A Guide to Black Cinema – Part 2: What is Black Cinema?

 

 

 

 

 

“I’m from a poor, crime-filled neighbourhood, raised by a single mother, don’t know my dad, blah, blah. Its cliché.”

 

…

 

Ok, so where did we leave off? Oh, that’s right, I just finished committing myself to exploring the entire ins and outs of Black cinema. Hell’s bells! Well, that’s a big task, indeed.

 

The art of Black cinema is a dear subject to me. Although this field of cinema belongs primarily in the zeitgeist to African American culture, being of African descent like myself, the narratives and visuals on display in these films are so easy to resonate with nonetheless. I mean, I may not have been born and raised in the American ghetto and fed aggressive American inequalities right from an early age, but neither was Black British filmmaker, Steve McQueen, and he directed 12 Years A Slave. That’s all just a cliché. The point I am trying to make here is that Black cinema may be rooted and popularised in American culture, but the art form has blossomed across the globe. It’s just our job now to seek out its flowers.

 

So, I thought, what better way to introduce and explore Black cinema by just casually asking people off the street the question: What is Black cinema?

 

These were some of the responses:

 

“[Black cinema] is movies starring Black people, right?”

“Anything by Spike Lee, I’d say.”

“You mean like black comedies? Like Fargo or something?”

“Oh, The Help! Or The Blind Side!”

“They are movies written and directed by Black people about the Black experience.”

“Black and white movies…? Like that little 1930s guy with the moustache?”

 

Black cinema is a field of cinema that focuses its attention on Black stories, exclusively told through the eyes of Black creators and their protagonists. No, it’s not black comedies like the filmography of the Coen brothers and no it’s not 1930s black and white movies starring Charlie Chaplin. Black cinema are films that centre around people of colour, primarily those of African descent, and their general trials and tribulations.

 

Black people for a long time were exempted from Hollywood and the surrounding sites of cinematic storytelling. Throughout the bulk of the twentieth century, Black people were portrayed in cinema by white actors in the derogatory façade of blackface (which, if you aren’t aware is white people literally painting their skin dark to appear Black onscreen) like, for example, in 1915’s The Birth of a Nation and 1936’s College Holiday. When Black people would eventually appear onscreen, they were shunted into racist, stereotypical clichéd roles of the time like, for example, the depiction of the “mammy” role popularised in 1940s’ Gone with the Wind and the “happy slave” in 1946’s Song of the South.

 

Unfortunately, Black people were forced to embody these cliché roles in order to have any chance of having a presence onscreen in Hollywood. The 1970s brought about the subgenre, Blaxploitation, that drilled hard into the stereotypes Black people were forced to fill in regular society and further white fantasies. Although, as a catch-22, the subgenre managed to finally allow Black creators to begin steering the ship away from the white man’s direction and perception of the Black experience. Films like 1971’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Shaft would finally allow Black filmmakers to take centre stage, all whilst their films rested on a backdrop of the ongoing Civil Rights movement. The films were still flawed in their clichéd depictions of Black people and their general exploitation of them for a white audience, but at least the power was finally in the Black man’s hands for a change… or so we thought.

 

Jump forward in time now and, as you saw from my survey, random people off the street would look to me and state, when considering what Black cinema is, that movies like 2009’s The Blind Side or 2011’s The Help make the cut. But they don’t. That’s not Black cinema. They are movies made by white people for white people about Black people. They’re not Black cinema. We live in a day and age where Green Book, a movie made by solely white creators about a niche moment in Black history wins the Academy Award for Best Picture over a Black sci-fi blockbuster like Black Panther or a Ku Klux Klan diss track joint like BlacKkKlansman, both movies of which are completely helmed by Black creators. Again, Black cinema may be more prominent now than it ever was before the 1970s, but it still needs to be consumable enough for a white audience to win any form of recognition. I have said it once and I will say it again: it’s all about, commodification, appropriation, tokenism and consumerism.

 

In our time, Black creators have finally been able to start taking back the Black experience and producing something of it in ways white creators could never develop from their own perspective. Black cinema today is creators like Jordan Peele satirically deconstructing racism through the horror genre; it is movies like Black Panther giving Black audiences their own superhero to get behind; it is veteran Black directors like Spike Lee doing whatever the hell they want onscreen because they can. It is not the clichéd narratives we have continued to be fed, like Green Book, The Help or The Blind Side, with the stereotypical stories of a Black character going through Civil Rights hardship with the aid of a white saviour.

 

True Black cinema, the stuff you guys all miss, is little movies like 2015’s Dope which may very well be one of the purest depictions of Black storytelling onscreen in the 2000s. It doesn’t follow a Civil Rights narrative nor slavery one; it is, quite simply, just a small-scaled coming-of-age comedy about a Black kid living in Los Angeles who has dreams of studying at Harvard. That’s it. That’s the story. Sure, the film involves the kid and his friend’s entering hijinks around their neighbourhood. There’s sex, drugs, violence and rap music, but its not like any of that is the focus. The focus is just a teenage boy living a completely normal life for a Black person in America.

 

The film is hardly concerned with the stereotypes traditionally found in consumable Black cinema. In fact, the protagonist Malcolm when addressing some of these spurious and harmful stereotypes (as if almost satirically speaking straight to the audience) says “blah, blah, its cliché.”

 

You see, the clichés don’t matter to the movie. That’s what makes the movie a true expression of Black cinema. The movie not only features an ethnic cast but is written and directed by a Black filmmaker. It’s the casual vision of a guy who just wants to tell a story; a guy who just so happens to be Black. And that is the word I have been looking for: casual. Black cinema doesn’t have to be big, bombastic and about hard-hitting events over and over again. Sure, the themes of inequality are there in Dope, but they are there naturally, in the background, almost like a by-product. That, to me, is Black cinema.

 

In short, Black cinema is made up of the moments that come natural to us all. It’s the casual things in life like sex, drugs, violence and rap music that can be unique to the Black experience, if told by someone experiencing it. Yes, racism, slavery and the whole shebang are imbued into all these stories, but that’s not what makes it unique. What makes it unique is how we tell our stories when faced with a world that attempts to force us into a cliché corner of creative bankruptcy. It’s the passion and drive to be casual, to be natural. That’s how little movies about the Black experience from America reached me over here in Australia. It’s how they probably reached Steve McQueen in England. At its best, Black cinema is universal. Black cinema is casual. It’s natural. It’s dope.

 

 

Read other pieces from Nahum HERE

 

 

To return to our Footy Almanac home page click HERE.

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?

And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help things keep ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE.