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238 Nancy Wang Yuen United States—Hollywood rarely created black characters that encompassed those variations. As a result, the black actors in my study experienced a great tension between their personal identities and the South Central “ghetto” type they were expected to play, which was typically based on a stereotype-ridden, lower-class urban myth. To deal with this tension, some black actors distanced their personal identities from the roles they played, from audition to final portrayal. For example, Vivian, contrasted her real-life, middle-class identity from the ghetto role for which she auditioned: I remember I auditioned for a movie that took place in the ’hood. And my acting, my audition was beautiful. But I didn’t get it. I said, “I want to know why I didn’t get a call back.” . . . They said, “Tell Vivian that when she comes back in she’s got to be ghetto. Extremely ghetto, organically ghetto, can’t see that she is putting it on.” . . . I thought that she was trying to say that there was an innate sophistication and elegance about me, that’s not associated with the ’hood. . . . That’s just me, you know. I grew up in a black sophisticated, middle-class family. And I went to boarding school. And I went to college. And I was around beautiful things. Even when actors portrayed “ghetto” roles, they continued to distance their real-life personas from that of their characters. Henry—a thin, mildmannered , forty-seven-year-old man with wire-rimmed glasses and wearing a baby-blue, short-sleeved dress shirt—described how he and another “non-urban” black actor found themselves portraying gang members and the personal tension it caused: There was a riot scene where a black guy got shot and the neighborhood comes out and they’re protesting in front of the precinct and they put me and this other guy in the front of the crowd. We didn’t have any lines. She [the director] said, “Just yell out whatever you wanna yell out.” And I remember at that time I went and put on my best ’hood clothes, you know, and I had my cap turned around backwards, and this guy that was standing next to me, I can’t remember his real name, but it was like Aristotle . . . . And we were just joking about the fact that the two of us, the most non-urban guys that they could find, you know, besides the extras around us. We were scared of these guys, because I think they had real gang members doing the extras. And here we are out in front. . . . Yeah, that was hysterical. Playing “Ghetto” 239 The black actors I interviewed coped with the inundation of ghetto roles in Hollywood by distancing their lived experience from the fictional ghetto roles in Hollywood. They discussed their middle-class upbringing, labeled themselves as “non-urban” or “suburban,” and contrasted themselves with actors or actual gang members, whom they thought were better suited to portray ghetto roles. These methods of distancing helped black actors to maintain a more authentic identity separate from the black stereotypes proliferating in Hollywood and society. Challenging Ghetto From time to time, black actors also challenged the stereotypical portrayals of “ghetto” roles in their performances. They did so by altering the behavior and speech patterns of the characters, and even by venturing outside of Hollywood to secure non-stereotyped roles. Ed, a sixty-five-yearold actor, described how he attempted to challenge one specific “ghetto” role, that of the black “pimp.” I didn’t play the “pimp” thing. . . . It wasn’t necessary to go to that stereotypical —put your hand behind your back and hump your shoulders and wear the big hat and go through the whole, you know, slang thing—to pull this off. So the director allowed me to not go there. Not do that . . . to do it my way. Similarly, Reyna, a fifty-eight-year-old actor, described how she challenged the “ghetto” dialect on set: I was a bank manager and they have this character saying “ain’t,” no final G’s on her words and what have you. And I’m like, “Wait a minute. She’s a bank manager.” So I just went through the script and I changed all the “ain’ts” to “aren’ts” and put final G’s on . . . and I was getting away with it until the director said, “Wait a minute. You left out a section there.” And...

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