ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses many of the alternative films are eloquently demonstrated as realism as a goal is quite compatible with a style which is reflexive and deconstructive. The hair-trigger sensitivity about racial stereotypes derives partly from what has been labeled the 'burden of representation'. The desire to reserve a right to judgment on questions of realism comes into play especially in cases where there are real-life prototypes for characters and situations, and where the film, whatever its conventional disclaimers, implicitly makes, and is received as making, historical-realist claims. A corrupt White politician is not seen as an 'embarrassment to the race', financial scandals are not seen as a negative reflection on White power. The sensitivity around stereotypes and distortions largely arises, then, from the powerlessness of historically marginalized groups to control their own representation. The Limits of Stereotype is revealing oppressive patterns of prejudice in what might at first glance have seemed random and inchoate phenomena.
