God how I hate it when people don't seem to "get it".
American Gangster is a big, brash and brilliant cinema tour de force. But it also reinforces a glaring stereotype, in fact, one of America's most enduring stereotypes, and that's that the drug problem and by extension drug kingpins come with a black face. There are two telling scenes in American Gangster that drive that point home with a tormenting vengeance.
First off, it's based off of the true story of Frank Lucas...a BLACK MAN. So there in of itself, it's not a stereotype.
I've saw the movie earlier last week and it was entertaining and not once did I think to myself "Typical stereotype of a black man who deals drugs".
Why? Because it was based upon a true story, so I didn't think the writers were embellishing anything, and I don't care about stereotypes when I watch a MOVIE.
It may sound bad, but there are stereotypes in the movies. Need a terrorist? A Middle Eastern person is who you'll probably end up getting in that movie because that's what a movie needs....realism. Think about that, if someone in a movie said "I have a meeting with this terrorist who's going to blow up an airplane" and a moose hunter from Canada shows up, what do you think? Do you think "Ah HA! That's the guy!" Or do you think "That's a twist I wouldn't have seen"?
A movie needs a certain air of realism, otherwise you lose the audience. It's not racism, it's believability.
I find it odd that a man like Hutchison would try to point out stereotypes in movies when he's using a true story as his example. He may have a point about stereotypes, but when he used a true story, it threw that argument out the window.
Travis
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