WP3_REVISED: Fighting For Our Place In the Sun
Oscar Micheaux.
Sidney Poitier.
Dorothy Dandridge.
Rex Ingram.
Pearl Bailey.
Butterfly McQueen.
Juanita Moore.
Canada Lee.
Cicely Tyson.
Harry Belafonte.
The names above as well as many more black artists, however big or small, dared to be black in Hollywood and contributed to the mountains we’ve moved on screen in terms of diversity. These names remind me of many first in the in the industry that inspired a younger black generation to begin creating a world in which they saw themselves represented in media. For them, I am grateful. For the current leaders’ push to diversify the industry, I am personally thankful.
Although the beginning of my journey focused on the clear lack we have in representation across the board in the movie industry, I want to recognize how far we’ve come and continue the dialogue with some of my favorite filmmakers. Oftentimes I feel that existing in a marginalized community is a constant fight where we don’t always pick our heads up to see how far we’ve come. This is why I want to do so and celebrate the progress instead of always critiquing our circumstances. My way of doing so is to analyze two of my favorite films making social commentary on the black experience and engage in dialogue with black filmmakers as well as the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum.
“We younger Negro artist who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.” — Langston Hughes (The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain)
So here’s to celebrating the trailblazers that have come so far with or without the credit!
I learned so much about these trailblazers by visiting the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum dedicated to Black Cinema 1898–1971 called “Regeneration”. In order to celebrate us, it’s important to know one’s history and what direction we are trying to progress toward. That is why I began analyzing regeneration. Regeneration is defined as “generative in its desire to dismantle disciplinary barriers.” This essentially means regeneration actively dismantles racist stereotypes. Regeneration does so by “presenting historical films and related materials in conjunction with contemporary art” in order to “create a visual dialogue and reveal social, cultural and historical urgencies that have faced African American visual artists and filmmakers for generations” (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures).
Visiting the Academy of Motion Pictures and seeing the Black Cinema exhibit firsthand revealed how powerful the work of regeneration is. By creating “visual dialogue” for parties like myself to use “in conjunction with contemporary art”, they have successfully sparked conversations of change and relayed how films made in the 19th century impact us today.
A sucker for romance films at the exhibit, I loved seeing Something Good — Negro Kiss (1898), a film capturing the earliest example of African-American intimacy. It showed that we can love. It showed that we can kiss. It showed that we can dance. It showed that we can celebrate. But most importantly, it showed that we can have a human experience and it was a refreshing change from how D.W. Griffith depicted us in Birth of Nation.
NPR’s “100 Years Later” piece on the Birth of a Nation described its everlasting impact on the “repulsive imagery” of black people and the spark that re-ignited the Ku Klux Klan. The fact that we are still talking about its effects 100 years later is a testament to the power of film and what racist film served as the “foundation” of Hollywood. USC’s very own Todd Boyd, Professor of Race and Popular Culture, spoke to NPR in this article saying “If you plant seeds, what grows from those seeds is going to be based on what you planted. So if this is at the root, then it shouldn’t be a surprise when in the last few weeks, there have been discussions about the lack of people of color being nominated for the Oscars. In my mind, this is very much a branch that grew out of the tree that was Birth of a Nation.”
I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Boyd’s statement, we can’t expect the root of something to change unless we uproot the entire tree and start again with inclusion in mind. This is where I feel the work the Academy of Motion Pictures comes into play.Regeneration can help change a false narrative and uproot the negative stereotypes by creating contemporary imagery that places older black films in dialogue with today’s films.
Additionally, I find Professor Boyd’s argument similar to the arguments made during the Black Lives Matter movement on policing. The institution was built out of the origins of slave catchers and upholding racist laws. This is exactly what Hollywood was born out of no matter how much we neglect it: we are romanticizing a racist institution in desperate need of reformation. Although some don’t feel like representation in film is on the same level as maybe policing, history has shown us through Birth of a Nation that racist and discriminatory media portrayal can directly lead to violence and 100 years of unjust stereotyping. But there is hope at the end of the tunnel in acknowledging the power of film. If false negative stereotypes can be placed on the black community through film, then it is possible to make double the efforts to reverse the stigmas and hate.
Furthermore, I find that films speak to the times and speak to one another, however old. We are in constant conversation with what we watch. Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner starring Sidney Poitier in 1967 describes the racism and bigotry an African-American man faces when he goes to meet his significant other’s white parents. This was during a time when interracial marriages were illegal in some states and I appreciated its creation because it created conversation surrounding social issues. Interracial marriages ventured from illegal to looked down upon to skeptical. Get Out, Jordan Peele’s film, starring Daniel Kaluuya in 2017 follows a similar plot when the main character, Chris, goes home with his girlfriend to meet her white family.
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” -W.E.B. Dubois (Regeneration)
In Regeneration, W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of “double consciousness” details African-American’s “constant awareness of how their self-images co-exist with the ways in which they are being viewed by others”. I found how this old concept of “double consciousness” has taken on a new visual life in spanning over many black films. The feeling of looking “at oneself through the eyes of others” has created much needed dialogue in order for people to have a gaze into the plight of the black experience.
In both Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Get Out, the main characters had to have “constant awareness” of how their blackness is construed to their significant other’s parents and learn how two “self-images” could “co-exist”. In Jordan Peele’s film he had to constantly ask whether his white girlfriend told her parents whether he was black because he knew he wasn’t just bringing himself home, but also his blackness. This tug of double consciousness I feel remained consistent throughout the film. This was obviously apparent when racist remarks were thrown Chris’s way from “liberals” and he was forced to swallow his words. This is because they were not looking at Chris, the human being, but rather Chris, the black body. We later find out in the movie that the sick joke was them auctioning Chris’s body and how in his feelings of “two-ness”, his gut was right all along.
I felt as though we were visualizing this sense of double consciousness and he was stuck in a middle deciphering how to “co-exist”. His white audience saw him as a commodity and used hypnosis to fix him up and rid his bad habits before they sold him off to the highest bidder. The white Armitage family did this all while making him feel crazy for one side of his consciousness telling him something is off. To add on, I find the film did an amazing job explaining double consciousness as Chris was trying to escape with his life. He saw one of the family members struggling for her life and couldn’t leave her to die. I connected parallels of how black people often feel the need to go back and save their community, even if it means putting themselves in harm’s way. Their self-images continuously have to “co-exist” and they have to think of a certain “two-ness” or “two-souls”. The film did a perfect job depicting how exhausting and strenuous this sense of double consciousness is living as a black person in a white world.
Furthermore, it is not a coincidence to me how the power of the film camera, more specifically, the flash, illuminated the truth in the ones that were trapped in their own body. In Regeneration, the author connected the power of photography to the likes of film and showed how renowned leaders like Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth used media as the “strategic and necessary tool for asserting the humanity of black people”. I feel Jordan Peele harnessed this double meaning in his film. The camera had the power to awaken the brain to its reality and the flash initiated it: allowing the black individuals trapped to wake up and get out!
Although Get Out is fiction, I do hope we continue to spread awareness on the new forms of racism that have evolved in the 21st century. I applaud Jordan Peele for snapshotting the black experience in such a creative way. His name is a great addition to the black trailblazers listed in the beginning of this celebration as he won Best Original Screenplay and Director for this film and sparked endless conversations.
“Once you begin to see the spaces where you are not, you begin to wonder: Where are all the people of color? And where are the Black Folks in particular? Where are the signing cowboys, the bull riders, the stories of the Black GIs and officers, the love stories? Where are the screenwriters, producers, and costume designers? How can it be that we are just not there?” — Whoopi Goldberg
In addition, as I continued to read through Regeneration, I landed upon the quote above that really resonated with me. “Where are all the people of color?…How can it be that we are just not there?”. Sometimes I wonder the same thing when I watch new movies today that romanticize the past and don’t include African-Americans in the film. I feel that it portrays that some filmmakers don’t want to touch the race issue. But by not including us and pretending that history didn’t treat us the way it did, is simply counterproductive. I appreciate Whoopi Goldberg speaking out on this explaining how “people thought [African-Americans] were only maids and butlers who had no real place in this industry except as, well ‘color’…These questions are finally beginning to shine a light, in the spaces and shadows where history often doesn’t look”.
“History often doesn’t look” into our past and hard truths and Whoopi Goldberg isn’t the only one that agrees with that statement. Filmmakers like Julie Dash, Dawn Porter, and Barry Jenkins all spoke in interviews about the obstacles they face trying to make films about the black experience. From Julie Dash’s filmmaking experience, “film executives, Black and white, young and old, want me to tell stories that they’re curious about, not stories that I’m curious about exploring and bringing to the screen.” This dance of telling stories that “they’re” curious about has been a forty year tug-a-war for Julie.
The same is said for Dawn Porter: her voice is being stifled, but this time, in the language of what will win awards in a predominantly white system. Ms. Porter now is “more interested in making sure that what I’m making satisfies me personally and intimately. Not pursuing accolades that I’m told I should care about or climbing someone else’s ladder”. I find it so amazing that no matter the circumstance these filmmakers didn’t allow the outside forces to stop them from making something they knew society needed to see and converse about. They questioned the system of changing for “someone else’s ladder” rather than changing their films to fit a biased gage of success.
Lastly, Barry Jenkins found success and then made a film about slavery and faced backlash on having “another slave narrative”. His response was “there have been like eight thousand movies about the Holocaust. Do you know why it’s hard to go to Germany right now and find any overt signs of Nazism? It’s because we have clearly owned up to the history of the Holocaust. There have been five or six, maybe seven narratives that we can openly identify that have been about the American condition of slavery…” When he put this into perspective for me, I wholeheartedly agreed. The numbers show how we desperately don’t want to own up to our own wrongs and are therefore stifling an entire genre of film that could enlighten those that choose to overtly act out racist behaviors. But what all of these filmmakers have in common is leaning into their truths and remaining authentic to themselves. This I admire. We should continue to uplift them and celebrate their contributions to Black Hollywood.
This overwhelming sense of admiration and gratitude was rooted in discovering more about the ones that laid down the foundation before me. The entertainment industry is one I want to work in and one I’ve previously felt my chances were slim in, especially since the profile of the masses doesn’t match my description. I was seeking community and found it in the trailblazers that came before me: the incredibly brave and innovative black filmmakers that broke barriers.
“I feel every day that I’m walking in the footsteps of people who came before. But you realize that at some point their footsteps run out and it’s your footsteps. That you are going beyond what they were allowed to do and were supported in doing. It’s a bittersweet feeling.” — Ava DuVernay
I leave you with this quote from my favorite filmmaker, Ava DuVernay, whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet. She speaks of forging new paths that journey beyond the ones that came before us and its “bittersweet feeling”. I find this predicament scary, but comforting knowing that one of us is going through the same experience. Even if I’m not immediately surrounded with people that look like me, finding out that I am not alone in this journey toward more diverse media is what I take comfort in. The interviews with three successful black filmmakers reveal that and so does Regeneration’s description of the everlasting determination for black filmmakers “to keep fighting for their place in the sun”. Reflecting, I launched this investigation into the treatment of Black people in the entertainment industry out of fear that there isn’t enough room for us. But with each film we make and the conversation it sparks, progress is made even if we have to accomplish it at our own table. And that is something to celebrate.
Works Cited:
Amistadresource.Org, www.amistadresource.org/documents/document_07_07_040_hughes.pdf. Accessed 28 Nov. 2023.
“Ava DuVernay Interview: Capturing Black Life & the Timeless Relevance of Gordon Parks.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Feb. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7f1CbJtnV4.
Berger, Doris, et al. Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971. Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, 2022.
Haygood, Wil. Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.
Staff, NPR. “100 Years Later, What’s The Legacy of ‘Birth of a Nation’?” NPR, NPR, 8 Feb. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation.
