All Black Art Deserves Valid Critique
The act of thinking about Black art and its meaning in a larger cultural context is equally as important as the final creation. By Stephanie Smith-Strickland Over the last two years we’ve seen films like Black Panther — Ryan Coogler’s triumphant diaspora-spanning
‘Captain Marvel’ and the Power of Women’s Emotions
Captain Marvel serves as reminder that emotional, compassionate, angry, resilient, brave, loud girls and women are dangerous to oppressive structures. This article contains spoilers for the Marvel film, “Captain Marvel” One of the most enduring and damaging messages I learned as a
White Conservatives are Really Bad at Protesting
White people are always worried about the wrong things and it shows up both in what they choose to protest and how they choose to go about it. White people are hilarious. I know they aren't trying to make me laugh,
‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Is A Milestone, But It Shouldn’t Be
Brown Asians and Black people should not be asked to support a movie that does not support them.
By Sangeetha Thanapal [This piece is the second in a two-part critique of race in "Crazy Rich Asians", you can read the first one here.] Many are lauding “Crazy Rich Asians” as a step in the right direction for the representation of Asians in Hollywood. Some have even gone so far as to call it the “Asian ‘Black Panther’”, and its setting, Singapore, the “Chinese Wakanda.” The truth is that the movie is actually far from being a win for representation, largely because it perpetuates existing racist dynamics in Singapore. It simply is not the “Great Asian Hope” that it is being portrayed as. While it is being billed as an Asian movie, it is made up almost entirely of East Asians. The few Brown people featured in it are seen in service positions to the glamorous and wealthy Chinese characters. The dominance of East Asia in the worldwide imagination of who constitutes the idea of Asia is troubling, especially since Brown Asians make up a sizeable portion of the continent. The tendency to equate East Asia with all Asians wipes out the many differences between us. An East Asian-Brown Asian divide exists specifically because Brown Asians have been overlooked from the American definition of Asian for generations. There has been much criticism against such erasure, and this movie only propagates it by branding a Chinese cast as a movie for all Asians. It presents Brown Asians as a backdrop to East Asian opulence and success, reinforcing the notion that Brown people are inferior to East Asians, those in closer proximity to whiteness. It further entrenches the idea that East Asians are the only Asians that matter. This should not be the case, especially because East Asians buy into and promote the model minority myth, conveniently cutting out those who do not fit into this narrative. Commentators keep referring it to as the first movie with an all-Asian cast in over two decades. However, Hari Kondabolu’s documentary “The Problem With Apu” also had a predominantly Asian cast, but because Brown Asians are often ignored within the U.S., the movie was not praised the way Crazy Rich Asians is being. One might say that a documentary is different from a movie but then what about "Missisipi Masala" or even "Harold and Kumar"?SUPPORT WEAR YOUR VOICE: JOIN US ON PATREON
Netflix’s ‘Jessica Jones’ has a Race Problem, But it’s Fixable
As a fan of "Jessica Jones" I am calling for more. By Michelle Carroll Spoiler Alert: This article discusses specific scenes and overarching themes in season two of Netflix’s "Jessica Jones". I am new to the expansive Marvel Universe. My interest was