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Authors: Wil Haygood
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distribution in this country thathad been directed by a black woman. It set no box office records. In 2004, however, Daughters of the Dust was chosen by the Library of Congress to be placed in the National Film Registry for preservation. Art doesn’t necessarily get moviegoers into seats, but it can very often be both a noble and an admirable undertaking. Whopping big-budget movies have fallen by the wayside; Dash’s small and intimate one will be remembered.
In the category of films that will be remembered but not necessarily profitable is The Wiz. It was directed by the great Sidney Lumet and starred the luminous Lena Horne as the Good Witch. It must have seemed like a lovely idea at the time: a black cast reimagining a beloved classic. The movie—both fun to watch and a bit too busy—ultimately suffered from the miscasting of Diana Ross. But blacks thrilled at the sight of a big-budget musical. How many inner-city dreams were hatched from the viewing of that film? We may never know.
Filmmakers are, after all, ultimate gamblers. Throw race into that gamble, and the predictions get a lot trickier. Tyler Perry has legions of admirers, but also those who do not rush to see his comedic work. But there’s no denying he’s tapped into a vein: movies with predominately black casts that are comedic sending the director-producer go laughing all the way to the bank. Perry has a genius marketing machine: the black church ladies talk of him in gospel-like tones. They bolt for the multiplexes to see his latest after Sunday services. Samuel Goldwyn andLouis B. Mayer would have loved the Perry formula. A lot of business, a lot of show!
It took George Lucas more than two decades to mount Red Tails, his movie about the black Tuskegee Airmen who flew in World War II. He bemoaned that no Hollywood studio wanted to make it, so he financed it himself. It became a modest box office hit, accumulating a $50 million gross. The brave gamblers can certainly win, particularly when measured in terms of both box office rewards and cultural pride. Which begs the question: Why have American filmmakers shied from taking advantage of the greatest civil rights movement in this nation’s recent history, that of the 1960s and its oceanic emotions? The territory is fertile and untapped. “I hope The Butler causes a movement in that direction,” producer Pam Williams told me.
If cinema is a universal language, what does it say about America—and American movies, which are great sources of export—that its movies tend to ignore a whole segment of its populace? Is that not cultural blindness? And yet, bringing attention to the plight hardly seemed to solve the problem.
In writing a story about the 2011 Oscar nominees—for performances in 2010—the estimable New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis commended those nominees and pictures for the variety of roles as well as genres. But the nominated films were also, she wrote, “more racially homogenous—more white—than the ten films that were upfor best picture in 1940, when Hattie McDaniel became the first black American to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ ” To Dargis, it was painfully obvious that 2010 was “perhaps the whitest year for Hollywood” in decades. For a major film critic to take American movies back to the 1940s when talking about race could only be seen as a rebuke of modern-day filmmaking. The Dargis story appeared in the Times on a Sunday, a day of wide circulation, and you could practically hear the gnashing in Hollywood: a black man occupied the Oval Office, yet the movies seemed to be harking back to the kind of “whitelisting” that existed in those mean days of yesteryear. (Interestingly enough, a story in the New York Times in June 2013 paid attention to African American–themed movies slated for pending release—one of which was The Butler. )
Fortunately, one of those people who had long been concerned about the lack of diversity
In the category of films that will be remembered but not necessarily profitable is The Wiz. It was directed by the great Sidney Lumet and starred the luminous Lena Horne as the Good Witch. It must have seemed like a lovely idea at the time: a black cast reimagining a beloved classic. The movie—both fun to watch and a bit too busy—ultimately suffered from the miscasting of Diana Ross. But blacks thrilled at the sight of a big-budget musical. How many inner-city dreams were hatched from the viewing of that film? We may never know.
Filmmakers are, after all, ultimate gamblers. Throw race into that gamble, and the predictions get a lot trickier. Tyler Perry has legions of admirers, but also those who do not rush to see his comedic work. But there’s no denying he’s tapped into a vein: movies with predominately black casts that are comedic sending the director-producer go laughing all the way to the bank. Perry has a genius marketing machine: the black church ladies talk of him in gospel-like tones. They bolt for the multiplexes to see his latest after Sunday services. Samuel Goldwyn andLouis B. Mayer would have loved the Perry formula. A lot of business, a lot of show!
It took George Lucas more than two decades to mount Red Tails, his movie about the black Tuskegee Airmen who flew in World War II. He bemoaned that no Hollywood studio wanted to make it, so he financed it himself. It became a modest box office hit, accumulating a $50 million gross. The brave gamblers can certainly win, particularly when measured in terms of both box office rewards and cultural pride. Which begs the question: Why have American filmmakers shied from taking advantage of the greatest civil rights movement in this nation’s recent history, that of the 1960s and its oceanic emotions? The territory is fertile and untapped. “I hope The Butler causes a movement in that direction,” producer Pam Williams told me.
If cinema is a universal language, what does it say about America—and American movies, which are great sources of export—that its movies tend to ignore a whole segment of its populace? Is that not cultural blindness? And yet, bringing attention to the plight hardly seemed to solve the problem.
In writing a story about the 2011 Oscar nominees—for performances in 2010—the estimable New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis commended those nominees and pictures for the variety of roles as well as genres. But the nominated films were also, she wrote, “more racially homogenous—more white—than the ten films that were upfor best picture in 1940, when Hattie McDaniel became the first black American to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ ” To Dargis, it was painfully obvious that 2010 was “perhaps the whitest year for Hollywood” in decades. For a major film critic to take American movies back to the 1940s when talking about race could only be seen as a rebuke of modern-day filmmaking. The Dargis story appeared in the Times on a Sunday, a day of wide circulation, and you could practically hear the gnashing in Hollywood: a black man occupied the Oval Office, yet the movies seemed to be harking back to the kind of “whitelisting” that existed in those mean days of yesteryear. (Interestingly enough, a story in the New York Times in June 2013 paid attention to African American–themed movies slated for pending release—one of which was The Butler. )
Fortunately, one of those people who had long been concerned about the lack of diversity
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