Lack of representation = systemic racism: Footloose is Exhibit A

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of rural Kansas was Black in 1984?

6%

But does it matter?

Movies are made for a national and ultimately global audience.

America was 12% black in 1984.

And they opted to only have white kids in the big dance scene. Probably 100 kids, and all are white. They feature dancers, including a blue eyed blonde hair guy doing MJ-esque breakdancing moves, and it didn’t occur to anyone on the set to add any diversity?

No, the current population of all of Kansas is 6% black, the vast majority of which is in the urban areas. It’s pretty safe to assume that the population of the average rural Kansas town in the 1980s was well well below 1% so the casting was certainly realistic/accurate for the setting, and was kind of the point of the movie.

[Anonymous]

I get it, OP. Though I’m not sure slotting in one or two token non-white actors as minor characters would have made that much difference. What’s really ground-breaking are stories with a critical mass of diverse characters. There were a few in the 80s, like The Cosby Show, but there’s been an explosion of that kind of content in the last few years, and I love to see it.

I’m white and went to a high school that was 99% white, so I never gave the whiteness of entertainment any thought. But my husband’s Asian, and he’s talked about what it was like to grow up never seeing people who looked like him on TV. Worse, the single Asian character usually turned out to be a stereotype of some sort. Our daughter has watched a few tv series from Japan and Korean, and it’s a whole different experience when the hero AND the villain AND the funny sidekick AND the police detective AND the nerd AND the background extras, etc, etc are all Asian. I believe watching shows like that will subtly change her sense of belonging in the world in ways that seeing a few token characters would not.

[Anonymous]

Wait until you realize the actor playing Will on Will and Grace was actually…wait for it…straight!


In the meantime, I’m doing a rewatch of Entourage!

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't want to be a black kid at a party in Kansas even in the 2000's.

https://www.bet.com/article/epsomf/fbi-offers-title00k-for-info-on-alonzo-brooks-murder

[Anonymous]

God who cares. It was the 80s- you know, the past… we’re all aware of how it was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just finished rewatching Footloose.

Filmed in 1984 when 12% of the American population was Black, yet there are zero Black kids in a movie about dancing.

Remember the big dance scene at the end? They had white guys breakdancing. This was at the height of the breakdancing craze btw. All white cast, and they didn’t even bother to add any Black or brown dancers in the big school dance. Zero.

Pretty shocking.

How many Asians are in the movie? Or Hispanics? Come on, op. Do better!

[Anonymous]

I take your point OP. But I don’t think footloose is the best example — a film about an insular backwards conservative town afraid of change and modernity—integrating that group would have been difficult for the narrative.

But talk about any of the John Hughes movies, or Fast Times’s, or Bill and Teds, or clerks (I guess that’s 90s).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There were black people in Kansas in the 80s.

Regardless: go back and watch movies from the 1980s, and you’ll notice a total lack of any diversity. The lack of *any* representation—even a token amount—is glaring.

It's glaring now. It wasn't then. I grew up in a rural small town. High School was in a central small town, drawing from 5 others around it. I can count on one hand the number of minorities among the 450 population. The town I grew up in had no people of color. No representation from anywhere with people having skin other than white. Two people were disabled, that's as diverse as it got.

Those towns did exist. Maybe still do.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in a bible thinking Midwest town with ZERO minorities. This could have been my town.

[Anonymous]

thumping

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in a bible thinking Midwest town with ZERO minorities. This could have been my town.

I grew up in the Midwest in a town of about 10,000. There was one Black kid, two Asians and one Latino in our high school.

[Anonymous]

You know what show was racially diverse in the 80's? Fame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in a bible thinking Midwest town with ZERO minorities. This could have been my town.

I grew up in the Midwest in a town of about 10,000. There was one Black kid, two Asians and one Latino in our high school.

I grew up on Long Island, NY in a town of about 29,000. There were fewer than one percent of black people there. I believe there were 6 kids in my high school who were black.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I take your point OP. But I don’t think footloose is the best example — a film about an insular backwards conservative town afraid of change and modernity—integrating that group would have been difficult for the narrative.

But talk about any of the John Hughes movies, or Fast Times’s, or Bill and Teds, or clerks (I guess that’s 90s).

This. Footloose is a bad example of what you are trying to say, OP.

And Kansas was ~5.5% Black in 1984. So likely less in rural areas. You can look it up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in a bible thinking Midwest town with ZERO minorities. This could have been my town.

I grew up in the Midwest in a town of about 10,000. There was one Black kid, two Asians and one Latino in our high school.

I felt like I grew up in Footloose, just in northern Ohio, population 3000. We had exactly one black family in town. It would have been weird to have added minorities to that movie.