Race and Representation in Movies - Movie Review Example

Race and Representation From the apparently overt racism of Birth of Nation through humorous films such as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and on to Crash, movies have both reflected and helped to change the social, cultural and political landscape vis--vis race relations in the United States. While it is perhaps tempting to 'judge' films through the lens of the present day, it is more useful to consider them on their own terms as cultural artifacts of their times. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century few black people could vote in America, there were openly discriminatory laws against many Asian races across America and miscegenation was a crime. The races were both formally and unofficially divided into a strict hierarchy. White males were at the top of that hierarchy, and other races were below him. By 2006 America had been transformed, but as the present discussions surrounding undocumented workers illustrate, racial tension will never be far away from the surface of American political, cultural and social life. The racial situation in America at the time of Birth of a Nation (1915) was far removed from that which exists today, despite the fact that problems still exist in 2006. Birth of a Nation was based on a racist play, The Clansman, written in 1905 by a North Carolina Baptist minister, Thomas Dixon. The film tells of the beginning, middle and aftermath of the Civil War and has what has often been described as a vicious and degrading view of African-Americans. In the film they are often viewed as either "happy slaves" working in the fields (with no sign of a whip in sight), loyal house slaves or child-like, grinning close-ups of uncertain intelligence: Racist laws currently in place at the time of its release led to a series of scenes being cut from the film, such as that between a mulatto slave and her white master. Abraham Lincoln is portrayed as a bumbling traitor to his race while black men are either mindless clowns and/or potential rapists. The movie, while the most successful in history until Snow White some 20 years later, was highly controversial. It is still so: when it was won a place in the list of the Top 100 Films of All Time, the Academy was widely accused of racial insensitivity. Ion first release, it caused riots in Boston and Philadelphia, and was banned in many other cities such as Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis. As a further reflection of its time, the leading African-American characters were played by white actors in black-face: actual black actors were relegated to supporting and extra roles. This reflected the dual view that blacks were not capable of acting in serious roles, and also the supposed 'fact' that audiences would not accept them in such roles. Interestingly, a reaction to Birth of a Nation occurred, as film-makers such as the African-American Emmett Scott produced works such as Birth of a Race (1919) and other films like Within Our Gates were produced by Oscar Micheaux. By the time of Gone With the Wind (1939) black actors could now fill the leading roles that were preserved for them, with Hatty McDaniel playing Mammy, and Butterfly McQueen portraying Prissy. While most racial segregation laws were still in place across much of the South, black characters could now be 'taken seriously' by white audiences in a way that film-makers had considered impossible before. Indeed, it seem as though film-makers have often been more conservative than their audiences on racial matters. Movies that have been made under the shadow of a supposed audience reaction have often just received the reaction they deserved as entertainment and/or works of art. By the late 1960's the racial situation had, at least officially, transformed in America. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Brown versus the Board of Education and the Civil Right movement in general had made most segregationist and prejudiced actions officially illegal. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) may be regarded as a watershed because it places an interracial marriage front-and-center within a film. The movie deals with the daughter of rich, white and liberal Californians who has fallen in love and is going to marry a black man, played by Sidney Poitier. While the film was groundbreaking, there are several elements in it which make it much 'safer' than it could have been otherwise. First, the black man involved essentially looks and acts white. He is always dressed in a tie, has become a doctor at an incredibly young age and was, unbelievably, meant to be the head doctor at the World Health Organization before he was thirty. He treats the woman wonderfully, and has even refused to sleep with her when she wants to before marriage. He is the "perfect black man", as seen in the still from the movie below: In many ways then, he is the exact opposite of the raping, frightening black monsters that were portrayed in Birth of a Nation. But the fact that he is so 'perfect' makes him safe for a mainly white audience. They are able to 'forget' his blackness as an unfortunate secondary characteristic to his glowing achievements and apparently perfect personality. He is perfect husband material and so his blackness can be overlooked. It is interesting to note that Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was released in the same year (1967) that the last miscegenation laws were struck down in the South. Marriage between the races was still taboo across much of the country as social customs tend to take much longer to catch up with laws then many would suggest. There is a lag between what is legal and what is acceptable, one that has yet to disappear in many Southern states where inter-racial marriages are essentially frowned upon. In Guess Who's Coming to Dinner both sets of parents are worried about the impending marriage, not because of any overt racism (although this is at least hinted at in the working-class parents of the black man), but rather because of what society will do to them. Inter-racial marriage is not demonized by the film, indeed, some would say it is valorized. But this is not the case. The film's message is that love can overcome anything. . . however, be sure of how strong that love is before entering an interracial marriage. The film is gently conservative rather than rabidly so, but conservative all the same. By the time of Do the Right Thing (1989) America had become comfortable enough with race issues to return to the subject of racial tensions rather than trying to show an idyllic world in which racism has disappeared. Spike Lee, one of the first mainstream African-American directors to be both a box-office draw and overtly political, portrays the mutual racism and tension within a New York City community. The film is shot in B/W, to illustrate the main theme of the work perhaps. The tension is not just black/white but more complex than that. The only businesses are a Korean grocery and Sal's Pizzeria. So Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans and African-Americans are all seen as somehow eyeing one another suspiciously. The movie portrays the hottest day of the year and the tensions that both stem from racial strains and the sheer pressure of the heat of a New York summer. Lee poses the question of what is the right thing to do in such a situation. He does not give any answers. Two years after Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee directed Jungle Fever, which seems to try to comment upon the "love conquers all" ethic of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner by portraying a similar situation, but with far more moral ambiguity and a darker view: Thus, once again there is a romance between a successful black man and a younger white woman. However, this time the man is married and there is the hint of some kind of workplace harassment as the white woman is just a temporary secretary in search of a fulltime job. Lee is ironically commenting on the social and cultural changes that have enabled the growth of a black middle class that will often be in supervisory roles over white subordinates. These people are subject to the same pressures as earlier characters however. Both people in the affair are subject to intense pressure to stop the relationship. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this film, and the one that some have accused Lee of exhibiting a reverse racism over is the title. Jungle Fever refers to the attraction that a non-black person has for a black person. Lee ahs suggested that all inter-racial relationships are based upon this. This view of interracial sexuality does appear to unfortunately return to the time of viewing interracial relationship as ethically questionable. Lee posits the view that the black man is somehow betraying his race through wanting to have a white woman. If the positions were reversed, and a white director had made a film called Jungle Fever about a similar couple, then he/she would probably be hounded out of Hollywood as a confirmed racist. As American culture has become increasingly racially diverse, with many races rising to the top in many different professions, movies have reflected this trend by either ignoring race altogether or by using it as just one more tension among many that are available to the dramatic writer. Thus in Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarintino pairs a white and a black pair of hitmen who both call one another "nigger" without any racial connotation being meant. The head gangster is black, and the boxer who he cheats is white. White men rape the black gangster, and he plans to gain revenge on them using some "pipe-swining niggers", but again there is no racial element involved. Racial epithets are merely part of a world in which epithets are a way of life. People are accidentally shot in the face, raped, overdosed and generally abused without a hint of racial tension. In fact the leading black gangster is married to a white woman, but this is no cause for any comment. Pulp Fiction is an example of a movie that is race-blind because it inhabits an amoral world in which any sense of prejudice would be meaningless: Numerous other films have similar race-neutral plots. In The Matrix trilogy, one of the main characters is black, but again this is irrelevant to the plot-line, if that film can be said to have one. All these films reflect a society in which race is supposedly becoming less important, at least in black-white terms. However, as the film Crash suggests, racial tensions will always be present in America. The current arguments that are occurring over 'illegal immigrants' or 'undocumented workers' (depending on your viewpoint) illustrate that racial tensions are still both topical and potentially dangerous. Some movies have taken the topic of 'race' and discussed it through a seemingly neutral form such as science-fiction. Thus in Blade-Runner (1982), questions of race are raised through the prejudice that exists against robots. The concept of human beings producing intelligent computers that might be self-aware, and thus be regarded as a 'race' has been a staple of science-fiction since the days of Star Trek. The fact that racial prejudice is based upon "difference", even if that difference is not obvious to the eye, is an interesting departure from the obvious racial differences of color that occur among human beings. Prejudice against replicants is based upon the idea of the danger of not being able to tell one from a human being. This is the reverse of, for example, the racism that has existed against African-Americans. Whether or not a race difference is obvious or subtle, America seems obsessed with the idea of race: both the tensions its produces and, more recently, the possibilities that it offers. A film such as Driving Miss Daisy (1989) , while roundly criticized by some as portraying some kind of latter-day Uncle Tom, actually shows how a friendship between a black man and a white woman can develop in which race is discussed and then transcended. While perhaps light years away from a movie such as Pulp Fiction, it portrays a world in which racial differences exist (and in which they can be even joked about), but also one in which they are not necessarily an unbreakable gap between people. As this discussion has shown, films have both reflected and, in some cases, catalyzed the political, cultural and social changes that have occurred in America since the early Twentieth Century. Griffiths genuinely appears to have believed that his portrayal of African-Americans in Birth of a Nation was not racist, but a view from ninety years after the fact seems to suggest differently. While a film must, like all art, be a selection and thus a simplification of reality, it also acts as a mirror for today as well as a time capsule from the past. __________________________________________ Works Cited Beresford, Bruce. Driving Miss Daisy. (1989) Griffiths, David. Birth of a Nation (1916) Haggis, Paul Crash (2005) Lee, Spike (director) Jungle Fever, (1991) Lee, Spike (director) Do the Right Thing (1991) Scott, Ridley. Blade-Runner (1982) Selznick, David (director) Gone With the Wind (1931) Read More