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Lorenzo's
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Arnold Schwarzenegger's anti-black bias in his films
(Alicia Danforth, September 29, 2003)
My search spans all 33 years of Arnold's film career. What follows are the main lessons I would have learned about men with dark skin if Schwarzenegger movies were my only reference during my formative years in South Central, Orange County. . . . For starters, they are liars and backstabbers. The Ubermensch's ubermessage is that if you ever trust a black male character, you're in trouble. . . . Even if he's got a badge or a Ph.D., the odds are good that a black man is a buffoon, cheater, weakling, coward or incompetent. When they're trying to be heroic, these guys can be as dangerous as the low-down, dirty liars. . . . The sequel drives home the point that knowledge and authority are dangerous in the hands of a black man because he won't know how to wield them. In Teminator Two: Judgment Day, a brilliant yet incompetent black scientist destroys civilization and nearly kills off the human race. Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton) accidentally launches a nuclear war to destroy all humans. The only way this well-intentioned, yet lethal, scientist can claim redemption is to blow himself up and destroy the complex housing his life's work. Lesson No. 2: Don't put a black man in charge of anything important if you want Homo sapiens to survive. . . . It's also safe to assume in Schwarzenegger films that black men, despite initial appearances, are frequently monsters, mutants and demons. . . . It's not that black men aren't in Arnold Schwarzenegger films. It's just that when they are, they're incompetent, inconsequential, insincere, inebriated, ineffective, insane, in disguise, inarticulate, in cahoots, in danger, invisible, in league with the devil, incapable and in the background. . . . And before you conclude that the action-adventure genre is to blame, consider that a feature in the August 18, 2003, Newsweek notes that Schwarzenegger chooses his own scripts, cuts his own deals with producers, and spends "days in business meetings, personally approving every hat and lunchbox that goes on the market in connection with one of his movies." He worked with numerous writers, directors and producers in more than three decades of filmmaking. Therefore, I've stopped thinking of him as the Terminator, the Governator, Mexicanator or any of the other monikers I've seen in the press recently. To me, he'll always be the common Denominator.

[NOTE: The above link will take you to the full essay, complete with detailed references to back up the above statements.]

posted by Lorenzo 9:40 AM