Foundation Portfolio: Representation

 A major part of our movie opening is representation. We want to show how females in minorities can be overlooked and face racial injustice compared to Caucasians. Depending on who we can get to act on our film, we are leaning toward using African American women.

In the beginning, we see the successful (ethnic) business woman get kidnapped. Then a Caucasian woman gets kidnapped later that same day. The police call on the Caucasian woman's family, questioning suspects, releasing her story to the press, putting in every effort to find her and get her back. Meanwhile, they ignore the ethnic woman's case, call her unimportant while she is more important compared to the Caucasian woman.

We want to main protagonist to be a complex character, show proper representation of a woman of color. She is smart and stays connected to her roots, not westernized. There has been too much misrepresentation of women of color in Hollywood. 

This article shows how African American women are treated in Hollywood by playing stereotypical roles in movies

https://www.rubiconline.com/incorrect-portrayal-of-black-people-in-movies/

Excerpt from the article

This part of the article talks about how black characters are portrayed as not smart, needing the white people to 'save' them. In our movie, the protagonist is the intelligent one. She is not going to rely on the white people to save her. 

Excerpt from the article

As for the 'sassy, black friend' trope, where fat, darker women are used as the sidekick/comic relief to the light-skinned, thinner characters. In our movie, a dark-skinned woman is our protagonist, and while we don't have a solid plan for the sidekick, they are likely to also be black and smart.