The Today Show Film Analysis

In a country where racism has been part of its history for centuries, no one would ever think that cinema could find a way of putting aside those inequalities, highlighting the skills and abilities of hundreds of black women in the art. Yet the 1980’s represented a major dynamic change for African American women in society. It was a time Americans embraced conservatism, mainly guided by Ronald Reagan, as well as an era of professionalism. The eighties were a decade of major achievements for African Americans in the field of media. Robert L. Johnson launched the Black Entertainment Television (BET) channel out of Washington in 1981. Bryant Gumbel became the anchor of The Today Show, the first African American to hold the morning anchor post on a major television network the following year. Louis Gossett, Jr. becomes the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, and Oprah Winfrey becomes the first African American woman to host a television show in 1986. (Cartier 2014)
The decade of the eighties was a time where the representation of the black woman began to increase dramatically in films. Actresses like Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey …show more content…
The written book came out in 1982 and it was the first work by a black woman (Alice Walker) to win both the Pulitzer and National Book Awards. (Lerner 2002) The book proved to be a huge success soon after Steven Spielberg secured rights to film the movie. The movie which focused on the black female characters, centered on black women’s rejection of respectability, politics, and on black women’s