African American Representations

The African American ethnicity has the worst representation out of all races. For several reasons, the media of all types distorts the representation of the real lives of black males. Because of this the media negatively effects the public’s view, understanding and attitudes towards black males. This includes understandings and attitudes of African Americans themselves. These distorted representations create distorted understandings and representation of black males cause real world issues for them. Straight Outta Compton and get hard are both movie which shows examples of how African American or black makes are signified as gangster or always relate towards it in some way.

Get hard Shows several representations of the African Americans all being gangsters and murderers in some way. When James king (Will Ferrell) finds out he’s going to jail he asks Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart) for advice on what to do because of his ethnicity’s. From the start of the movie Get Hard its already represented the black male to have knowledge or experience of a criminal and gang relation. The film shows Kevin Hart to have relation to the Gang Crenshaw Mafia and that he‘s grown up in the hood/Ghetto. Get Hard shows the example of Kevin Hart having to have knowledge of what jails like being black and that he can help Will Ferrell. For Various Reason Get Hard uses a distorted Image or what the lives and reality if being black male is to help create humor. The use of language in Get hard to create comedy also creates the wrong image in a criminal way. When Will Ferrell is showing how to illegally steal stock money the Black males call Wall street the real criminals until the topic of murder is brought up, the Gang members go on to say Murder is there favorite and how they do it all the time.

Straight Outta Compton also shows their representation as gangsters. The film shows police arresting them because they look like “Bangers” and “Gang members”. Because of how there dressed they are represented as Gangsters and which has the impact of police not wanting them in Torrance. They are marginalized as Gang members and not the artist they are which is shown in how the express frustration in it being a setup. The certain representation given by the police perceiving them as Gangsters carry’s over towards the viewers because if the law informant is showing them as bad then the viewers will look that way too. In a wide range of ways, the overall presentation of black males in the media is distorted, exaggerating some dimensions while omitting others it’s just that the officers in straight Outta Compton magnify the views the have a more lifelike effect of on society.

This shows the example of African American ethnicity having relation towards Gangster lifestyle and hood presence. While many aspects of black males real lived experiences tend to be missing from the collective media portrayal, some aspects are very much present, and are, in fact, exaggerated. These exaggerations are what create the problems with racial stereotyping because of the African American representation. Straight Outta Compton’s use of showing black males are arrested due to skin color if are accurate representation in some instances but not all, showing the film industries knowledge of the real-world issues. The same go’s for Get Hard and their knowledge of the impact caused by their representations of black males as found in my findings. It distinguishes them to be comfortable with murder, crime of all sorts and that their either engaged to Gang activity or have relation to Gang Members.

When James King is about to go to jail his ideology of a black male being able to give protection to him in jail is what causes the effects of blacks males being classified stereotypically as a bad person is what creates the problems in society and increases the racial tension. Even with Straight Outta Compton showing the real-world effect of black males’ representation as Gangsters causing them to be arrested, because of skin color it still doesn’t do much for the African American Ethnicity’s because of all the other falsified media representations. Get Hard showing comedy in how the Character Black laughingly says “Murders my favorite” because he gets away with murder all the time so casually to create humor is just creating a problem. Not even gang members murder for fun going along with them being black is diminishing and jeopardy of the accuracy representations are in film. Straight Outta Compton even being based on a true story still shows how the film industry wants to show the worst sides of N.W.A by showing more of their life story involving violence then their creation of each song and real emotions towards their situation. Overall the truth is how African Americans are represented is mainly false information and causes real world problems because of it.