#represetnation

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

Disco, so recently I've noticed that more movies are starring women above 40 as their main stars, and they are still portrayed as attractive women. I'm happy about that. But I'm also frustrated that they wear so much makeup to hide their wrinkles & look younger instead of embracing their age. Like, isn't that counterproductive?

I don’t think it’s quite counter-productive, since it’s come from having no women over 40 in movies. But it’s definitely not representative of real women, is it? Not that Hollywood has ever been representative of real women. 

Small steps, I think. The industry is taking very small steps. At least they’re in the right direction! 

Could they do better? Absolutely! But honestly, when it comes to well-written stories about women over 40 who are actually more than the love interest, or the mother, or some other socially acceptable role, Hollywood completely lags behind European cinema on that front. 

[jewishgirlrevolt]

Repeat After me, Hanukkah is NOT the Jewish Christmas

Hanukkah celebrates Jewish freedom from attempts to suppress and stomp out our identity, so kindly don’t add gnomes and snow globes to a holiday that that has nothing to do with either one of those things. We don’t need gnomes, we don’t need snow globes, and we do not eat Matza ball soup on Hanukkah either. STOP!!! Or at least talk to someone actually Jewish before you roll out your dumb products. 

I will take the Hanukkah cats kitchen towels though. Those are acceptable

[scaffoldsofthought]

Questions to Guide Discussion on Daughters of the Dust and Bamboozled

1. Julie Dash has said that Daughters of the Dust has "always been received differently outside the country because they don’t have the same expectations of, when you say “a black historical film” and people think, oh, I know the story, roll the film. And when they’re not seeing what they expect to see, then there’s some kind of resistance." What are the forms of resistance presenting in Daughters of the Dust? How do they compare to the forms of resistance in Bamboozled? 

2. What are the histories of African Americans that each film interrogates? How do these historical legacies of these physically manifest within the films?

3. What is the referential, explicit, implicit, and symptomatic meanings of each film? 

4. What are the cultural norms that Bamboozled interrogates? What is the cultural ideology that Pierre struggles with? Think back to the final, overwhelming montage sequence.

5. "Back in March 2015, the Writers Guild of America released a report showing that minorities comprise a mere 13.7% of TV staff writer positions, a drop from the 15.6% held in the 2011-2012 season." How does that affect the representation of minorities in film and television? What do these films offer in terms of envisioning black representation in cinema?