IBARW: A Night at the Movies

I wanted to do something really meaningful for International Blog Against Racism Week. Something wrenching, profound, well-written.

I thought about writing a heartfelt essay about people of color in movies. Then I thought about writing a well-organized essay about people of color in movies. Then I thought about creating a list of well-realized people of color in movies. Then I realized there's no way to organize any aspect of this little Hollywood clusterfuck, so let's play it fast and loose, okay? There's just so many ways to be offensive, why stick to just one?

Welcome to A Night at the Movies!





A slightly bigger version of this collage, made by some online tool that decides to take all your carefully-cropped pictures and make them look like tree-bark cells under a microscope.





1. Voodoo priest, Live and Let Die. Dances, menaces white women with snake, is killed. Par for the course for a Bond movie, I guess, but, uh, wow.

2. Oded Fehr (Ardeth Bay), The Mummy. Is enigmatic, selflessly provides exposition, saves white people. Likes long walks in the desert, being strapped to the wings of a biplane.

3. Everyone, Sister Act 2. Inner-city kids solve all their problems by forming a choir, retain colorful "ethnic" clothing.

4. Sayuri (played by Zhang Ziyi), Memoirs of a Geisha. Unfortunate victim of the geisha fetish; revered for her pale eyes, which isn't at all awkward or loaded. Played by Chinese actress, which sticks in the collective craw until the Airbender casting starts coming through, at which point this movie gets the Casting Oscar by comparison.

5. Ravi Gafron (Farid), Inkheart. Not as bad as it could be; on the other hand, every winsome, docile young thief-boy who spills out of the Arabian Nights in curl-toed shoes, a turban, and a tiny vest without a shirt under it brings up some questions, is all.

6. Halle Berry (Selina Kyle), Catwoman. "Let's make a strong black woman hero! Now cut some more of her suit off and make the script as bad as you possibly can." Yeah, mission accomplished, movie. Thanks.

7. Uh, everything, Gone with the Wind. It's so bad that the software kept trying to crop it to just the empty space in between them. Nice try, software.

8. Oh god, just everything, Black Snake Moan. "Hey, you know what people love? This dynamic. People have loved this one since, like, forever! Put the chains on the poster, okay?"

9. Extras, Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift. The African-American student is a thief; all the girls are silent extras. (Note: I don't think any Asian woman spoke a word in this movie unless you count the middle-aged teacher. This just occurred to me. Holy shit, movie.)

10. Michael Clarke Duncan (John Coffey), The Green Mile. Literal Magical Negro. Also, he's fine with dying for a crime he didn't commit, because one time Tom Hanks was nice to him.

11. Ben Kingsley (Gandhi), Gandhi. I'm just giving you a break here to enjoy a nuanced portrayal of an Indian statesman by an actor of Indian descent. Enjoy the reprieve; it won't last long.

12. And we're back to sucking! Bai Ling whose character name is never spoken, The Crow. She burns eyeballs for their magical powers and speaks in fortune-cookie sound bites. It's…just awesome. *sigh*

13. Salma Hayek (Tarantino doesn't care what women are named), From Dusk Till Dawn. She wears her special Mayan Goddess bikini, dances with a snake, caters to Tarantino's foot fetish, then turns into a bloodsucker. (Salma just banked the money and used it to make Frida, though, so that's a happy ending.)

14. J.J. Abrams, Star Trek. In 1966, you got one Asian man and one African woman. In 2009, that's also all you get.

15. Oh god, just EVERYTHING, The Air Up There. Kevin Bacon teaches an African tribe to play basketball. I can't even.

16. The Huron, Last of the Mohicans. Chingachgook and Uncas get some characterization. The Huron are treated like a bunch of whiny bitches for daring to suggest that white men were making a move on their country. (Awkwaaaard.)

17. Jason Scott Lee (Mowgli), The Jungle Book. He's raised by animals, with whom he communes. Comedy ensues when British people take him back to their house and he freaks out about speaking and clothes. It's not a metaphor! They swear!

18. Jessica Alba (Honey), Honey. She's Latina; therefore, she is sassy and wants a career in hip-hop dancing. Who wants to bet that she gets her way in the end by being feisty and having the kind of heart you can only get from The Streets?

19. OH GOD, JUST EVERYTHING, Pathfinder. This is my next We Need To Talk. You guys, it's DREADFUL. I can't even BEGIN. Just know that in this scene, the dude with the makeup is a Viking, protecting two Native American warriors, who heard a noise and got scared. I WISH I WAS KIDDING.

20. Angela Basset (Mace), Strange Days. I actually love this movie a lot, especially Mace. She's controlled, capable, fierce, intelligent, wry, loving...and she spends the entire movie getting some white dude out of trouble. (So close! Soclose!)

This is obviously not a comprehensive list of people/characters of color who got the shaft on the silver screen (that would take two years). On the other hand, I feel like, on any given weekend, this is what you'd flip through on the movie channels, which is something to think about, maybe.