Hollywood's Racial Stereotypes

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how the novel "Devil in a Blue Dress" and the film based on the novel both portray the same message of racism for their audiences. The paper explains how a film, however, has to employ different strategies from a novel in order to illustrate an idea. The paper explores the major and minor differences between the film and novel and then shows how film productions generally choose their actors and their scenes using concepts of race and racial images. The paper is of the opinion that these negative "common sense" assumptions towards different races only facilitate the idea of inequality.

From the Paper:

"It is necessary to use different strategies to illustrate an idea using a film compared to a novel. In a novel, readers are free to imagine what they read given the details from the book. These imaginations are usually based on what the readers have learned and experienced in the past. Because each person has different experiences and different knowledge, the information that is given by the novel will show a different perspective to each different reader. On the other hand, watching a film will show a common version of what is actually happening in the scenes. In this case, it is better to define characters in the briefest and most condensed manner (Omi 553)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Devil in a Blue Dress, Dir. Carl Franklin, Perf. Denzel Washington. Mundy Lane Entertainment 1995
• Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. Pocket book, New York: 2002
• Omi, Michael. "In Living Color: Race and American Culture" Signs of Life in the U.S.A 5th ed. Ed. Sonia Massik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006. 549-559

More papers on Hollywood's Racial Stereotypes:

• Film Review # 109622 : "Stereotypes in '50 First Dates'"
• Book Review # 26713 : "Tinseltown's Toys: Hollywood's Misleading Images of Indians"
• Film Review # 62804 : "Racism as Depicted in the Film "Crash"

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