In analyzing popular culture, one has to take a critical viewpoint on what is being promoted and why. 2013 has seen a noticeable shift in focus in Black films. This in of itself, sounds like a good thing, except when you factor in many of these films being based upon either slavery or servitude. The stream of these films, with them being relatively close together have forced many to sit up and take notice of why films of this nature at a time like this.
Many Black people have decided not to view these films. Whether it be for reasons of not wanting to support such films, or not wanting to be depressed. Everyone has a right to decide what kind of media they consume. Many say that Black people should view these movies as a way of embracing our history. To that, this writer says, should we really be learning our history from Hollywood anyway?
I have a theory of my own. Hear me out on this for a minute. In this time of austerity and uncertainty, there is always a certain amount of nostalgia that tends to emerge during rough times. On one hand, a venture into the past via film can mean viewing a time period with clear right and wrong. Since it is often easier to see the wrongs of yesteryear than to comprehend and/or face the issues of the present, we get morality tales steeped in history via cinema. Also, one subtle underlying message to Black America is that despite the harrowing issues that we face today in terms of unemployment, incarceration and association with criminality, our collective lot in the early 21st century is far better than that of our ancestors. As John Henrik Clarke once said “If you start your history with slavery, then everything else will look like progress.” Contemporary Black suffering is supposed to be ameliorated by pointing out “how far we have come” today.
To get further perspective on this, Polite On Society reached out to independent film maker and founder of the Bringing Conscious Back movement Nicholle La Vann to get a sense of why the avalanche of these sort of films. Nicholle had this to add.
“Hollywood doesn’t hide their agenda, if they want to give an overall message, so what better way than to use the medium of film? These slave movies released now are by master design. The agenda is to reshape history as white america sees fit. ROOTS was disturbing, so they had to make (these films) It’s obvious in movies like Django and the Help pose the overall message “nigga stay in your place”.
Ms. La Vann also added: “Our country has never appreciated ROOTS or what Alex Haley did to provide a history to a people whose history has been purposely erased. To push films that promote white privilege is the american way. Films like “Fruitvale station” which portrayed a great story and dealt with the racism didn’t receive the green light unless they are produced independently. Racism is aggressively encouraged in all the recent released films such as The HELP, 12 Years a Slave, Django and etc.
At the end of the day Hollywood wants to put their sick twist on the Black holocaust making it in to some type of comedy with inaccurate history timeline. We still are having repercussions of racism even in media and if folks don’t stop in their tracks and get on the ball of “Bringing Conscious Back” in what we read, watch and take in we are doomed to be a robot with no mind of our own.”
Whatever your opinion of these films, it is important to be watchful of the underlying messages within our contemporary media. Now, I turn this conversation over to our readers. What do you think? Am I way off? Let me know in the comments.
Marc W. Polite
Prefers contemporary Black films
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Hey Marc,
I really enjoyed this post. You raise a number of great
points that allow us to think about how stories are told and their importance
in 2013.
While I do agree with questioning the idea of how and why people learn history, I’m not certain that 12 Years a Slave should be lumped in the same category as Django or The Help. Here’s why: the film is based on a slave narrative, a
true account of a man’s experience of being a free person who believes in his
abilities not as a black man, but as a man. And suddenly, his freedom is taken
away and he becomes a slave. With that said, Solomon Northup’s story is his
fight to prove his freedom and worth in a world that does not truly acknowledge
the value of African-Americans (above and beyond their monetary value). I’m not certain that story has ever been told
in this fashion. And to be quite frank, it’s a fresh look at enslavement. It
refutes many myths we’ve been taught about enslavement—that it wasn’t that bad,
that there were some good slave owners, that the slave owner’s wife was a
docile creature who treated slaves with love, that skilled and house slaves had
it better than field hands or that master’s black wench was elevated above
regular enslavement. Not to mention, the
film has helped Northup’s narrative reemerge and become discussed in high
school classrooms and college lecture halls—joining more well-read narratives
such as The Narrative of Frederick
Douglass and Incidents in the Life of
a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.
Django, on the
other hand, is a fantastical, imaginative black action hero, who answers the
questions “what if there was a warrior slave who wasn’t hung?” and “What if
there was a warrior slave whose rebellion wasn’t thwarted?” A great fantasy,
but it’s not steeped in reality and if anything, can have viewers who are not
knowledgeable about enslavement believing that this person really existed. That’s
a scary notion that does a lot more harm than the good that 12 Years a Slave creates in both viewers
of the film and readers of the original text.
The Help is a young white woman’s story of finding her way. The protagonist uses (albeit
with the best intentions) African-American women’s stories to push her career,
her life forward. And at the end of the movie, when the protagonist rides off
into the sunset with her mission accomplished, many of these women were left to
wash clothes and tend to white babies. And in that vein, she’s really no
different or better than Harriet Beecher Stowe.
We should not be looking at films such as 12 Years a Slave through the lens of “look
how far we’ve come.” Instead, this is a distinct opportunity to say, “shit…we
have work to do.” There are so many connections that can be made between the
plight of freed and enslaved African-Americans of the antebellum period and the
status of African-Americans today. To say that we don’t want a reminder because
we’ve come some far—because we have
gained civil rights or an African-American president is not acceptable.
Instead, this is the opportunity to look at the number of African-American men
incarcerated in prisons across the country, the unemployment rate, lack of
educational opportunities and multigenerational poverty. Afterall,
African-Americans were enslaved much longer than they’ve been freed and for
that reason, it’s impact on America has been much more enduring than it has
been forgettable.
Since we live in a world where mainstream Americans are more
apt to watch a film than read a book, I believe this is a great way to refute
the notion that “slavery wasn’t that bad.” It’s an opportunity to prove the
horrors of enslavement and the uncertain world that even freed
African-Americans in the North experienced.
Lastly, it’s my hope that films like 12 Years a Slave create a forum for African-Americans to discuss their distinct history–just like Roots did more than 30 years ago. I hope that it prompts African-American parents to take their kids to bookstores and libraries where they can READ about history versus watching a film.
Thanks for providing a forum for me to rant. I used my whole prep writing this comment..As always your greatness is inspiring.
You’re right. Here’s another article of several on it http://thejasminebrand.com/2013/11/12/nick-cannon-is-sick-of-seeing-movies-about-black-slaves-elise-neal-says-she-was-disappointed-in-12-years-a-slave .
Good evening Femi. Thank you for your poignant commentary. I truly appreciate it. I may even consider seeing this film, considering what you have said of it. Excellent response. Perhaps I may have been hasty in lumping this film with the others.
Right on the money, my friend. It’s Hollywood’s attempt to forever associate us helplessness and slavery. It’s an embarrassment and does nothing to bring people together or built strength.
White people make up the overwhelming majority of people who see these movies. I’m surprised the producers of these films are able to find so many black people willing to play slaves for white people’s entertainment. Pathetic.
RAP DON’T EDUCATE –
IT HELPS ERADCATE –
ITS MUSICAL AIDS
THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
author@johnwfountain.com
Last Modified: May 6, 2012
Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict.
Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I.
Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now picture all of them dead. The national tally of black males 14 and older murdered in America from 1976 through 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics: 214,661.
The numbers tell only part of the story of this largely urban war, where the victims bear an uncanny resemblance to their killers. A war of brother against brother, filled with wanton and automatic gunfire, even in the light of day, on neighborhood streets, where little boys make mud pies, schoolgirls jump rope, where the innocent are caught in the crossfire, where the spirit of murder blows like the wind.
It is, so far, a ceaseless war in which guns are often the weapon of choice, and the finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at a black male is most often another black male’s.
The numbers alone are enough to make me cry — to wonder why — we as African Americans will march en masse over one slain by someone who is not black, and yet sit silent over the hundreds of thousands of us obliterated from this mortal world by someone black like us, like me. It is a numbing truth borne out by hard facts:
From 1980 through 2008, 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks.
Translation: For every Trayvon Martin killed by someone not black, nine other blacks were murdered by someone black.
In 2005, — blacks — accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population but 49 percent of all homicides. The numbers are staggering, the loss incomprehensible.
Add to the tally of black males 14 and older slain across the country from 1976 to 2005, another 29,335 (slain from 2006 to 2010), and their national body count rises to 243,996, representing 82 percent of all black homicides for that 35-year period. What also becomes clear is this: We too often have raised killers. And this war is claiming our sons.
But that’s still not the end of the story. Add to that number 51,892 black females ages 14 and older, plus five whose gender was not identifiable, and the total, not counting children, is 295,893 — more than the combined U.S. losses of World War I, the Vietnam, Korean and Mexican-American wars, the War of 1812 and the American Revolutionary War.
Is the blood of these sons and daughters somehow less American?
Two hundred ninety-five thousand eight hundred ninety-three . . .
Imagine the United Center, Wrigley Field, U.S. Cellular Field and Soldier Field nearly all filled simultaneously with black boys, girls, men and women. Now imagine that twice over. Now imagine them all dead.
As far as I can see, that’s at least 295,893 reasons to cry. And it is cause enough for reticent churches, for communities, for lackadaisical leaders, for all people — no matter our race, color or creed — to find the collective will and the moral resolve to stamp out this human rights atrocity occurring right under our noses.
Just imagine the human carnage and the toll to us all if we don’t.
I can’t. I won’t.
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
THE AMERICAN NEGRO IS A HYPOCRITE – AL SHARPTON IS AN FBI INFORMANT!
JESSE JACKSON WAS THE “JUDAS GOAT” THAT WALKED MLK TO HIS DEATH!
LOUIS FARRAKHAN INSPIRED THE HIT ON MALCOLM X.
MALCOLM X WAS COLOR BLIND WHEN HE WENT TO MECCA – HE SAW NO BLACK SLAVES!
PROPHET MUHAMMAD WOULD EXCHANGE 2 BLACK SLAVES FOR 1 WHITE!
AMERICAN NEGROS ARE SO FAR UP THE WHITE MAN’S ASS, HE IS BEGINNING TO LOOK WHITE!
AMERICAN NEGROS NEED THE “RIGHT OF RETURN” JUST LIKE THE JEWS, SO THEY CAN GO BACK TO AFRICA!
SMALL PROBLEM – NO WELFARE OR FOOD STAMPS IN THE JUNGLE!
THEY WOULD SWIM BACK, THROUGH SHARK INFESTED WATERS, JUST TO BE WITH WHITEY AGAIN!
ONE BIT OF ADVICE – “SHUT THE F–K UP”!
ALL THE OTHER RACES IN AMERICA GOT OFF THEIR ASS & MADE SOMETHING OF THEMSELVES & THEY DID IT BY FAIR COMPETITION – NOT LIKE THE NEGRO & HIS “POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION” – HE ONLY NEEDS TO GET 30%, WHILE EVERYONE ELSE HAS TO GET 70%.
THE BLACK & HIS 3 Rs
RAPING!
RIOTING!
ROBBING!
You are on an 0-3 streak. This post had nothing to do with Michael Brown or Ferguson, Missouri. Idiot.