Posts Tagged Sharon Willis

Sharon Willis, a member of Rochester’s Film and Media Studies program faculty, says this year’s nominations show that change may be afoot in Hollywood—but that how much movies will be transformed remains to be seen.

Sir Sidney Poitier became a cultural icon in the 1950s as the first black actor to break racial barriers in film. But as art and art history professor Sharon Willis argues in her new book, his image on screen creates a false sense of equality that continues to appear in the popular media and remains damaging to race relations today.