The summer of 2020 unfolded as one of the most tragic and exhausting in American history. The murder of George Floyd sparked outrage across the country as many protested against the corrupt police force and their brutality against Black Americans. People of all backgrounds united to demand justice for Black individuals through the Black Lives Matter social movement, working to create a more wholesome and undivided community. Despite the country’s newfound sense of a stronger community, many prejudiced and close-minded Americans attempted to suppress the Black Lives Matter movement by violently denigrating its supporters. George Floyd’s death by police brutality was, unfortunately, not the first of its kind, and not even the last. The national Black community has continued to endure racism from seemingly the beginning of time, and last summer’s events are a reminder of the extensive history of adversities to which Black people have been subjected – from slavery, to systemic racism, and more recently, police brutality. To say the least, being Black in America equates to an exhausting and distressing existence.
In fall 2020, dedicated to and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the Windgate Museum of Art at Hendrix College held an exhibition titled Let Us March On, celebrating Black voices and Black art, and honoring progress within Arkansas and beyond. As Film Associates for the museum, we were charged with the amazing responsibility of curating a film series to accompany the exhibition. This opportunity to choose films with emphases on Black culture encouraged enthusiasm through our passions for both cinema and social equality. We went into this series knowing that the Black community suffers from a distressing day-to-day experience due to not only the prevalence of hateful racist acts but also underrepresentation in the media. This underrepresentation allows racist acts to go unnoticed, and it contributes to historically negative perceptions of Black people. We felt it was overwhelmingly important to present a series featuring Black actors and Black stories by Black directors; a series that not only calls attention to the prevailing injustices Black Americans face daily but also foregrounds the community. Titled Black Representation Matters: In Film and Beyond, our series successfully uplifted Black experiences through moving images, showcasing what it’s really like to be Black in America.
Black filmmakers continuously generate praiseworthy films, yet their artistry remains disappointingly unsung in proportion to their talent. Instead of giving them the spotlight they deserve, Hollywood has long deliberately favored media that reduces Black characters to offensive stereotypes and tired cinematic tropes, if not excluding Black representation altogether. Hattie McDaniel’s role as a Black housekeeper, whose only purpose in Gone With the Wind was to assist white characters, perpetuates the Mammy stereotype and remains one of the earliest racist tropes in Hollywood film. Another played-out cinematic trope (which can sometimes be harder to spot) has since been cleverly dubbed “white saviorism,” in which Black characters cannot overcome their hardships unless a white character comes to the rescue, as exemplified in popular films like The Blind Side, The Help, and even the recent Best Picture-winning film Green Book. Black characters are reduced to helpless archetypes, who often exist in films only to support their white counterparts. Such films uphold the white gaze, telling Black stories through the eyes of a white person while also prioritizing the comfort of white audiences. Part of the importance of Black representation lies in promoting the Black gaze, by shining a light on Black culture through stories that exhibit an authentic perception of their lives that Black people get to lead. We tried to choose films that essentially provide this refreshing perspective, including narratives that serve as socially conscious entertainment. Some of the other films in the series present themselves as learning tools that break barriers and promote vital discourse on Black social issues and Black history, further defining the significance of Black representation through critical cultural context.
The film selection process was exhilarating, eye-opening, but also arduous and frustrating at times. We wanted to include films from a multitude of genres, so as to make sure that our series was diverse in showing different filmmaking styles that Black creators have mastered. When brainstorming on certain filmmakers that we wanted to include, we immediately thought of Ava DuVernay: a trailblazing Black woman director, world-renowned for her social justice documentary film 13th (2016), as well as the monumental biographical film Selma and the wonderfully diverse reboot of Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time. Exposing the corrupt ways in which giant corporations profit off the racially biased accumulation of prisoners and their labor, 13th efficiently and effectively highlights the unjust practices of the American prison system. This film was the first screened in the series, in order to provide an accessible and comprehensive context for issues of racism in America. Following the showing of 13th, we hosted a discussion panel with prominent social justice advocates in the central Arkansas community. By screening DuVernay’s documentary first, we hoped to start our series off with a powerful argument against the systems which have long existed for the purpose of hindering the equality and success of Black Americans, such as the American prison system and the major corporations and prominent government figures who have contributed to its oppressive practices for decades.
For our second screening, members of local social justice and civil rights organizations, as well as authors and experts on the subject of racial violence in Arkansas, came together virtually to talk with us about 13th as well as the local PBS documentary Dreamland: Little Rock’s West 9th Street – a film about the titular downtown ballroom which was a hub of musical entertainment and expressive culture for the Black community in Little Rock until it was tragically and unjustly shut down in the 1970s. Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, based on the writings of prominent Black thinker and essayist James Baldwin, delineates the history of racism and the fight for civil rights in America through Baldwin’s distinctly incisive voice. Peck’s film serves as a multilayered documentary of Black representation that explores Hollywood’s racist foundations, compounded by Baldwin’s personal reactions to the insidious assassinations of three prominent civil rights activists. The pertinent documentaries included in this series, with Ava DuVernay, Gabe Mayhan and Raoul Peck as their creators, efficiently function as African American history texts assisting the audience’s comprehension of the idea that tragic events of the past contribute to the detriment of the Black community in the present day.
We also wanted to highlight at least a few dramatic narrative films. Moonlight and Cheryl Dunye’s hidden 1996 gem The Watermelon Woman both tell stories of young queer Black Americans navigating the two-fold challenges and obstacles that face them as members of multiple oppressed minority groups in the US. The experiences of the main characters in Moonlight and The Watermelon Woman, translated through the dynamic medium of film, serve not only to educate but also to celebrate Black life in a culture that often suppresses it.
Virtual student-led discussions, featuring several Black students and students of the LGBTQ+ community, followed each screening and made for enriching, enlightening, and even fun conversations. The Watermelon Woman invited open discourse pertaining to the depiction of Black women in film, specifically gay Black women, and what it might look like as exemplified realistically in Dunye’s empowering work. Moonlight, on the other hand, prompted discussion on standards of masculinity within the Black community, homosexuality among Black men, and even the film’s riveting cinematography. For each panel, we reached out to an English professor at our college with hopes they would successfully moderate and guide our discourse, and they certainly exceeded our expectations. Given their deep familiarity with the films, each panel moderator posed thought-provoking questions to invite students to speak about the films with care and excitement. The entire process ultimately promoted a warm learning experience – one that, rather than feeling dull and obligatory, elicited great congeniality among our peers in exploring the importance of Black film. In each discussion, our peers’ sharp and illuminating contributions deepened our understanding and appreciation for the films. Through these panels, we successfully offered a space for Black students to watch the films they’ve loved, or would come to love, and talk about their viewing experience and what each piece of cinema meant to them, proving that Black representation on the screen gives the Black community a voice beyond the screen.
The persisting racist acts, like those of last summer’s tragic events of death and violence, indicate that Black bodies continue to be ceaselessly disregarded, belittled, and diminished in America: a concerning signal that the country has not changed as much as we’d hoped and imagined. America’s incessant racism is, in part, the result of past and present media creating and upholding racist ideology. From the Mammy stereotype, to white saviorism, and harmful racist archetypes (which date back to as early as 1915 with D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation), cinema has played a critically detrimental role in determining how Black Americans are perceived and regarded by others. Some Black directors have even dedicated their filmographies to supplying distasteful depictions of Blackness in an attempt to uphold the white gaze. These types of films must be held culpable for contributing to the disparaging perceptions of the community. Media should better serve the purpose of uplifting Black individuals and repairing our broken society.
We should aspire to behold informative documentaries and narrative fiction films alike, like the ones in our series, as roadmaps to a more inclusive, vulnerable, and loving American culture. Perhaps our series served as a model for what we all desire to see in our own reflections on the screen. The five films of Black Representation Matters each stand as meritorious pieces in their authentic portrayal of Black American life. Including and beyond these features that we’ve highlighted, a thrilling range of Black cinema exists that should be pursued and celebrated. Hopefully, the Black characters and stories we experience on screen will help change the world’s perception of this marginalized group toward a more inclusive society, because Black representation undeniably, matters.
