Lack of representation = systemic racism: Footloose is Exhibit A

[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.

But I think that you’ll notice that the really, really strong shows were trying to have some diversity, so people knew about the concept.

Star Trek always had diverse casts.

Columbo usually had people of color in crowd scenes, at least, and maybe the producers thought of Italians as being diverse.

The Mary Tyler Moore show had Gordy the weatherman.

So, it was pretty bad for a 1980s or 1990s production to have an all-white cast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not a lot black people in rural Kansas in the 80s. Or Nebraska or Iowa or Minnesota or South Dakota. I lived in one of those towns and there wasn’t any diversity, except for migrant farm workers.

Get over it, OP.

But there have definitely been some Black people in rural Kansas since the 1950s. Some people think Eisenhower was partly Black: https://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-black-roots-of-ex-president-dwight-d-eisenhower/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Football and Basketball are all black and white. Where is the representation among Latinos and Asians. Pales in comparison.

And don’t get me started on all the TV ads. The United States is almost 60% white, yet all we see now is black actors in just about everything. I get catalogues at home with all black models. That in itself shows a lack of diversity. Diversity is just a code name for hire more African Americans and disregard everyone else.

Do you consider Samoans a part of the Asian race. If so, the NFL has plenty of players of Samoan descent.

Samoans are Polynesian. No one in Samoa considers themselves part of the "Asian race."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Ok.

I’m the op if this thread…surprised to see it pop up again!

I’m fine with historical films using actors that make sense rather than inserting diversity for the sake of diversity. But any slavery-era film will have black and white actors. And black men did fight in WWII.

But if you rewatch mainstream movies from the 1980s primarily made for a teenage audience—like Footloose—you’ll realize Hollywood made a choice to not include black actors in even a token way. It begs the question…why?

The dance scene is what is most stark, particularly given this was the era of dance films and breakdancing.

Would you be upset if it were a film about an academic team? You know black people do things besides dance, right?

Bless your heart for trying to spur deep thought, but you have missed the point, Dear.

The point is I think it’s wrong for all the Hollywood films of the 80s targeting a teenage audience to not include any black actors…regardless of the setting or focus of the film.

Their choice to not even include at least a few black actors during a big dance scene at a time when Hollywood was churning out dance movies just baffles me. It seems like a choice they made rather than an oversight. I mean, imagine being on set as they choreographed the scene. It didn’t occur to anybody that the scene was perhaps shockingly white?

Wonder who choreographed the film.

How old are you, little lady?

Or should I say, Dear?

It is ridiculous, unproductive, and pretentious to judge and rage on a 1984 movie with 2023 eyes.

[Anonymous]

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

This.
We can’t change the past. We can learn from it and move forward. Ideally not by trying to right one wrong with another wrong because that never happened ends well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

[Anonymous]

In some movies race of the actors matters as it is relevant to the storyline. I don't think it is wrong to reflect historical facts and truths and it is confusing to tell a story with visial inaccuracies.

In other movies, race of the actors is irrelevant and doesn't create any inaccuracy at all.

I grew up in a very rural area - all white. My hgh school was big was there was ony one for the region and had 2000 plus kids. We had 3 kids who weren't white. In my junior year, the first black student arrived. I look back now and absolutely shudder at our ignorance in how we treated that student. Everyone was fascinated by him and wanted to be his friend because he was black and that was new and exciting.

If there was a movie about my highschool using a very diverse cast, it wouldn't really reflect at all the reality of our experience, his experience or the context / culture of the school.

Think of the Rosa Parks Story movie. If she had walked off the bus into a crowd of diverse races and into a school with a diverse looking cast, it wouldn't really have the same impact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

Yeah but the movie Dunkirk left out the Asians as well. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58466527.amp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

The movie also seemed to forget about the loss lives of the North Africans from Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia and places like alg row from the movie. https://slate.com/culture/2017/07/whats-fact-and-whats-fiction-in-dunkirk.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

Yeah but the movie Dunkirk left out the Asians as well. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58466527.amp

The Indian unit was 300 men out of over 300,000 evacuated, and they worked on the supplies, not front-line fighting. There would be no reason to feature them in the movie. You people are absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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).

IMO, the worst offender is actually Friends.

I thought the show was good, but, c'mon.. young people in NYC, and no gay people or minorities? That is until Ross dated two different nonwhite women. I think I read that he thought it was also ridiculous that a show about young people in NYC had zero non white people.

I also read a long time ago that when there were a couple of Asian guest cast, they had to deal with racism.

Friends started in the 90s. Seinfeld was just as bad, actually.

Cheers seems to be a big offender as well. I was watching a bunch of highlights on youtube because of the Frasier remake, and the only people of color were the cigar-store Indian and a few extras who pass out of frame. There is so much diversity of personality/social class/education in the show, but scarce minorities.

I think that this was done consciously/strategically, under the theory that any diversity that exceeds the levels actually existing in friend groups would ring false and diminish the comedy and hurt ratings. Also I think it played to white people’s (maybe all people’s?) subconscious desire to surround themselves only with people they’re totally comfortable with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

Yeah but the movie Dunkirk left out the Asians as well. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58466527.amp

The Indian unit was 300 men out of over 300,000 evacuated, and they worked on the supplies, not front-line fighting. There would be no reason to feature them in the movie. You people are absurd.

Why are we still uselessly reminiscing a war fought by imperialists and colonizers in the first place?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1. Thank you for stating this so well. I enjoyed Footloose and all those movies. But it was HARD growing up and never seeing yourself anywhere on screen. Thank goodness things are a little better now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not a lot black people in rural Kansas in the 80s. Or Nebraska or Iowa or Minnesota or South Dakota. I lived in one of those towns and there wasn’t any diversity, except for migrant farm workers.

Get over it, OP.

Same with me, town of 500 people, 25 kids (all white) in my graduating HS class and we all went from K-12 together in the same schoolhouse. No stoplight in the town. The entire region of the state was settled by Volga Germans and it's still very a mono-culture farming community.

[Anonymous]

Learning that some of y’all grew up in towns with no black people - this explains a LOT about some of the things I’ve read on DCUM over the years!