Final Project Proposal: Omotade Fatiregun

There is no question that the United States is if not the most powerful, the most influential nation on the planet. Due to the strength of American media, innovation by media creators, and technological advancements, the rest of the world seems to be heavily affected by American culture. A huge characteristic that makes American culture so influential is that America itself is a melting pot of diluted forms of all other cultures. Through out history the culture of America if formed by immigrants, whether voluntary or involuntary, coming into the country by the masses. as the face of the average American continues to change, American media culture has had its ways of representing its different cultural groups, more commonly know as minorities.

My concentration is on how each of the different cultural and ethnic groups have been represented in American media throughout history. I would then like to focus in on media producers from these different backgrounds and find out how they feel they have been represented in American media. Also, how does the history affect the work they make, if at all, and do they feel a responsibility to change the landscape.

My project will take the form of a documentary. I will shoot interviews with different subjects and show what goes into their creation of media content. I will then use the interviews to shed light on the History of film, television, and other forms of media in America and how they have represented the countries various ethnic groups. The concluding message would be how today’s society is affected by these representations today, and how they affect media culture in the rest of the world. 

These are some examples of content i will be referencing:

The Savage Indian:

The Death of Jane McCrea,  John Vanderlyn (1804)

The Latin Lover:

Still of Guy Williams in Zorro (1957)

The Mammy (Black Woman): 

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in Gone With The Wind

The Fighting Irishman: 

Notre Dame Fighting Irish logo