Talk:Mario Van Peebles

The following lists the films in the IMFDB directed by Mario Van Peebles:

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  New Jack City (1990)

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  Posse (1993)

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  Love Kills (1998)

Discussion

I try to stay away from making "too" (however I'm not a monk) many political statements when it comes to actors, but this guy is a racist. Watch some of his movies. White people are often portrayed as filth in his movies. Evil, murderous, corrupt. There might be one or two token white people who help his heroes ,but they usually get killed such as Baldwin in Posse and see Panther (1995). Am I saying that he shouldn't have a page? No, but I just wanted to get that out there. But then his father ,Melvin Van Peebles, was known to make some pretty inflammatory movies back in the day as well.See Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. I don't care what film citics/historians say about the impact the early films made on Black audiences. In this day and age Mario's films (written and/or directed by him) are racist. Filled with hate. Two wrongs don't make a right. --Jcordell 09:08, 3 October 2011 (CDT)

I respect your opinion, and I must respectfully disagree with giving the actor such a label. The first two films he directed had villains that were not just of one ethnicity. My take is that he was making those two films to portray characters that were under represented in films to that date (haven't seen Panther, so I can't make a judgment on it). Yes, there were some objectionable scenes, but there are other directors who have included far more incendiary scenes in their films. He's also worked with directors and actors of varying ethnicity and can't see that he would continue to be hired in the mainstream if he held such beliefs. You've been such a great contributor to the site and I hope this disagreement doesn't sour any more conversation. I hope that you would also agree that just because a user makes a page for a film, that the user necessarily agrees with the politics of the director or the film. --Ben41 00:31, 4 October 2011 (CDT)

Oh no I'm not soured because you don't agree with me. And I understand what you're saying. I've made pages for movies and actors that I did not agree with either. Most recently Coming Home. I would argue that there is a tendency in Hollywood for actors to work with people like Mario Van Peebles because he is (or was) politically correct. In other words his portrayl of whites was politically correct. I seem to remember Solo which was a science fiction movie that he only starred in was also racist in that he was helping to defend a BLack African nation from the evil United States C.I.A. Who was represented by mostly white actors. Now I will admit it's been many years since I saw Solo so I might be rather fuzzy on the details. Anyway Ben I can handle somebody not agreeing with me. I'm an adult. --Jcordell 02:10, 4 October 2011 (CDT)

It was actually Central America, but you're pretty much spot on about Solo (which I could have sworn we had a page for, but nothing comes up). There were only two black guys that appeared briefly in the beginning in bit roles (helicopter mechanics, I think) on the bad guys' side and neither were depicted as being inherently bad, while there were literally only two white guys that weren't pure evil. Even the general's command staff was all white. Even I have to admit there are some not-so-subtle racist tones there. But that's just Solo, because other than Heartbreak Ridge, I haven't seen much more of Van Peebles' work to judge it as a whole. Spartan198 (talk) 07:01, 19 May 2020 (EDT)