As I reviewed the 2009 Oscar nominations, I noticed the substantial number of Black nominees. Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Lee Daniels and Morgan Freeman were nominated for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director and Best Actor, respectively. Each of them were nominated for diverse roles ranging from an overweight physically, sexually and emotionally abused ghetto girl; a callous, alcoholic, psychologically abusive mother; a portrayal of Nelson Mandela: to a director who captured and illustrated the darkest, most violent and sordid pathologies of human nature.
Truth be told, from the early years of Hollywood when films such as The Railroad Porter (1912) and The Birth of a Nation (1915) made their way onto American screens and into American movie houses, films depicting African-Americans have often been the subject of controversy. Upon its release, Birth of A Nation, a retrograde film of the worst order, directed by D.W.Griffith, did more to cripple an already deplorable environment in regards to American race relations than any film of its era. The movie could not have come along at a worst time in history. Colonialism swept through the African continent. Poverty and disease saturated the Caribbean. Lynching, Jim Crow, Black codes and other restrictive measures deprived millions of Black Americans their basic human rights and dignity as American citizens.
As a result of this retrograde film, brutal lynching of Black men increased. The Ku Klux Klan increased its membership. Southern politicians ratified more racist legislation designed to further solidify White supremacy. To paraphrase the line of an Elton John song “it was a sad, sad situation.”
As the century progressed, other depictions of Black Americans graced the silver screen. By the early- to mid-1920s, Black filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux who for more than two decades produced a number of films such as Within Our Gates (1920) and Body and Soul (1925) that chronicled the complexity of layers that defined the lives of Black Americans. Lynchings, criminality, religion and passing were among the more common themes of Micheaux’s work. Like others before him, he faced a degree of critical response to his work from critics who argued that he perpetuated the same stereotypes that many of his contemporaries did.
