By Phillip Lamarr Cunningham, Ph.D.
In a discussion on a friend and fellow scholar’s Facebook profile about a promotional interview with Red Tails stars Terrence Howard and David Oyelowo, my friend lamented Howard and Oyelowo’s somewhat haphazard attempt at creating an analogy between acceptance of black American soldiers by Europeans (particularly women) during World War II and acceptance of black actors as heroes in American cinema. In response, a friend of his, who like many black moviegoers appears wary of the criticism lofted towards predominantly black Hollywood films by scholars, chided my friend for his critique. His friend compared Red Tails to Jackie Robinson’s re-integration of Major League Baseball, noting that Robinson’s success had a dramatic impact on the perception of all black baseball players.
While I understood my friend’s friend’s analogy, I cautioned him not to overlook the other significant impact of Robinson’s re-integration of the MLB: the decline and eventual end of the Negro Leagues. As Negro League historian Robert Peterson notes in his classic Only the Ball Was White, Robinson’s success “was like the first trickling pebbles of an avalanche to come” (201). It had an immediate and demonstrable impact on the Negro Leagues, including sharp declines in attendance and income, a loss of star power with the defection of stars such as the legendary Satchel Paige, and the inability to cultivate new talent as younger black players now had their eyes set on the majors (Peterson 201-203). In short, a modicum of access to the majors caused a black flight of audiences and players from the Negro Leagues to the majors.
In response, my friend’s friend noted the financial hardships of many Negro League players and suggested that access to the majors resulted in better financial circumstances for black ballplayers. However, while the Negro Leagues’ administrative and financial difficulties have been well documented (particularly in Robinson’s book), what he failed to acknowledge is that integration was only beneficial to a few. While some of the Negro Leagues best made it to the majors, most–including standouts such as James “Cool Papa” Bell, “the black Babe Ruth” Josh Gibson, and Robinson’s mentor Willie Wells–never got the opportunity. Essentially, he valued economics–at which the Negro Leagues often failed–over proliferation and quality–both of which the Negro Leagues provided. In other words, he ghettoized the Negro Leagues, which despite its troubles provided opportunities for a great number of skilled black ballplayers.
It is this favoring of the mainstream by some members of the black audience that also has often lead to declines in black filmmaking. Indeed, as black audiences abandoned the Negro Leagues, they also abandoned black independent films in the late 1940s. In Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies, and Bucks, Donald Bogle writes, “[W]hat killed off the efforts of even the sturdiest of the independents [such as prolific filmmakers Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams] in the late 1940s were the Negro Problem Pictures that took up racial themes. The independents could not compete with these Hollywood-made features” (116). As a result, though black actors and actresses appeared in several mainstream films throughout the next two decades, they certainly were fewer in number, and the number of independently made black films dwindled to virtually zero.
This would happen again in the 1970s after a relatively (the operative word here) prolific period of independent black filmmaking is set off by Melvin Van Peebles’ controversial Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (1971). However, as William R. Grant notes in Post-Soul Black Cinema, this period of independence and of blaxploitation films (which he correctly notes were primarily white filmmakers creating films for black audiences) did not last long, as Hollywood “learned that 30% of the tickets [for top grossing 1970s films The Exorcist, The Godfather, and Jaws] came from the African-American audience. In other words, the studios realized that African-American audiences would readily attend blockbuster films without any Black-oriented content” (43). Shortly thereafter, black cinema would face another dormant period, with filmmakers Michael Schultz (Cooley High, Car Wash) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) being two of a handful black filmmakers until the mid-1980s.
Interestingly enough, we seem poised to return to this desire for mainstream success even in a period of unprecedented black independent proliferation and success. Since the mid-1980s, black independent filmmaking arguably has been far more consistent than it ever has been. A glance at sites such as Shadow and Act highlights the number of black independent films currently being made. Admittedly, this prolific period of black independent filmmaking has paralleled a boom and bust period of black Hollywood films. As such, it is somewhat understandable that black audiences are buying into both George Lucas and Tyler Perry‘s lamentations about the state of black Hollywood films. However, both Lucas and Perry’s comments, while likely well-intentioned, are troubling, for they ignore black independent films in order to criticize Hollywood. In their forecasts of doom and gloom for black films if Lucas’s Red Tails fails to meet Hollywood standards for success, they both engage in a level of hyperbole–Lucas in overemphasizing his role in black cinema’s future, Perry in pronouncing predominantly black films as being on the verge of extinction–that fails to comment on the true status of black cinema (both Hollywood and independent). Certainly, the future of black Hollywood no more relies on Red Tails‘ success than it did on Perry’s For Colored Girls (another film that got the “view or black film perishes” treatment); furthermore, black independent cinema will always serve as a vessel for predominantly black casts.
As I note in a previous post, I recognize the value of and desire for black Hollywood blockbusters. However, in our clamor for a stronger black Hollywood presence, we should be careful not to abandon, ghettoize, or overlook black independent films, for as history tells us (in both black baseball and black cinema), doing so tends to have deleterious results.
http://resistingspectator.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/of-baseball-and-film-the-importance-of-supporting-black-independence/
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