Despite the current popular, political argument that life imitates art (or see: kids smoke and kill people because they are influenced by what they see on a screen at the local-plex) Hollywood has notoriously been behind the social times in reflecting what is going on in the moment when their films are released. For example, the overt personal artistic expression that littered art, literature and music in the 1950's and 1960's in this country only flowered in American Cinema in the 1970's. While Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1946, it took years after that before African Americans stepped out from the stereotypical roles they were usually relegated to on film...ironic for a supposedly liberal-leaning town. Part of the reasoning for this social delay is because of the time it takes to produce a film, but more importantly because major studios have often treated us, its audience, like kids with too much money in our wallet; by providing us with a two-hour escape from society rather than inciting us to question it. Plainly, it's just more profitable that way. However, Hollywood does sometimes catch up...and indeed the stoner-comedy Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle is an excellent example of the freeing of two otherwise forgotten-on-film minorities from the stereotypical ties that had previously bound them to anonymity.

Despite current continuous, necessary and vigilant calls for more roles and roles of power for African Americans, Hollywood has slowly integrated and enfranchised the African American on film. There is a stronger African American voice in Hollywood today then there has been ever before; actors like Denzel Wahington and Halle Berry have broken through racial-character stereotypes and play racially indifferent lead roles; roles that probably would have gone to an Anglo actors even fifteen to twenty years ago. Is there any doubt that a Manchurian Candidate remake or The Pelican Brief would have featured white lead actors had they been made in a different era? That Mario Van Peeples can make a film today (Badassssss!) about the independent, albeit meager beginnings of African American filmmaking is truly a signpost of how far things have come. The crossover mainstream success of films like Barbershop has proven that Hip-Hop culture is hip enough or, more importantly, a viable enough money-making product that major studio executives have noticed and responded.