The Politics of Filmmaking

So I'm watching a documentary on PBS just now. America Beyond the Color Line: Hollywood.  A major producer (I didn't catch the name) is being interviewed.  It being PBS, of course they pursue a racial angle in which whites and males are bad. Especially, the producer says that a film with black stars will gross half as much as white stars. "Why"  Producer says: "I don't know... Hillbillies?"  A black star complains that women are not respected and therefore not paid as much. Tell all this to Oprah, who by the way is both black and female, and is the the highest paid person in the industry. And Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and on and on.

It all pissed me off, major.

1st thing: the psychology of film teaches us that watching a film creates a dream-like state; it's the reason we are able to suspend disbelief as much as necessary for a film to work in our minds. But in particular, a film requires the viewer to identify with some aspect of the film, hopefully the lead characters. In our subconscious, it's just not feasible to ask our minds to identify with a character outside of what we look like, and how we behave. Some call this racist, I call it reality; so would Freud.

2nd thing: those hillbillies are the guys who made that producer a billionaire. And he wants to denigrate them?  But yes, he denigrates his customers.

Remember this the next time you go to the movies:
1. That the people making the film don't think much of you
2. They are happy to make the thing they think you want, irrespective of what they themselves think; a question of integrity, maybe?
3. They are happy to take your money and complain about you all the way to the bank.