The Eternal Relevance of Black Entertainment
How evergreen stories of the Black experience shed light on the pain and frustration of Black Lives Matter.
You’ve probably noticed many on social media are doing their part to share Black films, television shows, and documentaries — the right ones — to watch to best support Black voices and stories. Platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime are even highlighting these to draw attention to them. It is absolutely important and critical to share these stories and provide opportunity for creative, diverse people.
These tales told through visual art serve as reminders to not only educate people, but can also serve as a collective lesson on why many are so frustrated and fed up. Real life hasn’t enacted the messages or lessons that have been told in these mediums for decades.
While watching Da 5 Bloods on the aformentioned Netflix, I was reminded that these stories about Black lives are so consistently prescient because we have been reliving the same historic script over and over again. The new Spike Lee joint is a story about Vietnam vets and touches on the ill treatment of Black soldiers despite fighting for their country. While the premise is based in a bygone era, it is still a reminder of how Black people have been rejected from America, no matter the contributions made.
13th, a documentary by Ava Duvernay, has appeared on many lists and focuses on the decades long evolution of the treatment of Black people from slavery to Jim Crow to the criminal justice system still in place today. It provides so many answers to so many questions people might have about the current rebuking of police authority across the country. It’s almost as if this film was made in response to the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor rather than predating them. These stories are a part of a stark history that people of color can’t escape from.
From When They See Us to Fruitvale Station, stories of Black struggle to merely be seen as human are as relevant today as they were when the real-life stories they’re based on came to light. And it’s maddening.
We’re perpetually stuck in the second act of a movie about Black struggle with the third act of resolution and hope never in sight.
If you don’t know why people are taking to the streets in frustration and outrage, just look at the films and television shows that tell evergreen stories. The Black experience on film and in television has deep roots in pain, suffering, and overcoming hardships based purely on the color of ones skin. It consistently hits so close to home and always because there’s little change to prevent these stories from repeating themselves. That’s where the frustration sets in. It’s why Black people across the country have thrown their hands up in disgust at the lack of change.
These stories depict racism in all forms and serve as reminders of injustice no matter how far our country may think it has come or how far individual Black people may have come (i.e. President Barack Obama). Remember that episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where Will and Carlton get pulled over for driving a nice car? It’s a lesson in racial profiling that Will’s character — and the older Phil and Vivian — is already well aware of, but Carlton has a hard time coming to grips with. He learns in the end, that no matter how affluent a Black person may be, your bank statement doesn’t show up on your skin. Have things changed since this episode aired in 1990? No. Well, actually, now we have cellphones that capture traffic stops when things go wrong like in the case of Sandra Bland.
These episodes of racial prejudice don’t make it into network television series for being one-off incidents. They’re there to bring awareness to a harsh reality that many who are watching have experienced, myself included. The Black experience as seen through film and television, isn’t showing how things once were, but rather how they still are.
This isn’t to say that these stories shouldn’t be told. They absolutely should be and Black creators should get the latitude to tell the stories of their experience while also weaving new tales.
Many in this country would like to think that we’re in a “post-racial” America. Where everyone has the same liberties and freedoms and is treated equally and all prejudices are solved if you’re kinda racist, but become friends with a Black man by becoming his driver in the deep south. But we’re not in a “post-racial” America. Great story tellers like Ava Duvernay, Spike Lee, Ryan Coogler, and Lena Waithe have been showing this to us.
Black Panther was such a triumph — among various other reasons — because it reminded us that a “post-racial” world exists moreso in a fantasy and the antagonist (if you can call him that) tells us that Wakanda doesn’t exist for millions around the world. The movie is about empowerment and possibility. But we’re not there yet.
We’re still in a place where movies about the Black experience in the Antebellum era all the way through today still carry relevant lessons about what it’s like to be Black in America. This is where the frustration sets in. For centuries the mistreatment of Black people has existed in some form or another — none of which are just or morally acceptable. We’ve reached a boiling point and if one has trouble understanding why, one simply has to look back and see what Black movies, television, and documentaries have been trying to say for decades.
I hope people don’t just watch, but see why these stories are so consistenly relevant.
