The glittering Academy Awards night of 1973 created a sensation by the conspicuous absence of the best actor winner, Marlon Brando, for The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Touted as one of the best actors in the history of motion pictures and a foremost exponent of the Stanislavsky system of Method Acting, Brando sent his emissary, the unknown actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather of the Apache tribe, to deliver the speech. Amidst resounding booes and few cheers, Sacheen, never losing composure and poise, stated that Marlon Brando chose not to accept the Oscar Award due to the misrepresentation of Native Americans in Hollywood movies and his condemnation of such malicious stereotyping.
Stereotyping in Hollywood movies has been rampant and perpetuated with impunity since the silent movie era that commenced in the mid-1890s until the late 1920s. As early as 1914, the influential filmmaker W.D. Griffith featured the “hostile savage” stereotype of the American Indians in his movie The Battle of Elderbush Gulch. This familiar trope of Native Americans as uncouth savages gained notoriety during the era of director John Ford and matinee icon John Wayne, both avowed racists and sexists. In his popular 1956 movie, The Searchers, the brave and machismo hero, John Wayne, “finishes the job” by shooting an Indian already buried in the grave. Double desecration?
For several decades, American Indians were incriminated and vilified in Hollywood movies. They were primarily portrayed as raiders and marauders who targeted the frontier white settlers, jeopardising their peaceful lives by murdering, plundering and pillaging their settlements. This spiteful stereotyping had devastating moral, psychological and sociocultural consequences for the Native Americans across the United States. In his magnum opus, The Indians Of The Americas, author John Collier — who was US Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin De Roosevelt — enlightens the Western world about the illustrious culture and way of life of the indigenous Native Americans across the North and South Americas, before and after the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
History textbooks in schools in the US are replete with inaccurate depictions of the white settlers and Native Indians. The savagery of white settler communities who first arrived on American soil on the Mayflower, their rapaciousness, the aggression, the inhuman genocides, the grotesque slaughter of millions of bison and livestock of the American Indians and pushing them into secluded Reservations – ostracising them as uncivilised and tomahawk wielding savages — are seldom discussed and deliberated in public sphere, which, includes the media and entertainment industry. A jocular adage was that two barrels of a shotgun always got two Indians.
For centuries, justice, morality and righteousness never applied to the non-whites. The settler colonialists went on a murderous rampage of the American Indians from coast to coast, creating mayhem and untold misery for the indigenous population. Yet, Hollywood is the alma mater for understanding the rich history and culture of the native Indians, who are ruefully imprisoned by illogical, untruthful and agonising tropes. The US government, run by white people who sanctimoniously pontificate ethics and integrity in social and personal life, have categorically and systematically abrogated more than 400 treaties with the Indian Nations.
Hollywood has an ignominious history of racially caricaturing every community other than whites. Its portrayal of Blacks and Asians was equally deplorable and demonstrably false as the Native Indians. In the 1961 Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s, the buck-tooth Japanese landlord, Mr. Yunioshi, evokes a denigrating stereotype intended to mock Japanese, Chinese and other East Asian communities. East Asians were profiled for their pidgin English, extreme obsequiousness, and idiosyncratic swapping of the letter L for R that translated into a characteristic “Engrish” accent. White men exclusively played Asian characters, and in this movie, Mickey Rooney, of Scottish descent, adorns the role. Until the 1960”s, Asian characters were variedly portrayed as “yellow peril” and “yellow face” menacing villains or comical caricatures like identical twins speaking mangled English. Chinese men were incessantly characterised as having a fetish for gambling and prostitution, whereas Japanese women were portrayed as over-sexualized and conniving “geishas.”
With the advent of martial arts films — popularised by Bruce Lee in the 1970s and later Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the 1980s — revolving around vendetta themes centred on the Shaolin Temple and Kowloon, “all Asians know martial arts,” caricatures became ubiquitous in Hollywood. Another recurring trope was “mighty whitey, mellow yellow,” where a petite, homely and submissive Asian love interest is played opposite a dashing, powerful and charismatic white protagonist. With the emergence of Japan, China, South Korea and India as economic powers, the Asian stereotyping shifted towards being nerdy though docile, with lacklustre tastes and low refinement.
Blacks were subjected to more demeaning forms of caricaturing than Asians. As in real-life American society where they are the last to hire and first to fire, Blacks were enacted by painted-faced white actors on screen – in the early days of Hollywood filmmaking – derogatorily coined as “Blackface.” It had its roots in a racist tradition called Minstrelsy, a form of theatre developed in the 19th century for entertainment by comically stereotyping and mocking African-Americans. The African character is also the first to die in movies. Even in 21st-century movies, blacks are invariably portrayed as scary, emotionally intemperate and living in blighted neighbourhoods, leading drug-addled lives and acting as local conduits for the Mafia. The men are often depicted as vulnerable and violent with a bland and bleak outlook on life, whereas the women are loudmouthed and sassy.
Another prevalent trope is that of the black best friend of the white leading actor. Though it gives the appearance of diversity, in reality, it is merely tokenisation and virtue signalling. Black characters are introduced as sidekicks to reinforce and accentuate white actors’ characters. Classic examples are Stacey Dash in Clueless, Sam Wilson in Captain America: Civil War, Disney’s Radio Rebel and Netflix’s Tall Girl. These archetypal best-friend characters represent much of America’s apartheid history, where blacks expended their blood, sweat and toil working in cotton fields in the South as indentured labourers, creating prosperity for their white masters under the most gruelling and horrid conditions of discrimination and exploitation.
Latinos, the single largest ethnic group in the US, were historically identified by tropes like the “Latin lover,” infamous for virility and paramours of white women. Latino women were quintessentially temptresses who had mastered the art of seduction. With the rise of drug cartels in Mexico and gory epochs of mass murder and bloodshed, Hispanics were routinely portrayed as ruthless criminals, drug gangs engaged in turf wars, impoverished and unemployed, and undocumented immigrants desperate to cross the US borders to consummate the American Dream.
Latino men typified well-oiled hair, brown tan, living in the desert, wearing a Sombrero and sleeping under the cactus bush. The women toil as housemaids and domestic help for affluent white households, trapped in drug-infested neighbourhoods, lamenting the status quo while dreaming of a volte-face, like the fancy houses they clean. Films like A Day Without A Mexican, Man On Fire, Get The Gringo, and Spanglish, paints Mexicans in a unidimensional negative construct as dangerous, incorrigibly corrupt, silly and ignorant. The mystical charm and illustrious culture of pre-Columbian Aztec empires, punctuated by diversity and a rich tapestry of the colonial history of Mexico, is rarely fodder for Hollywood studios.
Germans have been characterised as mostly Nazis since 2000 or the erudite scientist that went under the moniker “Herr Doktor”, alluding to all scientists being German. Russian imageries are fashioned by The Cold War and its aftermath. The assorted depictions include heavy drinking and manly and boorish supporting actors leading a life of deprivation and hardship. Russian characters were played by non-Russian actors like Swedish Dolf Lundgren in Rocky IV, Austria-born Arnold Schwarzenegger In Red Heat and Danish Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises.
In movies like Ghost In The Shell, based on the hugely popular Japanese Manga series, the female lead was played by white actress Scarlett Johansson, which drew much flak. Similar whitewashing of Asian lead characters by non-Asians was witnessed when Tilda Swindon played a predominantly Asian role, The Ancient One in Doctor Strange and Emma Stone played the Chinese-Hawaiian character in Aloha.
British representation in Hollywood movies follows a cliché: upright, prudish and suave villains blurting out chaste English renowned as Received Pronunciation (RP), Queens English or BBC English. Anthony Hopkins in The Silence Of The Lambs, Peter Cushing in Star Wars and Alan Rickman in Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves exemplify this trend. The penchant for Disney studios for using a modified version of Received Pronunciation (RP), known as the Transatlantic or Mid-Atlantic accent, is pronounced.
The nasty evil queen in Snow White, Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians and the lady villainy in Cinderella; these characters typify the dated cliché of the Mid-Atlantic accent. The animated movie characters succumb to this accent stereotype, too. Popular movie characters like Egyptians in The Prince of Egypt, the animated car speaking in a British accent in Pixar’s Cars 2, Lion King, Kung Fu Panda, and Rise of the Guardians all feature villains or anti-hero voiceovers in measured, refined and sophisticated King’s English. The British accent has become an indicator of evil in Hollywood flicks.
Hollywood’s representation of Indians, one of the most accomplished ethnic minorities in the US, is also problematic. Indian Americans are generally characterised as nerdy and intellectual, donning roles from NASA scientists to software honchos in Silicon Valley. Yet these characters are depicted as suffering from certain awkwardness, socially inept, docile and shyness, which are gross misrepresentations and detrimental generalisations of the Indian population. Not all Indians have the disposition and idiosyncrasy of Raj Kootharappalli in Big Bang Theory, nor does Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire, which, unfortunately, follows a fallacious pattern.
Hollywood’s perception of Indian cities in movies like The Darjeeling Limited and Million Dollar Arm as dirty and dusty, replete with dilapidated infrastructure, where cows roam the roads, are farther from truth from the emerging India since the economic liberalisation of 1991. Big Indian cities with skyscrapers and modern infrastructure rarely feature in Hollywood movies in India. Instead, most films tend to romanticise poverty and deprivations of the Indian poor. The white employer as saviour narrative, which also stereotypes Indians as mainly employed as outsourced employees – as part of unbundling and offshoring of US companies – also features in Hollywood movies as a recurrent trope. Sitcoms like Outsourced and Family Guy reinforce this fallacy. Another familiar yet insidious trope is India is solely an exotic land of mysticism, magic and religious obscurantism. All Indians are not subservient to Gurus as depicted in movies like Eat, Pray, Love and Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. The Indian fat weddings are another cliché and saree as the only attire Indian women wear.
Bollywood is not the only movie industry in the country. Indians are adept at playing various musical instruments besides the Sitar, and Indian classical and Bollywood songs are not the only prevalent music genres. And Indian cuisine doesn’t cause a white man to be sick. Also, the generalisation of all Indians having a tacky English accent, which was ridiculously promoted by the character Apu in the blockbuster sitcom The Simpsons, was a trend commencing with Peter Sellers’ Indian character, painting his face brown and speaking in an incredibly amusing accent in the 1968 movie, The Party.
Reformist movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo have embarked on more diversity, equity and inclusion of blacks, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) in Hollywood productions. Meritorious initiatives from The Academy Of Motion Pictures, diversifying its voting body for Academy Awards, have resulted in diverse nominations and winners in recent years. Yet, the overwhelming majority of Hollywood movies are still white, straight, male-oriented and perpetuating archaic stereotypes. Machoism and masculinity constitute the predominant themes even in an era where women’s emancipation, empowerment, and advancement have reached a scale unprecedented in the history of humanity. Movies and TV shows churned out by Hollywood will adversely impact a kid’s self-worth, career choices, and social relationships and stunt their self-actualisation potential.
Aristotlean “catharsis” warrants any art form to intellectually and emotionally stimulate the audience, purging their souls in moments of melting moods. One of the cardinal principles of delivering persuasive content is centred on “ethos” or character, which should be ingrained in truth and transcend mere materialistic pursuits and greed for profits. In the last 100 years of motion pictures in Hollywood, veritable representation of diverse communities, their culture, complexities, aspirations, and multidimensional and multilayered character studies are reduced to emasculated and narrow stereotypes.
Global communities are seamlessly integrated in the 21st century by quantum technological advancements. The social media explosion has facilitated the “six degrees of separation,” connectivity chains, the possibility of cultural exchanges, and the creation of subcultures at a hitherto unseen and unheard scale. With the resounding success of Asian films like Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, Parasite and RRR winning multiple Oscars, it is a silent testimony to the rise of alternative storytelling commensurate with changing social dynamics of races and people across the world.
In the last decade, an acculturation process has been set in motion by producers of original content that is refreshing, invigorating and truthful. It transcends geographical boundaries through streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. If Hollywood wants to remain relevant as the global centre of filmmaking, it must eschew the outdated, inglorious and reprehensible stereotyping of communities and races that are as complex, vulnerable and illustrious as their monochrome white obsession.
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