Film and Empowerment
In the 1800s and especially the 1900s many new forms of entertainment and media became more prevalent in America. It began with newspapers then photography and moved into radio, movie (films) and finally television. In the beginning American entrepreneurs had control of all of these forms, but they needed a large audience in order to make their businesses a success. Because a majority of the population was made up of people who weren't rich, white males, in order to get an audience, these entrepreneurs needed to appeal to those who were in their audiences. Issues needed to be addressed that appealed to the lower class, women, and immigrants. In order to appeal to these audiences they also needed to portray those from the audience in the media. This is how non-dominant groups used to media to empower themselves. They also used media to empower themselves because many immigrants, and non-white ethnic groups became the entrepreneurs in media, they made businesses for themselves, became wealthy, and made a difference in how stories were told
All of these forms of media became especially important during the Depression of the 1930s, especially film because of the unemployment rate and the fact that movie tickets were really inexpensive. The 1930s was a time of true empowerment for ethnic groups in film as actors, and actresses. Among the actors and actresses that made a way for themselves in this time period were the Native American, Will Rogers who strived for a message of fairness and the working people in his characters, the Mexican American-- Dolores Del Rio, the Asian American-Charlie Chan, the African Americans-Haddy McDaniel and Bill Robinson, who played very stereotypical roles as the maid, butler, etc. but through those roles beat down a lot of stereotypes as well. An example of this is Haddy as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. In the 1930s the most successful crossover actor was Paul Robison, he was the first black man to kiss a white woman on stage in Othello, and made a point to make films that starred only African Americans. Radio was also brought to people in the
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Approximate Word count = 706
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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