Black Films And How Representation Disrupts Quality

For me, being a Black cinephile can be difficult when being bombarded with Hollywood’s ideas of “urban stories”. Failure to properly represent our particular culture has forever been a topic since Black Filmmakers started offering their talents to the industry. Over time, Black Filmmakers, Actors and Actresses alike have broken barriers that have propelled Black Creatives into the spotlight; and with that has come a slew of films that range across every genre. What I wanted to discuss specifically is the idea of the Black Community supporting a film “just because it’s black” and the discernment used to tell what is a good film. My focus will be on films such as Get Out, Black Panther & Queen and Slim, respectively, and how the Community has reacted via their support.

Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther is the epitome of this phenomenon and one of the main reasons for this article. Black Panther, as a film, is sloppy, boring and insulting. But that doesn’t make it a bad film. What makes it a bad film is the industry facade of this film is “for black people”. Marvel, of course, being aware, wasn’t going to make a film about Black Panther without some Black creatives at the helm, that would just be irresponsible. The problem lies with the Community promoting a product “just because it’s black”. Supporting a film that’s made by and for Black people isn’t a bad thing and should be done a lot more but it’s just frustrating to me that the film isn’t something to brag about. The film can’t decide whether it wants to tell a black story or a story that involves black people. It suggests our heroes come from a place that is so afraid of being colonized, they turn their back on people who are going through injustices who look just like them. This is how you get Erik Killmonger.

Erik is a physical manifestation of the African Proverb: “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”. The film wants to have themes of separatism within the Community and how an ostracized member can become radicalized and bringing change by destroyed the aforementioned establishment. To have these coded themes within a comic book movie is quite a feat and not one that is executed properly, in my opinion. Killmonger is right in hating Wakandans for decades of neglecting black youth in attempts to maintain their survival. It becomes even more personal when he finds out he’s royalty. The film, however, fails to properly depict how these opposing forces would interact. T’Challa vehemently defends his people and their history until he finds out the traitorous act his father did and the lies he was told as a child. T’Challa ends up killing Killmonger but opens up Wakanda’s borders in efforts to be more liberal and honor Erik’s wishes. It’s a pretty bad ending, to be honest. When the praise of a movie is based solely on representation, it’s already lost to me. As a film lover, I have a lot of problems with this film and as a Marvel film lover, it’s one of my least favorites and it’s unfortunate to me that the only “black” film in this Marvel franchise is only subpar.

Get Out (2017)

I have a love/hate relationship with this movie. When the synopsis was first released, my mind went into a frenzy of what could happen in this world. I watched the film, and I hated it. I would like to believe I was misled by marketing and it’s lack of transparency, but in all honesty, with a film like Get Out, it’s difficult to market. I rank this film much higher than Black Panther due to its style, originality, and re-watchability. After dispelling my initial hate for the movie because it didn’t match up to my own selfish needs, I rewatched it as Jordan intended and I finally understood what everybody was talking about. The film is mislabeled “horror” and should be under “thriller”. The film is a socio-economic thriller in a Twilight Zone-esque universe similar to our own. Jordan masterfully balances what it means to be Black and the effects of Living While Black within the said universe. Unlike Black Panther, Get Out is aware of the story it’s telling and tells it very well. Now, I’ve never made a movie, but when telling personal, cultural stories in film, a fear of mine would be making a film that isn’t widely accepted by the general audience because said audience isn’t apart of your culture.

A lot of great black films are deemed “bad” and are, in turn, “misunderstood” by general audience members. These members, mostly white, are not attuned to our culture and deem it “trash” or “ghetto”. Harlem Nights was famously razzed, discouraging Eddie from directing films again and films like Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” was met with reviewers saying the movie should be pulled out of fear of inciting riots. Making these types of honest portrayals are difficult to gain critical reception without some sort of catch. Slave films being the most blatant. It’s argued that the validity of a black film depends on the trauma that said characters go through throughout the film, a good example would be Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave. Lupita won her first Oscar for her performance in the film which featured her being sexually and physically abused. This furthers the narratives in a Black Filmmaker’s mind that to be praised by the “masses”, your film needs to include a disturbing portrayal of those characters. The Academy will usually give a director an oscar for a film retroactively. In 2018, Spike Lee won an oscar for his film Blackkklansman for Best Adapted Screenplay. As he went up to receive his award, the building gave him a standing ovation. They’re well aware that Spike has been snubbed by the Academy and this was their way of giving him his flowers for all the work he’s put out. Spike would then lose the Best Picture nomination to Green Book, a film about a white bodyguard who’s hired to protect and black pianist as he navigates the antebellum south. It’s a cookie-cutter film that doesn’t ruffle feathers and features black people how they want to see us.

Queen & Slim (2019)

This movie has a lot to say. It’s tackling several themes that permeate our culture, unfortunately, it’s poorly executed. The story revolves around a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde (or Touki Bouki), where we have two black adults inadvertently starting a movement while running away from a horrible mistake. After driving back from a poor dinner date, the two are stopped by a police officer. The officer asks the man to step out of the car. After a tense back and forth, an altercation happens, the cop fires, striking the woman in the leg, the men then wrestle on the ground, the Black man grabs the cops’ gun and fires, killing him. What follows is a meditation of police violence, the paranoia of the Black Community, and what it means to trust people. Before its release, it was being regarded as the zeitgeist of current black filmmaking. Upon its release, that tune changed fairly quickly. Critics, specifically Black critics, really trashed the film saying it was irresponsible with its messaging and its attempts to tell multiple stories fall short and are at times, embarrassing.

Lena Waithe, screenwriter and producer of the film responded to critiques kindly, saying this was a passion project and that everything was taken very seriously to tell this story as respectfully and they could. At its core, the movie is telling a compelling story about what it means to be within a system that is actively looking for your demise and how something as simple as a traffic stop can turn into the end of one’s life. David Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith are doing a fantastic job as these characters; it just makes me wish the movie was more about their romance instead of them bickering most of the film. The film is also technically jarring, some scenes are edited unconventionally. There’s a line that Slim says along the lines of, “why do black people always gotta be excellent? Why can’t we just be ourselves?” Now, the meaning behind the quote, I will not get into but the last sentence took me out of the film because it sounded like it was added in post-production. I’m aware that actors re-record lines for a variety of reasons; it’s just something about that specific quote and how it’s edited that lead me to believe that half of that quote was written after the fact to mend it. I found a lot of problems with this movie and it left me disappointed, wanting to see the movie it was promoting itself to be. Most of the Black Community have the same feelings towards the film, calling it embarrassing.

Lastly, I know I sound like a cynic but I love movies. More importantly, I love my people. Knowing the different struggles creatives face while telling their personal stories are truly inspirational when seeing their final product on the market and as a Community, it is our right to support and promote the said product with our capital. I just would like for us to be more honest with ourselves and with our creatives. Telling provocative cultural stories shouldn’t be edited depending on who’s listening. Giving recognition and finding value in our work will help us produce more great art that’s for us, by us.