As part of our training in this course we should become critical consumers of race infused information,
messages, and logic coded in popular culture. The assumption here, is that popular culture plays a strong role in
building a racialized common sense, and as critical consumers of such products we can identify such biases and
logics. For this project, you should choose a feature length movie.
Your chosen movie should be contemporary (produced and set in a time period after the 1990s) so that you can
analyze a more sophisticated use of racial logic rather than the blatant ones that you can see in older movies
where it was comparatively more acceptable to be racist. I encourage you to choose a movie that is presented
without an overt racist plot so that you can train yourself at identifying sophisticated and hidden/latent racial
logics.
What is the stated purpose or goal of this movie? You can find this information through trailers, or by
going through the publisher/studio website of the producers.
What do you think is the unstated purpose or goal of your chosen movie? This is completely your view.
Who is/was the target audience
How was this movie received by the audience?
Was it a commercial or critical success?
How is race/racism/racial bias/racial logic built into this movie?
Are these coded into the main story, or are they embedded in the background? Or elsewhere?
How are characters depicted/portrayed? What are the traits, characteristics, preferences of these
characters and how do these carry a racial logic?
What would a person consuming this movie learn about race and American society?
