'Star Trek' put sci-fi on the map and changed television, and 'Battlestar' has changed it in another direction by making it a little more mainstream and acceptable to people who wouldn't normally watch sci-fi.
Mainstream media's representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black men's lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.
Minister and writer Barbara Kaufmann has addressed the subject of guerrilla decontextualization on both the 'Voices Compassionate Education' website and on 'Inner Michael', where she offers the kind of insights into the spiritual aspects of Michael Jackson's creative artistry that mainstream media mostly ignores.
In the Indian film industry, especially those of us who are in mainstream cinema, we invariably play a typical hero's role. More often than not, we cater to the public perception. However, there is a latent desire in most actors to do a role where you can go all out and experiment.
Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music.
'Parks and Rec' is definitely a mainstream show - the group that watches it on TV on Thursday night is small, but the audience that watches it on things like Hulu, Netflix, and Tivo is enormous.
'Drive' is definitely an inspiration because it was a film that was able to use what would normally be considered cheesy, kind of bold, electronic music choice and pull it off in a mainstream way.
I think there's this idea that if we put up a play with all African-Americans or all Latinas, or even if we mix it up, then it won't really sell to a mainstream audience. At the end of the day, what's going to drive the story being told is what's going to drive people to the seats.
I think it's embarrassing for our industry that we have such low diversity across senior-level management at all of the mainstream, top-tier venture capital firms.
People need to realize that because black people have been established in the U.S. for a lot longer than in the U.K., the culture's a lot more embedded. We will get there with how comfortable they are with rap in the mainstream, but we're way behind them.
