Films about race

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A great number of movies have been made about race relations, or with a strong racial theme over the last century, from D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) to Marvel Studios' Black Panther (2018). [1]

Contents

Early years (1915–1960)

D. W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation set the precedent for heavily racialized stereotypes of African Americans (many played by white actors in blackface) as clowns or predators, and cast the Ku Klux Klan as the saviours of white America. [2] Later films, such as Dark Command (1940), [3] Song of the South and Gone With the Wind (1939), repeated some of those stereotypes. [4]

Other films such as the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races and Hellzapoppin' showcased early black performers including Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and Slim and Slam. [5] With Carmen Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess (1959), Hollywood put George Gershwin's and Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway shows – that reworked Jazz performances for white audiences – on screen with stars Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge. [6]

Race films marketed to black audiences included Hi-De-Ho featuring Jazz performer Cab Calloway. [7]

The quintessential American film, the western was often about implicitly about race, since it described the westward journey of colonists into the lands of Native Americans. [8]

Civil Rights era

With the growth of the Civil Rights Movement Hollywood was on the whole on the liberal side, with films such as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), West Side Story (1961), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and In the Heat of the Night (1967) looking at race prejudice critically. [9]

"Blaxploitation" and "gangsta" films

With the rise of the Black Panther Party, Hollywood tried to stay relevant with Black Power-themed films such as Shaft (1971), Superfly (1972) and Foxy Brown (1974), which became known as Blaxploitation films. However, the new genre was an opportunity for director Melvin van Peebles and actors including Richard Rountree, Pam Grier and also for musician Curtis Mayfield whose sound track accompanied the 1972 hit Superfly. [10]

Though Blaxploitation genre is in the past, filmmakers have excited black and white audiences with stories of gangs and crime that tread a fine line between glorifying and vilifying gangsters, such as New Jack City (1991), South Central (1992) and Juice (1992). Rap music, too, has given a new dimension to black gang films, with All Eyez on Me (2017) about the life and death of Tupac Shakur, and Notorious (2009) about the killing of Notorious B.I.G. [11]

Race revenge fantasies

In the 1970s and 1980s a backlash against Civil Rights was met by more films about black criminality threatening white communities. In Sudden Impact (1983), Clint Eastwood's character Harry Callahan goads a black rapist holding a woman hostage, "Go ahead, make my day" – meaning, "Shoot her, so I can shoot you." [12] The Dirty Harry series of films, like the Death Wish one, appealed to a reaction against Civil Rights with fantasy violence against black and other criminals.

Another way that films titillated white audiences was with fantasies of black people rising up against white society. The British film Zulu (1964) showed a small platoon of Redcoats fighting against thousands of Zulu warriors at Rorke's Drift at the end of the 19th century. Later John Carpenter achieved a similar effect surrounding a police station with a coalescence of Puerto Rican gangs in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). [13]

Historical civil rights, Jim Crow era, Civil War and slavery films

By the 1990s American attitudes on race were becoming more liberal and a new wave of films looked back at the Civil Rights Movement as history, beginning with Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning of 1989, right through to Ghosts of Mississippi in 1996. [14] More recently, Ava DuVernay's 2014 film Selma has shown there is much more in the civil rights era. The Civil War also got a different historical treatment in the 1989 film Glory , about black Union troops. [15] Civil War dramas like Lincoln (2012) and Free State of Jones (2016). Historical dramas proved a rich seam for Hollywood which went on to deal with slavery in Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997) and Steven McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013). [16] More radical black leaders, such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, had their story told in films by Spike Lee and Mario Van Peebles in 1992 and 1995. [17]

Social comment films since 1990

As well as a great rise in the number of historical dramas around the issues of slavery, civil rights and historical racism, more social comment films about race relations have been made since the 1990s. Spike Lee's breakout movie Do the Right Thing (1989) opened up the field for a lot more searching examination of race in the present day. Films such as Justin Simien's 2014 comedy Dear White People , the Academy award-winning Moonlight (2016) and Jordan Peele's 2017 horror film Get Out show that film audiences continue to be gripped by racial conflict. [18]

Notable films with a race theme, by year released

YearFilmDirectorNotes
2019 Harriet Kasi Lemmons Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, and Janelle Monáe star in this biopic about Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and the subsequent, dangerous missions she led to liberate hundreds of slaves through the Underground Railroad.
2018Yardie Idris Elba Aml Ameen and Stephen Graham in a film of Victor Headley's novel about West Indian gangs in London.
2018 Crazy Rich Asians John M. Chu Constance Wu and Henry Golding star in a comedy/drama based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan.
2018 Whitney Kevin McDonald Documentary on the life of Whitney Houston.
2018 Black Panther Ryan Coogler Chadwick Boseman stars as the Marvel Comics character in a film that grossed $1.345 billion.
2018 Superfly Director X Trevor Jackson stars as Youngblood Priest in the remake of Super Fly.
2017 Detroit Kathryn Bigelow Shocking depiction of police brutality in the Algiers Motel incident during riots in Detroit in 1967.
2017 Get Out Jordan Peele Sci-fi horror about a predatory white conspiracy to implant their consciousnesses into black bodies grossed $252 million
2017 Kings Deniz Gamze Ergüven A South Central recluse helps a working-class mother during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, with Halle Berry and Daniel Craig.
2017 All Eyez on Me Benny Boom The biopic of rapper Tupac Shakur.
2017 Mudbound Dee Rees Tragic drama of two farming families one white and one black, based on the novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan.
2017 Gook Justin Chon Two Korean-American brothers in the midst of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
2016 Zootopia Rich Moore A cop solves a case about predators turning savage, led by a prey supremacist organisation who is known for a hatred against predator species.
2016 The Birth of a Nation Nate Parker Nat Turner's slave revolt in Virginia in 1831.
2016 Moonlight Barry Jenkins Tarell Alvin McCraney's story of growing up black and gay in America grossed over $65 million worldwide against a budget of $4 million.
2016 Loving Jeff Nichols The story of Richard and Mildred Loving's marriage and the 1967 Supreme Court judgment against the State of Virginia's outlawing of interracial marriage, with Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton.
2016 Hidden Figures Theodore Melfi Taraji P. Henson is Katherine Goble leading a section of black women mathematicians working at NASA to computerise the Mercury Seven space mission.
2016 I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck The story of writer and activist James Baldwin told through contemporaneous footage.
2016 Fences Denzel Washington The film of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a father, frustrated at the stymying of his baseball career, and taking it out on his son.
2016 A United Kingdom Amma Asante Based on the true-life romance between Sir Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth Williams Khama in Bechuanaland and the imperial authorities' attempts to prevent it.
2016 Free State of Jones Gary Ross The story of Newton Knight's revolt against the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
2016 Nina Cynthia Mort Biopic of jazz singer Nina Simone starring Zoe Saldana.
2015 Straight Outta Compton F. Gary Gray The story of rappers N.W.A, which grossed over $200 million, four times its budget.
2015 The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Stanley Nelson Jr. Documentary on the Black Panther Party and their repression under the FBI's Cointelpro program.
2014 Selma Ava DuVernay About Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's arguments and preparations for the momentous 1967 Civil Rights march from Selma, Alabama, to Washington.
2014 Dear White People Justin Simien A comedy about members of a black fraternity house negotiating the racial assumptions of their white counterparts at college.
2013 12 Years a Slave Steve McQueen The English director's film of Solomon Northrup's memoir of the same name (1853) about a free man being abducted from the North to serve as a slave in the American South.
2013 The Butler Lee Daniels Forest Whitaker plays Cecil Gaines (drawn from Wil Haygood's Washington Post article "A Butler Well Served by This Election" about Eugene Allen) who works as a butler at the White House through successive presidencies.
2013 Belle Amma Asante Loosely based on the life of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lord Mansfield's ruling on the Zong massacre in Georgian England.
2013 Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Justin Chadwick Biopic of South African anti-Apartheid leader and President Nelson Mandela starring Idris Elba.
2012 Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino Controversial western with a slave revenge theme, starring Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson.
2011 Winnie Mandela Darrell Roodt Sympathetic biopic of anti-Apartheid leader Winnie Mandela.
2011 The Help Tate Taylor Based on Kathryn Stockett's book of the same name about a black maids standing up to their white mistresses, with the help of an aspiring writer.
2009 Precious Lee Daniels Grim story of parental rape and neglect in a deprived neighbourhood.
2009 Invictus Clint Eastwood About the struggle to re-launch the Springboks rugby team in post-Apartheid South Africa.
2009 Notorious George Tillman Jr. The life and murder of rap star Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.
2008 Gran Torino Clint Eastwood The unlikely friendship between Korean War veteran and a Hmong family in Los Angeles.
2005 American Gangster Ridley Scott Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) works his way up from sidekick to gang leader, pursued by Russell Crowe's lawman.
2004 Manderlay Lars von Trier A disturbing allegory of slavery from the Danish avant garde director.
2004 Crash Paul Haggis Multi-plotted state of the nation film with Don Cheadle's character harassed by a policeman, and other stories of the challenges of different migrants and citizens of Los Angeles.
2002 Dirty Pretty Things Stephen Frears The struggles of migrants in London.
2001 Ali Michael Mann Will Smith stars as the legendary heavyweight boxing champion Muhammed Ali.
1999 Introducing Dorothy Dandridge Martha Coolidge Biopic of the actress Dorothy Dandridge with Halle Berry made for television.
1999 The Hurricane Norman Jewison Biopic of boxing champion Rubin Carter falsely accused and imprisoned for a triple murder, starring Denzel Washington.
1998 Beloved Jonathan Demme Horror-drama film based on Toni Morrison's 1987 novel of the same name.
1997 Amistad Steven Spielberg The trial over the mutiny of the enslaved Mende people on board the Amistad in 1839.
1997 Miss Evers' Boys Joseph Sargent HBO television film based on David Feldshuh's play about a U.S. federal government experiment that led to men being left untreated for syphilis.
1996 Ghosts of Mississippi Rob Reiner Courtroom drama based on the trial of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
1996 When We Were Kings Leon Gast Documentary about the Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight fight between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974.
1995 Panther Mario van Peebles Dramatization of the Black Panthers' struggle against racism, based on Melvin van Peebles' book.
1995 Jefferson in Paris James Ivory On US President-to-be Thomas Jefferson's affairs as ambassador in Paris, and his relationship with Sally Hemings (played by Thandie Newton).
1994 Corrina, Corrina Jessie Nelson Interracial love story in 1950s America with Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta.
1992 Sarafina! Darrell Roodt A coming-of-age story in the midst of the Soweto riots, filmed in South Africa.
1992 Malcolm X Spike Lee Biopic of the inspirational Black Muslim leader starring Denzel Washington.
1992 Juice Ernest R. Dickerson With Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps.
1992 South Central Stephen Milburn Anderson Father and son learn to break ties with a street gang, an adaptation of the 1987 novel Crips by Donald Bakeer.
1991 Boyz n the Hood John Singleton Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube star in this story of gang life in Los Angeles.
1991 New Jack City Mario Van Peebles Wesley Snipes stars as Nino Brown, leader of a ruthless drug gang in the midst of New York's crack epidemic.
1990 The Long Walk Home Richard Pearce A drama with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56 as a background, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek.
1989 Driving Miss Daisy Bruce Beresford Gentle comedy based on Alfred Uhry's play of the same name set in the Civil Rights era.
1989 Mississippi Burning Alan Parker Parker's film of the Civil Rights era contest over desegregation.
1989 Do the Right Thing Spike Lee Acclaimed comedy-drama of racial tensions and rioting in Brooklyn.
1989 Glory Edward Zwick Matthew Broderick stars as the anxious white commander of an experimental all-black troop of the Union Army in the American Civil War.
1989 For Queen and Country Martin Stellman Denzel Washington stars as a Falklands War veteran returning to riot-torn Tottenham, England.
1988 I'm Gonna Git You Sucka Keenan Ivory Wayans A parody version of a Blaxploitation film.
1987 Cry Freedom Richard Attenborough The story of Steve Biko's detention and murder, and his friendship with the journalist Donald Woods.
1986 Absolute Beginners Julien Temple Based on Colin MacInnes' novel of the same name, the film revolves around the 1958 Notting Hill race riots and features Slim Gaillard and Steven Berkoff's impersonation of Oswald Mosley.
1985 The Color Purple Steven Spielberg Based on Alice Walker's novel of the same name and starring Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey in a story of pre-civil rights Georgia.
1978 The Wiz Sidney Lumet A black cast re-make of The Wizard of Oz starring Diana Ross.
1977 Roots Marvin J. Chomsky ABC-TV miniseries based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family , starring Levar Burton.
1976 The Last Supper Tomás Gutiérrez Alea Cuban drama about a pious planter inviting his slaves to a Christian dinner, only to encourage them to revolt.
1975 Mandingo Richard Fleischer Ken Norton is a slave put to exhibition fighting by planters, with illicit sex between slaves and masters driving a lot of the action.
1972 The Harder They Come Perry Henzell Jamaica-based story of an embattled reggae star, played by Jimmy Cliff considered a breakthrough for reggae in the United States. [19]
1974 Foxy Brown Jack Hill Pam Grier stars in this Blaxploitation film as a woman fighting back against exploitation.
1973 Cleopatra Jones Jack Starrett Tamara Dobson stars in this Blaxploitation film as an undercover agent exposing the drugs industry.
1972 Superfly Gordon Parks, Jr. Ron O'Neal stars in this Blaxploitation film as a drug dealer trying to get out of the business – notable for its Curtis Mayfield soundtrack
1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song Melvin van Peebles A kaleidoscopic journey through race-torn America.
1971 Shaft Gordon Parks Private detective John Shaft (Richard Rountree) is hired by a Harlem gangster to rescue his kidnapped daughter in a film that highlights black power, with a strong Isaac Hayes soundtrack.
1970 Little Big Man Arthur Penn Dustin Hoffman stars as a boy who goes to live amongst the Cheyenne, witnessing the massacres carried out by Custer's Seventh Cavalry.
1970 Soldier Blue Ralph Nelson Candice Bergen stars as a Cheyenne captured in the midst of a massacre of Native Americans.
1970 Watermelon Man Melvin van Peebles An inveterate racist wakes up to find he has turned black in a caustic comedy inspired as much by Kafka's Metamorphosis as by John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me.
1970 The Landlord Hal Ashby This Norman Jewison-produced film stars Beau Bridges as heir to a slum landlord, whose feelings for his black tenants – in particular Lanie (Marki Bey), a dancer at a local black club – run away with him..
1969 Slaves Herbert J. Biberman Dionne Warwick and Ossie Davis in a lurid tale of plantation slavery.
1969 Burn! Gillo Pontecorvo Marlon Brando plays a political agent who foments a slave revolt in a Caribbean island, only to help reinstate an oppressive wage-slavery in its place.
1967 To Sir With Love James Clavell Sidney Poitier plays a teacher arrived from the Caribbean to teach in a run-down school in London, based on E. R. Braithwaite's 1959 autobiographical novel of the same name.
1967 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Stanley Kramer Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy star in this comedy of manners about liberal parents confronted by their daughter's black boyfriend.
1967 In the Heat of the Night Norman Jewison Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is a detective from Philadelphia investigating a murder case and confronting prejudice in small-town Mississippi.
1967 Hurry Sundown Otto Preminger The complex race relations of multiple couples and community problems of the contemporary South in 1946.
1964 Zulu Cy Endfield A white outpost is beset by thousands of Zulu warriors in the British Empire story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift.
1962 To Kill A Mockingbird Robert Mulligan Gregory Peck stars in the film of Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the story of a black defendant falsely accused of rape.
1961 West Side Story Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins Gang warfare between the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Anglo Jets in this film of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name (itself inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet ).
1959 Porgy and Bess Otto Preminger Film of George and Ira Gershwin's opera of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.
1959 Black Orpheus Marcel Camus A reworking of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Brazilian carnival.
1959 Imitation of Life Douglas Sirk Susan Kohner stars as a mixed race woman who passes for white, in a film adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel of the same name.
1957 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet A jury decide the fate of a "boy" charged with murder – though the race of the accused is never stated, the film deals with prejudice as one juror denounces slum-born people, no better than animals who kill for fun.
1954 Carmen Jones Otto Preminger Sidney Poitier's airman is seduced by Dorothy Dandridge in the film of the 1943 musical, itself a re-working adaptation of Bizet's Carmen .
1954 The Salt of the Earth Herbert J. Biberman Hispanic American miners fight against injustice based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico.
1951 Cry, the Beloved Country Zoltan Korda Based on Alan Paton's 1948 novel of the same name about a black minister's journey to Johannesburg to find his son in Apartheid South Africa.
1949 Pinky Elia Kazan A light-skinned black woman has been "passing" for white while at school in the North. She falls in love with a doctor who knows nothing about her black heritage.
1947 Hi-De-Ho Josh BinneyA race film showcasing jazz performer Cab Calloway.
1946 Song of the South Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson Walt Disney's mixed live action and animation film of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories.
1941 Hellzapoppin' H. C. Potter Zany musical showcasing Slim and Slam (Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart) and Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.
1940 Dark Command Raoul WalshA Union-supporting John Wayne tries to uphold the law against the Confederate hold-outs of Quantrill's Raiders.
1939 Gone With the Wind Victor Fleming Historical drama of a southern family in the American Civil War and Reconstruction era from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name.
1937 A Day at the Races Sam Wood Marx Brothers film showcasing Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.
1936 Song of Freedom J. Elder Wills Paul Robeson stars as John Zinga, an African dockworker who becomes an opera singer.
1936 Show Boat James Whale Irene Dunne stars in the story of the Mississippi show boat featuring music by Oscar Hammerstein II and performances by Hattie McDaniel and Paul Robeson – who sings "Ole Man River".
1935 Sanders of the River Zoltan Korda Leslie Banks stars as the colonial officer who takes on Paul Robeson's African chief.
1934 Imitation of Life John M. Stahl Fredi Washington stars as a mixed-race woman who passes for white, in a film adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel of the same name.
1933 The Emperor Jones Dudley Murphy Paul Robeson stars as Brutus Jones, a convict who escapes to make himself emperor of a Caribbean Island, based on the Eugene O'Neill play of the same title.
1930 Borderline Kenneth Macpherson An African-American couple played by Paul and Eslanda Robeson stay at a hotel in Europe with group of hedonists. An interracial love triangle shocks the townsfolk.
1915 The Birth of a Nation D. W. Griffith The American Civil War and Reconstruction era with the Ku Klux Klan saving the white nation from black carpetbaggers.

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ Jaap van Ginneken, Screening Difference: How Hollywood's Blockbuster Films Imagine Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2007.
  2. ↑ Melvin Stokes, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, Oxford University Press, 2007.
  3. ↑ Garry Wills, John Wayne's America, New York, Touchstone, 1997, p. 103.
  4. ↑ Thompson, Craig; Tian, Kelly (2008). "Reconstructing the South: How Commercial Myths Compete for Identity Value through the Ideological Shaping of Popular Memories and Counter-memories". Journal of Consumer Research. 34 (5): 595–613. doi:10.1086/520076. hdl: 20.500.11919/1596 .
  5. ↑ Robert Crease, "Divine Frivolity: Hollywood Representations of the Lindy Hop, 1937–1942", in Krin Gabbard, Representing Jazz, Duke University Press, 1995.
  6. ↑ Jim Pines, "Blacks in the Cinema: The Changing Image", British Film Institute, 1971.
  7. ↑ Manthia Diawara (ed.), Black American Cinema, Routledge, New York, 1993.
  8. ↑ Michael Coyne, The Crowded Prairie, I.B Tauris, 1998, pp. 5–6.
  9. ↑ Hernán Vera and Andrew M. Gordon, Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
  10. ↑ Amy Abugo Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic, University of Virginia, 2009, especially chapter five.
  11. ↑ Robin M. Boylorn, "From Boys to Men: Hip-Hop, Hood Films, and the Performance of Contemporary Black Masculinity", Black Camera, Volume 8, Number 2, Spring 2017 (New Series), pp. 146–164.
  12. ↑ Michael Rogin, "'Make My Day!': Spectacle as Amnesia in Imperial Politics", Representations, No. 29 (Winter, 1990), pp. 99–123, p. 103.
  13. ↑ "Robin Wood, The American Nightmare: Horror Films in the 1970s" (PDF). Blue-sunshine.com. p. 29. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  14. ↑ Allison Graham, Framing the South, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, p. 147.
  15. ↑ Jim Cullen, "The Civil War in Popular Culture", Smithsonian, 1995.
  16. ↑ Jasmine Nichole Cobb, American Literary History, Volume 26, Number 2, Summer 2014, pp. 339–346 (Article).
  17. ↑ Guerrero, Ed (April 17, 2012). "The Spectacle of Black Violence as Cinema". In Sutherland, Jean-Anne; Kathryn M. Feltey (eds.). Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film. Sage. ISBN   9781412992848.
  18. ↑ "Hollywood's race war".
  19. ↑ McLellan, Dennis (2 December 2006). "Perry Henzell and Trevor D. Rhone; their movie 'The Harder They Come' brought reggae to the world". The Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 13 April 2011.
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