Union: “Stop Calling Films Starring Blacks Urban Movies’

Actress GABRIELLE UNION has hit out at the ‘urban’ tag given to her new Christmas film THE PERFECT HOLIDAY – insisting movies shouldn’t be classified that way just because they star black people. Union wishes The Perfect Holiday, which has a predominantly African-American cast and is released in the U.S. next week (12Dec07), could be thought of without race coming into it – like Vince Vaughn’s recent festive hit Fred Claus.

She says, “No one calls Fred Claus the white Christmas movie. The Perfect Holiday is a movie about the holidays. It’s not race-specific.

“If there’s more than one black person in the movie, it’s an urban romantic comedy, an urban thriller – it’s just a flipping movie. The way kids think, the demographic they pander and chase – they don’t care.

“The same way guys are like, ‘Halle Berry’s hot, Jessica Alba’s hot’ – they don’t say, ‘She’s a hot black girl’ or ‘a hot Latina’. They notice trends, they buy movies they like, they Google people they like. It’s not race-specific… “Give me a break. It’s an old-fashioned notion of marketing, and how they like to label things.”

[Source: Urban Music Culture and PR Inside]