African American Women in Hollywood Essay Example for Free

African American Women in Hollywood Essay In early film many African American actresses portrayed roles as mammies, slaves, seductresses, and maids. These roles suppressed them not allowing them to show their true talents. Although they had to take on these degrading roles, they still performed with dignity, elegance, grace and style. They paved the way for many actresses to follow both blacks and whites. These women showed the film industry that they were more than slaves, mammies, and maids. These beautiful actresses showed the film industry that they are able to hold lead parts and even carry the whole cast if need be. Phenomenal actresses such as Hattie McDaniels, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Waters, Nina Mae McKinney, and Dorothy Dandridge, to name a few, are African-American stars who paved the way for so many African-American actresses today despite the hardships that they were faced with. These women displayed beauty, intellect and talent, which allowed the stars that followed that they do not have to just settle for stereotypical roles. In early film there was much propaganda and even today, which lead to these demeaning roles that they had to betray, Professor Carol. Penney of Yale-New Haven writes, Film is one of the most influential means of communication and a powerful medium of propaganda. Race and representation is central to the study of the black film actor, since the major studios reflected and reinforced the racism of their times. The depiction of blacks in Hollywood movies reinforced many of the prejudices of the white majority rather than objective reality, limiting black actors to stereotypical roles (1). Hattie McDaniels, a trailblazer amongst African-American film, acquired many firsts for African-American actors. McDaniels was the first African-American to sing on the radio, first to receive an Oscar for best supporting actress in Gone with the Wind. She was also the first African-American to star in a sitcom in 1951 that featured an African-American actress in the title role (Pax 1). McDaniels appeared in more than three hundred films during the twenties and thirties. Her career was built on the ? Mammy image, a role she played with dignity (Smith 7). She received much flack from the blacks because of the roles she played in film and on radio. Blacks felt that she was degrading the race but her reply was to these views were, Hell Id rather play a maid than be one (Encyclopedia of World Biography 406). After her acclaim role as Mammy in Gone With the Wind, McDaniels was never paid anything less than $31,000 for a performance. This was much for an African-American as well as a white entertainer. Even though she broke that barrier McDaniel was still oppressed by racism not only on film, but also off film. She was faced with racial legal problems when trying to acquire a home in Los Angeles. At that time there was a limited black land and home ownership right. Though she won the suite she still was subjected to racial hostility from her neighbors. McDaniels experience oppressions of many types during her career, but she continued to take the mammy roles but played them with dignity and respect. In spite of her being the mammy, McDaniels made sure that her characters had the upper hand. After McDaniels death the mammy roles died with her. Pearl Bailey, the Ambassador of Love career took off on Washingtons U street at the age of fifteen years of age. She started off as a singer and appeared in many nightclubs. In the mid-30s she performed with the Noble Sissles Band in the Village Vanguard and Blue Angel Club. In the 40s she was the lead singer for Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Cootie Williams. She debuted on Broadway in St. Louis Blue; she won honors for as Broadways best newcomer. After her debut on Broadway films she performed in Variety Girl, Isnt It Romantic, Carmen Jones, and Porgy and Bess. In 1967 she won a Tony Award for heading the all-black cast of Hello Dolly! A role that allowed her, she said, ?to sing, dance, say intelligent words on stage, love and be loved and deliver what God gave me? and Im dressed up besides'(Black History: Virginia Profiles 1). Hello Dolly! allowed Bailey to be beautiful. Former President Ronald Reagan awarded Bailey was with the Medal of Freedom in 1988. She was also a special delegate to the United Nations under Ford, Reagan and Bush. While in her sixties Bailey went back to college and received her degree in theology from Georgetown University (2). Ethel Waters, Sweet Mama Stringbean, started her career in Vaudeville and nightclubs. In the 1921 Waters performed her first debut album The New York Glide and At the New Jump Steady Bump. In the mid-twenties she was coined as a pop singer (Red Hot Jazz 1). On stage she was in successful productions of Africana, Blackbird of the 1930, Rhapsody in Black, and Cabin in the Sky (Penney 8). She also starred in Pinky in 1949 this was a message film on racism. Waters did not receive recognition for her work until she portrayed Berenice Sadie Brown in The Member of The Wedding. The Member of the Wedding was more than simply a movie. It was very important repects a motion-picture event. Foremost, it marked the first time a black actress was used to carry a major-studio white production. Secondly, the movie was another comeback for Ethel Waters. Her autobiography, His Eye Is On The Sparrow? she told all the lurid details of her life the turbulent events in the autobiography convinced patrons that Ethel Waters, who always portrayed long-suffering women, was indeed the characters she played? Now patrons rooted for her to succeed? to triumph(8). During Waterss career she was nominated for an Oscar best supporting actress in the film Pinky. She also received the New York Drama Critics Award for best actress. Ethel Waterss last performance was in the film The Sound and the Fury in 1959. She continued singing and touring with evangelist Billy Graham until her death in 1977 (Red Hot Jazz 1). Nina May McKinney was the screens first black goddess (Penney 3). She was the first black actor in the film to be recognized as a potential mainstream star (7). McKinney was also the most successful African-American actress in the 1920s and 1930s (South Carolina African American History Online 1). McKinneys career started as a New York City nightclub dancer and later received a role in Lew Leslies Blackbird Revue. In 1929, King Vidor, of MGM Studios, casted McKinney as Chick, a promiscuous young woman in Hallelujah. In the famous cabaret scene McKinney, as Chick, danced a sensuous dance which has been copied by leading lady Lena Horne in Cabin in the Sky to Lola Falana in The Liberation of L. B. Jones (Penney 7). In Hallelujah, Chick represented the black woman as an exotic sex object, half woman, half child. She was the black woman out of control of her emotions, split in two by her loyalty and her own vulnerabilities. Implied throughout the battle with self was the tragic mulatto theme? In this stereotypical concept the white half of her represented the spiritual; the black half-animalistic (7). Hallelujah was considered the ace of all-black pictures? The film had a strong plot, but unfortunately the message was? blacks should stay in their place. Though McKinney received much praise for her role as Chick she did not generate leading roles in the American film industry. She was relegated to assuming routine black characters or to partaking in independently produced, low budget all black movies, as was the pattern for most of the outstanding African-American actors and actresses of the era? McKinney acted in a few other films in the 1940s. Her most notable role was in Pinky. McKinney was also a stage actress and performed at the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Barred from opportunities and stardom in Hollywood, she soon departed the United States and took her great talents to Europe? in Greece she was known as the Black Garbo? she also starred with the great actor Paul Robeson in the film Sanders of the River (South Carolina 2). Later in McKinneys life the great star returned to the States and died in New York City in 1967. Dorothy Dandridge is amongst Hollywoods beauties in the 1940s and 1950s. Though she receives much recognition today as the most beautiful and talented actresses of her time, but at that time she was seen as just another Black actress. Followed in the footsteps of the great Nina Ma McKinney, though they possessed the beauty and the charisma as other female actresses of their time their color was still seen first. Like many actors and actresses of her time Dandridge career went through many highs and lows because of her race. Dandridges career began as a singer with her sister Vivian, they were known as the Wonder Children and later the group became a trio by the name the Dandridge Sisters. She played in many movies in the 1940s such as: Yes Indeed, Sing for My Supper, Jungle Jig, Easy Street, Cow Cow Boogie, and Paper Dolls to name a few. She was not recognized until her performance as Carmen in Carmen Jones. Her co-stars were Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey and Diahann Caroll. She was the first Black to be nominated for an Oscar for best actress (African-American Almanac 248). Dandridges role as Carmen lead to more opportunities for African-Americans in films. Dandridge was the first African-American woman to be held in the arms of a white man in the film, Island in the Sun. She was also the first African-American to have an interracial kiss in The Decks Ran Red (Pioneer Actress 2). Though the film Carmen Jones allowed Dandridge to have a lead role she the character was the stereotypical mulatto woman with a high sex drive and filled with deceit. Penney writes, The irony that overshadowed Dandridges career was that although the image she marketed appeared to be contemporary and daring, at heart it was based on an old classic type, the tragic mulatto. In her important films Dorothy Dandridge portrayed doomed, unfilled women. Nervous and vulnerable, they always battled with the duality of their personalities. As such, they answered the demands of their times. Dorothy Dandridges characters brought to a dispirited nuclear age a razor-sharp sense of desperation that cut through the bleak monotony of the day. Eventually- and here lay the final irony- she may have been forced to live out a screen image that destroyed her (10). Dorothy Dandridge broke many barriers during her career. She opened the doors for black romance in films. She crossed over the racial lines with interracial relationships on and off screen. Later in Dandridges career she found it hard to get work. She filed for bankruptcy and later committed suicide. Dandridge made it possible for African-American women to be seen as beautiful and not exotic and sexual. In conclusion, many African-Americans actresses were blackballed by the industry. They were not able to achieve the success that they were entitled to because of the era that they were living in. These stars were oppressed because of the color of their skin and not because they did not possess talent. They were limited to roles that did not allow them to be the damsels or have leading roles. And if they were cast as the lead the film stereotyped the Blacks as shiftless, deceitful, or ignorant. These are just a few of the great African-American women in film that made it easier for African-American women to get into the industry. Though today African-American people are still seen shiftless, drug addicts, gang bangers, killers, whores, and criminals, but now they have more access to the industry because now African- Americans are able to write and direct films that depict them in a better light. Film today has changed for the past from mammies. Now African-American women are teachers, doctors, lawyers, business tycoons and what have you. Yet, they are still oppressed because they are only able to produce what the movie studios say that they can produce. Today there are films like Soul Food, Love and Basketball, Rosewood, Bamboozled, and many more that have messages and have African-American women in lead roles and not being in the background. These great stars allowed Black girls to see their own kind on a big screen and feel that they are beautiful too. Work Cited The African-American Almanac, 1997. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Vol. 1016. Detroit: Gale Research, 1987. Ethel Waters. Online. 10 March 2005. Available: www. http://www. redhot jazz. com/waters. html. Honoring Black History Month. Pax Stars. Online. 10 March 2005. Available: www. http://www. pax. tv/bios/one-bio. cfm/hattie-mcdaniel. Nina Mae McKinney. South Carolina African American History Online. Online. 11 March 2005. Available: www. http://www.scafam-hist. org/aahc/. Pearl Bailey. Black History: Virginia Profiles. Online. 13 March 2005. Available:www. http://www. gatewayva. com/pages/bhistory/1996/bailey. shtml. Penney, Carol. Black Actors inamerican Cinema. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Online. 12 March 2000. Available: www. http://www. yale. edu/ynhti/cirriculm/units. Pioneer black actress Dorothy Dandridge has a famous cast of modern-day admirers. Online. 12 March 2005. Available: www. http://ohio. com/bj/fun/tv/0299/002827htm.

The Praise And Strife Of A Her :: essays research papers

The Praise and Strife of a Hero The definition of a hero is dependent on that society's beliefs, laws and taboos. There are heroes for all ages and for both men and women. Heroes have had changing roles since man wrote his story, and all have been the embodiment of each society, each civilization's ideals. Basketball superstar, Michael Jordan, largely affects the children of today that are enthralled with visions of hoop dreams. He inspires the young depraved ghetto child to rise up against his unfortunate circumstances. Possessing many noteworthy qualities, all heroes possess faults because they are human and all humans possess failings. Because heroes begin to fold and make mistakes as they are suddenly thrust into the awe inspired limelight, and because their pedestals are broken and discarded as the public craves to see the dirt underneath the hero. Heroes are a product of a society's perception of someone to be praised. To be able to praise a hero, that hero must not only be a marvel but that hero must also be humble. Failings in heroes are only natural, they are human and all humans possess faults. All human beings are born and die with character traits, which can be, at the most basic level, perceived as being helpful or as being harmful, depending on the character's viewpoint. People are regularly regarded as having traits ranging from the most trivial as being a perfectionist, to the most weighty, such as being a coward. These traits form the basis of human personality and define the individual's personal nature. Ideal heroes are perceived differently in different periods of history. In Chaucer's Prologue of the Canterbury Tales a worthy man is described. He is a chivalrous knight who prided himself on his own personal truth, honor, freedom, and courtesy. Chaucer's view of a hero is one who is without fault, truly the epitome of goodness. Heroes are also praised by society because the hero takes on much of society's own stress. Heroes are under severe stress and live a life of duress and begin to commit errors as the level of pressure begins to catapult. Heroes are continuously placed under pressure by all who surround them, convinced that the object of their attention can not fail under any circumstances. They grow self-centered and absolute followers of themselves and expect the same-undeserved treatment from others. As Beowulf often takes pride in his work, proclaiming that he slew Grendel, that he rescued the damsel in distress, without any help needed, or offered from any persons.

Lewin’s Leadership Styles

Psychologist Kurt Lewin developed his leadership styles framework in the 1930s, and it provided the foundation of many of the approaches that followed afterwards. He argued that there are three major leadership styles:Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their team members, even if their input would be useful. This can be appropriate when you need to make decisions quickly, when there's no need for team input, and when team agreement isn't necessary for a successful outcome. However, this style can be demoralizing, and it can lead to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. Democratic leaders make the final decisions, but they include team members in the decision-making process. They encourage creativity, and people are often highly engaged in projects and decisions. As a result, team members tend to have high job satisfaction and high productivity. This is not always an effective style to use, though, when you need to make a quick decision. Laissez-faire leader s give their team members a lot of freedom in how they do their work, and how they set their deadlines.They provide support with resources and advice if needed, but otherwise they don't get involved. This autonomy can lead to high job satisfaction, but it can be damaging if team members don't manage their time well, or if they don't have the knowledge, skills, or self motivation to do their work effectively. (Laissez-faire leadership can also occur when managers don't have control over their work and their people.) Lewin's framework is popular and useful, because it encourages managers to be less autocratic than they might instinctively be.The Blake-Mouton Managerial GridThe Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid was published in 1964, and it highlights the best leadership style to use, based on your concern for your people and your concern for production/tasks.With a people-oriented leadership style, you focus on organizing, supporting, and developing your team members. This participatory st yle encourages good teamwork and creative collaboration.With task-oriented leadership, you focus on getting the job done. You define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, and plan, organize, and monitor work.According to this model, the best leadership style to use is one that has both a high concern for people and a high concern for the task – it argues that you should aim for both, rather than trying to offset one against the other. Clearly, this is an important idea!The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership ® TheoryFirst published in 1969, the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory argues that you need to use different leadership styles depending on the maturity of your team members. The model argues that with relatively immature individuals, you need a more directing approach, while with higher maturity people, you need a more participative or delegating leadership style.You can use this model in most business situations, regardless of whet her you want to build a new team or develop an existing one.Path-Goal TheoryYou may also have to think about what your team members want and need. This is where Path-Goal Theory – published in 1971 – is useful.For example, highly-capable people, who are assigned to a complex task, will need a different leadership approach from people with low ability, who are assigned to an ambiguous task. (The former will want a participative approach, while the latter need to be told what to do.)With Path-Goal Theory, you can identify the best leadership approach to use, based on your people's needs, the task that they're doing, and the environment that they're working in.Six Emotional Leadership StylesDaniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee detailed their Six Emotional Leadership Styles theory in their 2002 book, â€Å"Primal Leadership.†The theory highlights the strengths and weaknesses of six leadership styles that you can use – Visionary, Coaching, Affilia tive, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Commanding. It also shows how each style can affect the emotions of your team members.Flamholtz and Randle's Leadership Style MatrixFirst published in 2007, Flamholtz and Randle's Leadership Style Matrix shows you the best leadership style to use, based on how capable people are of working autonomously, and how creative or â€Å"programmable† the task is.The matrix is divided into four quadrants – each quadrant identifies two possible leadership styles that will be effective for a given situation, ranging from â€Å"autocratic/benevolent autocratic† to â€Å"consensus/laissez-faire.†Transformational LeadershipThese leadership style frameworks are all useful in different situations, however, in business, â€Å"transformational leadership † is often the most effective leadership style to use. (This was first published in 1978, and was then further developed in 1985.)Transformational leaders have integrity and high e motional intelligence . They motivate people with a shared vision of the future, and they communicate well. They're also typically self-aware , authentic , empathetic , and humble .Transformational leaders inspire their team members because they expect the best from everyone, and they hold themselves accountable for their actions. They set clear goals, and they have good conflict-resolution skills . This leads to high productivity and engagement.However, leadership is not a â€Å"one size fits all† thing; often, you must adapt your approach to fit the situation. This is why it's useful to develop a thorough understanding of other leadership frameworks and styles; after all,  the more approaches you're familiar with, the more flexible you can be.Specific Leadership StylesAs well as understanding the frameworks that you can use to be a more effective leader, and knowing what it takes to be a transformational leader, it's also useful to learn about more general leadership styl es, and the advantages and disadvantages of each one.Let's take a look at some other leadership styles that are interesting, but don't fit with any of the frameworks above.

Is Diabetes A Chronic Metabolic Disorder - 1161 Words

Diabetes, a chronic metabolic disorder, affects 9.3% of the U.S population. The prevalence is much higher in the population of age 65 or older, reaching 25.9%. It was the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S in 2010, evidenced by a total of 234,051 certificates including both underlying causes and contributing causes. Multiple factors contribute to the development of diabetes, although the exact pathogenesis is still undetermined. Patients with diabetes usually require a lifestyle change, diet modification, medication management, or even surgery to control symptoms or disease progression. Currently, diabetes mellitus (DM) is classified into four types: type I, type II, gestational diabetes and other types. Of all DM, 9 out†¦show more content†¦The patients usually present with significant weight loss as well as classical symptoms, including polyuria, polydipsia, and polyphagia. The causes of type I DM are uncertain, although emerging evidence demonstrates that genetic susceptibility, virus, environment, as well as chemical materials contribute to the development. The interplay of these various factors ends in destroying the pancreatic cell, resulting in lifelong insulin requirement to keep patient survival. Gestational diabetes, affecting approximately 3-10% of pregnancies, is diagnosed by hyperglycemia during pregnancy in women without a history of diabetes. The underlying cause of gestational diabetes remains unknown, although the interference of pregnancy hormones, such as human placental lactogen, with susceptible insulin receptors, has been considered. The patients usually have few symptoms, and they are often diagnosed by screening during routine pregnancy check-up. For the mother, glucose intolerance typically disappears after the baby is born. However, gestational diabetes often places the body at risk. Babies born to mothers with poor hyperglycemia control are often at increased risk of series problems including macrosomia, which associates with a high chance of C-section, shoulder dystocia, hypoglycemia after birth, polycythemia as well as multiple chemical disorders. Other forms of diabetes include congenital diabetes, infection related