African Americans are multi-faceted. Let’s start with this. We are singers. Fighters. Dancers. Politicians. Scholars. Gangsters. Saints. And everything else in between. We are purely people in the way that all people are a multitude of things at a multitude of times. And yet, Hollywood seems to perpetually paint one narrative time and time again, and that is of the horror, degradation, and survival that came out of slavery. While those depictions shouldn’t be abolished — as these are important historical facts of a bygone time — there’s a quiet margin of people who feel that the Black slave narrative has overstayed its welcome in cinema.
Representation in movies has always been a powerful tool, especially since it can paint people (or in the context of this conversation: ethnicities) in a certain way. It can serve as a beacon or even a mirror that reflects the different experiences that characterize and define a particular group. However, when does the effectiveness of representation reach a point of diminishing returns?
Releases such as 12 Years a Slave, Selma, Django Unchained, Amistad, Roots, and 42 dealt with either slavery or civil rights in their own way. Each sought to educate (and entertain) the audiences about the brutal realities of slavery, as well as its lasting effects on African American communities and the fabric of American history. What’s perhaps even more important is that these releases depicted, and thus brought to light, all the atrocities the mainstream media downplayed or simply glossed over.
For example, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, depicted African Americans (who were actually white actors in blackface) better off as enslaved, showing that the institution and practice of slavery are “civilizing” Blacks. That most certainly wasn’t the case, but the white society of the time wanted to feel better about themselves, and Hollywood used movie depictions of “Nobles,” seemingly civilizing the “savage” as just the natural progression of society. Those same practices are now widely recognized as a great violation of human rights and a crime against humanity.
Only twenty years after the release of Birth of a Nation, many things in Hollywood had changed significantly. However, sadly, the portrayal of African Americans had changed very little, which is still evident in 1939’s Gone With the Wind, a movie that portrayed an enslaved and relatively happy and loyal “domestic helper” — a treatment that still reflected America’s segregated society of the time. Still, the movie made history, and so did Hattie McDaniel because she became the first African American to win an Oscar for the portrayal of Mammy.
Then came the much harsher depictions; releases such as Roots and 12 Years a Slave provided the most explicit and historically accurate depictions of the violence, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery. But that still doesn’t fix the problem. The sheer persistence of the Black slave narrative as the dominant form of African American representation in Hollywood has reduced the Black experience to one of victimhood and suffering. Those same movies attest to the fact that there’s an obsession with Black tragedy in Hollywood.
As writer-director Justin Simien (Dear White People) noted, those are typically historical movies, that tend to deal with the African American pain. Since human beings are multifaceted, reducing the African American experience to a Black slave narrative is borderline dehumanizing. To add insult to injury, most of these movies are Oscar bait. Sure, 12 Years a Slave is a great movie, and it rightfully won Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Actress Lupita Nyong’o, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role as a slave in 12 Years, was only the sixth Black actress to do so in nearly a century of cinema.
Her predecessors include Hattie McDaniel and Octavia Spencer — the latter won the award for her portrayal of a civil rights-era maid in The Help. In the end, 12 Years a Slave won three Oscars and grossed nearly $190 million, despite (or perhaps because of) its unrelenting brutality and savagery. Does anyone else see a pattern emerging here? Why does this trend persist? More importantly, who benefits mostly from these depictions and the ongoing fetishization of African American pain? Is the Black slave narrative produced to foster understanding and empathy, or is it just a simple cash grab?
“How many Black men have you met working in Hollywood? It’s a white industry. Just as the NBA is a Black industry.” — Chris Rock
However, with everything said, we will concede that there is a clear and present danger in suggesting that the Black Slave narrative has overstayed its welcome completely. This statement could be loaded with the idea that our collective memory and the painful, brutal, and outright savage history of slavery should be moved beyond or bookmarked somewhere on a dusty shelf next to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. This archiving of history runs the risk of undermining all the efforts to address the lasting effects of slavery, not just on African American communities but others. Thus, we can only conclude that the real challenge lies not in eliminating the Black slave narrative but in ensuring that it’s only one of the many narratives being told.
It’s time for Hollywood to broaden its horizons to the vastness of African American experience, from historical epics to sci-fi and comedy, and to showcase the complexity and sheer multidimensionality of African American culture, history, and experiences.