Slaves, Drug dealers and Oscar awards.
In 2014, Steve McQueen’s biographical period- drama Twelve Years A Slave won an astounding three Academy Awards; among these was best supporting actress for Lupita Nyong’o and best adapted screenplay for John Ridley. Preceding this by only two years, another black historical period-drama Tate Taylor’s The Help was nominated for four Academy Awards. To call this a pattern would be unjust however a simple google search would clarify that the pattern is more than crystal clear.
Hollywood loves black actors…. As long as they are slaves, or drug dealers, or victims of police brutality or any other narrative that reinforces that we are oppressed and the police want us dead and we grow up with absent fathers, and did I mention we’re very very oppressed!
Now, as filmmaking fanatic I believe all of these previously mentioned films deserved the awards and portrayed stories that were necessary. However, my issue lies in the perpetual portrayal of the black body as a place of endless trauma and tribulation.
Let’s take a second and imagine the young boy who only ever sees men who look like him being whipped mercilessly by their “masters” or being degraded by prison officers. That young boy’s dreams will gradually become limited in his mind and he will conform to the statistics before he even finishes his GCSEs.
This is not to say film and television are directly responsible for individual life choices but rather that if a young black girl does not see films about black women being professors, lawyers, doctors etc she may not believe it a realistic career choice. That’s what this is about, the young men and women not seeing themselves represented positively.
I (being a writer) strongly believe in the freedom to write whatever story you feel necessary. In fact, some of my favourite films include; Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Jonathan Damme’s Beloved. Both films follow the narrative that I am expressing my resentment for however, I am not contradicting myself. The issue is not the narrative of the slave per se, the issue is that it is the dominant narrative in black media.
There is a plethora of films that belong to the biographical period-drama genre in the black community, there is additionally an abundance of films from the gang genre. Despite the quality of these films, it is important that other representations of black characters are equally being portrayed in the mainstream.
Science fiction, coming of age, horror and romantic comedies are a few genres in which finding a film with black protagonists would be an almost impossible quest. From a business and marketing standpoint it can be argued that Hollywood has a formula and they know that black films only sell when they are trauma narratives. However, as seen in recent years black films that have explored different genres have produced award winning films. For example, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight received an academy award and Jordan Peele’s Get Out also received an academy award.
Moonlight in particular is a narrative I felt needed to be told from a black perspective. In the world of film, exploring the spectrum of sexuality has become more accepted and some of the greatest films of the last five years have diverted from the heteronormative protagonist. Examples of this include Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 coming of age film Call Me by Your Name. Films the likes of this were missing in the black community however, Moonlight came as a refreshing breath and highlighted these stories of finding yourself and embracing your sexuality are simultaneously present in black communities and non-black communities.
Another series I feel embodies what is missing from black media is the Netflix original Raising Dion. The story follows a widowed mother trying to raise her superhero son. Narratives like this with black leading roles are virtually non-existent in mainstream media and for that I commend Netflix.
This blog post feels like telling people the sky is blue. Its nothing new. We all know that black people are misrepresented in the media. But that isn’t my argument here, my argument lies not in the fact that slavery films should stop being produced but rather that we need a larger variety of films. Every story that makes black people what they are today matters, even the gruesome ones, however there is also a rom-com waiting to be set in Compton or Peckham. This is in some ways for the creatives who are scared to write stories outside of the box because they don’t guarantee a paycheck. Write it anyway. Produce it anyway. Direct it anyway. Our stories are far more than jail cells and cotton farms.
Originally published at http://culturetalkswithkim.wordpress.com on February 8, 2020.
