Written by | Wang Yiping
It is no accident that African-American faces are increasingly appearing under Hollywood footage. In his book Philosophy of Art, the French philosopher Danner attributed the factors that influenced the development of literature and art to "race, time and environment". In today's Hollywood, African-American actors have become mainstream stars, African-American characters have become the protagonists of commercial blockbusters, and films that tell African-American stories have won Oscars, which is undoubtedly the result of the combined action of the three factors of "race, era and environment".
However, in the history of Hollywood, the process of African American faces entering the mainstream vision has not been smooth. In 1940, black actress Heidi McDaniel
（Hattie McDaniel）
Winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the role of maid in Gone with the Wind was the first time a black actor had won an Oscar, and at that year's awards ceremony, people of color and white people even needed to sit in separate places.
Sidney Portier, 1963
（Sidney Poitier）
With the help of the movie "Wild Lily"
（Lilies of the Field）
The performance became the first black Oscar in film history. And it wasn't until 2001 that the first black Oscar queen appeared, Harley Berry
（Halle Berry）
He received this award for his performance in Dance of the Death Row. At this point, it can be said that Hollywood's star system has finally opened its doors to African Americans.
Correspondingly, although black people are the protagonists, films about race have appeared as early as the 1960s, such as 1967's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" about a series of problems caused by a white woman marrying a black man. But by 1990, the film "Driving for Miss Daisy," about the friendship between white female employers and black male drivers, won that year's Oscar for Best Picture.
2019's "Green Book" flipped this setting, the protagonist of the story became a white driver and black employer, and the film also won the Oscar for best picture. Under the lens of Hollywood, black and white is just a way of telling African-American stories. In these films that focus on African-American faces, there is not only history and struggle, but also the splendor and hypocrisy, beauty and fragility of the American dream.
"Green Book" won the Oscar for Best Picture, the crew was on the podium, and from this photo, it can also be seen that although this is a movie about race, the creators behind the scenes are mainly white.
History and Resistance: Peaceful Marches and Violent Movements
As we all know, the infamous triangle trade began in the fifteenth century, when European colonists came to Africa with guns and ammunition, sold black people to the American continent, and became slaves on estates, especially in the southern United States. It was not until 1862, the second year of the Outbreak of the American Civil War, that then-President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that black slavery was officially abolished.
This history is not uncommon in Hollywood, and among the films that tell this history in recent years, "Twelve Years as a Slave" is undoubtedly the most eye-catching. The 2013 film was directed by the well-known black British male director Steve McQueen
（Steve McQueen）
Directing, it received nine nominations at the Oscars the following year and eventually won three awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The protagonist of the film was originally a free man with a happy family and the ability to make an independent living, but because of his African-American status, he was trafficked by human traffickers and became a slave on an estate in the southern United States. Thus he lived as a slave for twelve years, until a white male with a conscience appeared, and he was freed and free, while the other slaves in the manor did not know when to wait.
The film presents the hardships of black slaves under the enslavement of white estate owners with great calm and restraint: endless labor, rape, whipping, and double physical and mental humiliation. The film's indictment is undoubtedly extremely powerful, and its attempt to present this dark history from an objective perspective is actually an expression of dissatisfaction with history. The 2012 film "Django Rescued" chose a different perspective to explain this history.
Stills from the movie "Twelve Years of Slavery".
Although "Negro" has once been seen as offensive and racist in today's context, in this film directed by the famous white male director Quentin Tarantino, this offense is almost ubiquitous. In addition, in "Django Rescued", it is not only the white manor owners who oppress the black slaves, but also the housekeepers and nannies who are loyal to the white owners, which is not another way of looking at history.
After the abolition of black slavery, the African-American community still suffered many unfair treatment in the United States. For example, the movie "Help" released in 2011 focused on the black nannies in the American South in the 1960s. At this time, although the black affirmative action movement was already in the making, in the conservative South, black maids still endured the arrogance and discrimination of white noblewomen.
Meanwhile, a white woman raised by a black nanny began to pay attention to the phenomenon and helped them tell their stories and move on the path of resistance. As the name "Help" reveals, the film is not only about racial equality, but also about women helping each other. At the end of the film, the shootings of racial discrimination have completely angered the African-American community, and they have begun to take to the streets and participate in the wave of the era of the black affirmative action movement.
Black maids and white employers in the movie "Help Each Other"
Released in 2018, "Black Party" tells this journey of resistance with anger. At the beginning of the film, the classic Hollywood narrative represented by "Gone with the Wind" is criticized, in "Gone with the Wind", the heroine Scarlett is a tough and kind slave owner, and her black slaves are loyal to her. "Black Party" directly punctures the "hypocrisy" of this "master-servant friendship" and focuses on the struggle between the "Black Panther Party" and the "Ku Klux Klan" in the 1970s.
The Black Panther Party is a black left-wing radical organization that believes in the use of violent revolution to crush racial discrimination, while the "3K" is an American civil society group that advocates white supremacy. The film features a black policeman, a neutral male protagonist who imitates the voice of a white man and successfully goes undercover to the "Klux Klan" party in an attempt to stop a well-planned violent attack. In the process, he came into contact with a member of the "Black Panther Party" and his "neutral" stance began to waver. Eventually, the police succeeded in stopping the ku Klux Klan's violent attack campaign. At the end of the film, director Spike Lee directly shows the news footage of a series of racial discrimination and violence that have occurred since Trump took office, shifting the center of expression from history to the present.
The path of the black affirmative action movement can also be roughly summarized from these films, slavery was abolished in 1862, and about a hundred years later, the peaceful march represented by Martin Luther King Jr. became the main line of the black affirmative action movement in the sixties. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Malcolm The line of violent resistance advocated by X gradually replaced nonviolent assemblies. Today, in the 21st century, racial equality has become a kind of political correctness, completely incorporated into the mainstream discourse. It also means that under the Lens of Hollywood, the presentation of history needs to be chosen, and to enter the mainstream, it is necessary to erase violence, just as the former radical Spike Lee trusted the "police" in "Black Party".
Reality and Endeavor: The American Dream and the Anti-American Dream
In addition to the stories of resistance in history, Hollywood has gradually incorporated African-American faces into the mainstream narrative of the American Dream in recent years. The leader in this is undoubtedly "Black Panther", released in 2018, as Hollywood's first black superhero film, the film not only achieved great commercial success, but also received seven Oscar nominations. The black panther fire also marked the successful entry of African-American faces into the mainstream commercial film.
In terms of its content, "Black Panther" is actually a clichéd "Revenge of the Prince" story, from "Hamlet" to "The Lion King", which can be said to be common, but the special feature of "Black Panther" is that the film portrays a near-perfect African-American utopia - Wakanda. Rich and powerful, Wakanda is an extremely developed modern state economically and militarily, but Wakanda also retains primitive tribal "fighting" rituals and adopts a hereditary monarchy politically. This setting can be said to be Hollywood's arrogance and prejudice, and to some extent, it also alludes to the friction and discomfort of the African American community in the process of integrating into the mainstream American dream.
Stills from Black Panther.
Released in 2016, "Hidden Figures" is based on real historical events, and this film is an American theme film featuring three black women. The film is about the 1960s, working for NASA
(NASA)
How did the three black women use their ingenuity and enterprising spirit to break the shackles of race, contribute to the U.S.-Soviet space race, and win the recognition of white men and the respect of mainstream society. The film's narrative mode is roughly the same as the common American Dream story, with inspiration and class rise as the main line, but when the protagonist becomes black, the film is also branded with "racial equality". However, when the film overemphasizes "positive energy", it is not a glorification of history.
The 2014 sitcom "Love the New, Don't Get Tired of the Old" discusses the "African American Dream" more broadly. The show's protagonist is a black family living in a white middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles. The father came from the bottom and struggled to enter the middle-class community, while the four children were pampered from an early age. The drama revolves around many topics such as parent-child, couple, and workplace, and is no different from the same type of white family comedy, basically based on the core concepts of tolerance, openness, and respect, and adds the characteristic elements of black culture on this basis.
However, the show's creators also seem to be aware of this problem and have made self-ridicule about it, especially in the role of the father. As he entered middle-class society, he seemed to be gradually moving away from the "black" culture. In one episode, when the father takes the children back to the black neighborhood where he grew up, they are invariably frightened of this environment full of black people. In other words, for the African-American community, does integration into the American Dream mean eliminating their racial identity and moving closer to the white community?
Stills from the American drama "Like the New and Don't Get Tired of the Old".
For this problem, the 2019 independent film "Luce" chose a sharper angle to explain. In the film, a well-off white couple adopts a ten-year-old black boy, Luce, from Africa. After coming to American society, Luce unconsciously assumed the title of "model minority" in the process of growing up, and he was expected to participate in various speeches, with excellent results, becoming another successful case of the American dream.
This expectation comes not only from white parents, but also from black teachers in schools. Under pressure, Luce gradually idolized an African authoritarian leader and went down the path of violence, with black teachers becoming the first victims. What the film highlights is that the seemingly glamorous American Dream is extremely oppressive for the African-American community. And this oppression comes not only from the outside, but also from within the African-American community.
Therefore, for African Americans, the American Dream is not only an inspiration and class leap, but also a way to win racial equality and gain the respect of mainstream society. For the successful, the American Dream is bright and inspiring, and for the losers, the American Dream is not another hurdle on the road to racial equality. The former is obviously more likely to be mainstreamed by Hollywood, with "Black Panther" and "Hidden Figures" about the inspirational American dream receiving Oscar recognition, while the anti-American dream "Luce" has little response.
Culture and Psychology: Dissipation and Reconstruction
Whether it is a historical theme of the struggle story or a contemporary theme of the American dream narrative, these two types of films with African Americans as the protagonist are basically interpreted from the macro socio-political level, within the category of "racial equality". At the same time, Hollywood's black narrative is not so, and outside of race, it is a cultural and psychological dilemma.
Spike Lee's "Do What You Should" focuses on the interior of a black neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, showing the serendipity behind a violent event in great detail. An Italian restaurant on the streets of Brooklyn was burned because of the anger of two black teenagers. One teenager was stopped by his boss for playing music outside the restaurant, and another was dissatisfied with his boss because the store was full of pictures of Italian celebrities but no black idol.
As a result, the two joined forces to confront the white Italian boss, who called the police, injured the black teenager in the clashes, and the people on the street shifted their anger to an Italian restaurant, which triggered a violent carnival. This 1989 film is about how a deep-seated antagonistic psychology leads to the venting of violent instincts. What the director is trying to explore is, to some extent, beyond mere racial issues, and focuses on how stereotypical psychology and emotional emotions dominate people's actions and lead to chaos and violence.
An Italian restaurant burned down in Do What You Should Do.
The 2017 film "Escape from Desperate Town" tells the story of the hidden social psychological disease behind the appearance of racial equality becoming political correctness. On a quiet weekend, Chris, a black man, travels with his white girlfriend to a typical American town to visit his girlfriend's parents. As the plot unfolds, the male protagonist finds himself gradually in danger, and the girlfriend's parents seem to be the source of the danger.
In the layers of preparation, the answer is gradually revealed, and it turns out that the girlfriend's parents have been secretly trading skin color at home. The black people were tricked into taking away their skin bags; the white people who pursued the "black" tide put on the skin bags and became new humans with white hearts and black skins. The film satirizes the hypocrisy of political correctness with the most intuitive flesh and skin trade, and under the trend of the times, "black" has become a fashion trend, and the powerful only value the skin bag, not the living person. "Racial equality" is no longer an appeal and struggle here, but has become an element of horror films to bring the audience a sense of psychological creepiness.
Stills from the movie "Escape from Breaking Bad".
Similarly, the 2018 independent film "Sorry to Disturb" embeds "racial" elements into the framework of horror films. The film begins with a strike of predominantly ethnic minority workers, and the black male protagonist is also a member of the strike team. However, under the oppression of capital, the strike ended in failure. In order to make a living, the male protagonist entered a telemarketing company, and by chance, he came into contact with the company's white boss, but accidentally hit and found a shocking secret.
In the basement of the white boss, there are half-human, half-beasts imprisoned one by one—also the modified low-level human beings. Under the power of technology, they were transformed into new species and enslaved. The film uses the metaphor of "animalization" to skillfully blend the issues of race and class, capital and technology become the tools of the minority, and the remaining majority can only be enslaved. Under the tone of absurdity, the film conveys a very maddening sense of horror. It can be said that in "Escape from Breaking Bad" and "Sorry to Disturb", "race" has become an element that can be dissolved, providing new possibilities for the expression innovation of film art.
In the 2019 Oscar for Best Picture "Moonlight Boy", the "racial attributes" of African Americans were further weakened. In addition to vaguely mentioning the homophobic tendencies within the black community, the film is more about how a black boy discovers himself and accepts himself. Corresponding to this personal content, the film chooses lyrical expression, so that in this black story, the shadows of Wong Kar-wai and Hou Xiaoxian can even be faintly seen.
From the above films, it can also be seen that in addition to political expression, black films also present more possibilities, which include self-analysis and reflection, as well as the horrors of ridicule, self-deprecation, self-dissolution and reconstruction, and even personal lyricism. But at the same time, we should also see that these films, which cut from the cultural and psychological level, are more as a supplement to political expression than as the mainstream of black narratives.
Overall, african-American faces under Hollywood lenses are beginning to take on an increasingly rich face. Whether it is the "propositional composition" of historical struggle, or the focus on reality, the discussion and speculation on the "American Dream", or the more delicate display of the dilemma of cultural psychology, Hollywood has handed over a good answer. Among them, although some films are the works of the studios under the industrial system to the trend of the times, and most of the films that have entered the mainstream vision of Hollywood are relatively conservative, in the current era, the politically correct "face project" is still necessary. Moreover, for Hollywood, whose originality has weakened in recent years, race is not a new breakthrough. Perhaps in the future, black films can make more breakthroughs outside of political correctness.
Author 丨 Wang Yiping
Edited by Yu Yaqin Luodong
Proofreading 丨He Yan