Walk on Hollywood: Challenging Whitewashing and Yellowface in the Film Industry

[condensation]

Hi everyone! I'm not sure if this is allowed here at all (mods, please feel free to delete this if it is), but I wanted to make a report on a project I wanted to do for one of my university classes. Last Saturday, a day before the L.A. Times article released, I decided to paint signs just outside of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre (Hollywood Blvd)

Comments

[mrcab]

This is cool.

...but why did you paint the signs there? Seems like that'd be a formula for attracting police officers.

[tallycola]

I don't get that? In a place where so many people street perform and wander around in crazy outfits, I would think a girl painting a sign is just another "thing" people do for fun. Like I don't think that specifically would draw the attention of the police, unless every single other performer on the street had a performer's permit? (I mean, maybe they do??)

[mrcab]

The "performers" are basically just panhandlers who "work for tips," and, to be fair, the public/private property line is very vague. I'm not sure what she did but if I was painting signs on a crowded sidewalk, I'd probably nestle up to a building, which would most likely be on private property. Other than that, I really don't know how to explain it; I just think that, out of context, painting signs on the sidewalk seems like an attention getter. I mean, why do that in the first place?
Maybe Superman has some tips; I'm sure he doesn't get ready for the job, on the sidewalk.

Now that I've slipped into 'heel' territory: apologies to the OP.

[condensation]

Like glockgal said, it was a kind of performance art mixed with protesting (art can be used to/a form of protest, and it's been done before). Then again, I wouldn't know if making a sign for protests in a public space is necessarily wrong-- I mean, these guys did the exact same thing in Hollywood just a few months before.

For the record, it was a project for one of my contemporary art history classes. In terms of typical protesting, yes, it's out of context, but not for what I wanted to do. But the point was to get attention (and it did, because it got people to stop and ask what I was doing instead of just everyone just walking by), just not specifically from the cops. They happened to be in the vicinity handing a taxi cab a ticket, so I was kind of unlucky.

[nagasasu]

You go girl/dude!

[jinian]

Nice work!

[tallycola]

This is amazing! I think it's so awesome you did it, and I'm really heartened to hear that most people were encouraging or interested, or at least not abusive. And I think you handled the thing with the cops very gracefully! Well done!

[condensation]

Thank you! That was the interesting part about it: no one was particularly offended or had a negative response. Or at least they didn't confront me directly about it. The closest I got to "negative" was when I asked a random person if they would like to hold a sign, which they politely refused.

[nemogbr]

Good show.