Ethnicity and Race in New Cinema - Essay Example

Countless movies have been made that placed the white race concept atop the pedestal. This is apparent in many genres, settings, and contexts. Films strengthen the existing prevailing social concepts (Kellner, 1995, as cited in Brayton, n.d.) that refer to a middle-class white heterosexual male as the normative figure (Brayton, n.d.). The concept of race is a social construction and was originally defined by western people. The general notion brought by this concept is that white people are superior to those with colored skin.

This prevailed during the colonization period where the colonizers were white people. Whiteness reached its peak after the colonial era though (Lopez, 2005). Thus, having colonized lands with black people, the latter were treated as inferior and were made slaves. The same treatment is accorded to people with brown skin. The concept of whiteness was perpetuated even after colonialism as desirable and utilized to repress and marginalize others (Lopez, 2005). The concept of “personal whiteness” is referred to by W.E.B.

Du Bois has been readily and systematically accepted by groups that were “racialized, enslaved, conquered and colonized,” but who regard “white power and white pretense” as critical concerns (Towards a Bibliography 2006, p. 5). Although numerous groups are working to counter this unequal social construct, there are still segments in society as well as individuals who retained such white supremacy notion. Even those not belonging to organized groups, their individual attitude towards colored people show antagonism or disgust.

Individuals who do not belong to the whiteness group are categorized as belonging to the “other” (Performing Whiteness n.d.). The concept of race can be found in many cultural materials such as stories, narratives, habits, etc,. and perpetuated in cinema (Critical Race Theory 2011). Although socially constructed, race has been institutionalized in the US through systematic and deliberate actions, thus creating social structures and consequences (Lipsitz, 1995). In cinema, the race is constructed continually as a performance and “understood as a set of cultural tastes,” but not in relation to biological or cultural existence (Brayton, n.d., p. 63). The lifestyle of the rich upper-class whiteness is portrayed as the proper norm (Johnson and Roediger, 1997, as cited in Brayton, n.d.).

It is played around the concept of consumer choice (Brayton, n.d.). Academic debates on race focus on cultural identity, the roots of the group, and how members see themselves as a cultural group (Bernardi, n.d.). Identity does not remain the same. It undergoes continuous change and transformation (Hall, 1989, as cited in Bernardi, n.d.). White dominance as performance is aptly described by Orwell (1936 as cited in Lopez, 2005) in saying that by wearing a mask, the face grows to fit with it.

Shifting Focus of Whiteness Racial formation, according to Omi and Howard (1994, as cited in Bernardi, n.d.), is a divide grounded on cultural and physiognomic parameters that tells who should have access to institutions. Racial formation changes like identity (Bernardi, n.d.). During the early developments in cinema, the concept of race was dominated by social Darwinism and eugenics wherein humanity is placed in a “hierarchy of human cultures and histories” with the Anglo-Saxons at the top, followed by the other Caucasians, the Mongoloids, and then the Negroids (Bernardi, n.d.).