Will The New African American Film Jumping The Broom Be A Flop Or A Hit?
The new black film Jumping The Broom will be released tomorrow but the trailer the film seems boring.
Since Jumping The Broom only cost $7 million dollars to produce, it will make a profit.
However, I think Jumping The Broom will probably be less successful than Tyler Perry’s Madea films.
Jumping The Broom seems to be trying too hard to challenge the so-called negative stereotypes in society about black people.
The British/Jamaican scholar Stuart Hall wrote about the construction of binaries in relation to blackness.
According to Hall, images have multiple meanings. Jumping The Broom is clearly attempting to
present the positive image that black people are wealthy and not poor. I agree with one message of Jumping The Broom, that blacks are often
presented in Hollywood films to be poor people. Of course, blacks are not pathological, but Jumping The Broom is an exaggeration
of blackness. Hall says the positive stereotypes are not actually positive because very few people can “fit into” this category. The negative stereotypes of
course is negative and that’s not good either. Hall advocates looking at blackness through a third theory called the binary of representation, to
acknowledge both the good and bad stereotypes and subvert them. Hall acknowledges that he doesn’t have all the answers.
Hall believes the binary of representation is important to understand that black people we are multi dimensional human beings.
The plot for Jumping The Broom is very formulaic, it is basically about two black families one rich and the other is lower middle class.
I love Loretta Devine and Angela Bassett they are excellent actresses but they deserve better roles than Jumping The Broom.
According to Forbes Magazine, Tyler Perry made over $125 million dollars last year.
Even though Jumping The Broom is not a Tyler Perry film, he lurks in the shadows due to his incredible power in reaching the black audience.
The Hollywood studios want to reach the urban audience and make money. I am just not sure Jumping The Broom will become a huge success?
Jumping The Broom is a perfect example of the myopic representations of blackness in pop culture.
Where are the black science fiction, detective, or psychological dramatic films?
Jumping The Broom is just a tired romantic comedy that is very predictable.
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