Hollywood movies that feature aliens and predators may be blockbusters at the box-office, but a Brock University professor believes that these films are actually reinforcing racial discrimination against black people in the society.
These remarks were made by Tamari Kitossa, Associate Professor of Sociology, at Brock University, in his recent article written on The Conversation.
Anti-Black Discrimination in Movies
According to Kitossa, Ridley Scott has negatively portrayed a black alien mother in his movie 'Alien', who ceaselessly breeds alien offsprings. In the same manner, he claimed that Predator demonstrates a black man as dreadlocked, violent, and superhuman.
"Ridley Scott's Alien franchise, with its vicious and endlessly breeding carbon black alien mother, came at the height of neoliberal experiment and in the U.S. especially, an all-out assault on Black people. In the context of anti-Black culture, the film signifies the Black woman as an unkillable and ceaselessly breeding alien who threatened the body politic," Kitossa wrote in the article. He added that the black man predator does not feel any kind of a pain in the movie, and these views have roots in chattel slavery.
Black People Should Breath
In the article, Kitossa also talked about the way in which the anti-Black mentality in the world can be changed. The professor begins by demanding that "First, there must be candid admission that there is both sexualized fear of and desire of Black people".
He demanded that there should be an admission and said, "Hollywood and the media paint Black people as sexualized, superhuman monstrosities and that this meshes with racialized political discourse."
Kitossa also urged white people should try to critically examine their whiteness, and he also reminds the words by famous writer Noel Ignatiev. "More white people need to critically examine their whiteness. Well-known white scholar and writer Noel Ignatiev's called for whiteness to be abolished: this call should ring true and is necessary if we are to see an end to the psychosexual and racist pathologies that prevent Black people from being able to breathe," added Kitossa.
