"Grey's Anatomy"

One of my favorite shows on TV today is Grey’s Anatomy. The cast and plot keep me coming back each week, and waiting in anticipation for new seasons to begin. The show has a variety of actors, coming from very different backgrounds, racially and ethnically. The chief of all the doctors there is played by an African American actor, James Pickens, Jr. who attended Bowling Green State University. He has the highest position with the most authority on the show. The head resident doctor is played by an African American woman actress, Chandra Wilson. She is portrayed as an angry black woman, always yelling and bossing people around the hospital. Another doctor is played by a black man, actor Isaiah Washington. These three obviously have brains because they are in top positions at a prestigious hospital, unlike in the old days when black people were depicted as being uneducated and unable to live a comfortable life.
In Hollywood throughout the years, there were very few African American actors and actresses. As shown in the movie, “Ethnic Notions,” black people were played by white actors in black face. Once black actors made it through to Hollywood, they too had to paint themselves in blackface to look even blacker than their normal skin color. As time went on, there were next to no Hollywood productions that starred an African American actor. Eventually, African Americans had minor roles in shows and movies. Usually these roles were stereotypical of African Americans, showing them as underprivileged, uneducated, or the bad guy after the innocent white girl. But not until recent decades did African Americans have leading roles in a movie or TV show, or even star in their own movies. Also, not until recently were African Americans toping Hollywood income charts, and topping the Hollywood box offices with their starring movies. Today, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, and Halle Berry are just some of the actors and actresses who top Forbes Magazines top paid actors lists (forbes.com).
Even though this is a fictional show, it is realistic and show that today African Americans have not only climbed up the ladder when is comes to high paying jobs, but also in the film industry and well-known and high paid actors.

"The Skeleton Key"

One of my favorite movies, “The Skeleton Key,” with Kate Hudson is based on a tale of voodoo, a type of witchcraft associated with African American slaves back during slave times. The movie is about a hospice nurse, played by Kate Hudson, who is sent to take care of an elderly man who still lives with his elderly wife on a plantation in the Deep South. She starts having nightmares about the history of the old plantation. In one of her nightmares she goes back to when the plantation was thriving, during the days of slavery. A slave couple who were kept as house slaves were caught teaching/doing voodoo on the plantation owner’s children, but not hurting them, and the couple was therefore hanged for that in front of a huge gathering of people on the plantation. Hudson’s character realizes she too is living in a mix of that voodoo that was put in place on that plantation the night the two slaves were hanged, and she must fight for her life before the voodoo spell takes over her too, and she too becomes trapped in its evil never-ending web.
This voodoo is just one of the things that the whites of the slave times became afraid of. Voodoo is really a kind of religion that has different practices that whites were not used to and scared them. Voodoo was brought to America by the slaves that were exported from Africa, and therefore passed along through the generations of slaves and spread all over America. This new “religion” with its odd ritual practices frightened the Christian whites; it was something different and unlike their own religion which whites believed was superior to any other religion. Many thought it was a kind of witchcraft because of the strange ritualistic practices. Many white landowners forbade it to be practiced on their land, and if caught, much like being caught learning to read or write, there would be most severe consequences.
I think the movie, especially the parts of Hudson’s nightmares, were more of visualization to the times of slavery. Even when the blacks wanted to practice their own religion that they brought from Africa, they were forbade to and punished for doing so. When today in America one of the basic freedoms is that of religion, and we look down on the parts of the world where people have to practice their religion in secret for fear of their lives. It is interesting to think that not long ago, people in our own country were doing the same thing, and even trying to learn to read and write in secret for fear of their own life, I think these things are taken for granted a lot today in our country.

Zatarain's Logo

Zatarain’s food brand has been around for decades, and its logo is another commonly known media image, but the image it portrays can be traced to images from slave times.
The logo of the brand Zatarain’s is a man dancing with a musical instrument, wearing a hat. The man is always colored in black as to say that he is African American. In the commercials the narrator speaks with a southern accent, adding to the description of being African American. Zatarain’s is a food brand which mainly specializes in southern comfort food such as Dirty Rice, Jambalaya, Gumbo, Red Beans and Rice, and Creole and Cajun foods. I think this image of a black man dancing was chosen because of the connection with slavery and how the slaves were the cooks of their time, and had to cook for their white masters. They basically invented the southern comfort kind of food and perfected the thousands of recipes that have been passed down through the generations. The man is also dancing and playing a musical instrument that looks to be a trumpet. This depiction goes along with the movie, “Ethnic Notions,” we watched. In the movie it talked about how white people were led to believe, through the advertising, that the blacks were happy because they were always singing and dancing. The whites depicted the blacks as always having a huge smile on their faces and singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments, even if the instrument was just the bottom of a wash bin. I think this image was used in created the logo of Zatarain’s.
Why use this little character for a logo of a wide spread food product? Many people when they pick up a box of Zatarain’s probably do not think in their mind that the little man on the box could be tied to an image of what at one time in our country’s history was an image that was used to make the white population think that the black slave population was living a happy and festive life.
When I think of Zatarain’s, I think of southern comfort food, and especially New Orleans, and again of African Americans singing and dancing around the street, like their advertising portrays. This image, however, is still a reminder that even though slavery is over, the images and stereotypes that were produced during that period of time are still existent today, even if we don’t think that they are prevalent.

Aunt Jemima

My first media image is the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle. The bottle and logo was created from the common image of the southern “Mammy” a slave.
Aunt Jemima has been a household image for several decades. She represents the Aunt Jemima brand of pancakes and pancake syrup that Americans have grown to love for decades. But her image comes from the portrayal of the African American Mammy. During slave time and after as well, the Mammy was the usually larger set black woman, often whose job was to cook and clean their white master’s house, and also be the nanny figure to the white plantation owner’s children. Aunt Jemima’s “Mammy-like”, warm and welcoming appearance has helped to sell the company’s products. But why is that image still being portrayed after slave times are long gone? It is an image that creates the a mental picture of warm maple syrup being drizzled over hot fluffy pancakes, comfort food more or less, which is what “Mammy” was best known for in slave times. Up until recently, the actual bottle of Aunt Jemima maple syrup was in the shape of a larger black woman, wearing what looks to be a long flowing dress with an apron, what Mammy would have worn.
Why was this image chosen to represent a pancake and maple syrup brand? Mammy was the household cook during slave times, so this association of warm pancakes and hot maple syrup to the Mammy cooking it, makes sense for a company which has been around for decades to use to market their products.
Until this class and the movie, “Ethnic Notions,” I had never viewed the Aunt Jemima syrup, which I personally choose to top my pancakes and sausage with, as something that is racially charged and based off of a character created in the negative image of African Americans hundreds of years ago.