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Example research essay topic: Political Agenda Black Men - 1,228 words

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... motivation and their will to compete with the "regular" society. And it seems planned! One of the kids we interviewed said, "We " re going the way of the American Indians.

They killed our spirit, our self esteem. " (q. in Reynaud 330) All that many young black men have to model themselves after is the media's definitions of who they are, and a cycle of destruction of the black family is allowed to propagate. Jo Nina Aaron writes in The Black Scholar, "In most cases, the media's portrayal of life in the so-called black 'underclass' focuses on mores, living habits and social patterns, such as promiscuity, drug addiction and crime. Thus, the stereotypes that far too many whites have of blacks continue to be perpetrated" (50). Regardless of whether Hollywood portrays black men as murderous drug dealers or ineffective celibates, the result is not good for black society. "Blacks complain that mainstream films present a negative impression of Black people and have a detrimental effect on their lives, " says Jacqueline Bobo, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Study of Women/Department of English, UCLA, "[I]f Black producers were given the freedom and support to produce films about Black people, they would project a different image" (428). Dictating how images in American film are portrayed is the business side of Hollywood.

Independent film producer Dennis Greene says Hollywood is not merely concerned with profit, but also with the status and marketability of individual executives in the movie industry (28). Blacks have found themselves excluded from the upper echelon, and that leaves white executives in charge. Joy Horowitz, writing in American Visions, calls the lack of black executives "Hollywood's dirty little secret" because it is "not overt racism but a subtler prejudice" (16). This unspoken conspiracy keeps black people from being hired and promoted from within. Executive Producer Grace Blake explains how blacks are excluded even from film production crews: The industry is so much of a family-oriented business. Nobody really wants to teach anybody anything.

You may find that all of the people in a particular category are blood related, specifically with grips and electricians. That's one of the ways we, as black people, have always been kept out of this business. (q. in Rhine's 30) Nepotism and cronyism keep Hollywood a shop closed to outsiders (Horowitz 18). White executives, who control the money, are happy to keep making films using the images that they grew up with (Greene 28). Thus, modern film images are constructed in the same racial paradigm that produced Birth of a Nation. Jane Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Journalism at Indiana University, says, "Racial identity has been -- and continues to be -- a crucial factor in determining who can produce popular culture, and what messages are created" (185).

And those in control of the images are free to promote their own politics, clarifies St. Clair Bourne in The Black Scholar: [M]ost of the current black images emanating from Hollywood are essentially those which have as their primary function to entertain, advocate no change and, more importantly, to suggest the legitimacy of the current social and political order. (15) Thus, the images offered in American film are a product based in Hollywood's hereditary political agenda -- a white political agenda. But the system does not merely control the images in American films, it ensures that the public will see them by monopolizing marketing and distribution. According to Jacqueline Bobo, there has been an increase in the number of films produced by black people, but black filmmakers have trouble getting their films in front of an audience: They receive limited financial support, and their films fall victim to inadequate distribution and marketing campaigns. The result is that Black films are, in effect, unavailable to a large number of Black people and other interested viewers. In addition, Black filmmakers have difficulty getting certain films screened at "showcase" theaters where a large number of people can have access to them. (428 - 29) The power of marketing and distribution goes beyond excluding independent filmmakers, however.

Marketing and distribution create the audience, that is, the demand for the films it offers (Bourne 19). Thus, Hollywood and the audience have a sort of symbiotic relationship, each feeding off the other. Until there is a change in either Hollywood or the audience, the audience will continue to consume whatever Hollywood chooses to feed it. "The problem, " says independent filmmaker Spike Lee, "is getting Hollywood to expand the kinds of films it will make, and raising the glass ceiling in terms of money and marketing" (q. in Lowery and Said 108). And until there is a change, independent filmmakers will have to continue struggling to get their movies seen. Examining a film by an independent filmmaker can show how black men can be depicted positively.

Michael Roemer's Nothing but a Man (1964) is representative of the relatively few independent films that realistically portray black men and the problems they face. Nothing but a Man is the story of Duff, a black laborer who falls in love with and marries Josie, the minister's daughter. The film examines Duff as he struggles to define his worth as a man in the context of his family and his job. Duff's need to define himself as a man is symbolic of the black man's need to define his identity. Other black males Duff encounters are in themselves symbolic of the compromises that blacks are forced to make by white society.

And they do not offer a solution Duff can live with. Josie's father, for example, has a "solution" for being black -- assimilation into the white man's world. Although he has an ordered and secure life, Josie's father has sacrificed his black identity for it. Duff is not willing to make that sacrifice, so he tries to define himself through his job at the mill. He knows how to work hard and relies on that ethic for his success.

But Duff refuses to play the white man's "game" and loses his job. Duff finds himself faced with the reality of being black in America: play the game or pay the price. He is falsely denounced as a labor organizer and a troublemaker, and he is blacklisted from or forces out of the good jobs. The only work Duff can find is the kind of jobs reserved for those of an ex- slave class: picking cotton and emptying ashtrays. Because he is trying to define himself through work, Duff cannot bear to take on such degrading jobs. While this is happening, Duff and Josie have started a family.

She is pregnant and he finds himself unable to support her, much less a child. And she wants his son to move in with them, too. Duff's frustration manifests itself in anger and violence. But Duff and Josie's marriage seemed doomed from the start. The broken house they move into foreshadows a broken home; the broken neighbor slumped on the porch virtually offers Duff his only role model of a father and husband. Duff had a biological father, but he is a man who has never been a part of his life.

When his father dies, and Duff cannot tell the undertaker how old his father is or where his father was born or what his father did for a living, he sees that he i...


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Research essay sample on Political Agenda Black Men

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