Cartoons, shows, children’s books, music, advertisements and all other forms of entertainment: while they all appeal to people as something just for fun and to keep engaged in the staleness of life, they can mold themselves into more. They’re primarily seen as an escape from our bleak reality or fictional entertainment, but what about when they’re not just that. What about when they try to mirror reality through the form of alluring amusing images and motion pictures. filmmaker Marlon Riggs’ documentary “Ethnic Notions” goes all into detail about how racial stereotypes about blacks were imposed and brainwashing the public in the 18 and 1900s through the simple form of cartoon images, movies, and more. While the entertainment was seen as a form of something like casual amusement, people were too fickle in their enjoyment to look into the fact that It molded itself into casual racism. People were too induced into the action and amusement of these images to realize It gave a phony portrait of black life, ultimately making their oppression seem dandy rather than traumatic to the point where facts were ignored and not clouded into the background by popular media
One of the ways media tried to make stereotypes about blacks was through convincing others that black slaves were fine serving a master. In political cartoons and images, slaves were portrayed with a smile on their face and giddy actions of jumping rather than sad looking, giving a white audience the notion that blacks were fine with being slaves and ultimately content with being a servant to their master. In war films, black people were depicted as servants to white military men who got fed by black servants and entertained by them in the midst of war, further inserting white supremacy ideologies casually into something that should be just to amuse. Even after slavery and into segregation, this same type of stereotype prevailed in mainstream media. In bars and joints for music entertainment and enjoyment. Blacks were seen as being talented entertainers, knowing how to get a crowd going. The crowd in question however, was only white people, convincing others that black people were content with being only entertainers for whites rather than people with freedom and bondage from segregation and limited opportunities. This all ultimately hid the true facts and evidence from the public white people of blacks’ trauma and pain from slavery and their frustration over the fact of their only economic opportunities being portraying their own race as pawns in society with no greater value.
The second malicious way blacks were portrayed in media was through the entertainment technique of Black face, or the darkening of black skin in order for them to look sexually and physically unappealing. This was in order to spread the notion that black skin, was indeed ugly and not attractive compared to a seemingly much more clear and lush white skin. Black people were also portrayed with exaggeratedly wide lips and janky facial features, cartoonish almost. If they’re cartoon looking, then why would people believe black people look like that? well, the ultimate goal is to put that image in the public’s heads through fiction until their brains are erased from the real, beautiful image of black skin and looks. Until whites ultimately looked into the facial and dark skin details of blacks and had their minds automatically revert to seeing it as ugly. The blackface and grotesque facial features of blacks in media not only influenced white people, but also young black kids and people themselves. Impressionable kids would see themselves portrayed in that ugly way and start to become insecure about their own skin, until that insecurity eventually turn into self loathing the more that image of blacks becomes more mainstream and normalized in commercial America. Black was then not seen as beautiful, but an ugly and laughable cartoon. Not just a cartoon, but unappealing and nowhere near as attractive as whites, ultimately hiding the beauty of blacks and twisting it to be something that’s seemingly non existent in the roots of brown skin.
Blacks beyond looks and thoughts, were portrayed also nastily in action throughout popular media and film. The stereotypes of blacks being seen as violent and harmful to society, can actually be traced back to the medium of film itself. White filmmakers after slavery had come to its ends, would make films depicting a society under fire because of slaves being freed. the films depicted blacks as wild animals and brute apes, wildly running around because they no longer had a master to serve that kept them in check. The films ultimately, claimed that society would’ve been better off with blacks still in chains, “tamed” by a master who wouldn’t let them run wild. Who were the actors behind these black characters? whites. The white actors were to portray black people by painting their faces black and using black face. The acting for them wasn’t just a form of pursuing a passion of entertainment and a thespian life, but expressing their deep rooted hatred and desire to spread propaganda through anti-black stereotypes in film. When blacks were seen entertaining at juke joints in reality or body of fiction, white people were amused by them, but only from the absurdity of the violence they committed in the stereotypes those filmmakers depicted. Even In the segregation era and post civil rights when blacks had their freedom for good, the prejudice through film didn’t stop, but only evolved. In crime films, black cops were seen as “Rambo cops”, the only types of cops given permission to commit excessive harm and violence on civilians, pushing the agenda that blacks’ main “strength’ in society was being unapologetically violent.
The media is powerful to say the least. It’s filled with entertainment and enjoyment for all to be enthralled by, but when that entertainment and harmful poison get mixed together, the poison can get overshadowed by the mere fact that its bringing the mind and soul pleasure to see. Popular media making stereotypes prominent, also made them casual. racism portraying blacks as ugly, violent and worthless, were twisted into something that seemed to be just fun and laughing entertainment for giggles and crying babies needed to be occupied by something funny. The truth is nothing’s funny about it all, but the perception of it gets clouded as such through the minds of whites who saw black people as a mockery to society which more than anything, was racism made casual and an everyday thing to laugh on rather than a serious matter of hatred and discrimination. Black trauma and beauty is suppressed through narratives attempting to mirror reality by presenting the opposite of it. They feed the poison to young children even as the target audience, as any young and swaying mind will feed into that subtle message, not having their gullible minds know how sinister the message that lies beyond nursery rhymes and cartoons is. How could a generation of children but also adults, men and women alike be so naive to buy into the Notions? Popular culture is popular for a reason. If one’s to believe it, who’s to say the next in line to be exposed to it won’t when a legion of society is arms deep into the propaganda and entertainment masked as a harmful disease of racism and stereotypes spreading like wildfire. It’s not just a movement of black discrimination, It’s a movement of white supremacy, with whites being more valuable than the other race of black people who are nothing but the laughing stock of the white man’s world. Let this not only be a reminder of our bleak reality of the hatred we sow, but to watch closely in your head and soul what you say is “just a joke”.
