Meida Blog 2

It’s a wonderful life was created in 1946. It is a movie that can be bought or rented at any store. I found the picture at www.google.com.

The movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” is based on the 1940’s. "It's A Wonderful Life," starred Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. It is about a young man named George Bailey played by Stewart, who was just about to start his grown up life. He wants to travel and get out of his small hometown called Bedford Falls. His father has a company that gives loans to people and he has been working there to help his father out. George’s family was a middle class family back then, the family business did well. George’s family consisted of his father, mother, brother, and the extra help. The extra help was a black woman they used for a maid, but in the movie they very much included her as part of the family. She was the boy’s nanny when they were little, and the mother’s helper and friend. I choose “It’s A Wonderful Life,” as my media because when I was watching the movie “ “ in class and it was describing how mammies where popular back in the old days. The first thing that popped into my head was the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”. In the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the mammy was very friendly and kind towards the family, and the part they showed in the movie the Bailey’s included her as part of the family as well. The mammy was still the maid and did not get to do what the family members did but they were kind to her. So I choose this piece of media because it was an example of what the movie in class was explaining.
The movie “ It’s A Wonderful Life” relates to the movie we watched in class because the movie “Ethnic Notions“ talked about how black women were stereotyped and degraded. The mammies are the most well known and enduring racial caricature of African American Women. The film “Ethnic Notions “ used mammies as an example of how black women were stereotyped and degraded, the film described the characteristics of the mammy. First, she was an obese, coarse, maternal figure who always wore a headband around her head. She had great love for her white “family,” but often treated her own family badly and was looked at as the male figure. Mammies were also completely desexualized. In the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the black maid was portrayed as the mammy. She was a bigger woman, wore a headband around her head, loved her white family, and was placed below the white mother of the family. The black maid in the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” was portrayed exactly how the film in class describes the mammies. In the film you never saw the mammies’ families or her real personality, the film only showed the part of the mammy everyone knew, which was happy, friendly, loving towards her white family. She was not shown as a sexy wife, or a beautiful woman, or a loving mother of her own children. This media relates to the movie “Ethnic Notions“ that we saw in class because it is giving a perfect example of how the movie we saw in class described the mammy.
I believe the issue of the mammy is extremely wrong. Degrading black women and seeing then as manly and ugly is sad. These black women are people as well not only are they people but they are women. They want to feel beautiful, and want to be treated like all other women are black or white, mammies or white wives. I can only imagine how it would feel if you were looked at as a man, not as a beautiful women. That would make me so sad and depressed. I feel for these women who were called mammies, they life and their families matter too, they were not put on the earth to just care for someone else’s family, and how the media portrayed them to be was very wrong. Being a mammy was their job, they were the maid or nanny of a white family, it was not their personality. Black women are women, they are sexual, they are pretty, they are mother, they are lovers, and human beings. Black women are not these creatures used in the media called mammies, they have feelings and lives of their own.