History“American cinema was born from white representations of black people” Rogin (1996)Rogin (1996) argues that American films became popular from popular images back when Caucasian peoples painted a picture of African Americans using the famous “Blackface”. “Maafa 21” is a film directed by Mark Crutcher released in 2009; this film examines the history of African Americans shortly after slavery and how they struggled with labels and were categorized with different types of insulting names. This documentary is a study in how the most hardened would have done their best to eliminate race, by dehumanizing African Americans, thereby making "average white people" believe that they are a burden to America. Although Mark Crutcher's views are quite extreme, much of what his studies mention about the labeling and annoyance of African Americans is present in the films. In the early 1900s, silent cinema used racial stereotypes, racial slurs, and racist cosmetics; it was very common to see stories about the racially inferior Denzin (2002), page 22. Films of the early 1910s and 1920s contained many African American characters played by white actors. Hearts and Apartments (1911) and Birth of a Nation (1915). These are just a few of the many films from this era that depicted black characters as submissive, dark, criminal, dangerous, and buffoonish or animalistic. Duke University Website (2007)In the Roaring Twenties, blackface was extremely popular in motion pictures such as The Jazz Singer (1927) which proved to be a hit at the time. Rogin (1996) studies the relationship between Blackface and Americanization, in his book "Black Face, White Noise" where we soon discover how Americans managed to spread their views on A...... middle of paper.... .s that people like to watch other people with whom they can identify, which means that people pay more attention when the person on the screen is identifiable. If so, that would mean that according to statistics there are more Caucasian viewers than any other race, so the money would go towards Caucasian portrayals and so on. Disney's first African-American princess, Tiana, was introduced in 2009, which made people believe that "the color barrier is collapsing in Hollywood." A majority of people may still see the thin line between Hollywood's "new" attitude toward race and their "old" attitude toward race. “The consolidation of a black presence in films and television has no more marked the arrival of a post-racist Hollywood than the election of Barack Obama in 2008 sounded the death knell for a racial drama 400-year-old American." Duke University website (2007)