Ah, silver screen stereotypes. Is there anything as laughable for its sheer ignorance? As a society in the year 2012, are we really pandering to these archaic preconceptions? Along with such celluloid tropes as the slutty blonde, the dumb jock and the lovable nerd/stoner, one stereotype that is perpetuated more than any other is the token black guy. And how does the black guy advance the storyline? What purpose does he/she serve? One thing is for sure, it’s not to contribute to their rich cultural heritage. No, the black guy is usually the first to bite the dust, thus letting the viewer know when the killing has begun and when they should be afraid. Despite the prominence of such a ridiculously tacky (and dare I say predictable) film convention, there are those who stand up in the face of adversity. Those black characters that just refuse to die…
10. Event Horizon – Cooper (played by Richard T. Jones)
A spaceship that can open a portal to hell pretty much spells certain disaster for all the characters involved. In the film, a rescue team is sent to investigate the Event Horizon, an abandoned spaceship that disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances.
While his crewmates are slowly driven to insanity of the gouging-out-one’s-own-eyeballs variety, mechanic and comic relief character, Cooper, spends most of the macabre moments floating around outside the ship. Although the film ends on an eyebrow raising note, Cooper makes it to the end with his eyeballs still firmly secured in his head.
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3 Comments
Glad someone wrote an article about this often unspoken subject. It is funny but I was often pleasantly surprised when many of these films ended with the token African American actually surviving the ordeal. I would think that Hollywood studios would do it more often to just break from the mold and quite frankly surprise its audience.
As a young black boy in the 80s, I found it disheartening that whenever the black character got snatched up or killed in whatever fashion, it was to emphasize the danger and there was no real sorrow over the character’s death but later, after a white character dies in similar fashion, there’s always a quiet moment where the ones still alive would mourn for him/her. Ironic how those with all the ideas have so long displayed such little imagination
OF COURSE Keith David made it to the end of The Thing. He’s the only actor who can out-badass Kurt Russell!