In the beginning of the 1990s Hollywood started to embrace more black directors and produce more films featuring black characters. One of the factors that that led to the encouragement for Hollywood may be President Clinton appointing an unprecedented number of minorities to his cabinet because of how public this was. Black movie goers would go to the movies to see black actors in big block busters, while these movies were successful this only fueled the possibilities of these black side characters to get their own film because of the audience coming to the theater for these black actors. After the brutal police beating of Rodney King, the nation was stunned and even more upset when the police officers responsible were found not guilty in court. The nation finally started to recognize the racial injustice that exists in our country today. This allowed black film makers to start to explore their cultural pride, injustices they face, and rebellion on film because people were finally starting to listen to black voices.
One topic of this chapter that interested me was the section on Whoopi Goldberg called “Whoopi’s Back”. I chose this topic because Whoopi Goldberg has been in my life for as long as I can remember. Leading into the 1990s movie goers still liked Whoopi but felt like the films she had been making were not that great and when it was announced she was going to be in a movie called Ghost fans set their expectations low. She blew the audience away though with her engaging performance. Whoopie manages to give her characters depth by modulating her reactions and giving them human dimensions. Whoopi used her African American cultural bearings to give her character Oda definition. Later in the film Ghost Whoopi and Demi Moore’s character have a relationship that may have had underlying themes of lesbianism. She would later play a lesbian character named Jane in the film Boys on the slide. In one of personal favorites from growing up, Whoopi stared in a film called Sister Act which focused on her character Deloris becoming a nun after being placed in the church for witness protection. The film barely touches on her being a black nun, this is a good thing and a bad thing. Great because audiences don’t even question the presence of a black nun but not too great because they don’t give her character much cultural references in attempt to make her a “white mainstream character". Even though Whoopi Goldberg’s films rarely matched her talents, she never lost her comic timing and her attitude in her dialogue.