#OscarsSoWhite and Loving Film While Black
I love film more than I love some people. As a writer, it should probably be the literary sphere and its icons that I worship, study and offer my first-born to, but it’s the realm of film that’s always had my heart. Case in point: The Rosie Perez dance scene at the beginning of Do The Right Thing is more important to me than anything written by a dead white dude, and that’s just how it is.
So amidst the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag created by April Reign and the memes and the clapbacks over how white this year’s Oscars are, all I’ve been able to think is, yeah, the whole damn industry is “so white.” I am not involved with the business of film, outside of reviewing movies here and there for chump change. I don’t have any on-the-ground horror stories to report like so many do. I’m just a dude who loves movies. A dude who loves movies who also happens to be Black.
A dude who loves movies and is Black who has seen every shuck and every jive imaginable onscreen, who has seen an entire regiment of bug-eyed, sweaty brothers die first in action and horror movies stretching back as far as I can remember, Black women and sometimes girls objectified and mammyfied, mystical magical negroes in their cardigans and bowties or aprons and neat buns giving troubled white protagonists the push they need to achieve maximum greatness in the name of all that is white and holy.
And I’m sick of it.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world,” maybe. But also, maybe, just like when we’re out in the streets screaming for the cops to stop killing us, when we’re striving to prove in this white world that we can meet and exceed any and all challenges in STEM fields like we do on athletic ones, maybe instead of telling us to be quiet, instead of saying we’re the real racists, you sit back and watch us work. You might learn a thing or two.
The value of Oscar validation could be argued either way. That Black actors can only win Academy Awards when acting out some sort of struggle or playing the villain is, however, a symptom of a larger problem. The ceremony’s mayo-ness points to a film industry that serves to remind us of all the ways in which white people (and of course, only a specific segment of white people) are triumphant, interesting, hilarious or otherwise magnificent. White man-overcomes-impossible-odds is a trope that Hollywood is hammering us with at the moment, with a few variations on the theme allowed for the occasional Black man or white woman character.
Why is it still such a tall order to ask that we see more stories about Black characters just being people, going through the ups and downs that all people do, rather than being nothing more than vessels, be it for hope in a vacuum or struggle free of context? The hacked Sony emails showed us that the film game is but a function of the country as a whole, and the “Denzel or bust” mindset is clearly not exclusive to that studio.
The buzz surrounding these Oscars has been good for shining a light on the larger problem, but of course there have been corresponding trash takes. Charlotte Rampling claiming that this hubbub over diversity is “racist to whites” came right on cue. As racism is a system of advantage based on race, and as Black directors, actors and others are clearly disadvantaged, it’s pretty clear that Dame Rampling should stfu and stick to emoting onscreen for the gaggle of critics the world over who would seemingly be glad to sip from a goblet of her pee if given the chance.
And speaking to BBC in January, clearly Michael Caine thought he was still in character as Alfred talking to Bruce Wayne when he told the network that Black actors must be “patient” in their quest for Oscar validation. Suffice to say Blacks across the diaspora have been more than patient with white foolishness like this for longer than even Caine’s old ass has been roaming this fucked up Earth. And that’s to say nothing of our patience with brutality, discrimination, violence and ignorance.
At an anti-fascist rally in 1937, actor Paul Robeson declared, “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.” And while the racial climate may be (somewhat) less outwardly hostile compared to what the legendary activist/actor faced in the ’40s, “post-racial” America is in ruins less than a decade after it was erected following Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, built on pillars of salt evaporated from millions of white tears over why we can’t “just move on.”
As a kid, I came to believe some of the things most movies were telling me: That I was an expendable background player on the set of life, that my life didn’t matter. Being fortunate enough to learn about Robeson when I was young — the only chocolate boy among all my white classmates — was like being let in on a secret. Here was a Black artist with an otherworldly presence of body and spirit who was actively challenging a very fucked up country, and being a force of nature creatively to boot, speaking out while Black men and women were being hanged for any and all reasons that an abnormally fearful white imagination could drum up.
That same imagination of course lives on today, in the form of Mike Brown being seen by his killer as a superhuman demon, or 12 year old Tamir Rice looking like a gun-toting grown man to a distant 911 caller, or Sandra Bland defying physics. And it is this same vivid white imagination poisoned by racism that also narrows the scope of what the film industry believes is possible for black and other POC talent on both sides of the camera. “Thugs,” sidekicks and homegirls/homeboys are nowhere more sought after than in Big Hollywood, whereas we are feared and mocked in the wider world.
The Great Blackening of Cinema that some seem braced for is not necessarily inevitable. The game has been rigged for many lifetimes across the board, and the art of film is no different, but that doesn’t mean that striving to tell our stories isn’t worthwhile. And the same ones, be they Charlotte Rampling or a “patriot” dude on Twitter asking why don’t we just make better movies a. haven’t been paying attention, to anything, and b. probably spend a lot of time complaining about how there isn’t a white history month or scholarships for white people.
The business of film, like many others, is overwhelmingly white and male, an instrument of empire from the jump. Lion’s Gate’s upcoming Gods Of Egypt, along with committing the sin of looking like absolute shit, is the latest release to have been criticized for the all-too-common crime of “whitewashing.” A white Dane and a white Scot playing Egyptian gods Horus and Set is as true to form for Hollywood in 2016 as it was in 1963 when Elizabeth Taylor starred in Cleopatra, but the term whitewashing almost doesn’t capture it. It implies that there’s some sort of blunt artistry involved in actively denying that people of color, women or LGBT people exist.
For every one of these films made, how many Black-helmed/Black-starring pictures are getting passed on? And miss me with how we should “just make better movies” if we want to be represented or awarded when cinematic beer shit with white leads like Movie 43, Aloha, Mortdecai, The Identical, the Point Break remake, Pixels, and Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? fills up theaters consistently.
Sure, we have Marlon Wayans out here still cranking ’em out, but even he seems to be going where the money is. If Marlon Wayans or other Black writers, producers or directors released a movie about the Haitian Revolution or the Mali empire or Madame CJ Walker, and it played in 3000 theaters, he’d flop hard and likely pay dearly when trying to get future films made.
There are so many movies that my white friends love that either elicit a “meh” or a “oh hell no” from me because of some not-so-slick Hollywood bullshit. The Coen Brothers’ latest, Hail Caesar, is a period piece, so it makes sense in a way that Black actors are nowhere to be found. But for Joel Coen to tell the Daily Beast that yes, diversity is important, but the Oscar ceremony doesn’t “matter much from an economic point of view” exposes a disconnect, born of privilege, that has tempered my love for some classic and modern films.
Pulp Fiction was groundbreaking and had a massive cultural impact, but I wanna reach through the TV and slap the shit out of Tarantino every time I hear him drop that “dead nigger storage” line. The legendary director has of course taken to that word (with the hard -er) in a show of how “down” he is. He marches against police brutality in New York, and it’s supposed to be all good. But just like out in the real world, in Hollywood, we don’t need allies, we need warriors ready to John Brown some shit when the time comes. And the time is now.
Executives hunger for “four-quadrant” films, the type that bring in men and women, and the over and under-25 set, and of course they’ve found them in superhero movies. But with Marvel’s trio of Chrises (all these white dudes are starting to look alike), many of these movies are “look at how extraordinary white people are” sizzle reels packaged as films. Never mind that Black moviegoers continue to show up for this genre in droves for year after year. The bullshit line of “diverse” (one Black or brown character serving as cannon fodder, comic relief or window dressing does not a diverse cast make) films not selling has been smashed to bits by the Fast and Furious franchise, and to an extent by the latest entry in the formerly whiter-than-Mitt Romney’s-heavily-starched-boxers Star Wars franchise.
Am I going to cease enjoying film until Hollywood gets its mind right? Most likely not. But I am going to make a more concerted effort to support and signal boost the works of not just actors of color, but producers, screenwriters and others behind the scenes. I am insanely excited about Nate Parker’s upcoming Birth Of A Nation, and even more surprised that it isn’t starring Matthew McConaughey as Nat Turner. I am currently lobbying for Selma director and all-around boss Ava DuVernay to adopt me and make me her best boy. I am thrilled that Black trans actress Mya Taylor (of Tangerine fame) is getting her shot. Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson starring in a biopic about Black women scholars involved in the space race is undeniably next level. And Jeff Friday’s American Black Film Festival holds special significance this year. Representation is more important now than ever, and the question becomes whether the film industry will fuck up like the recording one did in underestimating the importance of embracing change. As a film lover and someone who hopes to make films someday, like a drunk uncle, I want to see them do right. Only time will tell.
