Lack of representation = systemic racism: Footloose is Exhibit A

[Anonymous]

https://medium.com/the-brothers/loving-john-hughes-movies-while-black-1c4acba2e628

Good piece

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside actual demographics of a film’s pretend setting, try to think about this:

Imagine being a black or brown person or Asian person in the 1980s and only seeing white people in the major Hollywood films targeting American teens.

Imagine how that might make you feel.

That’s the point.

I suspect most whites didn’t give this any thought in the 80s. Let’s face it: America was still very segregated at that time…as evidenced by demographics, your Gen X recollection of your white schools, etc.

We are better now. Dramatically better.

Most of us would think it’s weird to be in a room with only white people. We would think it’s weird for a mainstream film to not include diversity.

That’s the point of this thread.

Oh please. In the 80s we had the A Team. Rocky movies were out with tons of diverse cast. 80s looooved ninjas and karate and there were tons of movies with Asians and Asian culture. There were iconic movies like Full Metal Jacket, Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, The Warriors, 48 Hours, Purple Rain, Aliens, Coming to America, and Donthe Right Thing. Hello? The Predator! Ghostbusters….so many more.

It’s hilarious how modern day progressives think they invented diversity. Just because you have a selective memory and focused solely on a movie like footloose doesn’t mean there wasn’t diversity in movies back in the 80s. You just have a terrible memory and love to nitpick.

? uh.. no. There were not " tons of movies with Asians and Asian culture" unless it was just stereotypes.

I was a teen in the 80s.

-Asian American

[Anonymous]

Now do “Breakin’”

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086998/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Waaaiiiit, are you saying that black people should be in a movie about dancing because they are "good dancers" and have "great rhythm?" You know that is racist, right? This is what happens when white people try and be "allies." OMG please tell me this is a fake double-reverse psychology post.

+ 1,000.

Yeah, it's like Jimmy the Greek came back to life as a film critic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1, I grew up in a Footloose-esque town and it really was very white. To be accurate they might have included a handful of black or hispanic kids, but part of the point of the movie is how homogenous and close-minded this tiny town is. The whiteness and the lameness is sort of part of the point.

Now, the way the Chicago is portrayed in John Hughes movies, and his treatment of Asian characters? Yikes.

Excuse me, but not everything white is “lame.” What is wrong with some of you people?

I never said that everything white is lame. I said that part of the point of Footloose is that the town, like my home town, was very homogeneous, close-minded, white, and lame. Like those are distinct descriptors. Calm down.

Would you ever describe a majority black town as “homogeneous, close-minded, and lame?”

The entire point of the movie was that the town was homogeneous, close-minded, and lame. You're getting in a twist over nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone alive in the 1980s people of different races and religions and income levels really only interacted at work.

And even white people the Jews, Italians, Catholics, Wasps, Rich or Poor all lived in different neighborhoods.

My 1,000 person HS had 8-9 black kids. Meanwhile a HS around 7 miles away had only 8-9 white kids.

Bars I went to were often 100 percent white. There were black bars, gay bars, heck Greek bars. Divorcée bars, college bars. We did not interact

Yeah, no. Maybe where you grew up but not where I grew up (on Long Island) HS and friend groups very diverse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside actual demographics of a film’s pretend setting, try to think about this:

Imagine being a black or brown person or Asian person in the 1980s and only seeing white people in the major Hollywood films targeting American teens.

Imagine how that might make you feel.

That’s the point.

I suspect most whites didn’t give this any thought in the 80s. Let’s face it: America was still very segregated at that time…as evidenced by demographics, your Gen X recollection of your white schools, etc.

We are better now. Dramatically better.

Most of us would think it’s weird to be in a room with only white people. We would think it’s weird for a mainstream film to not include diversity.

That’s the point of this thread.

Oh please. In the 80s we had the A Team. Rocky movies were out with tons of diverse cast. 80s looooved ninjas and karate and there were tons of movies with Asians and Asian culture. There were iconic movies like Full Metal Jacket, Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, The Warriors, 48 Hours, Purple Rain, Aliens, Coming to America, and Donthe Right Thing. Hello? The Predator! Ghostbusters….so many more.

It’s hilarious how modern day progressives think they invented diversity. Just because you have a selective memory and focused solely on a movie like footloose doesn’t mean there wasn’t diversity in movies back in the 80s. You just have a terrible memory and love to nitpick.

? uh.. no. There were not " tons of movies with Asians and Asian culture" unless it was just stereotypes.

I was a teen in the 80s.

-Asian American

BS


Bloodsport, The Kickboxer, American Ninja, Karate Kid, Goonies, Akira, Miami Connection, literally every Jackie Chan movie, The Killing Fields, the golden era of Hong Kong action cinema, and on and on….


Yet another one with selective memory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Waaaiiiit, are you saying that black people should be in a movie about dancing because they are "good dancers" and have "great rhythm?" You know that is racist, right? This is what happens when white people try and be "allies." OMG please tell me this is a fake double-reverse psychology post.

Touche

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Much better than the goofy wannabe movies like disneys Little Mermaid new movie where King Triton has an ethnic mermaid daughter with a woman from all far reaches of the earth. Blech.

[Anonymous]

That was quite the harem. It was getting distracting. That plus the farewell scene at the end. Trying so hard to represent 100s of ethnicities and races.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside actual demographics of a film’s pretend setting, try to think about this:

Imagine being a black or brown person or Asian person in the 1980s and only seeing white people in the major Hollywood films targeting American teens.

Imagine how that might make you feel.

That’s the point.

I suspect most whites didn’t give this any thought in the 80s. Let’s face it: America was still very segregated at that time…as evidenced by demographics, your Gen X recollection of your white schools, etc.

We are better now. Dramatically better.

Most of us would think it’s weird to be in a room with only white people. We would think it’s weird for a mainstream film to not include diversity.

That’s the point of this thread.

Oh please. In the 80s we had the A Team. Rocky movies were out with tons of diverse cast. 80s looooved ninjas and karate and there were tons of movies with Asians and Asian culture. There were iconic movies like Full Metal Jacket, Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, The Warriors, 48 Hours, Purple Rain, Aliens, Coming to America, and Donthe Right Thing. Hello? The Predator! Ghostbusters….so many more.

It’s hilarious how modern day progressives think they invented diversity. Just because you have a selective memory and focused solely on a movie like footloose doesn’t mean there wasn’t diversity in movies back in the 80s. You just have a terrible memory and love to nitpick.

OP read this. Seriously. To focus on Footloose when the 80s had all this representation and more, including top TV shows of the time with all black actors, means you are missing the point entirely. Do your homework.

[Anonymous]

Footloose is a great FICTIONAL movie. Not a documentary. It’s a fun movie. Just go with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go watch the last scene where they dance at the prom and imagine what the director and choreographer must have been thinking when the white guys were trying to breakdance. It’s a featured scene. This was the height of the breakdancing craze. Only racism could have prompted an all-white cast for the big dance scene featuring breakdancing.

Lol. Guess you were not around in the ‘80’s. At my very white private high school in DC in the mid 80’s, there was a group of white kids who were in to break dancing. They would dance at school evens. Oh yes they had a cardboard box.

[Anonymous]

You picked the wrong movie to use as your target, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Waaaiiiit, are you saying that black people should be in a movie about dancing because they are "good dancers" and have "great rhythm?" You know that is racist, right? This is what happens when white people try and be "allies." OMG please tell me this is a fake double-reverse psychology post.

Touche

Dumb white people bending over backwards for black people thinking they would appreciate it!! Ha ha. Whites will never be and can never be allies. You heard it here first.