1. The "Criteria of African-American Art" refers to the issue of whether "African-American" Art has to have "African-American" content, and if so, what that content might include.

2. The issue of "dual consciousness" is an issue that begins at least with W.E.B. DuBois and is whether an African American has an African consciousness separate from an American consciousness. (That is a distinction from the "African-American" consciousness which is seen as ‘one’ instead of ‘dual.’)

3. The "fundamental attribution error" is the distinction made by Paul Cowen. He says, "Numerous studies have shown that people make a ‘fundamental attribution error’ by tending to ignore situational, social, and environmental factors when explaining another person’s behavior while overemphasizing the importance of what are perceived to be the other’s more enduring characteristics and traits." This is significant to our understanding of prejudice, bias, racism.

4. Terry Christensen offers working definitions of "conservative" and "liberal." He says that some movies "lean to the right, stressing individualism and traditional values like self help, hard work, family, and patriotism, often criticizing moral decline, bureaucracy, and big government...others lean left, emphasizing tolerance and co-operation, criticizing discrimination, conformity, greed, and sometimes capitalism..."

5. The "differences in Black and White film sensibilities" is a reference to points made by Donald Bogle. For example, he says that a white audience responded to "The Defiant Ones" in a very different way than a black audience. In that film Sidney Poitier stays with Tony Curtis instead of escaping. The white audience cheered, and the black audience jeered. It is a difference of sensibilities.

6. Regarding Eisner’s distinctions about science and art, social scientists and artists have different ideas about "artistic license." Eisner argues, for example, that scientists are concerned about "truth," but that artists are more concerned about "meaning." Because of this difference in aims, artists are more likely to use "license" to better make clear their meaning. For example, what do you think about the fact that in the film script for the "true" story of "Glory," the African-American soldiers were represented as having been from the South, when in fact they were from the North?

7. The "values" material is contained in the Gose manuscript, "Reel Values."

8. Psychologists and Sociologists have written about "identification" as a necessary part of maturing. Heroes help us set standards to aspire towards. Ernest Hilgard says, "In identification we often take other people’s desirable qualities as our own." Leonard Broom says, "Identification is part of the normal process of growing up...identification continues through life...one way to establish an inner control is to take over the values of an admired figure as a guide."

9. Bywater (reporting on work by Haskell) states that feminist writings "charted the history of women characters in the movies and found that, by and large, they were very unrealistic. In fact she suggests that they are little more than male fantasies, stereotypes of what men want to believe about women. She found most characters typed as either demure virgins or passionate but evil prostitutes. The plot dynamics of American genre films revolve around male heroes who are the active agents. Women play passive roles as maidens in distress, comforting mothers, objects of sexual desire, or obstacles to the male’s success. When women are the protagonists, their successes are always compromised. In film noir, they are devious, power hungry bitches who dupe men into criminal activities; in family melodrama, they may be capable enough to get ahead in a career, but they cannot have the security and love of a family as well. Even the briefest glance at the content of Hollywood films confirms the feminist position. Women as women, women as they actually exist in the every day world, are hard to find."

10. T.S. Eliot argues that it is impossible to think in terms of Western Culture without regard to Christianity.

11. Color blind or ethno-centric? My example was that Maury Wills wanted to be known only as Maury Wills, baseball manager, whereas Frank Robinson want to be known as a Black baseball manager. This relates to the distinction made by DuBois discussed above.

Censorship.

John Milton wrote what I consider to be the definitive Christian position on censorship. He wrote that, "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is as involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned." He concludes that we can only know good by evil and that he "cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary."

A Final But Seemingly Related Point to Milton’s idea of separating the good and evil: In his book "Redefining Black Film," Mark Reid is highly critical of objectionable material that is inherent to any film released for commercial reasons. Yet we concur with his argument that "audiences have the ability to overlook the obvious racism and seize the human properties," that "one can either accept the authoritative discourse, or appropriate and create an internally persuasive discourse," that "it is possible for African-Americans (and others) to practice oppositional readings..." For our course to be successful this, in fact, must happen. Our goal is to challenge stereotypes while creating reflection and questioning.