One of the best things during COVID-19 was learning to prepare delicious meals and exchange recipes with friends, making mouth-watering cocktails, some I had never heard of before, and lastly, watching great films, new and old ones. If you do something enough times it becomes a habit. One of the things I look forward to each day is watching new and old films and television series that I always loved like Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury, Living Single with Queen Latifah, Dr. Blake Murder Mysteries, Perry Mason, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Monk with Tony Shalhoub, and of course, Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld and others. I love good comedies and action-packed dramas that encourage me to figure out who committed the murder.
What I love the most about watching old Hollywood black-and-white films is the elegance that is displayed through the beautiful fashion worn by men and women. Even the children were well dressed too. As a boy, I can still remember, regardless of how poor or rich you were, you always dressed appropriately when going to visit friends and family, going to school, or just shopping for food. Everyone looked so elegant, very different from how people dress today.
Several weeks ago, when I started rewatching great old films, I began to feel angry and annoyed at how people of colour were portrayed in old Hollywood films. Racism in early American film is the negative depiction of racial groups, racial stereotypes, and racist ideals in classical Hollywood cinema from 1910 to the 1960s. From its beginning, Hollywood has always been dominated by white male filmmakers and producers catering to a predominately white audience.
In February 1915, the film, The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith was released. The film depicted Ku Klux Klansmen (KKK) as the saviours of the nation that brought back a stable government and upheld American values. The film used actors in blackface to depict African Americans as mindless, lustful savages, portraying them as less than human so that White Americans could justify violence against them and believe the lie of being superior. The misinformation is still being taught to white children in their homes by racist parents and relatives. Following the movie's debut, racial violence against Blacks or African Americans increased, including the reincarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in November of the same year. Sadly, The Birth of a Nation’s racially charged Jim Crow narrative, coupled with America’s heightened anti-immigrant climate, led the Klan to align itself with the movie’s success and use it as a recruiting tool.
The first major displays of racial stereotypes of African Americans were minstrel shows. At the beginning of the 19th century, white actors were dressed in blackface and attire that was supposedly worn by African Americans. Many of the 19th-century stereotypes, such as the Sambo character, are derogatory and racist. The character Sambo was a stereotype of Black men considered to be very happy, usually laughing, lazy, irresponsible, or carefree. The Sambo creation gained notoriety through the 1898 children's book, The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman. It told the story of a boy named Sambo who outwitted a group of hungry tigers. This depiction of black people was displayed prominently in films of the early 20th century. The original text suggested that Sambo lived in India, but that fact escaped many readers. The book has often been considered a slur against Africans. The term pickaninny, reserved for children, has a similarly broadened pattern of use in popular American theatre and media. It originated from the Spanish term “pequeño niño” and the Portuguese term “pequenino” to describe small children in general, but it was applied especially to African American children in the United States. Depicting African American children as alligator bait was a common trope in American popular culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. The motif was present in a wide array of media, including newspaper reports, songs, and visual art.
The Mandingo was displayed as a sexually insatiable Black man with a large penis, invented by white slave owners to advance the idea that Black people were not civilised but rather animalistic by nature. The term Mandingo is a corrupted word for the Mandinka people of West Africa, presently populating Mali, Guinea, and the Gambia. The Mammy role describes African American women household slaves who served as nannies giving maternal care to the white children of the slave owner's family. African Americans were frequently stereotyped as having an unusual appetite for fried chicken, watermelon, and grape drinks. Today, many of my Black friends try not to eat fried chicken or watermelon in front of their white friends and colleagues. The Jezebel stereotype emerged during the era of chattel slavery in the United States. White slave owners exercised control over enslaved Black women's sexuality and fertility, as their worth on the auction block was determined by their childbearing ability, i.e. their ability to produce more slaves.
Starting in the 1980s, Black men were shown in Hollywood films as criminals and social degenerates, especially as drug dealers, crack addicts, homeless drug users, subway muggers, rapists, and thieves. In recent history, they have been portrayed as deadbeat fathers and dangerous criminals. Often Black women are portrayed as welfare queens or as "angry black women" who are loud, aggressive, demanding, and rude.
In 1927, the film, The Jazz Singer by Alan Crosland was released and regarded as one of the first films of sound. One of the major themes was the use of blackface by the Jewish character Jack Robins. The use of blackface in the film led to lots of controversy, especially about the role in the plot and its Jewish character. There were more than seventy examples of blackface in early sound films between 1927 and 1953. Al Jolson made at least nine blackface appearances.
It's also disturbing how East Asians were portrayed in old Hollywood films. For example, Charlie Chan (based on the real Chang Apana), was depicted as a "good Asian", and used as an antithesis to Fu Manchu, considered the "bad Asian" villain. For the record, Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star, featured in Hollywood films as a supporting character or Dragon Lady villainess during the early 1920s.
During the silent film era, Native American characters did not talk much, when synchronised sound made its way into the theatres in the 1930s. The characters spoke an alien-sounding language that was not a Native language, to exclude Natives from the audience and to increase their misrepresentation. Their English dialogue was often recorded as if the characters were speaking backwards, and later printed in reverse so that a fake Native American language was heard. Throughout the 1900s, there were many films made that perpetuated stereotypes about Native Americans. The goal was to create the Indian enemy image and erasure of the good Indian stereotype. Even though none of this was true, the Western culture and Native American/Indian stereotypes steeped deep in the American consciousness to the point of obliteration of Native identity. Hollywood was successful at feeding lies and misinformation to the American people and the world, which they all believed.
In 1921, Paramount Pictures released the Rudolph Valentino movie, The Sheik, a box office success. The film showed Arabs as savage beasts who auction off their women. A few years later, The Son of the Sheik was released, which also portrayed racist overtones. Rudolph Valentino was asked by a New York Times reporter once whether his character could fall for a savage, referring to an Arab woman. He responded by saying, "People are not savages because they have dark skin." In both films, Arabs were portrayed as thieves, charlatans, murderers, and brutes.
You may not recognise his name, but in the 1940s, Dudley Dickerson appeared in over 160 films but is most known for his appearances in the Three Stooges films. Hollywood used him because of his huge bug-eyed appearance and portrayal of stereotypes of the way White people believed that all Black people looked, spoke in idiotic tones, and shuffled around saying "Yessum" and being afraid of everything. These characters made them laugh. Unfortunately, many to this day still expect Black people to behave in this manner which they never did. It was just all made up for entertainment purposes and to make lots of money at the box office. Even today, there are still college students who think it's fun and innovative to dress up in blackface for various events.
Recently, I watched "The Help", a film with a brilliant cast of great actors that included Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, David Oyelowo, and many others. When I first saw the film when it was released in 2011, I loved it. This time around, it reminded me of difficult times that I am sure my mother, her sisters, and friends had to deal with working as housekeepers or maids for rich, arrogant people with lots of privileges. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck start to rise and tingle over the lack of respect for those working in the role of "the help". I immediately returned to being a young boy watching my mother leave every morning to clean the homes of the so-called elite and raise their children. Growing up I thought my older sister was my mother because my mom would leave for work before I woke up for school and not return home until after I had been put to bed by my older sister or brother. Ironically, I never heard my mother or her friends complain in front of us children. Once, when it was a school holiday, my mom had to take the three of us with her to work. We were all given small jobs to do to keep busy and to help my mother. All went well until my sister decided to use the toilet, which was not allowed. My sister was dark brown and the boss lady, Ms. Woodson, screamed that she shouldn't sit on their toilet because her blackness would rub off on the toilet seat and possibly get on their white skin. My sister was lectured and sent to use the toilet in the garage that was designated for "Negroes" only. After Ms. Woodson left to attend a tea party with her friends, my sister returned to the inside toilet and made sure to sit all over the toilets throughout the house. My mother was embarrassed and feared for her job. I was allowed to use the toilets inside because I was considered a red-bone little boy with reddish-blond hair. So many memories that I had buried pushed their way to the surface. Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. said, "Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence."
"The Help" has been criticized for its portrayal of a white character as the driving force behind the African American maids' movement for equality during the Civil Rights era. While the film does shed light on the struggles of black domestic workers, it's seen by some as reinforcing a narrative where a white character takes the lead in advocating for marginalised black characters, essentially becoming their saviour. Critics argue that this narrative undermines the voices of the black characters by emphasizing the actions of a white protagonist, perpetuating the notion that black individuals need a white figure to empower or save them. The film has faced backlash for simplifying the complexities of racial dynamics and the Civil Rights movement by centering the story around a white character's perspective and actions.
"The Help" takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. This is when and where civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated. Real-life national news headlines of the assassination are used in the film about an hour and twenty minutes into the movie.
Sissy Spacek nearly turned down the role of Missus Walters, as she felt there wasn't enough material to work with to create a fully rounded character, but her mind was changed when director Tate Taylor told her she would be allowed to improvise during filming.
Despite an Oscar nomination, Viola Davis has expressed regret about her role in the film, apparently concurring with critics of its "white saviour" narrative. Davis played Aibileen Clark, one of the black maids in 1963 Mississippi whose stories are told by a young white woman (Emma Stone) in a book exposing the everyday racism they face. In an interview with the New York Times, Davis cited The Help as a role she regretted. "I just felt that at the end of the day, it wasn't the voices of the maids that were heard," she said. "I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They're my grandma. They're my mom. And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, 'I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963,' I want to hear how you feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie."
It's an incredible feeling when you take a few steps back to get a better understanding of everything going on around you, every day. Whether you liked the film or not, it helped to open the discussion and awareness of how people of colour were treated and how the disrespect and racial stereotypes continue today in Hollywood films and within global communities.
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