The ideology of Way Down South was to boost African American morale - Essay Example

Hughes stopped writing more screenplays because he met with the resistance of racial discrimination in the film industry. Hughes was a pioneer in his society. He lived through the Harlem Resistance, the period of the flowering of Negro literature, in its heart of Harlem and his works were influential in encouraging the propagation of more African American literature, art, music and culture. Hughes figured that the time was not yet ripe for a solely black chief protagonist so his screenplay had a white boy, Tim Reid, as the hero.

His black characters seemed to be more righteous than the whites. The exemplary blacks were larger than life characters or stereotypes. They were criticized as being not recognized as the average people on the street. Gaines asked the question on why the blacks 'are unrecognizable to the people they are supposed to represent.' (Gaines 25). Gaines then quoted the film theorist Christian Metz's explanation that; 'although one's own body is always reflected in the mirror, the spectator's own body is never reflected on the screen.

' (Gaines 25). One of the main problems of being a black artist in this era was that the blacks were cast into stereotyped roles. Hughes wrote Hollywood stereotypes for his characters in this way because his main purpose was to write an acceptable social script and emphasize that the color black was beautiful and worthy.