It’s a cheap way to keep a couple together. A child should NOT be a plot deceive to keep a couple together or create drama. Ross and Rachel were the worse along with Belle and Rumple; Ross and Rachel had fallen into a slump and the audience were starting to move on and look at other options for them so the writers thought they could yank us back by revealing they had sex and Rachel was pregnant. All this led to was the same slapstick they went through when they were together before and they never worked through the issues they had before, mainly that they were jealous, possessive, and vindictive except now they had a BABY.

With the Rumbelle the writers couldn’t decide what the hell they wanted with Rumple (did they want him to be evil or a hero), but knew his actions were pushing Belle (and the fans) away. So what did they do? Threw a baby into the mix with a whole contrived plot that was just—what? I mean, it COULD have worked, but not the way the writers did it.

Writers, people; IT IS NEVER A CHILD’S JOB TO FIX A COUPLE. A baby is not a plot device they are people and deserve more respect than they get. If a couple can’t stay together by themselves, then a baby is not going to help. All it does is trap two people and why would want a couple that’s forced together that way?

“We’re trying to protect ya so we ain’t telling ya shit” and Bad communication skills: How many problems in stories could be solved if two people just sat down and talked instead of keeping secrets. Like “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” If Dumbledore had told Harry that Voldemort could get into his head and could hurt people Sirius might be alive. And in a couple? I don’t need to list an example. You’re already thinking of a moment where a couple got into a fight because they didn’t just sit down and talk.

That being said I do like this trope as a potential reason for a hero being ignorant of their past at the beginning of a series as I like the hero from a muggle world. At the very least I want the person keeping the secrets to be called out on it.

Insane maniac pixie girl: This a low one as there are some I like, however I feel this character is over done lately and honestly I can only take so much of the personality. They’re always so loud, screaming all the time, squeaky, and have no sense of personal space. I mean, I like Webby and Mabel, but even then I can only take so much squealing. (I dunno, maybe I have sensitive ears.)

I’m not dead!: Disney gets away with this because the brought backs happen towards the end of the film and isn’t done time and again in the same movie. Compare to the Dragon Ball series were death is like a mosquito bite. Why should I care if they get hurt or the world dies? Just wish them back and everything is fine! Seriously, is anyone who watches DBZ concerned when a character gets hurt or dies still? It’s a cheap trick that feels like a “ha! Fooled you!” moment.

High school drama / Skewd Priorities: Okay when I say high school drama I mean focusing on a school dance when the world is at stake or worrying about whether or not a boy likes you when a murder is on the loose, or focusing on school junk when we as the readers want tto focus on the fantasy elements. This is mostly in YA dealing with kids, so some of this is understandable, but even so it’s not fun to read and even teenagers hate being portrayed like this (at least the one or two I know). When I  was teenager I liked the prom and stuff for quiet moments in stories, but NOT when there was a villain loose or danger was coming. Whenever that popped up I was like, ‘bitch wtf is wrong with you! Who cares about a zit when you have super magical powers.’ When I read a fantasy I want to focus on the fantasy elements, not school! School is boring.

Too Easily Forgiven: Forgiveness is wonderful thing, however it should be earned and you know some things can’t and shouldn’t be forgiven. For me it’s murder. Now if it’s between two warriors in a fight that’s one thing, but hurting or killing innocent civilians? No. No, no. Or hey, what if a person has been horribly bullying you or making your life miserable? Do you have to forgive, fuck no. Now I’m not saying you should seek revenge, but I’d rather they just choose that they don’t want to be angry and anymore and decide to move on.

Forgiveness should be earned when they’ve truly hurt someone and even if they feel remorseful, characters still have the right to be angry when they’ve been hurt or had someone they love taken from them.

All humans /muggles are bastards / idiots: Yeah, humans are assholes. We get it. No one knows how bad humans are than other humans, but you know what? Humans have done amazing things to conquer natural selection and the fact that other humans is humanity’s greatest enemy shows just how powerful the human race is. And not everyone wants to blow up shit, some of us work VERY hard to help and save everything we can and the rest are just trying to live our lives without hurting anyone. We may not be top dog, but we’re not bottom of the barrel either. And why should other races get put on pedestal as the woobie race or holier than thou? That doesn’t make them more interesting it just makes them annoying. I see this trope in almost every fantasy, can’t we switch it up a little?

magical speciesism / the blood must remain pure: Ignoring the real life implications this trope’s just been over done. Can’t we turn this around and have it that cross breeding between a magical and a human is considered the norm or a good thing? Switch it up a bit?

Ron the death Eater and Draco in Leather pants: This annoying enough in the fandom where we like to exaggerate and things we like and dislike, but in the actual show it’s insulting to the character AND the fans. If there’s something wrong with the character then the writers should make an arc to improve them, not drag the character through the mud.

On the other end if a character is an asshole you can’t just make them a hero suddenly and expect the audience to buy it. The characters have to earn their redemption.

And those are ten tropes I hate. How about you guys? What’s your thoughts? Do you hate them or am I alone? And what do guys hate to see in stories?

[kashif1550]

Post 3 - Multicultural America

1.What is the subject of your film, program, or internet/social media selection? Provide a brief summary, describing your selection and how it relates to our course topics, readings, and screenings.

For the site I picked, I used the root dot com because I wanted to find a way to discuss white-passing and also how it’s changing. Initially, I was going to do that by introducing the 1950s movie, Imitation of Life, for my post about films. Both the remake and original, though, give off a white person’s narration of what it’s like to be a white-passing individual, similar to how Gone with the wind is a white supremacist view of how slavery in the south was like. 

(The way the slaves were depicted is far from reality, making it uncomfortable to watch at times when they portray the mammy character.)

In short, it sugar-coats the trauma, glossing over the true pains that black people faced when navigating their world—and for that reason, I avoided it. 

Before I dive into the article about white passing, let us review what “passing” is first. Passing can be used in more ways than just race. For someone to pass, it means to be perceived as something they aren’t. When it comes to the topic of race, white passing is when someone passes as white, but in actuality have a mixed-race background. Throughout US history, African Americans have passed as white as a means of survival, understanding that there life would be at risk if the truth was told about their parent’s racial background. Society was closed off for non-whites; the best schools, best towns, best jobs were in the segregated white side of town. 

For someone of mixed-race heritage to venture into those areas safely, they would have to embrace only one side and play into the image of what they wanted others to see when they looked at them. Because, at the end of the day, the system of how race operates is based on perception.

Still, to this day, people have to put up an inaccurate front, maybe even lie about their real name, to secure a job. Race-based implicate bias in workplaces has led to research being brought to the public’s attention due to how serious the issue has gotten throughout the years. 

Looking at a study conducted by Princeton professors, Paul von Zielbauer, of New York Times, discusses how race plays a big factor—despite having problems with law enforcement. White men with a criminal conviction get just as much, if not more, job offers than an African-American man with nothing on his record.

“White men with prison records receive far more offers for entry-level jobs in New York City than black men with identical records, and are offered jobs just as often—if not more so—than black men who have never been arrested, according to a new study by two Princeton professors.” (Zielbauer, 2005) 

Decades past The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by MLK Jr., African American men are still hindered at entry-level jobs. People tend to push the blame on minorities, stating that the problem lies that, however, that can’t be the case when the entire system of race was built on injustice. The system cannot be deemed broke if it is doing what it was meant to do, discourage darker skinned people from providing for themselves and achieving upward mobility. 

And that, sadly, leads us to why white-passing was so prevalent after slavery and into the 20th century. It was not because these individuals wanted to, but because they had to. Connecting this back to the reading, I think back to Peggy Mclntosh’s piece on white privilege. 

She says, “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cash in each day, but about what I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes tools, and blank checks. Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable.” (Mclntosh, 1989) 

As Mclntosh stated, white privilege is ‘unearned assets’ given to you on the bases of your skin, not your skills. Continuously, we see people try and paint minorities as the ones that caused this curse of bad fortune, dismissing the existence of white privilege entirely in the process. Even more childish than that, people demand the end of affirmative actions as though the playing field has been set leveled for everyone. It isn’t, and to say it has is a clear slap to the face of every disadvantaged black and brown person who lives in this country. 

2. Referring to related and appropriate readings and screenings from the course, describe how your selection represents racial and ethnic identities (and if applicable, intersectionality). In what ways does your selection for each of the journal entries generate a conversation regarding race, ethnicity, and cultural diversity?

The way my selection has represented racial identity is through the lens of the one-drop rule. Through Henry Louis Gates Jr. article titled “How Many ‘White’ People Are Passing?’ he discusses how the roles are beginning to show what was the aftermath of the one-drop rule. 

When talking about the fallout of such a law, it iscreated a precedence of people ignoring the existence of their white parent in order to box that person in to a ‘colored only’ section. For the piece I picked, it creates a conversation by questioning about how often that rule wasn’t used and how it created an unneeded divided. 

“‘Bryc found that about 4 percent of whites have at least 1 percent or more of African ancestry […] “the percentage indicates that an individual with at least 1 percent African ancestry had an African ancestor within the last six generations, or in the last 200 years. This data also suggests that individuals with mixed parentage at some point were absorbed into the white population,’ which is a very polite way of saying that they ‘passed.’” (Gates, 2011)

However, when you compare that to African Americans, the percentage is far more staggering, showing that people who looked “white enough” wasn’t always the case for mixed-race people. Shockingly enough, it is stated that: “research shows that the average African American has a whopping 24 percent of European ancestry.” (Gates, 2011)

24?! That’s means, unlike with white people, African American’s bloodline had someone fully white not as far back. Many people of mixed-race background submerged themselves in to the African American community, as well as the obvious underlining effects of sexual assault of enslaved black women. The article gets even more interesting when they dive into where the hidden ancestry might show up more, showing that whites living in the south had a higher chance of having unknown African DNA. 

“In South Carolina at least 13 percent of self-identified whites have 1 percent or more African ancestry, while in Louisiana the number is a little more than 12 percent. In Georgia and Alabama the number is about 9 percent. The differences perhaps point to different social and cultural histories within the south.” (Gates, 2011) 

It begs to ask the question how many people are unaware of their own identity due to the fear of the past, having grandparents who lied about their linage in order to get a better life for their offspring. 

3.How does your selection relate to the course readings, screenings and discussions?  Reflect upon the representation and circulation of racial and ethnic identities in popular visual culture. Your reflections should be attentive to the intersectionalities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic class and gender.

When it comes to the popular visual culture and “white passing” the stories are definitely there. At the turn of the century, literature had a bit of an obsession of the concept of “passing” as white. The novel like “Passing”, “Imitation of Life” and other tales followed ambiguous African-Americans. The novel “Invisible Man” was less about running between the lines of white and black, but rather a social commentary about a fictional scenario of an ambiguous African American man who drifts between two worlds, unnoticed as an onlooker, and discussing economical and political tensions that are rising.

Overall, when we thinking of “passing” individuals in the media, we notice that many sided with their white side to secure roles. For Broadway star, Carol Channing, she did not even claim her black ancestry until 2002 - at the age of 80. Before that point, she only identified as of European descent. Having been shielded from her own identity till the age of 16, it wasn’t a surprise that Channing had a lot of unsettling ignorance resided about her own heritage, making cringeworthy comments.

When she was told that her father was partly black from her grandfather, she said: “I know it's true the moment I sing and dance. I'm proud as can be of [my black ancestry]. It's one of the great strains in show business. I'm so grateful. My father was a very dignified man and as white as I am. My [paternal] grandparents were Nordic German, so apparently I [too] took after them [in appearance]” (Chicago Tribune, 2003)

I feel uncomfortable now even looking at her say that being black was “one of the great strains in show business.” Her comments were distasteful, dismissing how slaves were forced to perform in front of their masters and how that led into subcultures of new music like blues and country. She chalked up all of her talent to her black grandfather and her white looks to her white ancestors. If only she knew that wasn’t how genetics work. Perhaps, if the divide placed on mixed-race people wasn’t so strenuous, we wouldn’t have cases of ignorance like this.

For the most part, the media has mainly shown the stories of mixed raced women, not showing the struggle of mixed-race men who have to choose if they’d “pass” as only one race. As I stated before, “Invisible man” isn’t really about passing because his own race wasn’t up for debate, but rather what he saw due to his ambiguousness. 

There’s many reasons as to why women were the main focus when talking about “passing.” However, it becomes obviously clear in the film Imitation of Life, writing the mixed-race girl off as a trickster for being something she wasn’t. In a sense, Hollywoods take on “passing” women was that they were deceptive, completely disregarding the essential need of passing as white. Sadly, in Imitation of Life, the mixed-race girl is beaten to a pulp after her white date finds out she’s mixed with black.  

Sources:

Zielbauer, Paul von 2005

    “Race a Factor in Job Offers for Ex-Convicts”

      New York Times, July, 17, 2005

 Mclntosh, Peggy 1989

      “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

Gates, Louis Henry

    “How Many ‘White’ People Are Passing?”    

https://www.theroot.com/how-many-white-people-are-passing-1790874972

Rusoff, Jane

    “At 82, Channing still in step” Chicago Tribune