TREATMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS.   Term Paper ID:30538 Click to get this paper

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Paper Abstract: Discusses stereotyped portrayals of black males in various films. Cites examples from THE BIRTH OF A NATION, GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, the blaxploitation genre, MANDINGO, 1930s films of the old South, THEY WON'T FORGET, 1940S STEREOTYPES AND THE "New Negro," TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Realistic treatment of black males in several independent later films. Paper Introduction: D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967) represent opposing poles in the treatment of the African-American male in Hollywood films. The portrayal of black men in both films is absurd, but their intentions were quite different. Griffith, the Southern-born director whose great career was a milestone in the development of the medium, claimed until his death that his film was not racist despite the thousands of African Americans and white Americans who explained why it was, indeed, a landmark in screen racism. His conception of the old stereotype of the sexually predatory black male, intent on despoiling white females, gave cinematic form to one of the most prevalent myths involved in white fear of black people. Kramer, on the other hand, was a devout liberal interested in furthering the cause of Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. In A Patch of Blue he once againplayed the calm, controlled, respectable black man and met a pretty, blind,young, white woman who was under the thumb of her controlling, drunken, andvulgar mother. MGM-Pandro S. Between 1929 and 1941,according to Guerrero, Hollywood produced more than 75 feature films withthis setting. Responding to blackcriticisms of his character's saintliness Poitier, too, argued that suchroles "served black interests, in that they suggested the possibility ofmeaningful black-white interaction and racial integration" (Woll & Miller59). The film's hero defends the manand exposes the prejudice that lies behind the town's willingness to blamethe African American despite having plenty of reasons to doubt the word ofthe woman's father (who was sexually abusing her) or the intimidated wordof the woman herself. But only with knowledge of the persistence of this notion inreal life--and an understanding of the sexual queasiness underlyingHollywood's refusal to either employ the stereotype in its racist films orconfront when the atmosphere improved around 194 --can one understand theemergence of a series of films that specifically counteracted the buckstereotype during the Civil Rights era; culminating, of course, in theegregious Guess who's Coming to Dinner? The difference was merely thatwhile white Southerners might be more overtly racist and complain, as someactually bothered to do, that Eddie Anderson's "Rochester" character was"too familiar with [his] white employer," Jack Benny, audiences in the restof the country were content to enjoy (and assign much truth to) thestereotypical comic cowardice and superstition of the Rochester character(Bogle 92). Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. It did this, however, in such an indirect mannerthat it might seem as though white women are now the ones being blamed. Philadelphia, Temple UP, 1993.Kramer, Stanley, dir. The former typepersisted to a degree and although audiences could conclude that theirviolence was an expression of release from sexual repression, the sexualelement in such characters could only be inferred, a sign of Hollywood'sincreasing refinement of "the art of suggestion" (Guerrero 17). Even in melodramas such as They Won't Forget (1937) Hollywood shiedaway from presenting the stereotype even though the black suspect in amurder case was not found guilty. Lion International, 1959.Diawara, Manthia. This essay deals with strange career of the 'buck' stereotypewhich despite having virtually disappeared from the screen for fifty yearsstill had to be refuted once the movies began to mature a bit in light ofthe Civil Rights movement. Griffith, the Southern-born director whose great career was amilestone in the development of the medium, claimed until his death thathis film was not racist despite the thousands of African Americans andwhite Americans who explained why it was, indeed, a landmark in screenracism. The alleged words of the politically ambitiousnewspaper editor who spurred the outcry against Frank were used in theplay: "We can lynch a nigger any time, but when do we get a chance to hanga Yankee Jew?" (quoted in Erickson). In 1967 thefilmmakers indirectly acknowledged the secret that Hollywood had kept forso long (but was still known to everyone), i.e., that Griffith's 1915vision of the lecherous black buck was, indeed, central to the Americanfear of the black 'other' and had been so for a long time. But as forthe latter type Bogle dates its disappearance from the screen as roughly1915 to 1971 when black director Melvin van Peebles reintroduced the"sexually assertive black male" in his Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song(16). http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dllGreen, Guy, dir. But, aside from a couple of productions of Othello in which otherwiserespectable actors Laurence Olivier (1965) and Orson Welles (1952)performed the role in blackface, interracial relationships were theprovince of two black actors: Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. But if one judged solely by Hollywood's output duringthese years such stereotyping no longer existed and belief in it had fadedaway too. Videocassette. AsDiawara notes, Gus's pursuit of "Little Sister" and her death-before-dishonor decision to kill herself "supports a Manichaean world-view of racein which Gus represents absolute evil and Little Colonel and his sisterembody absolute good" (213). "Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance." Black American Cinema. ButHollywood liberals (and most white liberals, for that matter) still favoredthe integrationist model for righting black wrongs. The portrayalof black men in both films is absurd, but their intentions were quitedifferent. It is obvious that Poitier's role was conceived as acountermeasure against the buck stereotype as he gradually falls in lovewith the white woman, toward whom he is always respectful and to whom hetries to communicate the social barriers against their love blossoming intoromance. But it is important to note that theracism in Hollywood films was, indeed, not just a matter of bowing to box-office pressures from the South. But, as Bogle argues, this particular stereotype disappeared becausethe Griffith portrayal was so vehement and the controversy was so strongthat "movie companies ignored and avoided such a type of black characterfor fear of raising new hostilities" (Bogle 16). His conception of the old stereotype of the sexually predatoryblack male, intent on despoiling white females, gave cinematic form to oneof the most prevalent myths involved in white fear of black people.Kramer, on the other hand, was a devout liberal interested in furtheringthe cause of integration and he made a film that was intended to deal adeath-blow to this stereotype. http://www.artsreformation.com/a 1/hays-code.htmlMulligan, Robert, dir. The role of the husband in One Potato, Two Potato isconceived of as "a decent and intelligent black man without glamorizing oridealizing the character" (Bogle 2 2). Columbia Pictures, 1967.Leroy, Mervyn, dir. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? ArtsReformation.com. The studioswere not interested in controversy of this sort and sought safer subjectsand safer portrayals of black Americans. to the insolent, criminal, and free'brute negroes' of Reconstruction" (Guerrero 15). The Birth of a Nation engaged in the"elaborate construction of stereotypes, ranging from the loyal slave, themammy and the dancing bucks . Berman-Guy Green, 1965.Griffith, D. The depiction of the mindless lust and violenceof the "Gus" character was so starkly drawn that it could not easily bereplicated in an even slightly convincing manner in lesser films. Theopportunity for the use of such characters was not lacking, however, sincethe depiction of the 'Old South' was quite popular in the years between thetwo world wars. Yet it was only the buckthat disappeared and the others, as the histories show, proliferated ingreat numbers as blacks in Hollywood films "were cast almost exclusively incomic roles" (Bogle 16). It was atrend, he says, that continued in the 'blaxploitation' genre with Shaft(1971), Superfly (1972) and their numerous progeny. Online. The growing freedom of the era led to an increase in the depiction ofblack Americans in films as well as in the realism with which they weretreated. . D. Island in the Sun. . Universal, 1962.Peerce, Larry, dir. In the fifty years between these two films the manystereotypes of black people that were employed in Hollywood films includedthe black male primarily as emasculated "toms" or "coons," playing a rangeof rascally, sometimes clever and sometimes simpleminded characters whowere little threat to anything but the self-respect of black audiences.But the hypersexual buck who threatens the virtue of white heroinesdisappeared from the screen. Manthia Diawara. "They Won't Forget." All Movie Guide. One Potato, Two Potato. If anyevidence was needed that this particular figure disappeared as a result ofthe combination of these factors one would only have to look at theproliferation of other stereotypes. The woman is not attempting to 'pass' for white but "simplybelieves it unimportant" and learns that race is never unimportant inAmerica (Bogle 2 ). New York: Continuum, 1999.Cassavetes, John, dir. Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television. There were very few exceptions to this tendency. The importance of the buck stereotype becomes even more evident,however, as the racist horror of the mother (Shelley Winters) is revealedas a matter of sexual jealousy. Thesefilms included such titles as Dixiana (193 ), Mississippi (1935) and theShirley Temple vehicles featuring Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, The LittleColonel (1935) and The Littlest Rebel (1935). In 1967,however, "the revolution in black consciousness" had turned the saintfigure into a joke that was "laughably out of touch with the rising demandfor assertive, realistic black images on the screen" (Guerrero 76). Bogle draws an important distinction in regard to the buck stereotypebetween the "black brute," who was simply a barbaric black man intent oncreating havoc, and the "pure black bucks," who are "oversexed and savage,violent and frenzied as they lust for white flesh" (13). W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Stanley Kramer'sGuess Who's Coming to Dinner? In the 194 s the standard stereotypes persisted but there were moredepictions of black men as ordinary people, e.g., Of Mice and Men (194 ),Ox-Bow Incident (1943), and Lifeboat (1944). The somewhat over-the-top depiction of thesluttish woman who is both a racist and sexually desires the black manforms an odd counterpart, in fact, to the historical fact of the whiteman's relentless pursuit of black women and his desire to assign suchrampant lechery to the black man's supposed pursuit of white women.Although it is unconvincing and terribly didactic A Patch of Blue addressesthe underlying sexual layers of the buck stereotype, which it also refutes,as no other film did. Independent films such as JohnCassavetes' Shadows (1959) and Larry Peerce's One Potato, Two Potato (1964)addressed interracial relationships in an evenhanded fashion. Even in They Won't Forget he had been repressed in aversion of the fumbling imbecilic black man favored by most Hollywoodproducers. The simple elimination of blackcharacters would have solved that problem. Miller. Whatever films were made had to play inall sections of the country in order to be profitable. And, as they well knew, therewould be few films whose power and command of the medium would equal thetalents of Griffith that, to a certain extent, enabled many people tooverlook the film's racism. But his answer was to provide a black manso nearly flawless that the character tumbled over into what would havebeen a new stereotype except that it proved, for the most part, to be thefirst and last of its kind. To Kill a Mockingbird. In this cinematic trend,however, Hollywood was only interested in "perpetuat[ing] the popular myththat the American Negro was a happy, laughing, dancing imbecile" and therewas little room even for the black brute type (Woll & Miller 48). To a certain extentthis was due to the perception in Hollywood that The Birth of a Nationsucceeded despite angry protests over its racist preaching. Videocassette. At its heart the film's none too radical propositionwas, of course, that the stereotype of the 'miscegenist' buck had alwayslived in the hearts and minds of white Southerners and raised its head atfrequent intervals. 3rd ed. The words of the Code warned that"miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races) isforbidden." The specification of "white and black" relationships asopposed to those between various European ethnicities or between whites andAsians is yet another proof (if one was needed) of the widespread nature ofracial prejudice in the country. But the Code was not adopted as a measure of self-regulation by theAssociation of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors until 1934 and thebuck character was apparently absent from 1915 to 1934 as well. They Won't Forget. In Peerce's film a white woman marries a black manwhich prompts her outraged first husband to sue for (and win) custody oftheir daughter. A second reason is provided, however, by Guerrero who notes that theHays Code (officially the Motion Picture Production Code of 193 )specifically prohibited the presentation of interracial sexualrelationships of any kind. But there is an absence of anydiscussion of such roles in histories of African Americans in the movies.None of the volumes by Woll and Miller, Guerrero, or Bogle, for example,discuss films in which the stereotype was portrayed. Clearly the filmmakers recognized that during this period ofintense, widespread economic insecurity audiences wanted reassurance and sothey began "to conceptualize and to produce the 'Old South' as an escapistvehicle, a panacea for depression-era anxieties" (Guerrero 2 ). Indeed, in general, black men who appeared inHollywood films were either sexless or, at most, comically interested inblack women. In addition, the emergentcivil rights activism of the 194 s produced an interest in the so-called"New Negro," the black person as model citizen, and this was reflected insuch films as In This Our Life (1942) and a whole series of militarysubjects including the 1943 films Bataan, Crash Dive, and Sahara (Bogle136). New York: Routledge, 1993. Twentieth Century Fox, 1957.Woll, Allen L., and Randall M. New York: Garland, 1987. Warner Brothers, 1937.Motion Picture Production Code of 193 . Interracial relationships, no longer termed miscegenation(although the Code was not officially dropped until the late 196 s), weresometimes featured in films as well. . The immediateassumption by the townspeople that the black janitor was responsible forthe crime hinges (as it certainly did in real life) on the assumption thatthe black buck who lusts after white women was not a figment of anyone'simagination. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. As Bogle says, all Fontaine's character"and an expectant audience got . The first significant view of interracial male-female relationshipsdid not occur until Sidney Poitier's appearance in A Patch of Blue (1965).Poitier had established himself as Hollywood's version of the reasonableblack man "who attacked racism by indirection and compassion" as long agoas 195 's No Way Out (Woll & Miller 58). But this film also hinted at the persistence of the stereotypein life, even if it was not made manifest on the screen. Certainly it was also true that no studiowanted to make films that would be banned from the Southern markets andthis has frequently been cited as an explanation for the absence of seriousblack characters on the screen. A Patch of Blue. But the film dropped the anti-Semitism and, as Woll and Miller put it, pointed to "sectional antagonism[i.e., North-South conflict] as the source of southern lynch law" (5 ).The director, Mervyn Leroy, was interested in using the black character to"point up racial injustices committed daily by ordinary folks [and] as asymbol of all the oppressed, exploited peoples of the world" (Bogle 138).Yet, as Erickson points out, the character was "played as a superstitiousmoron," from which audiences could infer that the injustice of racialprejudice was not related to the stereotyping of an entire race but to theunreasoning unkindness of white Southerners. The film To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) was set in the South in the193 s and the core conflict centered around the trial of a black manfalsely accused of raping a white woman. Works CitedBogle, Donald. Videocassette. It remained, therefore, for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, with itspowerful liberal stars and director, to take up the challenge. This is so broad and severe a division of theworld that without the skills (and racist commitment) of a Griffith itwould probably be revealed to any audience as the absurdity that it is. Epoch, 1915.Guerrero, Ed. Woll and Millernote, for example, that the actor Noble Johnson and a few others werecalled upon to play "skulking sinister parts or the 'good-bad nigger'" andthat even a few minor male characters were portrayed as normal human beings(46). But the moment for such thinking had passed among black audiences.They believed, instead, that what the film represented was a means ofexpiating white guilt over the prevalence of racism and belief in theludicrous stereotype of the 'miscegenist' black buck. But for the most part black men were shown as emasculated, clownishstereotypes--props of the opulence of Hollywood's imaginary plantationculture where the wealth of the planters grew at great rate until itculminated in the plutocratic excesses of Jezebel (1938) and Gone with theWind (1939). Cinema 5, 1964.Rossen, Robert, dir. W., dir. Clearly Bogle's definitions are somewhat fluid since the reemergenceof the buck type did not show black men focused on white women but menintent on the misogynist exploitation of every woman they met. Neither, however, did thekind of sensationalized depiction of "the rape or molestation of whitewomen by blacks," or even the horror of an actual proposal of marriage froma second character, offer promising material for directors less concernedthan Griffith with presenting a historical (or an ahistorical) picture ofthe South (Guerrero 17). This idea was firmly held by racially prejudiced people andprobably still is but it was not until after the Second World War and therenewed strength of the civil rights movement in the 195 s that even themyth as myth reemerged in films. Shadows. . Online data-base. In theCassavetes film a young black woman (or "girl" as Bogle calls her) isengaged to a white man (called "man" by Bogle) and never bothers to tellhim that she is black, a fact he only discovers on meeting her much darkerbrother. Intuitively it might seem as though this stereotype was employed inmainstream films during this period. The Birth of a Nation. In such films the nightmarish vision of the 'miscegenist' buck wasabsent, of course. This approach alsoensured that white characters, essentially, 'handed' their rights andfreedom to black characters by consenting to consort with them. (1967) represent opposing poles in thetreatment of the African-American male in Hollywood films. Ed. The film was based on a play about theLeo-Frank-Mary Phagan murder case of 1915 in which a black janitor wasaccused of murdering a white woman but the populace fixed the blame on herNorthern Jewish employer. was a limp handshake" (191). Ironically the 'miscegenation' provision in the Hays Code followedimmediately after the one forbidding the depiction of "white slavery." Theenslavement of black people was, however, a perfectly fit subject and onemajor legacy of The Birth of a Nation was the always increasing popularityof films set in an ever-glossier ante-bellum South. In a way, however, the character of Gus, therenegade Negro in The Birth of a Nation (played by a white actor inblackface) who aspires to no higher goal than the white woman, was also thelast of his kind. In thefirst film to boldly break the taboo on interracial relationships, RobertRossen's 1957 Island in the Sun, the boldness lay primarily in making theeffort. Although one plot strand involved black actor Dorothy Dandridge,playing "a respectable West Indian shopgirl," in a genuine romance the plotfeaturing Belafonte with Joan Fontaine danced around the edges of arelationship (Woll & Miller 57). The specifically "miscegenist" buck, to use the repellent language ofthe Hays Code, did not reappear, however, until the cycle expanded toinclude such steamy versions of plantation life as Mandingo (1975) and eventhen it was played largely as a myth that white audiences could use forcheap thrills while being informed that it was, indeed, a myth. 211-2 .Erickson, Hal. In the long run, therefore, the well-meant but misguided absurditiesof Guess Who's Coming to Dinner were a form of belated apology for (and anattempt to alleviate guilt over) the soul-destroying absurdities ofGriffith's racist portrayals in The Birth of a Nation. 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