OSCARS SO WHITE IS NOT NEW

For many years I have been watching the film industry and other media insidiously manipulate the images and angles through which African Americans are viewed. This manipulation has been going on so long and been so consistent and pervasive I could write a book about it, but Donald Bogle already did.
       Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films is a popular book originally published in 1973. It is currently in its fourth edition, updated to include the entire twentieth century. Mr. Bogle will need more updates as the pattern continues into the twenty-first century.

It did not surprise me that Academy Award nominations were rained on Precious, the 2009 movie about a black family that is seriously dysfunctional. That kind of focus is in keeping with the Academy’s history of honoring particular types of roles played by black actors. Among the more than 300 Oscars handed out since 1927, fewer than twenty have gone to black people. 

The winning roles for black actors have largely been when they played characters that conform to conventional white expectations for African Americans—servants, slaves, musicians/athletes, or people who were corrupt and/or cruel. 

The black actors who have received Academy Awards for both leading or supporting roles are: Hattie McDaniel (a maid in Gone With the Wind, 1940), Sidney Poitier (a handyman in Lilies of the Field, 1964), Denzel Washington (a slave in Glory, 1990), Whoopi Goldberg (a dishonest psychic in Ghost, 1991), Cuba Gooding Jr. (a boxer in Jerry Maguire, 1997) Halle Berry (a waitress in Monster’s Ball, 2002), Jamie Foxx (the singer Ray Charles in Ray, 2005), Morgan Freeman (a former boxer in Million Dollar Baby, 2005), Jennifer Hudson (a singer in Dreamgirls, 2007) and Mo'Nique (a brutal and abusive mother in Precious, 2010).

In 2012, the Academy returned to where it began with McDaniel, awarding an Oscar to Octavia Spencer for her role as a maid in The Help. In 2013 two movies about American slavery—Lincoln and Django Unchained—received lots of attention. Both included black actors; however neither of the award winners for these movies was black. (Jamie Foxx was not the right kind of slave.) There was another slave movie released in time to be considered for the 2014 awards, Twelve Years a Slave. That movie excited the country so much, they totally forgot about Fruitvale Station, the movie they were marveling about earlier in the year. 

In my opinion, and I wasn’t alone in this, Fruitvale Station was an excellent movie that dealt directly with contemporary issues. And that, no doubt, was its undoing. 

Why focus on a movie that makes people squirm when you have a perfectly good "black" movie set in the distant past that reassures us all that we’ve made such great progress. Twelve Years a Slave wowed the Academy and received the 2014 Best Picture award. Steve McQueen, the black director, apparently was not so impressive. He managed to direct the Best Picture, but he was not the Best Director. Lupita Nyong’o  received an award for Best Supporting Actor in her role as, surprise! a slave.

The dubious exceptions that prove this insidious rule are Louis Gossett (An Officer and a Gentleman, 1983) and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, 2007), who won Oscars as strong military men, though both characters were stern and pitiless. In the same year Precious was released, Morgan Freeman starred in Invictus as Nelson Mandela, one of the most inspirational figures of our time. Although Freeman was nominated, I was certain that a role depicting a black man as a shrewd, resourceful, inspiring leader would not receive an Oscar. I was right.

By celebrating only roles that are subservient, cruel, demeaning and/or within an “acceptable” profession, Hollywood's majority reinforces America’s assumption of white dominance.

The case of Denzel Washington is a stark illustration of this practice. Washington is one of the most talented actors ever; he became Malcolm X and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in the title roles of two films about complex and empowered black men—Malcolm X (1992) and Hurricane (1999). The Academy Award voters didn't find either of those to be winning performances. In 2002 when Washington finally received an Oscar as best actor in a leading role, it was for Training Day, a film in which he played a brutal and crooked cop. That was a role he could be honored for.

Academy voters for Oscar winners are 94% white and 74% male, and their average age is sixty-three. I expect this trend to continue.

And it is. 

Excerpted from "The Viewers Involvement" in the essay collection, Not All Poor People Are Black by Janet Cheatham Bell.

Purchase Not All Poor People Are Black here.

TWO MOVIES ABOUT SLAVERY: LINCOLN and DJANGO UNCHAINED

When I was a child, my mother told me the only reason my brother kept calling me names was because he could get a rise out of me. “If you ignore him,” she said, “he’ll stop.” She was right. So I learned it’s what I answer to that matters more than what you call me.

            I may not have seen Django Unchained if the movie had not generated such controversy. There was angry talk about the number of times “nigger” was used--somebody counted and said it was more than a hundred. Spike Lee said he wouldn’t see it because it would offend his ancestors. Others were outraged that Brunhilde (Kerry Washington’s character) was a “helpless female” needing rescue. (If she had been the proverbial “strong black woman” fighting to get her husband back, we would have complained about that as well.)

            I thought Django Unchained  was fun and funny.

            When I heard the contemporary music playing, I knew it was not a serious movie, so I relaxed. I’ve seen a couple of Quentin Tarantino movies and I was more disturbed by the prospect of his signature mayhem than I was about how many times “nigger” would be uttered.

            This movie is an ironic spoof of slavery. Beloved (1998) was a serious film treatment of slavery and nobody saw it. Tarantino knows what kind of movie puts butts in the seats: lots of big blasting guns, explosions, blood flowing freely, a damsel in distress, an invincible hero who has close calls, but whom we know will triumph in the end; and, with tongue firmly in cheek, anachronisms all over the place. In other words, Tarantino made a typical Hollywood adventure film. What was atypical is that it was set within slavery and the last man standing was black.              

          Yes, Tarantino mocked the travesty that was slavery, but he also showed the cruelty and absurdity of it. I much prefer that to having slavery being denied or lied about. And there were several moments of hilarity. The night riders who couldn’t see through their ineptly made hoods was a scream. The sadistic slaver who “owned” Brunhilde called his plantation “Candyland;” a silly parody of the pastoral names given to the estates of traders in human flesh. I hooted when, after all the whites around him were dead, Samuel Jackson’s character dropped his cane, straightened his back and stopped acting servile. I also laughed when Tarantino’s own character wound up as a hole in the ground, victim of one of the explosions. It was escapist, cathartic entertainment.

            The film Lincoln, on the other hand, is serious and can be faulted for ignoring important aspects of history pertinent to the story. I believe the movie has resonated with so many, as it did with me, because nearly 150 years ago the U.S. Congress was as sharply polarized as it is today, and along nearly the same lines. This is a movie for those who love the gamesmanship of politics. Unfortunately, by focusing solely on the white male elected officials who finally managed to make traffic in human lives illegal in the United States, Spielberg has denied agency to the many others who forced this political battle. This is particularly obvious and painful because those who are ignored, not even given the courtesy of a line of conversation, are those who are historically marginalized in this society that reserves power for wealthy white males.

            Briefly, these people are Quakers who were resisting slavery in the seventeenth century; abolitionists who labored for decades to change public opinion from acceptance of slavery to abhorrence for it. One of the most eloquent abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, met with President Lincoln to convince him to allow blacks to fight in the Union Army. Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, said, “The 13th Amendment originated not with Lincoln but with a petition campaign early in 1864 organized by the Women’s National Loyal League, an organization of abolitionist feminists headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” To not even mention Douglass or the Women’s National Loyal League in this movie is inexcusable.

            However, I am pleased to see a serious, major American movie admit that the Civil War, this country’s most pivotal event, was fought over whether or not the U.S. would continue to hold other humans in bondage. For a very long time the country has been in denial about that.

           The capture, enslavement of, and commerce in the bodies of people of African descent went on for hundreds of years, and the fallout from that trauma continues to the present day. It will hound us and haunt us until we face it, talk about it and accept it as a tragic part of our history. Despite their flaws, these two popular movies, the latest of several Hollywood attempts to present that brutal experience on film, at least have the country talking about an enormous and critical subject that we usually avoid.

THE HELP, or Comforting Whites

I wasn’t interested in writing about The Help by Kathryn Stockett until the book became all the rage and was made into a movie. I rarely read fiction, but a friend’s book club read it and she loaned me her copy to get my opinion. I enjoyed the quick read, largely because it captured that mixture of devotion and disgust that people have when they clean up after their “betters.” I know this because I’ve been a maid—your devotion is to doing a good job, your disgust is that they actually believe they are better than you.

I assume the book is largely autobiographical, set in the past so Stockett’s Mississippi family and friends wouldn’t be offended. Besides, how could anybody actually write a book about blacks in Mississippi in the 1960s and virtually ignore the civil rights upheavals? Obviously, it was not part of her consciousness. Her brother's black maid sued her so the author has to insist it’s a work of fiction. White families usually don’t have a clue how their black maids feel about them, so it’s clear to me that Stockett listened to some maids, or a maid.

My issue is not with Kathryn Stockett. I am just tired of the same old shit. At age 74 I’ve been watching this black-people-don’t-exist-until-white-people-notice-us for a very long time. When a white person writes about black life, major media and the movie studios suddenly see us. It's Black Like Me all over again. I wrote about actually being a maid in my memoir, The Time and Place That Gave Me Life; nobody cared.

I know why The Help struck a huge responsive chord in America. The popularity of the book and its being so quickly made into a movie is a comforting reminder to Americans of the place black folk should occupy. This reminder is necessary because there's an African American family in the White House and black folks could get the big head and start thinking they are equal to whites. (After President Obama’s election, the first movie about blacks that was wildly popular was Precious. What a hit that was! SIX Academy Award nominations.)

A group of whites didn’t have to get together to decide that The Help is important because the image of faithful black servants is as American as mom, apple pie and the flag. Black folk were kept as slaves four times longer than we’ve been “free.” And for the first hundred years after slavery, most blacks had jobs serving whites; this is the most familiar and therefore most comforting image white Americans have of blacks. As blacks move forward in a quest for full citizenship, this vision of the “good old days” is periodically resurrected to soothe whites. There have been many incarnations of this comforting trope of blacks as servants including Corinna, Corinna, 1994; Driving Miss Daisy, 1989; Imitation of Life, 1959, a remake of the "immortal" 1934 version; the Beulah Show television series, 1950-53; Song of the South, 1946, and the most beloved of all, Gone With the Wind, 1939. As I said, this has been going on for a very long time.

Other than the reassurance it provides, I see no reason to rave about this book/movie once again showing blacks serving whites. Two years after The Help was published, it’s on film. As the presidential campaign revs up next year, it will be up for Academy Awards and the dominant media image will be black servants being used and abused by whites. Ah, so satisfying it almost makes up for having a black man in the White House.

My last word on "Precious"

I saw the movie Precious in Chicago before it went into wide release and expressed my opinion of it at the time. However, since then more people have seen the movie and several have found it touching and inspiring. The movie wasn't as awful as I expected, but then my expectations were low. As I've read other comments about the movie, I realize that my response is informed by my 72 years of battling racism in the United States and having seen soooooo much that informs my perception of Precious. I've seen the film industry manipulate the general public about the life of African Americans in so many insidious ways that I could write a book about it, but Donald Bogle already has.

I didn't need to see a movie to remind me that some people live horrifying lives because I've seen similar lives up close and personal. At first I thought perhaps the movie might inspire those who are struggling in hopeless situations, but at the end of the movie, Precious is single, homeless, unemployed, HIV positive, and has two children, one of whom is disabled. I'm not sure what young woman would be inspired by that. To give Precious her due, she has learned to read. Unfortunately, I know too many folks who read quite well yet who continue to struggle mightily in this winner take all society that we live in.

The "Oscar buzz" about Precious reminds me of the fact that of the 300 or more Academy Awards passed out over the years, 11 black people have been winners. Initially the winning roles were a maid, a handy man, a slave, a dishonest psychic, and a waitress. Recently the field has been widened to include those other acceptable roles for blacks: musicians--Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, and athletics--Cuba Gooding, Morgan Freeman. Louis Gossett and Forrest Whittaker are the exceptions that prove the rule, winning awards as military men.

Did I leave anybody out? Oh, yeah, Denzel Washington, one of the finest actors ever, who literally channeled his characters in the roles of two powerful and noble black men--Malcolm X and Ruben "Hurricane" Carter. The Academy Awards didn't find those to be winning performances, however, but then Denzel played a crooked cop. "This is more like it!" Hollywood apparently thought. And he won best actor for that. In my heart, Hollywood has a long, long, loooong way to go to make up for that travesty. And Precious is NOT the first step on that road.

Random Thoughts

I just saw Man on Fire for the first time and loved it! Usually, I don't care for violent movies, but I found this one deeply satisfying to that dark side of me that likes revenge. Of course the fact that Denzel Washington was in practically every scene didn't hurt. He was at his Denzelian best as the cool, ruthless assassin.

Speaking of violence, the Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick, and PETA as well as many others are outraged. I certainly don't approve of Vick's treatment of his dogs, but I save my outrage for those many occasions when human beings are treated inhumanely. For example in cases of domestic violence when law enforcement officers, up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court, refuse to enforce restraining orders against men who often wind up killing or maiming women and children. I am also outraged that this country's leaders in the previous administration tortured and abused "enemy combatants" as if they were dogs. Perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall witnessing the kind of public and media outcry about that as about Vick.

SLAVERY AND HEALTH CARE
I've just finished reading a book entitled A Slave No More. It's the stories of two men who stopped accepting being enslaved during the Civil War, before President Lincoln had issued his Emancipation Proclamation. In reading once again about the dilemma Lincoln faced, it reminded me of the current situation with President Obama and his health care reform. Lincoln was caught between Southerners who didn't want blacks to be free, and Northerners who didn't care if they were free or not, so long as they didn't come up North. It recalls that old African American folk saying: "In the South they don't care how close you get so long as you don't get too high. In the North, they don't care how high you get, so long as you don't get too close."

Once again, the U.S. President is faced with making the best decision for the country in the face of an entrenched opposition whose interests are selfish. Justice prevailed in Lincoln's time, although he paid the ultimate price for that victory. And justice will prevail this time as well without Obama having to die for it. However, we must continue the fight because the opposition is just as determined to preserve their power and privilege today as the slaveholders were.

COMPROMISE
Without the Left and the Right, how would we know where the middle is?