Lecture 8:
Being Black in White Hollywood
Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
Directed by Robert Townsend
Professor Michael Green
1
This Lesson
•
Black Stereotypes in
Hollywood Cinema
•
The Black New
Wave
•
Los Angeles and
‘Hood Films
•
Hollywood Shuffle
Black Stereotypes in Hollywood
Cinema
Song of the South (1946)
Directed by Harve Foster and Wifred Jackson
Lesson 8: Part I
3
Donald Bogle
• Important black writer and scholar on African
Americans in film and television.
• He wrote a well-received biography of
Dorothy Dandridge.
• He wrote Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,
Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of
Blacks in Films in 1973.
• He updated it in 1989, but didn’t have to
change much, as the stereotypes did not
change much.
4
Toms, Coons, Mulattos,
Mammies and Bucks
• In the book he divides the portrayals of
African-Americans on film into the five
stereotypes of the title that range from the
overtly racist to the more subtly demeaning.
• He traces the history of these images from
the blatantly disparaging The Birth of a
Nation in 1915 to the “Blaxploitation” films
that were a box office phenomenon around
the time of the book’s publication.
5
“Black Beginnings”
• The first black character in American movies
was Uncle Tom from Edwin Porter’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.
• He was played by a white actor in blackface.
• “After Tom’s debut, there appeared a variety
of black presences. All were character types
used for the same effect: to entertain by
stressing Negro inferiority. None of the types
were meant to do great harm, but at various
times individual ones did.”
– Bogle
6
Black Actors Playing Stereotypes
• “Later, when real black actors played the
roles and found themselves wedged into
these categories, the history became one of
actors battling against the types to create
rich, stimulating, diverse characters.”
• At various time, the types were brought to life
by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Stepin Fetchit,
Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Sammy
Davis Jr., Dorothy Dandridge, Ethel Waters,
Jim Brown, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy,
Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover.
The Tom
• Porter’s Tom was the first in a long line of
socially acceptable “Good Negro”
characters.
• “Always as toms are chased, harassed,
hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted,
they keep the faith, n’er turn against their
white massas, and remain hearty,
submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and
oh-so-very kind. Thus they endear
themselves to white audiences and emerge
as heroes of sorts.”
Bogle on Sidney Poitier as Tom
• “When insulted or badgered, the Poitier
character stood by and took it. He knew the
white world meant him no real harm. He
differed from the old servants only in that he
was governed by a code of decency, duty,
and moral intelligence. There were times in
his films when he screamed out in rage at the
injustices of a racist white society. But reason
always dictated his actions, along with love
for his fellow man.”
Example
To Sir, With Love (1967)
Directed by James Clavell
The Coon
• The coon represented blacks as amusement
objects and buffoons. They were represented
as the pure coon and two variants: the
pickaninny and the uncle remus.
• “The pickaninny was the first of the coon
types to make its screen debut. It gave the
negro child actor a place in the black
pantheon. He was a harmless little screwball
creation whose eyes popped, whose hair
stood on end at the least excitement, and
whose antics were pleasant and diverting.”
Example
The Pure Coon
• Before it began to disappear from movie
screens, the pure coon developed into one
of the most blatantly degrading of all black
stereotypes.
• “The pure coon emerged as no-account
niggers, those unreliable, crazy, lazy,
subhuman creatures good for nothing more
than eating watermelons, stealing chickens,
shooting craps or butchering the English
language.”
– Bogle
13
Uncle Remus
• “The final member of the coon triumvirate is
the uncle remus. Harmless and congenial,
he is a first cousin to the tom, yet he
distinguishes himself by his quaint, naive,
and comic philosophizing.
• Remus’s mirth, like tom's contentment and
the coon’s antics, has always been used to
indicate the black man’s satisfaction with
the system and his place in it.”
– Bogle
The Tragic Mulatto
• A female character of mixed blood (generally
black and white).
• Some early silent films explored the plight of
the mulatto, usually fair-skinned, who is trying
to pass for white.
• “Usually the mulatto is made likeable – even
sympathetic (because of her white blood, no
doubt) – and the audience believes that the
girl’s life could have been productive and
happy had she not been a victim of divided
15
racial inheritance.”
The Mammy
• Mammy, the fourth black type, is so closely
related to the comic coons that she is usually
relegated to their ranks.
• Mammy is distinguished, however by her sex
and her fierce independence.
• She is usually big, fat, cantankerous and
slightly militant, but despite her brashness,
she “knows her place.”
• Pause the lecture and watch clip #1 from
Gone with the Wind.
Contemporary Mammies
17
The Brutal Black Buck
• Birth of a Nation included all the stereotypes
named by Bogle and touched off controversy.
• Some say that the movie defined the way that
Hollywood would represent blackness.
• The movie propagated the myth of slave
contentment and made it appear as if slavery
had elevated blacks from bestial instincts.
• It introduced the figures of the black brutes
and the black bucks.
The Black Buck (continued)
• The black brute was a barbaric black out to
raise havoc. Audiences could assume that
his physical violence served as an outlet for
sexual repression.
• The black bucks are also big, oversexed and
savage, violent and frenzied as they “lust for
white flesh,” a great sin to whites.
• These two characters reveled the tie between
sex and racism in America.
• Pause the lecture and watch clip #2.
The Black New Wave
She’s Gotta’ Have it (1986)
Directed by Spike Lee
Lesson 8: Part II
20
History
• Until the 1990’s, most of the Hollywood’s
black-themed movies were directed by white
filmmakers.
• Although studios released a few films by
black directors in the late 1960’s and early
1970s, including films by Charles Burnett,
Melvin Van Peebles, and Gordon Parks,
films by African Americans would not emerge
in force until almost 100 years after the birth
of cinema.
21
New Voices
• Black (and some white) directors would react
to the racist stereotypes of a century of film
by creating movies that represented black
people much more centrally and complexly
than in the previous decades.
• The turning point in the history of the new
black cinema was She’s Gotta’ Have it, the
first feature film by Spike Lee (1986).
• Robert Townsend also helped open doors
with Hollywood Shuffle (1987).
• Both films were independently financed.
Spike Lee
• Lee was a pioneer who had a lot of success
early in his career. Because his early films
made money – including School Daze, Do
the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues – the
studios gave other black directors a chance.
• Lee has now directed more then 20 films
(including documentaries like Get on the Bus
and When the Levees Break) and is
considered the “dean” of black directors by
virtue of his talent, productivity and attitude.
Other directors
• Other directors from the Black New Wave –
1986 – 1996 included:
•
•
•
•
•
•
John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood, Poetic Justice)
Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem, Deep Cover)
Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang)
Mario Van Peebles (Posse, New Jack City)
Carl Franklin (One False Move, Devil in a Blue Dress)
Charles Burnett (To Sleep with Anger, The Glass
Shield)
• The Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society, Dead
Presidents)
• Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust)
24
Style and Content
• The movies were hip and cool, many
featuring rap soundtracks and flashy
cinematography.
• They also tended to be more formally
sophisticated then their 1970s counterparts.
• They were more complex in characterization,
emotion and theme; most importantly, there
was a wide range of stories.
• Pause the lecture and watch clip #3 from
House Party.
Los Angeles and ‘Hood Films
Boyz n the Hood (1991)
Directed by John Singleton
Lesson 8: Part III
26
‘Hood Movies
• Hood films detail the difficult coming of age of
a young black male protagonist in an
economically depressed, socially contained,
often violent inner city setting, or “Hood.”
• They were born, as their seventies urbanthemed counterparts had been, of a
Hollywood economic depression and studio
decisions to produce inexpensive films
targeted at niche audiences in the hopes of
making quick profits.
27
‘Hood Films (Continued)
• These new black-themed urban films
emerged also out of specific economic and
social conditions that African Americans
were enduring in the nation’s decaying urban
centers, such as Los Angeles.
• They depicted what their (mostly) young,
black male filmmakers felt were the difficult
realties in black America.
Boyz n the Hood
• The most visible and successful of these
urban-themed films was Boyz in the Hood.
• Directed in 1991 by 23-year old USC film
school graduate John Singleton, the movie is
a rite of passage narrative about three
teenage friends – Tre, Ricky and Doughboy –
who grow up together in a poor neighborhood
in South Central L.A. and struggle, in addition
to the normal travails of adolescence, with
marginalization, gang violence, and racism.
Boyz n the Hood (continued)
• Violence and shootings broke in theaters
• Columbia Pictures stood behind it and it
became an enormous financial success,
grossing 57 million dollars on a budget of
around seven million.
• Many of the nation’s foremost film critics
praised the film and Singleton became the
first (and only) black director ever to be
nominated for a Best Director Oscar.
• Pause the lecture and watch Clip #4.
30
Template
• In many ways Boyz n the Hood was a
template for other films in the Hood genre that
followed.
• Not only did the films financial success
prompt Hollywood to make films in a similar
vein, but its tropes found their way into most
of the black urban films released in the next
few years.
31
Tropes and Themes
•
•
•
•
•
Blighted urban cityscapes
Guns and violence
Drug use
The marginalization of black women
The use of gangsta’ rap music on the
soundtrack and rap stars in the cast
• The coming of age narrative
• Absent black fathers
• Mobility/Entrapment
L.A ‘Hood Films
• Some of the most prominent ‘Hood films were
set in L.A, including not only Boyz in the Hood
but also Menace II Society, Deep Cover,
South Central, The Glass Shield and others.
• The films reflected the real life race and class
turmoil in Los Angeles in the early 1990s,
which included the polarizing O.J. Simpson
trial, the beating, trial and acquittal of Rodney
King, the L.A. riots, and various other police
abuse cases.
Example
Menace II Society (1993)
Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes
34
Hollywood Shuffle
Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
Directed by Robert Townsend
Lesson 8: Part IV
35
Background
• Hollywood Shuffle was co-written and directed
by Robert Townsend, an actor who became
frustrated by the opportunities available to
African Americans in Hollywood.
• He raised $100,000 in cash from credit cards
and made the movie with Keenan Ivory
Wayans, who would go on to a successful
movie and television career himself.
• Like In Living Color, which would follow it, the
movie is primarily sketch comedy.
Satire
• Like The Player, Hollywood Shuffle is a
pointed satire that skewers Hollywood’s
treatment of African Americans in the industry
and the representation of blacks and other
minorities in Hollywood films.
• The movie grotesquely parodies most of the
stereotypes outlined by Bogle, as well as
other black stereotypes.
• Pause the lecture and watch clips #5 and #6.
Questions
• What kinds of stereotypes is Townsend
criticizing in clip #5? What points is he
making?
• Define the choice that Bobby makes in clip
#6. Why does he make it and what factors
into his decision?
• Have the kinds of stereotypes outlined by
Bogle and criticized in Hollywood Shuffle
dissipated at all in contemporary cinema, or
have things not changed much?
End of Lecture 8