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Photo courtesy of Touchstone Pictures
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IIn the film "Crazy/Beautiful," a 2001 release,
features Kirsten Dunst (right) as the "crazy"
white woman who falls for her Hispanic and "beautiful"
classmate (Jay Hernandez). The film is one of the more
recent films to address interracial relationships
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By Graig
Uhlin
Arizona Daily
Wildcat
Wednesday Jan. 30, 2002
Hollywood only beginning to get past long-standing history
of racist representations
In 1915, one of film's greatest narrative achievements - D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" - was released. It was highly successful and almost universally lauded for its technical advances.
It was also extremely racist - the film glorified the Ku Klux Klan as the savior of democracy from the "evil" of the integration of blacks into society after the abolition of slavery. The black male was ostensibly the film's villain, and it was from him that the pure white woman must be saved, so much so that, at one point, a white female character jumps to her death rather than be "defiled." Miscegenation - sexual relations between people of different races - was the film's greatest taboo.
In 2001, the film "Crazy/Beautiful" was released. The film, although only moderately successful at the box office, depicted an interracial relationship between two high school students - a crazy white female (Kirsten Dunst) and her beautiful Hispanic boyfriend (Jay Hernandez). In this film, race is largely a non-issue - the couple faces obstacles to their love than other racial differences.
Media images of interracial relationships, it seems, have come a long way over the last century. Not only are they more frequent, but also they seem less controversial, less of an issue, less taboo. But how far have these depictions really come, and how much further do they need to go?
As students of the University of Arizona and consumers of popular
culture, these media images play an integral part of our lives -
affecting who we find attractive, who we're willing to date, even
the dynamics in our relationships. They are not simply "entertainment."
Jorgiana Jake, a media arts graduate student, says media - along with religion, family and law - is one of the social institutions that influence what people know and learn.
"So if you believe, since you can date a black man or a Hispanic woman, if you can date that person and it's fine in your mind, that's good," she said. "But there are millions of other people in this country who it bothers. So I think that people do need to realize that the more you see it in your own life, the more acclimated to it you'll become."
Media can expose its viewers - including students at UA - to cultures and lifestyles unlike their own, helping to build tolerance and understanding.
"Arizona is a perfect case study · We're going to inflate the number and say we have 12 percent, 15 percent of people of color on campus," said Beretta Smith-Shomade, an assistant professor of media arts. "So by and large, you can go your whole college career · without having any interaction with someone who is outside of your racial, ethnic, cultural experience.
"If that is the case, where do you get your knowledge of these people who live in this world, who operate in this world, who live in your world? You get it from the movies or from television," she said. "To say that they don't matter, or you understand certain things to be stereotypes, how would you understand that to be if that's your only knowledge of the person? It becomes who they are to you."
With an increase in the number of interracial relationships portrayed in media images, the stereotypes that inform these depictions of racial difference begin to break down. But divorcing race from stereotype is a difficult process, Jake said, especially considering the long-standing history of racist representations in media.
Plotting a trajectory of these representations from, say, "Birth of a Nation," to the present day is not as simple as it seems. Certainly, there are more representations of minorities in film and television, Jake said, but she added that doesn't mean they are "better."
"There's still way too many horrible representations of people of color. (Race) gets brushed under the rug, or you think it's funny, so you laugh at it," she said. "And name an Asian-American film star. You can't do it."
More frequent representations, furthermore, does not mean that depicting interracial relationships is any less controversial, said Yuri Makino, an assistant professor of media arts.
"I do think that interracial coupling is still considered a taboo in the media. You only have to watch television commercials to notice the complete absence of interracial couples," she said. "Many contemporary commercial films perpetuate notions of white supremacy and sexism by constructing narratives around white males who ultimately have free sexual license with women of color. On the other hand, men of color as sexual partners for white females has remained the epitome of the sexual threat to white males, and is rarely seen in the media."
But while one might assume society is becoming more open and diverse, the increasing number of minorities in media is often only a reflection of marketing strategy, Jake said.
"You have to think that companies like UPN (United Paramount Network) started their whole network to make it 'inner-city' television. And as soon as they got that market successful, they changed. So now it's going more white again," Jake said. "That's an interesting trend to think about. They're using race as a hook for commodity sales."
While certainly the trend toward niche marketing of minority groups - the recent Latino explosion, for instance - still thrives, Smith-Shomade identified another trend - one that moves toward a blurring of racial difference in order to appeal to multiple consumer communities.
"There hasn't been as much focus on the interracial (as of late). There's almost this kind of faŤade like we've already gotten past that. We're into people who are multiracial in their personhood and how do we deal with that," she said.
These representations not only appeal to a more diverse audience, but also avoid addressing the racial disparities that still exist, Smith-Shomade said.
So, while mainstream media has made strides over the past century in terms of bettering its representation of minorities, as long as media makers continue to default to stereotypes when depicting racial difference, representations of interracial relationships will remain taboo. But one should have hope for the future.
"Eventually Hollywood cinema will start being more defined and targeting (specific) audiences," Smith-Shomade said, "which will make films be more aware of what they're saying and what their impact is."
