Hey there! This is our last post about American cinema! We hope you have enjoyed the blog as we have enjoyed making it!!!!
What have
you learnt from American culture after watching movies from its industry? Since
we are kids, the films we watch came always from the golden industry of the USA…
we learnt from their culture and we create stereotypes about them! Just have a
look on the billboards and you will realise that Americans are the owners of
the industry! 
We know
they have Great Plains, yellow school buses, big houses with gardens and
American flags, green campuses, prom balls, cheerleaders and the best army.
During the Hollywood
‘s golden age, most of films were following the same genre: western, comedy,
musicals, cartoon and biographies… but they were created by the same studios…
that’s why it was possible to guess which studio had produced which film
because they tend to hire the same actors and to have their own style,
something impossible to guess nowadays.
The arrival
of TV was decisive to change the film industry. Films created by a particular
studio could have a different cast and production team, from now it was
impossible to distinguish which film belonged to MGM, Paramount, Universal
Columbia, RKO or Twentieth-Century Fox.
A new
strategy was needed; studios had to create something TV couldn’t offer to the
audience: transcendental stories, shows… as soon as public opinion about TV
began to be negative, cinema’s status improved: American cinema became a
renamed art. Furthermore, the Supreme Court of United States decided that films
were an art that should be protected by the first amendment.
New Hollywood
or post-classical Hollywood was the name of a new generation of intellectual directors;
they have a good command of European technics (Francis Ford Coppola, George
Lucas, Brian de Palma, Martin Scorsese, y Steven Spielberg) and they created successful
films remembered nowadays.
During the
90s a new generation of directors, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Kevin Smith,
and Quentin Tarantino, created innovative films, they changed the known genres
and achieved success and popularity as independent directors.
As you may
know, most of the films coming from the USA are commercial films, however, all cinematography
creations coming from this country are the best of the world, films such as ‘Bram
Stoker’s Dracula’ (Coppola, 1992), ‘Pulp Fiction’ (Tarantino, 1994), ‘Lost
Highway’ (Lynch, 1996), ‘Titanic’ (Cameron, 1997) change the outlook of the
industry in the 20s.
STEREOTYPES
After the
large history of American cinema and its distribution all over the world, it
has created some stereotypes we can found in most of the films. We could say
that Hollywood hasa big influence about how people are.
Films such
as “the Godfather” or “the Sopranos” have taught to the world a portrayal of Italians
as gangsters and its relations with the organized crime. In addition, many
actors of colour are asked to play stereotypical roles (maids, immigrants,
prostitutes…)
Native Americans
or American Indians tend to be characterised as they had all the same features:
fierce warriors that kill the white men and harm the white women. However sometimes
the portrayal changes,
American Indian men could become the wise doctor who
helps the white men, and the American Indian women become the beautiful maid or princess, this stereotypes make her image vulnerable to sexual harassment in
real life. 
Blacks face
both positive and negative stereotypes in Hollywood. The good black tends to be
portrayed as a wise man that helps the white to overcome the problems. The black
Mammy is the one that take care of white families and cook for them. The black
best friend tends to help the white friend (the main character). The bad black
tend to be a thug, drug dealer, or other kind of criminal that have no respect
for the law.
Latinos
have been portrayed as maids or gardeners, furthermore, Hispanic men and women
have both been sexualized in Hollywood. The
Latino men has become the “Latin lover” and Latinas are characterised as exotic
and sensual women that attract the white wealthy man with their thick accent
and fiery temperament.
Asian Americans are portrayed
as foreigners in Hollywood films. Asians speak broken English and have
mysterious traditions. Asian women are often sexually attractive women but they
hurt the white men that fall in love with them. In war films, Asian women are portrayed
as prostitutes. Asian-American men are portrayed as inteligent men or martial artists
(Bruce Lee).
High school life is portrayed as a very
important moment for American teenagers, where popularity is the main thing. You
may have learn from this kind of films that Asians are good at maths, blacks
are rude, and pretty girls were rich and white, mainly cheerleaders or quarterbacks’
girlfriends.
American Dream, as we have learnt during this
semester, America was the land of opportunities where people was born equal and
could move in the social ladder. Its history is the responsible of American citizens’
attitude towards success. Success is a very important fact of films. Hard work
and optimism are the keys for the smartest to achieve all the goals, for Americans,
success is the most important goal they have to reach doing whatever, because in
this land everything is possible, and that’s exactly what Hollywood do in films…
magic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.indiewire.com/article/who-needs-theatrical-why-hal-hartley-is-distributing-ned-rifle-via-vimeo-on-demand-20141212
http://racerelations.about.com/od/hollywood/tp/Common-Stereotypes-Of-Minorities-In-Film-And-Television.htm
http://racerelations.about.com/od/hollywood/a/Five-Common-Latino-Stereotypes-In-Television-And-Film.htm
http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Cine_Norteamericano
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream#American_Ideals
.jpg)
