Zeitgeist of the Decade: Black Films Matter

DO THE RIGHT THING - UNIVERSAL

The themes of racial oppression, prejudice and inequality have been present in cinema since its early days. Some would even venture a supposition they were baked into its original formula given that Hollywood – one of the key hotspots of Western popular culture – wasn’t built on a foundation of multicultural diversity, but rather developed organically to reflect the cultural tendencies of the time. And although people of colour have been consistently contributing to the development of film in the English-speaking world, it has taken a century for their voice to be heard.

Despite the fact African American filmmakers such as Richard Maurice, Spencer Williams and Oscar Micheaux were already making films during the silent era – some even concurrently to D.W. Griffith’s infamous The Birth Of A Nation – they were confined to the peripheries of the mainstream. They often worked well outside of Hollywood in more or less hermetic niches. Meanwhile, stories pertaining to their own cultural strife and injustice were being told by others. Their voice and identity were being used to animate a figurative sock puppet manned by big populist auteurs. Thus, some of the most recognizable works dealing with the themes of racial prejudice or the legacy of segregation in America (think of The Color Purple or Driving Miss Daisy) were helmed by people with limited ability to internalize these issues on the same level. While some of these movies, like Douglas Sirk’s The Imitation Of Life, or Norman Jewison’s In The Heat Of The Night are rightly considered important classics, this process is still in operation today. Green Book winning Best Picture at The Oscars in 2019 testifies to that effect.

One would perhaps think that a sudden emergence of Spike Lee, John Singleton (the first black director ever nominated for Academy Awards) and others as a collective voice for the angry, disenfranchised and permanently patronized community of African Americans would become a massive game-changer. The historical record would indicate they were ruining their throats for nothing. For example, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X was completely ignored by The Academy in 1993 while Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood was equally overlooked one year earlier. The world either wasn’t listening or wasn’t equipped to tune in to the frequencies used by these prominent black filmmakers. Or maybe – just maybe – the critical mass allowing for a revolutionary change had yet to be reached.

Almost a century after D.W. Griffith’s racially charged epic, Hollywood signalled its readiness to finally embrace change by awarding the Best Picture Oscar to Steve McQueen for 12 Years A Slave, a harrowing odyssey through America’s legacy of slavery and oppression told in the most visceral, blood-curdling and personal manner. Though, it has to be noted that McQueen’s historic achievement was preceded by another important milestone when the Ryan Coogler-directed Fruitvale Station took The Sundance Festival audiences by storm. Notably, this dramatized account of the last day in the life of a young man introduced the wider world to the talents of Michael B. Jordan, who quickly went on to become a major Hollywood star.

Thus, the world was changed. Even though accusations of institutionalized racial prejudice are continually issued at the Hollywood establishment, and for a good reason too, a platform was formed to amplify the voices of young emerging filmmakers of colour. Shortly after McQueen’s win at The Oscars, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, a film about Dr Martin Luther King’s Gandhi-inspired struggle against systemic oppression, saw the light of day and walked away with a handful of accolades; she later followed it up with a Netflix-produced documentary 13th in which she interrogated the American legacy of slavery and its evolving incarnations that survived to the present. Though, what truly cemented the position of this newly emerging trend in cinema – a Black New Wave, if you will – came a few years later when Barry Jenkins-directed Moonlight again took the gold at The Oscars, though not without the accompaniment of a scandal involving Warren Beatty and an envelope.

The floodgates were open and what started as a shy trickle of select titles with prestige potential turned into a tidal wave spanning multiple genres and appealing to ever-widening audiences. Some of the greatest examples of how this trend seeped into the popular culture again involve Ryan Coogler who followed up Fruitvale Station by stepping into the world of big-budget filmmaking. Together with Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan he re-focused the beleaguered Rocky series and gave the world Creed, arguably one of the most powerful sequels to the 1976 original. He later had a hand in turning what essentially was an obscure comic book superhero property into one of the most successful Marvel films, Black Panther, that also – historically – punched through to become a part of the Oscar conversation. Hence, some of the most calcified elements of pop culture were being successfully bent to the will of emerging artists and providing much-needed evidence that audiences were hungry for culturally-diverse stories, some of which – like Jordan Peele’s breakout hit Get Out – succeeded in finding a balance between commercial success and prestige clout thanks to their culturally-provocative and intellectually stimulating thematic undertones.

However, arguably the most important piece of evidence supporting this newly emergent trend in American cinema and further bolstering its validity came much later. After nearly three decades of patchy commercial success, 2018 saw Spike Lee come back with BlacKkKlansman, a stranger-than-fiction retelling of a real-life story of a black police officer who successfully infiltrated and ridiculed the Ku Klux Klan. Equally angry as it was comically entertaining, the film brought its creator both commercial success and critical acclaim, which hadn’t always been the case. After initial success in the late 80s and early 90s, Lee’s movies would rarely resonate with wider audiences and this would likely coincide with him toning down his angry rhetoric or directing for hire (Inside Man). The success of BlacKkKlansman could, therefore, be read as a sign that the world has in fact heeded his pleas to wake up and find verbatim in Do The Right Thing and School Daze.

Thus, the second decade of the 21st century finally saw formation of a sustainable and successful trend in American filmmaking celebrating culturally diverse talent and lending a voice to a section of society that had historically been deprived of the ability to speak for itself. Between If Beale Street Could Talk, Us, Queen & Slim, Widows, Fences, Sorry To Bother You and many others popping up on top 10 lists among critics and regular moviegoers alike, garnering awards and persisting in the wider cultural consciousness, the film industry is at its most diverse in history at this moment. It is abundantly clear that this new wave of filmmaking isn’t a fluke, or a temporary fad doomed to dissipate and disappear into the night in the coming years but a cultural revolution staged over the course of a century and executed in the last ten years or so.