Thoughts on the coexistence of racial identity and responsible consumerism
This is just a collection of thoughts that have been rattling around my head for a while. There's no conclusion because I have no recommendations or solutions. In other words, academic post is academic.
So, Red Tails. It's not a bad movie, but it's not really a good movie. It starts after the story begins and ends before the story is finished. The characters aren't terribly fleshed out, and were I a betting gal, I'd wager Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. gave themselves those roles without offering them up to the masses. And I just don't really like war movies. Generally, for my personal enjoyment, I need people getting shot to be secondary to the plot.
That said, here's what else it's not -- It's not Tyler Perry Movie Part 756, and it's not another installment of Blaxploitation 2.0.
I get that Tyler Perry has a pretty firmly installed fanbase and a broader audience of people who will just pay to see black people on a screen doing something that isn't robbery, rape, or murder, but the movies are preachy and not so much individual works as volumes in a series and, of the ones I've seen, they pretty much focus on valuing women based on the quality/qualities of the men they choose to sleep with and his level of commitment to them. If you manage to marry a guy who doesn't hit you or cheat on you or rape your daughter by the end, you must be a worthwhile individual. Good job! Can't really fault his grasp of reality there, though, as black women are in actuality pretty much entirely measured by the men in their lives. Women who reach, say, their mid-twenties without being married, having been married, or having had children are obviously defective, and men within five minutes of meeting them often feel it's their right to demand to know in what way, so as to determine to what degree these women are worth pursuing.
Side note: I couldn't tell you whether this is true among other races/ethnicities/cultures, only that I've only been asked the series of questions -- Are you married? Do you have kids? How old are you? What's wrong with you? -- as such by black men.
Then there's the urban (read: ghetto) comedy. And as much as low-brow humor based on cheap stereotypes really grates my nerves, I can't even be mad at Friday and its spawn because I see it as a sort of pendulum swing from the gang dramas of the '90s, and I have respect for those. I don't know if it's that I was so young and naive at the time and haven't watched them in this millennium or if it's that as formulaic -- and as they grew more numerous, largely uninspired -- as they could be, I remember them as a genuine expression of pain from a subnation in self-destruct mode.
So I feel like the turn to from urban drama to urban comedy was a sort of a natural counter to the hopelessness, and the best way I can try to explain it is to go to one of my mom's favorite mantras that she got from her mom -- you may as well laugh as to cry.
But the thing is, that's, like, all there is for black people to get to speak three sentences in a movie, along with the occasional YA inspirational flick -- Akeelah and the Bee, The Great Debaters, Stomp the Yard, and you get my point.
All that said, going back to Red Tails. This is a project from an actor with a Best Actor Oscar nom, an actor with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win, and one of the most financially successful producers of all time, and studios refused it. So against that background, it makes a World War II movie fucking revolutionary, doesn't it?
So by a miracle, the project is able to get made and released, and this miracle is George Lucas' riches. And now it's a case study. For all future movies featuring predominantly black casts that don't fall into the genre of Thing By Tyler Perry or Tales From the Streets, it serves as a precedent, whether it wants to or not. If it fails, this project from the man who brought you the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises could not make white people pay to see black, and if he can't, then whoever could? And if it makes money, then hey, it turns out black people are people, too, and whoda thunk?
Well, maybe those aren't the right terms. Maybe it's more like, is there room for black actors to be anything more than black characters? Or black caricatures? Morally, the answer is obvious -- black people can be whatever they want to be (I can be president! Not really) and if racial prejudice stands in their way, they should just break right through it, etc., but how? As long as studio execs think people won't pay to see the movies, they won't make them, so there has to be some evidence. Back to the case study.
Will the audience pay? If I'm the consumer and potential audience and my answer is that yes, I will pay to see a movie giving black people a chance to take a small step out of the box, do I have a responsibility to see this movie and encourage others to do the same? Even if I don't love the movie, am I obligated to reward the risk to encourage others to take it in the future?
So, Red Tails. It's not a bad movie, but it's not really a good movie. It starts after the story begins and ends before the story is finished. The characters aren't terribly fleshed out, and were I a betting gal, I'd wager Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. gave themselves those roles without offering them up to the masses. And I just don't really like war movies. Generally, for my personal enjoyment, I need people getting shot to be secondary to the plot.
That said, here's what else it's not -- It's not Tyler Perry Movie Part 756, and it's not another installment of Blaxploitation 2.0.
I get that Tyler Perry has a pretty firmly installed fanbase and a broader audience of people who will just pay to see black people on a screen doing something that isn't robbery, rape, or murder, but the movies are preachy and not so much individual works as volumes in a series and, of the ones I've seen, they pretty much focus on valuing women based on the quality/qualities of the men they choose to sleep with and his level of commitment to them. If you manage to marry a guy who doesn't hit you or cheat on you or rape your daughter by the end, you must be a worthwhile individual. Good job! Can't really fault his grasp of reality there, though, as black women are in actuality pretty much entirely measured by the men in their lives. Women who reach, say, their mid-twenties without being married, having been married, or having had children are obviously defective, and men within five minutes of meeting them often feel it's their right to demand to know in what way, so as to determine to what degree these women are worth pursuing.
Side note: I couldn't tell you whether this is true among other races/ethnicities/cultures, only that I've only been asked the series of questions -- Are you married? Do you have kids? How old are you? What's wrong with you? -- as such by black men.
Then there's the urban (read: ghetto) comedy. And as much as low-brow humor based on cheap stereotypes really grates my nerves, I can't even be mad at Friday and its spawn because I see it as a sort of pendulum swing from the gang dramas of the '90s, and I have respect for those. I don't know if it's that I was so young and naive at the time and haven't watched them in this millennium or if it's that as formulaic -- and as they grew more numerous, largely uninspired -- as they could be, I remember them as a genuine expression of pain from a subnation in self-destruct mode.
So I feel like the turn to from urban drama to urban comedy was a sort of a natural counter to the hopelessness, and the best way I can try to explain it is to go to one of my mom's favorite mantras that she got from her mom -- you may as well laugh as to cry.
But the thing is, that's, like, all there is for black people to get to speak three sentences in a movie, along with the occasional YA inspirational flick -- Akeelah and the Bee, The Great Debaters, Stomp the Yard, and you get my point.
All that said, going back to Red Tails. This is a project from an actor with a Best Actor Oscar nom, an actor with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win, and one of the most financially successful producers of all time, and studios refused it. So against that background, it makes a World War II movie fucking revolutionary, doesn't it?
So by a miracle, the project is able to get made and released, and this miracle is George Lucas' riches. And now it's a case study. For all future movies featuring predominantly black casts that don't fall into the genre of Thing By Tyler Perry or Tales From the Streets, it serves as a precedent, whether it wants to or not. If it fails, this project from the man who brought you the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises could not make white people pay to see black, and if he can't, then whoever could? And if it makes money, then hey, it turns out black people are people, too, and whoda thunk?
Well, maybe those aren't the right terms. Maybe it's more like, is there room for black actors to be anything more than black characters? Or black caricatures? Morally, the answer is obvious -- black people can be whatever they want to be (I can be president! Not really) and if racial prejudice stands in their way, they should just break right through it, etc., but how? As long as studio execs think people won't pay to see the movies, they won't make them, so there has to be some evidence. Back to the case study.
Will the audience pay? If I'm the consumer and potential audience and my answer is that yes, I will pay to see a movie giving black people a chance to take a small step out of the box, do I have a responsibility to see this movie and encourage others to do the same? Even if I don't love the movie, am I obligated to reward the risk to encourage others to take it in the future?