black women in hollywood

This weeks discussion highlighted the plight of black women in Hollywood. In the articles shared by Dr. Palmer before her presentation, we read about the various tactics the film industry uses to keep black women suppressed in the media. One way that Hollywood has suppressed black women is by only giving them opportunities for stereotypical roles such as maids, servants, historical figures, and sexualizing their body. This narrows the role opportunity for black actresses in multiple ways, one by eliminating the dimensions of roles that black women have to work with, and also by pitting black actresses against each other in the fight for the roles. In a short video in class with Oprah and other prominent African-American in acting, Viola Davis perfectly summarized how black actresses are pit against each other saying "if you throw a piece of cheese in a room full of rats, they're going to claw at each other." This metaphor compares the few roles available for black women to the piece of cheese that everyone is fighting for. 
Another issue in Hollywood is a term called "colorism", which refers to when roles are prejudice to certain skin tones. Often the media is sadly drawn more towards light skin actors, and request certain shades for certain roles, narrowing the pinhole of opportunities yet again. 
This Sunday before our class I happened to watch 12 Years a Slave, a movie based on real-life events of a man named Soloman Northup who was a free black man in the north, kidnapped and brought to the south to be enslaved. In this movie, the talented actress Lupita Nyong'o played a prominent supporting role of a slave women who was the love interest of the master. She played the role beautifully, capturing and conveying an abundance of complex emotions throughout the film. This role won Lupita lots of recognition, but what people do not realize is she is more than her role as a slave. Hollywood highlights her role as a slave and her ability to act as one, but it should also highlight her ability to do other diverse roles. There are so many opportunities for creativity with black women in Hollywood, and I hope that the outspoken actresses are heard and are given more roles that they deserve.