Ethnic Notions - Journal Entry 23 Xiongyue Yu

Ethnic Notions – Marlon Riggs

 

In Ethnic Notions, a documentary with a difference, it opens with an American animation that was popular in 1941 as an introduction. In this animated film featuring black people, stereotypes of African-Americans abound, both in terms of exaggerated and ridiculous images and negative character traits such as stupidity and rudeness, illustrating the deep-rootedness of such stereotypes in historical deposits. After that, there are sculptures, stories, movies, and even music and dance, which are also full of such anti-black stereotypes. Such stereotypes are not the same as cultural records that amplify basic characteristics, but rather mainstream cultural propaganda with a clear negative connotation of prominence. Confronted with the historical legacy of stereotype culture in the United States, Ethnic Notions' 1987 interrogative documentary reflects on the negative stereotypes of black people that permeated mainstream culture in a subtle way before the 1960s through the accumulated achievements of the civil rights movement.

 

The historical record of these stereotypes helps to understand the formation and evolution of racial consciousness in the United States, while at the same time illuminating, through documentary film, the devastating consequences of these stereotypes on culture then and today. This insidious stereotype is a stigmatization of African Americans from beginning to end, and this damage is certainly reflected in American popular culture today, where many social events have their roots in the cultural transmission of history. And the main idea of the documentary is to hope that such stereotypical historical records are not forgotten and hidden, because the effects they have had have become irreversible facts, deeply rooted in the perceptions and habits of successive generations of American residents. Therefore, it is all the more important to bring them into the modern society, to update and try to transform them, so as to bring new social effects and impacts.

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