NCJ Number
183610
Date Published
2000
Length
16 pages
Annotation
The author believes how people are represented in movies plays a determining role in how they are perceived and treated socially, especially with respect to media images and the victimization of black women.
Abstract
The way in which black women are perceived in the culture, particularly by criminal justice officials, is directly linked to how they are sexually positioned in movies. Movie characterization of black female subjects as "oversexed" is so commonplace that when they are sexually assaulted in reality, these women are not taken seriously because viewer perceptions about black female sexuality in movies becomes fused with viewer perceptions of black women in reality. The author shows how, through a process of deductive reasoning, movie images of black female sexuality contribute to their sexual victimization and influence the criminal justice system's handling of these women's cases as rape victims. 84 references