<p>This false representation of Blackness in Hollywood perpetuates the idea that racism is a Black issue for Black people to deal with. It shows the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow eras as experiences of Black suffering, rather than white violence and complicity — all while cementing them in the past, where they can be ignored rather than confronted.</p><p>All this is at odds with the recent pushes for Americans to acknowledge how they are implicated in the country's deep-seated racist history.</p><p>Though film has the potential to excavate deep emotional truths about the current lives of Black folks, or imagine multiplicitous and dynamic futures, Hollywood is too obsessed with cataloguing Black trauma to realize that potential.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-145"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent3 - longer_content --></p><p>For film to truly be a resource for antiracism and an artform where everyone is represented, the powers that be in the academy need to reach beyond historical narratives and stereotypical caricatures and instead give their money and energy to new stories.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1ODY1Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxODczODQ1Nn0.O1r2vUKcI7fRgqTmPok4hoK5UXcWc20CANjot3VIzb4/img.jpg?width=980" id="bc800" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4afec79772f133808d1b382ab2efc06d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Roots" data-width="750" data-height="500">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Roots</small></p><div style="display: none;"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1ODY1Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxODczODQ1Nn0.O1r2vUKcI7fRgqTmPok4hoK5UXcWc20CANjot3VIzb4/img.jpg?width=980" id="bc800" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4afec79772f133808d1b382ab2efc06d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Roots" data-width="750" data-height="500"></div><p><strong>Voyeurism of Black Trauma<br></strong></p><p>Sometimes I think there shouldn't have been any film about slavery after <a href="https://www.pbs.org/black-culture/shows/list/roots-slavery-in-america/" target="_blank"><em>Roots</em></a>.</p><p>The six-part, nine-hour mini series, based on Alex Haley's giant novel of the same name, premiered in 1977 and catalogued the cruelty endured by one slave, Kunta-Kinte, who refused to give up his name.</p><p>Though the story is iconic and a canonized part of the lexicon (often referenced in Black art and popular culture like multiple Kendrick Lamar songs), what is most famous about the movie adaptation are the scenes of violence — the whipping, the blood, the lacerations left on the skin.</p><p>In most film representations of enslaved people, there is a focus on the violence and cruelty experienced — from physical to sexual assault. <strong>While it is important to remember the intensity of the cruelty suffered under slavery, the Hollywood gaze often sensationalizes this violence, using it as plot or character development or to establish tropes. This creates a voyeuristic dynamic which is more objectifying than empowering.</strong> </p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-147"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent4 - longest_content --></p><p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script></p><p>Too often, this violence serves as a catalyst for some self-determined act of escape. Capitalizing on their anger, the enslaved person finally finds the strength to run away and free themselves. Not only is this narrative incredibly reductive of the psychological horrors of captivity (insinuating a kind of <a href="https://www.popdust.com/kanye-calls-slavery-a-choice-2565254035.html" target="_self">Kanye West-like philosophy</a>), but it draws on actual pain and trauma in service of a contrived redemption story.</p><p>There is no worse offender than <a href="https://www.popdust.com/heres-every-quentin-tarantino-movie-ranked-2639280319.html" target="_self">Quentin Tarantino's</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/" target="_blank"><em>Django Unchained</em></a> — a film which I firmly believe Tarantino wrote and directed just to cast himself vicariously saying the N-word even more times than he did in <em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/13/quentin-tarantino-on-race-and-black-critics-the-hateful-eight" target="_blank">Pulp Fiction</a>.</em> A classic Tarantino revenge fantasy, the fact of slavery becomes the background and backstory to Tarantino's spectacle of blood, gore, and farce.</p><p>But there is no healing in this, no real redemption found in the execution of single characters without the confrontation of the institution. And yet, it's categorized as a "Black story" … not likely.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1ODY2MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDkzOTU5OX0.lBxLcb5b_XbHEn3JxjlMX9K40_iwW4-55XG5hNRk6Qo/img.png?width=980" id="b1f05" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="05153d68b46d421a5d9ea36e29b7cd94" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="800" data-height="502">
</p><p><strong>The Reign of Black Caricature</strong><br></p><p>Most of the movies which fall outside of the slavery and civil rights categories still leave much to be desired: from biopics on famous athletes and musicians to outrageous slapstick comedies (like, <em>White Chicks</em> … really?), the leading roles Black people can play rest in pretty defined tropes.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-163"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent_5 - incontent_5 --></p><p>For a while, in the late '80s to early-2000s, there was a high demand for Black, male comedians — largely attributed to the success of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000552/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Eddie Murphy</a> on <em>SNL</em> from 1980-1984, which paved the way for Chris Rock, the Wayans Brothers, and Keenan and Kel, amongst others.</p><p>However, while white male comedians could exist in a range of styles and did not all follow the same formula, the same was not true for Black comedians. When it comes to Black actors, often what works once is all that networks will invest in — so everybody had to be Eddie Murphy.</p><p>What ensued was a generation of comedy movies built on over-the-top caricatures of Blackness which now find themselves in these "Black Voices" categories; meanwhile, the creative vision behind the reductive characters are likely the work of white Hollywood executives, pumping out repetitive content they knew would sell.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1ODY2My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTUzMTk3NH0.gqrs2yrRKtybKButGhXXC0d3LdKLqONRwCfZ-u6oDWw/img.jpg?width=980" id="3d116" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d1b8da13776316ad5514f333f513ab5f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="620" data-height="348">
</p><p><strong>The New Age: Prison Movies</strong><br></p><p>The recent attention to the atrocity of the prison industrial complex, especially after the success of the book <a href="https://newjimcrow.com/about" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>The New Jim Crow</em></a> and Ava DuVernay's documentary <em>13th</em>, has spawned a new genre of Black trauma film: wrongful incarceration films.</p><p>In the last few years alone, there have been multiple adaptations of true-story accounts of Black men who were wrongfully imprisoned, then fought to prove their innocence.</p><p>From <a href="https://justmercy.eji.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Just Mercy</em></a>, starring Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson, the prominent lawyer and prison activist at the <a href="https://eji.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Equal Justice Initiative</a>, to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3920820/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Brian Banks</em></a> about the story of the former football player who was freed by the <a href="https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwiMsIDf28nuAhUCh4YKHU7jB_wYABACGgJ2dQ&ae=2&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESQOD2CosudYIP23grnos3XygMEPHj-j-SAWkms2rkrBuXneurBUgkt_Q2dJbtm0NPX3dUcobOx4dkr57Gq_Qcnag&sig=AOD64_0HnjE7d6cYC_49s8dUD3qd38dNDw&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiKn_be28nuAhXnhOAKHQt4A_wQ0Qx6BAgYEAE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Innocence Project</a>, these accounts are powerful, but they feel reiterative of the same tropes: Black man who finds his freedom through self-determination.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-164"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent_6 - incontent_6 --></p><p>They also hinge too heavily on carceral tropes of guilty-versus-innocent instead of interrogating the project of prisons at large. Hollywood, in this way, likes to claim the label of righteousness and activism, while not really moving towards radical change.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1ODcwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0Mzk1OTE5N30.gXAYneSSac9AFZ2EquX1G7degg4XlNvbD8s7MC7GQN4/img.jpg?width=980" id="93c47" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ee0c340b08241c890805fe08070842cf" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="960" data-height="640">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Academy Award winner, Moonlight, ushered in a new era in avant garde Black cinema</small></p><p><strong>A Black Renaissance</strong><br></p><p>The past few years, however, have been a sort of renaissance of Black storytelling in Hollywood.</p><p>The rise of Black-run production agencies like Lena Waithe's <a href="https://www.hillmangrad.com/about-us" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hillman Grad Productions</a> and Issa Rae's <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/news/issa-rae-hoorae-production-film-tv-digital-1234787811/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hoorae Production Company</a> has shown what a difference it makes when Black creatives are empowered both in front of and behind the camera.</p><p>With more Black people behind the camera, Black artists with unique viewpoints and more nuanced stories are now more likely to work with executives who understand them, and know how to support them.</p><p>In the past few years, the fruits of this renaissance have made big moves in the box office and at award shows. Films like Barry Jenkins's <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4975722/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Moonlight</em></a> and Jordan Peele's <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5052448/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Get Out</em></a> have become cultural staples, and major blockbusters like <em>Black Panther</em> have shown the buying power of Black audiences.</p><p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script></p><p>No more do Black stories have to fall into restrictive categories. No more are Denzel Washington and Will Smith the only ones who get cast in challenging, complex roles. <a href="https://www.popdust.com/strong-black-lead-black-history-21-2650144928.html" target="_self">New Black movies</a> are more exploratory and expansive than ever — whether it's Beyonce's afrofuturist take on the Lion King in <a href="https://www.popdust.com/beyonce-2646852084.html" target="_self"><em>Black Is King</em></a> or the upcoming intimacy of <em>Malcom & Marie</em>.</p><p>For true representation, Black movies cannot depend on the same canned narratives any longer, and Black people can't be the only ones watching them. Hollywood just needs to put faith in different narratives and trust that our stories are worth hearing.</p>
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