The Representation Of Black Identity in Films

The Representation Of Black Identity in FilmsThe debates over course and image of African American in films lose been highly combative for over a century. Blacks move over gen periodlly been perceived and stigmatized, throughout history, as trouble makers, incapables, intellectually limited, inferior, futile and irrational, amongst the many other de thinking labels addicted to them. These labels are connected not only to the history of colonization notwithstanding also, seriously, to the exploitation, perpetuation, and careful maintenance of stereotypes through cinematic clichs which have compel themselves easily and significantly on the popular imagination. As rightly state by Wijdan Ali, the projection of harmful and negative stereotypes onto marginal or ineffectual groups within a society has always been an easy and useful rule for making scapegoats.1Effectively, films form the ideal platform/space to circularize and bear on the labels which the mainstream audience desires to attach to the blue community.Five decades of the Civil Rights Movement have gone by, and the degree of change in the black community, though undeniably real and noticeable, frame perplexingly complex and inadequate. Although the incident that we now live in a time in history where Americans have voted for a black President, where blacks now occupy positions of power and are ostensibly less work to institutional discrimination than in the past, the black community nevertheless remains inadequately poor, unemployed, undereducated and negatively labeled.Therefore, adopting a writing-back style in Bamboozled (2000), empale Lee satirically attacks the way in which African Americans have historically been misused and misrepresented on screen. Through Bamboozled (2000), the managing director attempts both to curb and to educate his audience about the history of African American representation within popular culture, with the word bamboozled itself indicating the state of having been cheated or conned. Bamboozled (2000) presents American the great unwashed entertainments history of discrimination through abasing minstrel stereotypes, which inaugural started to be performed in musical theatres and which were after brought to cinema with films such(prenominal) as The Wooing and hymeneals of a Coon (1905), The Sambo Series (1909- 1911) and D.W Griffiths controversial The Birth of a Nation( 1915). Consequently, the take of this study is to analyze both the African American evolution in the American film industry and the social construction of black individuation through symbolic representation in cinema. These will in human activity help to understand why the integration of African Americans is considered as a problematic issue even in a sophisticated era where racism seems to be a thing of the past, and where people are supposedly no longer judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.2This paper will also analyze the ef fect of stereotypes on black identity using Spike Lees film, and will explore the intrusion of such a film in the deconstruction of stereotypes and the renegotiation of a stigmatized identity. and before getting to what Bamboozled (2000) actually brings to the table of African American films, it is important to look at the history and evolution of black representation in Hollywood cinema, which the following paragraphs are going to deal with.African American in American Films A Brief RetrospectiveAfrican Americans first started to be represented in minstrel projects in the late 1820s and later on television in the early 20th century.3Through blackface minstrelsy, a performance style where sporty males parodied the culture, clothing, songs, dances and speech patterns of Southern blacks4using blackface piece of music and exaggerated lips, Americas conceptions of blackness and tweed were shaped by these mocking caricatures. part whiteness was posited as the norm, every black fac e was a bidding of social imperfection, inferiority, and mimicry that was placed in isolation with an absent whiteness as its ideal opposite.5Consequently, for over a hundred years, the belief that blacks were racially and socially inferior to whites was ingrained and accepted by legions of both white and black minstrel performers and audiences. The caricatures took such a firm hold on the American imagination that audiences naturally came to expect any person with one-sided skin, irrespective of his/ her background, to conform to one or more of the following stereotypes Jim Crow, a dull-witted and subservient plantation buckle down Zip Coon, a gaudily dressed, lazy man from the city representing the proud newly- freed slave Mammy, the contended, happy, loyal and ever-smiling female slave (as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery,) Uncle Tom, the good Negro submissive, hearty, truehearted no matter what, stoic, selfless, and oh-so-very-kind,6Buck, the proud and menacing Black man always interested in white women Wench/ Jezebel, the temptress the mixed washing Mulatto and Pickaninnies, who have bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips and wide mouths into which they stuff immense slices of watermelon.7As time moved on, black appearance in mainstream films became more and more frequent, as well as the increase in the turn of events of independent black directors, from Oscar Micheaux to Daniel Lee and Spike Lee. Since The Birth of a Nation, which marked a change in emphasis from the pretentious but clean Jim Crow to the threatening savage Nigger, black filmmakers have responded by creating racecourse movies and blaxploitation films which were tailored to black audiences . The 1970s witnessed a resurgence of the blaxploitation genre with films such as Sweet Sweetbacks Baadassss Song (1971), Shaft (1971), Black Caesar (1973) and Foxy brownish (1974). Since such films were themselves in turn accused of using the negative to magnify issues pertaining to blacks , this genre saw its end in the late 1970s to reach out way to a new wave of black directors, such as S. Lee and John Singleton, who focused on black urban life. However, we cannot leave to simply celebrate the achievements of black filmmakers for the so-called ethnic arts. And as Stuart entrance hall remarks, we have come out of the age of innocence, which says that its good if its there.8The mere fact that such films have had a considerable increase does not mean that the black self is undergoing a positive change although it may be true that the level of clear-cut racism has known an important decrease, or even a disappearance. This can be backed up by Appiahs statement that changes in the representation of blacks do not ipso facto lead to changes in their treatment.9In Bamboozled (2000), Spike Lee directly addresses this issue of African American representability as being a discourse of white essentialism. Through Bamboozled (2000) the director in vites his audience to realize that although nobody goes around in blackface anymore,10it does not connote that Hollywood has altogether abandoned/given up essentialist discourse. The name of the blackface show in Bamboozled (2000) is in itself very symbolic Mantan The novel Millennium jongleur Show. Here, Lee suggests that minstrelsy has not disappeared in the new millennium. In his own talking to therefore, it has only gotten more sophisticated. Gangsta rap videos, a lot of the TV shows on UPN and WB- a lot of us are still acting as buffoons and coons.11Clearly, his aim in this satirical film is to show that even today, the American film industry is still concealing essentialist discourses within contemporary films. Consequently, as essentialism involves ongoing human and social interaction as well as limitation, identity regulation and enforcement takes place within this kind of racist discourse, whereby blacks have to undergo identity dilemma while trying to seek approval.App iah, K. A. (1993). No Bad Nigger Blacks as the Ethical Principle in the Movies. In Garber, M, Matlock, J and Walcowitz, R, L Media Spectacles. New York Routledge. 77-90.Bogle, D. (2001). Black Beginnings From Uncle Toms Cabin to The Birth of a Nation. In Bogle, D Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films . fourth ed. London The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. p1-18.Crowdus, G. and Georakas, D. (2002). An Interview with Spike Lee. In Cynthia Fuchs Spike Lee Interviews. United States of America University Press of Mississippi. 202-217.Mercer, K. (1994). Diaspora Culture And The Dialogic visual sense The Aesthetics Of Black Independent Film In Britain. In Mercer, K Welcome to the Jungle New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. New York Routledge. 53-68.Wijdan, A. (2003). Muslim Women Between Clich and Reality. Diogenes. 50 (3), 77-87.