The Color of Evil: How American Media Racializes Villains

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10 Responses

  1. Frances says:

    Very fascinating! i am doing my film studies coursework on this exact topic !

  2. Puck says:

    Been noticing this a lot more recently, especially with animated films where the color of the actor doesn’t really matter when it comes to the race/racialization of the character. So it did not escape my notice that the ONE POC in How To Train Your Dragon 2 was also the big bad.

    One tiny nitpick (sorry!): Simba’s dad in The Lion King is Mufasa not Mustafa.

  3. Xeno says:

    This is all very interesting but speaking as someone from the UK, the big flaw in your argument is that quite a few villians, even the ones you mentioned, speak with an English accent.

    Which really says that these villians are British and not from the various parts of the world which you claim.

    So in fact the racialization of villians is an anti British sentiment as the villians are portrayed as being English regardless of their physical appearance.

  1. 30th January 2014

    […] how the “best actor” for any heroic role more often than not just happens to be white; there seems to be no shortage of “best actors” with dark skin for villains in film. But it’s just a coincidence that no acting Oscar has gone to a Latin@, Native American, or Asian […]

  2. 3rd February 2014

    […] a recent post, I discussed a longstanding trend in American (and Western) media of using racial Others to embody […]

  3. 3rd October 2014

    […] Sociology Lens: The Color of Evil: How American Media Racializes Villains […]

  4. 16th April 2015

    […] The Color of Evil: How American Media Racializes Villains, Sociology Lens, 2013 <http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/03/28/the-color-of-evil-how-american-media-racializes-…&gt; […]

  5. 21st September 2016

    […] But it’s not just Hollywood. From advertisements, to cultural icons like White Jesus, American society, perhaps subconsciously for some, shine the most favorable light to those with fair skin. […]

  6. 2nd August 2020

    […] identified through Lombroso’s racial stereotypes. This piece in Sociology Lens looks at this: https://www.sociologylens.net/topics/communication-and-media/the-color-of-evil-how-american-media-ra…. For […]

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