GOOD BLACK CINEMA VS BAD BLACK CINEMA?

GOOD BLACK CINEMA VS BAD BLACK CINEMA?

As a black male intellectual I have been disquieted by the proliferation of culturally retrogressive black cinema and have chosen to boycott them as an act of solidarity with those who desire to see a better quality of film.  The burning question, "Who decides what stories get made into film", and the burning reality of what ultimately gets made into film are the drivers behind this long running conflict.  In truth, there is such a richness of material from which to choose that no excuse can be made for the lack of more substantive films other than apathy and even perhaps ill-intent.  After all, nearly anything can be marketed for success but in a country where sex, violence and institutionalized racism are best sellers one must be far more analytic when attempting to determine the difference between good black cinema and bad black cinema...

There are two schools of thought circulating in the mix of contemporary cinematic consciousness.  The first school says patronize the retrogressive films in hope that eventually someone will be inspired to do better.  The second school says no patronage for media of every kind that fails to portray black men in positive and non-stereotypical roles.  Clearly I am a student of the latter school! 

The first school of thought is one of blind hope and faith, but not one of action.  It is a school that has waited languorously, lugubriously on the conscience of a world that has never and will never see them!  It is a school that waits patiently, earnestly, hungrily for castings of bread crusts from the o’erflowing, cornicopic table of the big house.  It survives as it can and because its expectation level is maintained always at a point of critical subsistence this school of thought always appears to be the most realistic in its grasp of the real and of the possibility of what might become reality.

The second school is no less blind in its quotient of hope and faith, but it is one of action, and that is what makes it fundamentally different!  It is a school that is impatient with what the world will offer and serves as an agitant to those who have accepted the narcotic of providence over preemptive action.  Not that it ever unwisely refuses crusts of bread when sustenance is an issue for the body but it is ultimately what it does to transform those crusts much in the line of its idealistic insistence in effect to use those crusts for the production of their own bread.  Unrealistic as the means might be, a product, if only intellected has been manufactured from the merest wisps of imagination and desire! 

In the primordial battle of human survival, desire has always been a far better broth than despair.  Strange, that the struggle to establish something as superficial as “Image” would cook down to a soup of such elementary truths.  The black man has fought during his entire existence in America against the corruption of his image.  His power to paint and frame it removed, he has had to define himself within himself whilst defending against the external slander and perversion of his image by those seeking to justify the evil behind the denial of his beauty.  And what would this black man accomplish if he were to refashion himself as a handsome and wise, industrious and essential salt of this precipitous world?  T’would be vainglorious if not for the mere task of balance!  Then what would happen after these scales were balanced, how much would enlightenment weigh? With men it is never only about image, image is always a difference quantified within a hierarchy between the un-celebrated and the very Gods themselves.  So through the medium of film would the black man reclaim his image as a man or paint himself as a God?  The point having been made for the variable of human vanity let us say only that there is much reconstruction that is needed for the image of the black man and for him there can be no greater tool outside of his own ethical fortitude and deeds than to aptly personify himself within the iconic cloud of global virtuality and not in the ephemeral streaming of music videos but within the classic permanence of film!

Digression is often a comforting mirage effective at introducing the richness of other points of view.  But there are some very straightforward, one might say sobering realities to why we see the types of films we do and why the images and in particular the representation of black men continues to fall so far from where many feel it ought to be and that reality is often linked not only to prejudice but also to money.  There is one magnanimous control variable which looms in the omnipresent horizon of every film either conceptual or real... Capitalism!  We are all witnesses to the fact that capitalism does not work in reverse! In order for something as costly as a film to be produced and distributed there has to be a demand for it.  Film financing will claim that it wants to make culturally progressive media but that ultimately the good stuff doesn't sell at the box office.  In the film industries defense, it can be argued that after decades of conditioning the consumer public into expecting, paying for and being entertained by bad cinema they are justified by financing only those films which fall in line with the usual lucrative garbage.  The first argument puts black actors to work but in degrading films so it might be opined, by followers of the latter school, that such actors are putting nails into their own creative coffins.  But the first school would contend that being paid to play negative roles is better than not being paid for any role.  Does this argument support the perpetuation of negative stereotypes for black men simply because it is lucrative?  You bet your bottom dollar it does!  So there is a great deal of profit in the perpetuation of racist stereotypes whether they reflect real life or not.  Nobody held a gun to any black American’s head during The classic Blacksploitation Film Era of the 1970’s, indeed it was not necessary because Black Americans were so eager simply to see faces that looked like them on the silver screen they would have paid many times over to see what are now looked down upon as culturally dysfunctional films.  That is the legacy of the first school, its students so desperate for image they never challenged it’s context because seeing black faces in films filled a void that everyone thought could be tweaked later down the line… The problem is that later down the line never happened; we are still hoping to tweak the problem fifty years later. 

The first school is a hand that cannot touch its own nose; it merely exists at the behest of those who find it convenient to get rich off of the talent of actors and the ignorance of consumers. The second is a hand that can touch its nose but only when nobody is looking.  The second schools' argument would require black people to raise the bar by creating their own bar; owning and producing their own quality films and gradually cultivating an audience.  There is a real financial gamble involved in the assumption that black patrons will pay to see the "Better" films as opposed to the "Garbage" films they are used to, as assessed through the eyes of the second school of thought. 

So in conclusion, it might be a more idealistic philosophical argument to say that cinema with more substantive and intellectually progressive material is a better way to upgrade the consciousness of black filmgoing audiences but a more financially sound and therefore realistic argument to say that filmgoing audiences might not patronize "Better" films if they considered them too deep or high-brow or simply because they just don't like the subject matter.  This is not to say black people are not intellectual but rather that their history of patronage shows greater interest in other genres. 

Right now what is commonly viewed as the black community is largely massed on the demand side of the economic curve rather than the supply side!  Simply put, black owned film production and marketing businesses are not yet plentiful or powerful enough to offer a home to what would certainly be an entirely new world of black actors, screenwriters, technical and marketing staff who would operate the machine of a global black cinematic empire.  If ever it gets to a point where this untapped market becomes robust enough to support the production of higher quality films with more intellectual subject matter matched with an audience that will pay to see these films we might be surprised at the kinds of magnificent black cinema that can be made. If that time ever comes, and it will, the argument over what constitutes good black cinema vs bad black cinema can be made within a far more robust, ethnically and economically well-grounded climate.  The idealist and the realist must combine forces in order to create conditions where this argument is even plausible and that must serve to become the catalyst for realizing this dream!

Written by David Vollin

Administrator: FOR THE BROTHAS INTELLECTUAL SALON