So to say that film was racist misses the point. Film was capitalist with all that entails. Something never mentioned in the "film was racist" arguments (be they video, podcast, soul-searching article or slideshow) is that black & white film was also capitalist (or racist, if you insist): simply put, the darker you are, the more light you need to get a decent exposure of you. Human eyes adjust the same way to face tones as we do to sunsets; we mentally composite the image through post-processing. Film didn't just render black faces poorly; it rendered everything poorly. The giant color extravaganzas of the 50s weren't recorded on one camera, they were recorded on three - a red one, a green one and a blue one - because the chemistry just wasn't good enough to deliver a decent image. Thief of Baghdad? That sound stage used as much electricity as the rest of Los Angeles because the color chemistry required so much light. Yes. Shirley cards had white women on them. But there's more nuance to the situation than these discussions would lead you to believe; the actual aspect of those images that mattered was the color chips. Those would actually be compared when printed. Shirley herself was there for QAQC. Not only that, but once you had the dichros set right, you wouldn't mess with them that often - it's not like you printed a Shirley every time you had a roll of film. And let's be honest - the guys buying the processing equipment were white. Their customers were probably white. And there's nothing saying you needed to use the Shirley cards. If you had a lot of black clientele, you probably figured out a balance that made black families look better. They're only dichros. It's disheartening to me that this is always a tale of how racist film was, as if the film industry were somehow more racist than the rest of the country. It's also disheartening to me that they always talk about chocolate and wood as the reasons Kodak started formulating better stock... without pointing out that neither Ilford nor Agfa bothered (not a lot of black folx in England or Germany). And I've never understood why we whip out the Philips comparator as if it were a bad thing, rather than pointing out that a major multinational corporation designed an entirely new optical block so that black people wouldn't look like shit on camera. I used to run lights in clubs. We had a lot of reggae bands, a lot of rap bands. And you know what? Those yellow and orange gels you had for the jam band last night? Pull 'em down 'cuz black performers are well aware of how awful they look under yellow light. So is it racist to run yellow lights? Or is it racist to not run yellow lights? Or is it silly to talk about "racism" in terms of technology when the evidence generally supports a bunch of good intentions changing with the times, just like everything else?
The title of your post is: "Color film was build for white people" That isn't a title that says "there are racist undertones we have to consider for everything" that is a knee-jerk "everything is racist, be angry" title. People can read undertones as well as they can overtones, and the undertone of this post is "film is racist".It's not really an issue of racism
There's a concept of this which helps me to frame my understanding of racism a little better: Second-generation bias. It's what happens when people, in general, realize that racism, or any other ism for that matter, is not a good part of their society and make efforts to make it taboo. The example I was just reading about was regarding gender bias in workplaces and why women still aren't anywhere near well represented enough. The old guard is aging out, women should be higher than where they are, but what's happening is actually a stagnation of growth in terms of women leadership. Why is this if no one is actually trying to keep the woman down? They explain that part of the problem is second generation bias, which is a more structural bias that is more subtle. The given example that made it click for me was that international assignments are usually leadership bullet points that help skyrocket someone ahead of their peers. These assignments are usually huge considerations for someone with a family, and are therefore preferred by people without families, or who have a spouse which does not work as lucrative of a job. These people are more likely to be men, as a woman working is less likely to have a stay-at-home husband. So men are getting these assignments and the concomitant promotions not as a direct means of discrimination, but as a by-product of lifestyles outside of work. Which, to be fair, are still influenced by a tertiary sexism of the family and society. Don't worry about your tags. Kleinbloo can use whatever tags he wants, or none at all because he has so many followers. People are going to see his posts because they follow him, and not the tags. He's the buzzfeed of commenters: flashy, a little substance stretched out to make a long post that people seem to identify with, and a whole lot sassy bossy nonsense. He probably blocks more people than anyone on the site because if he didn't that would interfere with his narrative that he is supremely intelligent. Of course, it's all because he doesn't want that drama in his pure Hubski experience. Right. The title of the video that color film was built for white people is completely appropriate. It wasn't intentionally racist, but that's where the money was and that's what you get. It's just what he wants to get excited about right now.
How anyone looks at photography, where light is the key factor in capturing an image, and then posits that technology itself is racist because it has trouble accurately capturing the skin tones of dark-skinned people, is just bonkers to me. Cameras capture light, and that's it. It's the job of the photographer or cinematographer to ensure that a black actor or model is lit properly under certain conditions. Not to mention, the photographic process does not begin and end with light hitting film, and the claim that seems to be thrown about by this video that black people existed in color photos only as negative blobs of obscure darkness is just pure lunacy. Go look at any color photos from the time period described, and you'll see perfect photos of dark-skinned people all over the place. I mean, what are they even trying to say with this? That black people are underrepresented in photography out of a nefarious plot to keep them underexposed, both literally and figuratively? And if they're not saying that, then what are they saying? Black people are harder to take photos of? This is not news! It's logical, common sense! Furthermore, let me just say again that positing that technology itself can have a racial bias is just pure insanity.
Except it wasn't based on white people. There was a white person as an example image, with the color blocks underneath and to the sides of her used for real color balance. The white person was a reference for each individual photographer and developer to look at if they so desired, but only an idiot would think that this actually affected anyone other than amateurs. So please, respond sarcastically again dismissing my entire argument, as it's fairly obvious you already have an agenda that this video somehow illustrates.