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What Scorsese Movie Has The Most Black People It?

Started by Dr Rock, April 03, 2021, 09:13:55 PM

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Dr Rock

I had no idea this was some talking point. I was watching Hugo last night, set in 30s Paris, and noticed that even with the time period, there might be some black people milling around Gare du Nord, but there weren't. Not a big deal to me really.

chveik

Quote from: greenman on April 04, 2021, 04:16:55 PM
Really it was a pretty self obsessed era wasn't it? Allen had some female roles of substance I spose but it was mostly white mens angst from Easy Rider onwards.

Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is actually quite the feminist film (far more than yer Captain Marvel and the like anyway).

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: Kermit the Frog on April 04, 2021, 05:12:49 PM
Yeah that's a good point actually, he is the only one still operating with any kind of visibility. I suspect that it is because of the Marvel thing that it's become such a internet talking point though, as I remember quite a bit of chatter in various publications (not good ones) at the time he made his initial offhand statements where people posited that if Scorsese is taking it upon himself to shit on examples of poc and feminine excellence like Black Panther and Captain Marvel, why doesn't he do the work and support more filmmakers from diverse ethnic backgrounds? All this despite the existence of Scorsese's World Cinema Project, in which he does exactly that and more.


He just doesn't like superhero films so it's a non-starter for him really. For someone with such a vast love and knowledge of world cinema though, I'm bewildered by some of Scorsese's comments. I read one where he said he couldn't watch more than one episode of The Sopranos because he couldn't relate to it.

It's of no consequence to me that Scorsese doesn't personally like the most popular, financially successful, widely seen and culturally dominant films in the world right now, and it's far more bewildering to me that this seems to be of consequence to anybody at all.

Old Nehamkin

Quote from: chveik on April 04, 2021, 05:28:08 PM
Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is actually quite the feminist film (far more than yer Captain Marvel and the like anyway).

Another advantage that Alice... has over Captain Marvel is that it is not a propaganda piece for the United States Air Force.


I can't think of many (any) black people in Woody Allen's films. Ditto David Lynch. And Spielberg.

More of a broader industry issue, rather than it being solely Scorcese's fault. Not that I'm trying to play the problem down.

Dr Rock


Keebleman

Quote from: thecuriousorange on April 04, 2021, 06:54:33 PM
I can't think of many (any) black people in Woody Allen's films.

Deconstructing Harry had a prominent black character and Chiwetel Ejiofor had a major role in Melinda and Melinda, but I can't think of any others.  There was a bit of a fuss around the time of Hannah and her Sisters because the only black people visible in the film were the servants in Hannah's apartment but there was no great outrage.  I remember Spike Lee commenting on it, but really he did only that: comment on it.


Waking Life

#40
D'Angelo Barksdale is in Gangs of New York as a very three dimensional, fleshed out character.

(EDIT: hit reply at the end of page one without seeing the post above)


El Unicornio, mang

Edit: wrong thread

dammit. the crazy to work here sign, wrong thread, too late to edit

Tokyo van Ramming

One of these days you're gonna get organisized 😄

phantom_power

Quote from: thecuriousorange on April 04, 2021, 06:54:33 PM
I can't think of many (any) black people in Woody Allen's films. Ditto David Lynch. And Spielberg.

More of a broader industry issue, rather than it being solely Scorcese's fault. Not that I'm trying to play the problem down.

I think a lot of artists just tell their own stories. I think the bigger problem is the lack of black directors being allowed to tell their stories and the lack of black executives greenlighting films.

Keebleman

Just watched this clip from Raging Bull and at the end a big black guy comes up to congratulate Jake as he's being awarded the championship belt.  Haven't seen the full film for years but I don't think he appears again, though his prominent placing in the scene suggests that we - and certainly Jake - should know who he is.  A former champion maybe.  Perhaps a related scene was cut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1jf7HM-k8g

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Keebleman on April 04, 2021, 07:23:03 PM
Deconstructing Harry had a prominent black character and Chiwetel Ejiofor had a major role in Melinda and Melinda, but I can't think of any others.  There was a bit of a fuss around the time of Hannah and her Sisters because the only black people visible in the film were the servants in Hannah's apartment but there was no great outrage.  I remember Spike Lee commenting on it, but really he did only that: comment on it.

And don't forget Sweet and Lowdown, which had many (though few of them were any kind of major character, if memory serves).

Petey Pate

Quote from: Keebleman on April 04, 2021, 07:23:03 PM
Deconstructing Harry had a prominent black character and Chiwetel Ejiofor had a major role in Melinda and Melinda, but I can't think of any others.  There was a bit of a fuss around the time of Hannah and her Sisters because the only black people visible in the film were the servants in Hannah's apartment but there was no great outrage.  I remember Spike Lee commenting on it, but really he did only that: comment on it.

Take the Money and Run has some minor parts for black men as convicts.

Speilberg also cast Scatman Crothers in his awfully saccharine segment of the 1983 Twilight Zone movie.

Blumf

Woody Allen had this bit from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex

https://youtu.be/nM3fglmaRrA?t=95

St_Eddie

Quote from: Petey Pate on April 20, 2021, 01:06:29 PM
Take the Money and Run has some minor parts for black men as convicts.

Black men portrayed as criminals.

Quote from: Petey Pate on April 20, 2021, 01:06:29 PMSpeilberg also cast Scatman Crothers in his awfully saccharine segment of the 1983 Twilight Zone movie.

Literally the magical negro trope.

Two great examples of representation, there.  *cough*

Mister Six

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on April 04, 2021, 05:38:41 PM
Another advantage that Alice... has over Captain Marvel is that it is not a propaganda piece for the United States Air Force.

I keep seeing this but it's a terrible take. The Air Force is shown throughout as a sexist institution in which women are bullied and sidelined, and the plot of the film as a whole is anti-imperialist.

And I say this as someone who isn't a fan of the film as a whole.

EOLAN

Quote from: Mister Six on April 21, 2021, 03:59:06 AM
I keep seeing this but it's a terrible take. The Air Force is shown throughout as a sexist institution in which women are bullied and sidelined, and the plot of the film as a whole is anti-imperialist.

And I say this as someone who isn't a fan of the film as a whole.

The US military major concern usually isn't with the morals portrayed in films. They would be far more worried if the film portrayed military service as being boring or extremely inept militarily.

Happy to take some Liberal pandering in movies if they feel it is able to help recruitment for other reasons.

Josef K

Quote from: Mister Six on April 21, 2021, 03:59:06 AM
I keep seeing this but it's a terrible take. The Air Force is shown throughout as a sexist institution in which women are bullied and sidelined, and the plot of the film as a whole is anti-imperialist.

And I say this as someone who isn't a fan of the film as a whole.

The way Marvel (and other big budget military movies) work is that the military lets them use vehicles, locations, personnel etc, in exchange for having final signoff on the script. It obviously saves the production a ton of money and gives them some visual authenticity but it means the military can ask certain parts to be rewritten. It's happened before, e.g. rewriting an off the cuff remark in Iron Man 2 about someone committing suicide, in light of some high profile suicides in the military.

Generally when there's army bad lads, it usually ends up being a rogue element trying to launch a coup, which is thwarted by the good guys. instead of...being a structural issue within the entire imperialist beast.

Captain Marvel was particularly egregious as Marvel actually partnered with the Air Force to aid a recruiting drive focused on women. Considering the Air Force is the branch of the military with the highest rate of sexual assault it's fucking immoral.

Edit: I can't recommend the Citations Needed podcast episode about this enough:
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/ep-115-hollywood-anti-muslim-racism-part-iii-how-the-pentagon-cia-sponsor-american-mythmaking

jobotic

[questions that took you by surprise at a job interview]

Mister Six

Quote from: Josef K on April 22, 2021, 12:26:33 PM
Generally when there's army bad lads, it usually ends up being a rogue element trying to launch a coup, which is thwarted by the good guys. instead of...being a structural issue within the entire imperialist beast.

Except in Captain Marvel, where the entire structure of the Air Force is at fault for oppressing women, and the only non-shitty members of the Air Force we see are the three women who are sidelined. And, again, the film is against imperialism.

The recruiting drive thing I hadn't heard about, but the film itself isn't army propaganda.

13 schoolyards

I guess the thing is that if you're going to use the US military in your film, then the US military are going to have to sign off on your film, which means that on some level the US military approves of your message.

For people who don't like or trust the US military, this may be a sign the film's message isn't great, even if it's not immediately obvious why.

(I assumed the recruiting message in Captain Marvel was along the lines of "Women, sign up and make a difference - we're an organisation that wants to change and needs your help")

Dr Rock

No it was 'join the air force and you're basically a superhero, fly a plane, weee'

dissolute ocelot

It's hard to think of many serious/prestige/arthouse films from the 70s or even early 80s with notable black performers. Some of this was probably down to studios and producers, but directors definitely played a part. I'm excluding exploitation/crime/genre with black villains or black antiheroes, and black auteurs like Charles Burnett who never really got their films released.

Generally films were very white even when about subjects with lots of black people involved. There are a lot of Vietnam films with at most one token black guy, like little Laurence Fishburne in Apocalypse now.

But there are black-centric films that are forgotten maybe because they don't fit into the angry white dude model, so critics get as much of the blame. Like Martin Ritt's Sounder in 1972 (Ritt, who also directed Hud, The Front, Norma Rae, Stanley and Iris, etc, was a solid director but not a self-obsessed auteur in the Scorsese sense.)

It probably improved in the late 70s. Paul Schrader had a lot of success with Blue Collar (1978) starring Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto and some white dudes. Sam Fuller made the amazing White Dog (1982) with the great Paul Winfield (which was also kind of buried). And then come the 90s almost every film had Morgan Freeman.

So what have I missed?

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on April 23, 2021, 09:55:18 AMGenerally films were very white even when about subjects with lots of black people involved. There are a lot of Vietnam films with at most one token black guy, like little Laurence Fishburne in Apocalypse now.
Wasn't the chief of the boat crew that Willard sails with also African-American?