article by: Imani Joseph
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A new year means new stories featuring marginalized communities hitting your local movie theater, streaming service, and television. White Hollywood has had a history of recycling corny tropes and stereotypes when portraying minorities’ stories; however, it's not just white Hollywood playing into problematic stereotypes, but these same marginalized groups cashing in on their peoples’ misrepresentation in the box office. Going into 2019 as a viewer and consumer, let’s try to avoid putting our money where ignorance is - let’s leave all of these overused, problematic tropes in the past:
- Award winning movies about black people only involving slavery or Jim crow
- Black women being portrayed as simply loud, bitchy, angry, or sassy
- Leading women needing a male love interest
- Two women's conflict focusing around a man (failing the Bechdel test)
- Feminine gay men being the sassy sidekick, never the lead
- Homophobic characters being secretly gay
- Interracial couples always including one white person
- Transgender people being described as ‘born in the wrong body’
- Bisexual people solely interested in threesomes
- Bisexual people involved in affairs
- Light skinned Latinx and Black people taking on the majority of leading roles
- Large women being portrayed as grandmothers or aunts, never lovers
- Asian Americans having phenomenal standardized test scores, being violin prodigies, and having doctors for parents
- Black men only being funny dressed up as women
- Black kids having absent fathers
- Queer stories entirely centred around homophobia
- Domestic violence only shown in heterosexual relationships
- Not acknowledging Mexican people can be brown, white, and black
- Bisexuality being illustrated as a phase
- All Mexican American people as poor and undocumented
- Not acknowledging men are victims of sexual assault too
- Women incapable of healthy friendships
- Mexican Americans only having wealth through drug related business
This list was put together by asking my family and friends of different ethnicities, sexualities, and walks of life: it’s not an exhaustive list of all problematic narratives that exist. If you have any more narratives you think should die in 2019 comment below.
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