"Race and Amazon Studios"

Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference featuring May Santiago

Friday, April 9, 2021 12:15 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Online Location, Registration Link: http://cglink.me/2d7/r1057308

Amazon has come under wider scrutiny in the COVID age for its ballooning profits, making Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world thanks to a racialized and brutalized workforce. All the meanwhile, Amazon Studios has risen as a formidable film studio, coming from an arthouse-independent background in 2015, surviving a #MeToo scandal of its top leader in 2017, and now in 2021, becoming its own fully-functional film studio that handles its own production, marketing, and distribution of its content. This rise in reputation is not only due to Bezos’ deep pockets, but also with the co-signing of first-look deals with creators such as Steve McQueen to Nicole Kidman. Jennifer Salke, Amazon Studios’ head of operations, has said as recently as 2020 that the goal for the studio is to release as radical content as possible to amplify marginalized voices.

Yet, how can this be reconciled with Amazon’s labor practices at-large? My research examines a bevy of press releases, trade articles, magazine profiles, and studies ranging from 1998 to 2021 to build the history and context of Amazon Studios and its operations within Amazon at large. Furthermore, I investigate the contradictions in Amazon’s stances for racial and gender equality, particularly in the moment of civil rights demonstrations sweeping the physical and virtual spaces of 2020. At the core of this research are the practices of ex-CEO Bezos himself, an avid participant in Amazon Studios’ day-to-day and the chief architect of the oppressive workplace practices Amazon benefits from.

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