What the unfortunate '12 Years a Slave' posters say about Hollywood
An Italian distributor for “12 Years a Slave” recently caused an uproar when a promotional poster for the critically acclaimed film prominently displayed actors Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, the latter of whom plays an abusive slave master. Meanwhile, the film’s African American star, Chiwetel Ejiofor, was dwarfed in both renditions. Although the distributor apologized and pulled the unauthorized materials, this sort of whitewashing isn't uncommon. (See also: The racist international poster for the 2009 Vince Vaughn comedy “Couples Retreat.”)
In a Hollywood driven by the bottom line, major studios often seek to produce movies with the largest potential for global profitability. That means making flicks that appeal to the broadest possible demographic around the world. That not only limits the type of movies made and the stories told, it also excludes talented actors who aren’t deemed profitable.
“As foreign box-office sales have become more important, the people who manage international distribution have become more influential, weighing in on ‘green-light’ decisions about which films are made,” the Economist explained in a 2011 article about the internationalization of film. “The studios are careful to seed films with actors, locations and, occasionally, languages that are well known in target countries.”
Since African American actors aren’t as popular abroad, they are often brushed to the side in foreign marketing. The “international marketplace is still fairly racist,” James Ulmer of Ulmer Scale, which ranks actors' star power, told the New York Times in 2007. Reginald Hudlin, a producer and then entertainment president of BET Networks, agreed: "I always call international the new South. [...] In the old days, they told you black films don’t travel down South. Now they say it’s not going to travel overseas.”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-12-years-a-slave-hollywood-racism-20140106,0,7918120.story
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to explain, the inference from far too many white people in Hollywood that
a) white people can only relate to situations only if a white person is front and center, even if the issue at hand has practically NOTHING to do with white people (see so many movies about the Civil Rights struggle and JAG's favorite "The Help."
. It will take these people probably a hundred years to realize how offensive this is or to understand why the fact that so many of the top-rated, most successful people on YouTube right now (which is dictated by the masses instead of the "arbiters" of what is cool/beautiful/interesting) are non-whites blows 99% of their reasoning to smithereens;
b) that there is absolutely nothing wrong with white actors playing real life people of color (see Ben Affleck's role in "Argo" and Angeline Jolie playing Marianne Pearl in "A Mighty Heart" among about 50 gillion other movies where this has been done);
and c) having Chinese actresses play geishas (see "Memoirs of a Geisha" ; Pakistanis playing Indians; Colombians playing Hondurans, etc. etc. etc. doesn't really matter because "white people won't know the difference anyway." These same folks that scream and holler because a black guy was in "Thor" turn blind deaf and mute when confronted with these really ignorant portrayals which in all honesty, insult white people even more than they insult the other cultures they mish mash and can't be bothered to differentiate. Add on their insistence that the only roles black people can play are slaves and then not even bothering to put them up on the posters such as in this article is just icing on the shitty cake.
I'll never forget the EXTRAORDINARILY talented Viola Davis talking about when she goes on casting calls. She puts on her best makeup, her most beautiful dress, smiles the whole interview and still gets cast as a maid.
White Hollywood simply MUST DIE. Or evolve. But I'm okay with either.
Media portrayals of people of color work my LAST BLACK NERVE. I am still so pissed that according to Allure magazine's What's Beautiful Now census that they did about two years ago, women of color were MASSIVELY over represented in what was considered to be "most beautiful" now. A Latina model was viewed as the most beautiful of all the female models put before the respondents and a bi-racial BLACK woman was considered the new beauty ideal (even though of course, Angelina Jolie was still voted as the woman that represented the modern day beauty ideal -- a disconnect that the respondents never explained but we all know what's up with that).
And yet, I still cannot open a magazine or see a movie without being bombarded by blondness because the folks that have always dictated what is beautiful/desirable are still stuck in 1953. It is simply MADDENING.
The Gio aka Mr JAG had the iPAD earlier and was yelling in his Calabrese accent - "Oh Madonna she's gotta throw the mic!"
Me: Who?
Him: Just read this!
You've got him hollering with you.
It would be too cute to get our hubbies together and compare which one's accent tickles us more. Italian or Aussie! 
Even Modern Family has been working my last nerve lately. It is one of the few shows on television that even pretends to have a diverse cast but so many of the "jokes" are just flat out ignorant and racist. There was one episode where the loathsome Clare (words TRULY cannot express how much I despise that woman. By FAR my least favorite character followed by her brother, Mitchell) actually says to her dad "dad, can we do something about Cheech and Chong?" referring to her Colombian stepmother. If the power existed to jump into a tv and slap someone upside the head, Clare would have had hers slapped that day.
And it's gotten worse. In one single episode, Jay (the old dad) refers to his Colombian wife as his "housekeeper" in order to try to get out of a parking garage and Cameron says "it was always expected that she would be a bad driver" about his adopted Vietnamese daughter. Gloria, the Colombian stepmother, had her mother and sister visit her and the whole episode was about floods washing their village away and beating clothes on a rock to wash them. I don't think I laughed one damn time during the whole episode -- and keep in mind this is a show with NO black characters, but given the utter lack of common sense by the writers, I'm starting to think that's not a bad thing.
I've also been reading where Naomi Campbell is spitting bricks about the racism in the fashion world and the complete lack of diversity in the modeling industry. And keep in mind that all of this shit is STILL happening in 2 damn thousand and 14. Makes you wonder if this shit is ever going to go away.
C'mon now...
Michael Clarke Duncan (rest in peace...)
Don Cheadle
Anthony Mackie
Idris Elba
Denzel Washington
Will Smith
Jamie Foxx
Morgan Freeman
Samuel L. Jackson
Forrest Whitaker
Eddie Murphy
Laurence Fishburne
Sidney Poitier
James Earl Jones
Taye Diggs
Danny Glover
Eriq La Salle
The hottie from Sex and the City who played Miranda's doctor boyfriend (can't remember his name)
Djimon Hounsou (yes, he's played a slave, but he was fucking awesome -- not as a slave -- in "In America"
and on and on...
I haven't seen her. Having her in the center of a poster could only be good for business.
