Читать книгу The Hollywood Jim Crow - Maryann Erigha - Страница 8
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Representation and Racial Hierarchy
Members of the exclusive Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—mostly white-haired white men over age sixty (and a few select others)—annually convene in an auditorium for the Academy Awards ceremony, held to commemorate the highest achievements in the American film industry. Red carpets, four-piece tuxedos, black bowties, and glittering designer gowns adorn the evening, which despite its grandeur, usually passes with little fanfare for Black directors, for whom few nominations and even fewer wins are rather the norm. When the presenters tear open their sealed envelopes to announce “and the award goes to …,” the phrase completing the sentence is rarely the name of a narrative-feature-film director who is Black. In fact, since the first Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 through the arrival of the twenty-first century, the Academy had yet to award any feature-film director of African, Latin, or Asian descent. For all the faint praise of symbolic nominations, the pinnacle accolade had evaded even the best of them.
Only recently has the Academy formally recognized movie directors of African, Latin, or Asian descent. For Black filmmakers, the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony marked a historic turning point when Steve McQueen, who is British born and of Grenadian descent, won the coveted Best Picture Oscar for 12 Years a Slave (2013), which he directed and coproduced. Eighty-five years after the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony, McQueen’s victory marked the end of a long drought at the podium for Black-directed films. 12 Years a Slave chronicled the life and tribulations of Solomon Northup—a man who was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and held in captivity for over a decade. By the movie’s end, Northup has regained his freedom. Coincidentally with the accolade, Hollywood sought a liberation of its own. To some people, the dismantling of a racial barrier for Black directors signified a departure from a history of nonrecognition.
Despite the movie’s clear merit, its victory at the Academy podium was far from being a shoe-in. In fact, some Hollywood insiders, who hold positions of influence and control in the movie industry, thought that the racial demographic of the voters would deter McQueen’s film from receiving the shining crown. As a case in point, before the Best Picture Award was settled, Laura, a Hollywood insider, expresses doubts about the likelihood that white men in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would support a movie such as 12 Years. She voices this observation in a correspondence to Hollywood executives and other insiders:
“12 Years” is truly a brilliant film with a compelling story.… This film is made by a Brit that exposes the darkest “hidden history” of America, exposing a cruel and brutal segment of our white society. These plantation owners are as terrible [as] the Nazis, who are the only “acceptable” cinematic villains. The Academy’s experience of watching this film is not pleasant. Some will not see it … yet, because of the violence. Eventually they have to, to vote. If they put it in their dvd, they may fast-forward or turn it off. So, will they vote for a Best Picture so difficult to watch? Many others who have seen it tout the brilliant filmmaking but are a bit embarrassed by the story and more importantly did not “enjoy” watching it. My point is … is this the story American cultural bell ringers want to send around the world as the “best story” in the best picture? I think the voters are patiently waiting for an excuse to vote for another film. In their hearts, they are uncomfortable sending a global message from a Brit that we are or were terrible people.1
As this quotation reveals, race is a defining characteristic of Hollywood that matters in film-industry workers’ deliberations about movies. Laura points out the whiteness of Hollywood as an industry. In her correspondence to several Hollywood insiders, she refers to “our white society” and self-consciously feels that after watching the historical drama about U.S. slavery, viewers at home and abroad would conclude that “we [whites] are or were terrible people.” She believes that white Academy voters such as herself would be hesitant to award a movie that envisions white Americans as cinematic villains, that showcases white-on-Black violence as a “cruel and brutal” yet integral and enduring mechanism of American race relations, and that depicts a narrative of Black suffering that is downright unpleasant for most whites to relive. Laura’s quote demonstrates how easily criteria besides sheer filmmaking (even filmmaking described as “brilliant”) enter into decision-making about what kinds of movies receive recognition during the annual ceremony. Race and racism are explicit factors governing how Hollywood insiders contemplate and evaluate movies. In Hollywood and in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, representation is important for members of all racial groups to equally impress their opinions and subjectivities on crucial decisions in cinema.
Key aspects of representation in a culture industry can be visualized in the “cultural representation pyramid” shown in figure 1.1. At the bottom of the pyramid are symbols and images. A reminder of the slogan “if you can see it, you can be it,” both images and symbols typify visible monikers of representation that indicate early signs of inclusion in popular culture. Recognition at the Academy Awards and other awards ceremonies is a form of symbolic representation. Images and themes in movies also provide racial symbols of inclusion.
Figure 1.1. Cultural representation pyramid.
Once a group has established visibility in symbols or images, its members might subsequently pursue advocacy for numerical representation. Fighting for representation in numbers, groups emphasize demography, usually in the form of landing roles in films or attaining adequate employment in jobs. The threshold of representation might be tied to the group’s population share. Struggles for numerical and symbolic representation is ongoing, and the goal may take a long period of time to attain—if parity, or something like it, is at all in reach. Meanwhile, numerical representation promises greater presence on-screen and behind the camera. Symbolic and numerical representation, however, can be present but with little real improvements toward alleviating inequalities. Symbolic representation, for instance, could be only superficial yet not substantive. Despite an appearance of harmonious inclusivity with visible symbols, more telling signs indicate there are further layers to the story. Like symbolic representation, numerical representation is meaningful, but further dimensions of representation can be more insightful for understanding and alleviating racial inequality. Scholars and observers should critically examine representation in Hollywood under a microscope that goes beyond symbols and numbers.
Having achieved some improvements in numerical and symbolic representation, groups can stake citizenship claims in the dominant cultural canon. For example, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), about racial conflicts on the hottest day of the summer in Brooklyn, New York, was inducted into the National Film Registry in its first year of eligibility for the honor and was deemed “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress.2 As voting members of the Academy, Black directors have a hand in influencing whose movies are memorialized during the Oscars as national cultural artifacts.
Presumably, the last goal for attaining representation in cultural production is to occupy positions of power. In such positions, groups can control cultural output and steer flows of workers into and out of positions on cultural projects. Therefore, beyond the numbers of directors present or absent behind the camera or the number of victories at awards podiums, rethinking representation to look more closely at qualitative measures of institutional representation—especially access to lucrative positions of influence—is a way to investigate in more depth how racial inequality happens in Hollywood. An institutional analysis of the contemporary race politics of representation in the film industry would need to be located in the dimension of hierarchical representation. Hollywood insiders, who have the power to shape cinema from within the industry, structure film production around unequal racial hierarchies and justify inequality using statements that value and privilege white movies and directors over Black, Asian, and Latino/a movies and directors. This Hollywood Jim Crow racial hierarchy, in which outright expressions about race matter for the sorting of individuals and films in the movie industry, privileges whites at each level of the cultural representation pyramid, whereas African Americans and other marginalized racial groups find underrepresentation at each level. For film directors, racial disparities span what kinds of movies they direct, which movie genres are prominent, how much movies cost, and which studios are involved. Hierarchical racial representation has implications for individual careers and for the broader impact that directors and their movies can exert on global societies.
Symbols of progress, numbers of people in jobs, markers of cultural citizenship, and placement in positions of power and prestige reveal multiple levels at stake in the complex struggle over racial representation in the film industry. All this happens within the nation’s sociopolitical context. The nation’s racial context, for instance, plays no small role in shaping groups’ access to each level of representation. The racial climate determines which groups are most likely to be employed and to occupy positions of power just as much as it influences whose cultural citizenship rights are realized or dismissed and what images become commonplace occurrences or rare anomalies. Examining various measures of representation provides a new look at racial inequality in Hollywood, while new reasons to explain away those inequalities circulate among those who are positioned to protect their advantage.
Symbols of Progress
Steve McQueen’s win was quickly followed by other victories for Black talent behind the camera. In fact, the 2017 Oscars ceremony was a landmark year of firsts for Black workers in technical, behind-the-scenes positions in cinema. They received an uncharacteristic barrage of recognition in nominations and awards. An unprecedented four Black directors were nominated for Best Documentary Feature: Ava DuVernay for 13th, Roger Ross Williams for Life, Animated, Haitian-born brothers Raoul Peck and Hebert Peck for I Am Not Your Negro, and Ezra Edelman, who ultimately won Best Documentary Feature, for O.J.: Made in America. Barry Jenkins, for Moonlight, became only the fourth Black director in Academy Awards history to receive a directing nomination. African Americans also received nominations in film editing and cinematography. What is more, the 2017 Oscars marked the first occasion that three Black-cast movies were in consideration for the top honor of Best Picture. Three Black producers received Best Picture nominations: Denzel Washington for Fences (2016), Pharrell Williams for Hidden Figures (2016), and Kimberly Steward for Manchester by the Sea (2016). Ultimately the Barry Jenkins–directed Moonlight, an adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s novel In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, took home the Best Picture win.
Upon the announcement of victory, smartphones fanned the room. Blinking lights from the handheld gadgets captured the moment on video. Barry Jenkins accepted the award to raucous applause from a crowd of cheerful, teary-eyed onlookers with mouths agape. With a look of wondrous disbelief, he stepped up to the microphone and uttered, “Even in my dreams, this could not be true. But to hell with dreams—I’m done with it, because this is true. Oh, my goodness.”3 The momentous energy was palpable throughout his speech. Fists pumped toward the ceiling. Clearly, something of magnitude had been accomplished, something beyond expectations, and it felt good.
Via symbolic gestures such as Academy Awards accolades, Black directors can influence audiences and effect change through their creative works. The producer of Moonlight, Adele Romanski, a white woman, spoke about the symbolic power of the Best Picture victory for uplifting young African American teenagers: “And I hope even more than that, that it’s inspiring to people—little black boys and brown girls and other folks watching at home who feel marginalized and who take some inspiration from seeing this beautiful group of artists, helmed by this amazing talent, my friend Barry Jenkins, standing up here on this stage accepting this top honor.”4 In an essay in The Root, Danielle Belton describes the exchange of inspiration and admiration that took place at the African American Critics Association Award Ceremony when, prior to the Oscars’ Best Picture Award, John Singleton presented an accolade to Barry Jenkins for Moonlight. Belton writes that “probably one of the most deeply affecting moments during the awards ceremony was when acclaimed director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Baby Boy) could barely mask his pride and admiration for a man he admitted he hadn’t met, but felt he knew through his art: fellow director Barry Jenkins, the auteur behind independent film Moonlight. Singleton was presenting an award to Jenkins for Moonlight. Jenkins, in turn, thanked Singleton for inspiring him through his work on Boyz N the Hood, Singleton’s first, groundbreaking film.”5 Before ever meeting in person, they engaged each other through their films. Movies and images are symbolic vehicles that shape audience perceptions and exert influence beyond the screen.
As a marginalized group in Hollywood, Black Americans have a restricted ability to control their own self-images or to challenge disparaging stereotypes about themselves—stereotypes that not only influence individual people but also shape crucial social factors such as politics, racial attitudes, and treatment by authority, namely, employers and law enforcement. The capability to create images for mass consumption comes packaged with the power to effect change. Cinema can be a vehicle for both racist and antiracist ideologies. Hence, cinema can serve to counteract racist ideologies with progressive ones. With inadequate representation behind the camera, Black Americans are less able to shape the minds of viewers or create mass-disseminated cinematic images that effect change with regard to social issues around race relations in the United States, such as mass incarceration and police brutality.
In the post-2000 era, the wheels of integration into the Academy Awards also turned for Asian and Latino/a directors. Twice, Ang Lee won Best Director—for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012). On the heels of Ang Lee’s achievements, two directors of Latin descent, both Mexican, won Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity (2013) and Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015). For Birdman, Iñárritu also won Best Picture. Implanting seeds of retreat from a racist past, these victories provided the arsenal for one to believe, or at least hope, that Hollywood would turn a new leaf toward a long-awaited future of racial inclusion.
By and large, film directors’ symbolic acceptance in the Oscars aligns with Hollywood’s public reputation as a liberal-leaning industry. Across the broad spectrum of Hollywood professions, actors and executives alike have been linked to this liberal moniker. For instance, Bruce Davis, a white American and former executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture and Arts and Sciences, once described the Academy as “overwhelmingly made up of liberal actors, writers, directors, and producers.”6 Hollywood celebrities are also commonly associated with liberal political involvement. To name a few, Beyoncé Knowles, 50 Cent, Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, Ben Stiller, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith publicly supported the Democratic Party or donated money backing Democratic politicians.7 In 2003 alone, Hollywood companies donated over $30 million to Democratic politicians and contributed substantially less, $10 million, to Republicans.8 Part of the film industry’s liberal image stems from key players’ advocacy for liberal groups over conservative groups.
Beyond individuals, Hollywood movies have also garnered a reputation for portraying liberal themes, bolstering the perception that the industry upholds ideals of racial tolerance. In the midst of intense racial tensions in the United States, Hollywood social-problem films of the 1950s and ’60s assumed progressive stances on social issues about racial inequality and, in doing so, spearheaded a national dialogue on race relations with such movies as Guess Who’s Coming Home to Dinner? (1967), which featured an on-screen interracial romance between Sidney Poitier and the white actor Katharine Houghton. Beginning in the 1970s, progressive fictional portrayals depicted African Americans as leaders of the nation, preceding change in the general society. Indeed, before the community-organizing senator of Illinois, Barack Obama, became the forty-fourth president of the United States, numerous African American presidents preceded him in popular culture: James Earl Jones in The Man (1972), Tommy Lister in The Fifth Element (1997), Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact (1998), Terry Crews in Idiocracy (2000), Chris Rock in Head of State (2005), and Dennis Haysbert and D. B. Woodside in the Fox television series 24. Through taking progressive stances on social issues, Hollywood offered themes and characters that not only purged the old dispensation of racial exclusion but also provided symbolic gestures of liberalism.
Just decades ago, a dogged racial exclusion and invisibility plagued representation of racial minorities in Hollywood. In fact, the history of racial exclusion in Hollywood exceeds the level of exclusion in other industries such as music or television.9 Accolades for directors of color at the Academy Awards, political advocacy for the Democratic Party, and movies provoking conversations about controversial racial issues point to a symbolic inclusion for racial minorities that gives the appearance of a growing, albeit gradual, racial progress—as if presenting the case that a history of the film business once plagued by racial inequality is being supplanted by a more liberal future that fosters egalitarian ideals. Nonetheless, obvious questions follow: How could a film industry that appears to be so racially liberal be the constant subject of racial inequality? How does racial inequality persist within an American society that outwardly condemns racism and within a Hollywood film industry that presents a liberal public face?
Symbolic representation of racial minorities presents a public face of the U.S. film industry as a liberal entity. As the scholar of American popular culture Eithne Quinn writes, “there was a prevalent view among whites that the [film] industry, despite glaring evidence to the contrary, was basically racially progressive.”10 The appearance of growing symbolic inclusion can be deceiving. Despite the semblance of greater inclusivity, this portrait of a liberal Hollywood contrasts sharply with the lived realities of racial minorities working in the film industry. Progressive on-screen images or conspicuous awards ceremonies can obscure stagnant behind-the-camera working conditions for racial minorities.
Number Crunching
Ossie Davis, the director of the second-ever Black-directed film distributed by Hollywood studios, Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), highlights one recurring concern about representation in cinematic production: that employment is important to secure jobs. Davis says, “there is from time to time a big brou-haha—sometimes it gets quite excitable—over whether or not a white director can really ever make a film truly representative of black lifestyle and black culture. This question, in my opinion, is more about jobs—and ultimately about power—than it is about race.”11 In the film industry, work is a necessary step, first, to secure a livelihood and, second, to exert control over images in popular culture.
As Ossie Davis emphasizes, representation is largely about jobs. Adequate representation for directors has direct gains with regard to employment outcomes. Gainful employment in any major industry, including culture industries, is vital because for African Americans as a group, employment levels are persistently lower than for every other racial group. For example, in September 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a huge racial employment gap for young adults between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, with a 31.5 percent unemployment rate for African Americans compared to a 13.9 percent unemployment rate for white Americans. For men and women twenty years old and over, African Americans likewise had more than double the unemployment rates of white Americans, 9.2 percent compared to 4.4 percent.12 Even these numbers drastically underestimate the gap between Black and white unemployment, since they do not include incarcerated citizens, of which African Americans are disproportionately overrepresented.13
Closing the racial gap in unemployment requires effort from all sectors, including entertainment industries. Yet popular culture industries such as Hollywood are rarely included in discussions about places where African Americans have been historically overlooked in employment and where significant efforts to increase Black employment can be made. Hollywood still has much work to do with its inclusion of African Americans in all positions in cinema. The Hollywood workforce includes a range of jobs beyond directors: set designers, gaffers, office workers, lab technicians, visual artists, colorists, and carpenters, to name a few. Major culture industries, therefore, should not be overlooked in efforts to close the racial employment gap.
Figure 1.2. 1963 March on Washington. Courtesy of National Archives.
Beyond images and gestures characterized by symbolic representation, numerical representation is preoccupied with questions of demography and parity, measured by proportions and employment numbers. The central aim of equality becomes to make the proportion of African Americans in Hollywood equal to or greater than their share of the general U.S. population. In this vein, sociological research has highlighted racial inequality in the occupational careers of African American writers, actors, and directors.14 For instance, studies by William and Denise Bielby and Darnell Hunt and colleagues have concluded that African American writers are well underrepresented in relation to the U.S. Black population. Recent studies have thoroughly documented various aspects of minority underrepresentation and marginalization in film directing, concluding that Black directors are underrepresented in relation to Blacks’ proportion of the U.S. population and are otherwise marginalized in the profession.15
A number of academic studies have demonstrated the significance of employment in power roles for other positions on film sets. Employment of African Americans in prominent positions of control, especially as Hollywood directors or producers, increases both the number of work opportunities for Black talent behind the camera and the number of on-screen speaking roles for Black actors. In a 2014 study of the one hundred top-grossing movies of the year, Stacy Smith and colleagues found that when no Black director was behind the camera, less than 11 percent of characters on-screen were Black; however, when a Black director was behind the camera, 46 percent of characters on-screen were Black. The presence of a Black director increased the number of Black actors more than four times over.16 The director Tim Story describes his efforts to diversify acting roles: “I make it a point to do those movies where I can actually put Black people as well as Latinos in those parts.”17 In addition, Chris Rock explains how he personally uses his platform to provide opportunities for entry into work for other African Americans: “I try to help young Black guys coming up because those people took chances on me. Eddie [Murphy] didn’t have to put me in Beverly Hills Cop II. Keenen Wayans didn’t have to put me in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Arsenio [Hall] didn’t have to let me on his show. I’d do the same for a young white guy, but here’s the difference: Someone’s going to help the white guy. Multiple people will. The people whom I’ve tried to help, I’m not sure anybody was going to help them.”18 By Story’s and Rock’s estimations, as well as through the testimonies of other Black directors and film scholars, the best advocates for African Americans’ employment have always been, and perhaps will forever be, other Black workers on the job.
In positions of influence on movie sets, Black Americans in larger and more powerful roles are able to advocate for and demand inclusion for Blacks in other positions. Their involvement facilitates a process by which they can break down color barriers on historically “lily-white” film crews, trade organizations, and technical unions.19 Underrepresentation in directing jobs leads to decreased opportunities for Black Americans in the workplace, which means less authority in the decision-making process and fewer profits.
More African Americans working in Hollywood would mean greater control over images that travel to audiences worldwide.20 Hollywood exerts a widespread domination of mass dissemination, production, distribution, and exhibition of popular culture in both American and global markets. According to the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, dominant groups monopolize control over public communication and therefore over public meaning and cultural influence in society.21 Dominant groups, which are best positioned to use cinema to serve their own interests, encode cinematic texts, for instance, to shape public events and to reinforce their ideologies. In contrast, marginalized groups are not generally well situated to create and disseminate their own meaning systems through popular movies. As it stands, marginalized racial groups exert little control over the production and content of cinematic images that are consumed by mass audiences. However, it is important for racial minority groups to penetrate all levels of the film industry in order to harness power and control over global media systems.
Representation in cinematic production and distribution is essential because directors hold immense power to influence what images come across our television and movie screens. Hollywood plays an important and critical role in the creation and dissemination of ideologies through images, narratives, themes, and genres. Calling cinema “a mind molding art form,” the director Neema Barnette stresses, “There are some of us who are storytellers who understand that film is the strongest political tool that we have. Some of us got into the art form because of that, and I’m one of them.”22 Barnette reflects on cinema as an art form that possesses unparalleled strength in its ability to move and affect audiences across the world, even in the face of new digital and communication technologies. Through the medium of cinema, film directors, as drivers of vehicles that influence and affect thoughts, perceptions, self-esteem, politics, and policy, play an important role in disseminating, legitimating, and rationalizing worldviews.
This is not to suggest a unidirectional relationship between movie directors and audiences that is uncontested; audiences also play a role in interpreting movie messages. For example, viewers heralded the decision to make a female reboot of Ghostbusters (2016), but many were unimpressed that the only Black female character (played by Leslie Jones), who is also the only nonwhite member of the Ghostbusters team, was the only nonscientist of the group. Instead, she played the role of a transportation worker. Jones responded to critics on Twitter: “Why can’t a regular person be a Ghostbuster? And why can’t I be the one who plays them, I am a performer.”23 On the one hand, viewers felt that the role kept Black women circumscribed into their narrow box of roles in mainstream cinema. On the other hand, the role brought the lived experience of workers to light through Jones’s performance.
As cultural objects, movies can be interpreted and evaluated in various ways, sometimes in manners that contradict intended meanings. Audiences embrace some portions of media and reject others. Social experiences and characteristics such as race, gender, class, education, political affiliation, religious affiliation, and locale also structure how people make sense of movies, often depending on how much a social category is privileged in a film. Besides individual readings, social-group interactions and dynamics can lessen or intensify evaluations of movies and movie characters.24 Even though audiences exhibit control over how they react to movies, cultural producers and creators, such as film directors, set the stage for what cultural objects are available for consumption and interpretation. Controlling this sphere of fictional reality gives cultural workers vast authority over the imaginings that the majority of audience members devour uncritically at leisure. The director of Meteor Man and The Five Heartbeats, Robert Townsend, remarks, “Films are powerful. Images are powerful—they can travel around the world.… Even though [Hollywood Shuffle] was my first film, it gave me an education on the power of images.”25 No doubt, directors’ presence or absence behind the camera helps shape what images are seen and what images remain invisible. But more than creation of images alone, representation in film directing is a measure of power to execute one’s vision of art and life in an influential culture industry.
Discussions around the politics of representation emerge in decisions about who should direct movies showcasing Black issues or icons. August Wilson, who wrote the play Fences and optioned the movie as a feature film before his death in 2005, said that he wanted a Black director to helm the film adaptation: “I declined a white director, not on the basis of race, but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of African Americans.”26 Besides Wilson, other directors believe there is something more to directing movies of cultural or historical significance beyond technical proficiency. John Singleton chose not to direct a studio biopic about the late rapper Tupac Shakur, posting on Instagram,
The reason I am not making this picture is because the people involved aren’t really respectful of the legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur.… [Tupac’s] real fans just know I am still planning a movie on Tupac.… It doesn’t matter what they do mine will be better.… Tupac was much more than a hip hop artist.… He was a black man guided by his passions.… Of most importance was his love of black people and culture.… Something the people involved in this movie know nothing about.… Real talk! How you gonna make a movie about a man when you suing his mother to get the rights to tell his story?! They have no true love 4 Pac so this movie will not be made with love!”27
Both Wilson and Singleton are tuned into the rampant misrepresentation and stereotyping of African Americans that occurs on U.S. screens. For Wilson, knowledge of culture is paramount in the execution of movies about African American communities. For Singleton, love and appreciation of Black culture and people is a key ingredient in making a movie that is not only antiracist but also respectful of popular Black artists. The intentions, awareness, and empathy of the director make a difference in the outcome of the film and portrayals of characters and stories.
The assumption underlying most calls for increased representation of marginalized racial groups is that more representation would lead to more humanizing images on-screen. Although directors’ presence or absence behind the camera does not necessarily mean that less stereotypical or more multidimensional and complex racial representations are sure to follow, there is reason to believe that people of color behind the camera would improve on-screen images. For example, Robert Townsend remarks, “When you look at my career, I’ve tried to stay on course in my mission to uplift people of color.”28 Black Americans’ employment in high-paying and lucrative occupations in a competitive industry such as Hollywood holds immeasurable weight for the well-being of broader communities beyond the benefits it bestows on any single individual.
Cultural Bell Ringers
Another pressing concern is how underrepresentation in the film industry undercuts rights to citizenship. Citizenship rights are additional facets of representation in Hollywood that deserve recognition. Assessing the level of representation in media is one method of gauging a racial group’s access to cultural citizenship, which includes standard components such as voting rights and free speech but also the right to produce and be recognized in a nation’s dominant cultural myths, narratives, and images.29 In this sense, African Americans have been disenfranchised during Oscar season when the film industry votes for the highest awards for creative talent of the previous year.
Awards ceremonies are as much cultural as they are political and geopolitical. Awarding a movie with an Oscar sends a symbolic message to people across the globe. Earlier, we heard one Hollywood insider, Laura, lament that 12 Years a Slave might send out an “uncomfortable” global “message” that whites in America “are or were terrible people.” She called Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members “American cultural bell ringers.” Symbolically, their awards function as a sounding board that calls attention to certain art works and, in doing so, labels some movies and not others shining examples of American culture. Laura recalls, “The Academy consists of approximately 6,000 white 60-year-old-men who are educated, experienced filmmakers who take their voting power seriously. They are all fiercely patriotic and very aware of our day by day international standing politically and culturally.”30 Laura’s mention of fierce patriotism demonstrates how movies, beyond their significance as individual art forms, embody national cultural representations and are intended to speak to the world about the American cultural canon. Interestingly, Academy voters understand that their movie choices should reflect the nation’s “international standing politically and culturally.” Part of regular business practice in the film industry involves deciding what movies travel to other parts of the world, with foreign-market distribution determining the relative ease or difficulty movies have in entering international markets. Those subjective assessments, which are racially skewed to favor whites and disadvantage Blacks, demonstrate the immense power that Hollywood insiders possess to define what counts as American cinematic culture on a global scale.
Having few voices in Hollywood and little representation in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, African Americans are unable to vote in proportional numbers for industry awards, which play an integral role in enhancing visibility and bolstering careers. A Los Angeles Times survey of 6,028 Oscar voters in 2012 showed that 93 percent of Oscar voters were white. Future predictions project the Academy membership to be 89 percent white, at its most diverse outcome, by 2023—which still means that Black, Asian, Latino/a, and Native Americans, who currently stand at 36 percent of the U.S. population, collectively would have only 11 percent of Academy votes.31 With few Oscar ballots, these groups have diminished rights to representation in the voting process for the film industry’s annual awards ceremony.
On several occasions, the dearth of racial minorities recognized at the movie industry’s annual awards ceremony has raised protests, in both the physical and virtual worlds. During the 2015 ceremony, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite became a trending topic on Twitter, as social-media users reacted to the dearth of Black, Asian, Latino/a, and Native American nominees.32 Some Academy members did not empathize with the calls for inclusion. In response to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, one disgruntled white female Academy member ranted anonymously, “When a movie about Black people is good, members vote for it. But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because it has Black people in it?”33 With criticism and approbation for popular cinema come high levels of subjectivity—which is all the more reason why it is important that African Americans and members of other marginalized racial groups realize their rights to include their subjectivities on decisions made in the Academy Awards program in particular and in Hollywood more broadly.
Methods of acquiring membership to the Academy, and thus attaining voting power, are problematic, in that they privilege whites who have existing connections to Hollywood and to the Academy. Directors and other creative personnel can become members by receiving an Oscar nomination, getting a recommendation from two existing members, or getting an endorsement from an Academy membership committee or staff. Barriers to entry make it difficult to achieve racial equality in Academy representation.
Recent amendments to the voting rules have led to more diverse incoming cohorts, though diversity in leadership at the helm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also affects who is able to vote for awards and ultimately shapes who is nominated and wins. Cheryl Boone Isaacs was the first African American president of the Academy, elected in 2013 to serve for four consecutive one-year terms. During her tenure, she prioritized increasing diversity in the Academy, inviting a record 683 people, 41 percent of whom were racial minorities. During this wave, more Black talent received invitations to join, including several Black directors: Keenan Ivory Wayans, Dee Rees, Ice Cube, Ryan Coogler, and others. The viral #OscarsSoWhite hashtag of 2015 described an extreme lack of diversity, with white actors receiving all twenty acting nominations. Subsequently, as a result of critical changes in the Academy’s organizational structure, with an infusion of people from various racial backgrounds as members of the Academy with voting power, Academy nominations and awards have become more diverse.
The sociologist Darnell Hunt lauds the changes that have taken place to enable a more racially inclusive awards program and organization. Hunt says, “The Academy is now talking about the issues in major ways as opposed to apologizing for them, which is what they had done prior to that. They actually made some changes in terms of the voting rules, and they’ve been bringing in much more diverse new members every year, and a lot of that was under [Cheryl Boone’s] leadership. There’s no question she’s made an impact. The question is, will [the Academy] continue to move in this direction under new leadership, and will they continue at the same pace?”34 Black representation in key leadership positions proved to be of immense importance for achieving greater recognition at the Academy Awards. Boone’s leadership demonstrates that racial representation has tangible outcomes with regard to opportunities for people of color. It remains to be seen, however, whether the momentum for inclusion can continue after Boone’s tenure as president comes to an end and other presidents preside over the Academy.
Cultural citizenship includes the right to participate in shaping a nation’s cultural narratives. The ability to contribute to the nation’s dominant cinematic cultural narratives is as much an inalienable claim to citizenship as is any other right. However, Jim Crow systems result in marginalized groups’ loss of basic citizenship through political disenfranchisement. Barriers to attain equal rights to produce popular cinema resemble exclusions from citizenship that characterized the experiences of Black people during previous Jim Crow eras. Lacking the capabilities to contribute to cinematic expression in an ideal fashion, African Americans achieve only an incomplete cultural citizenship and belonging in the United States.
Black Directors: Then and Now
The quest for representation in Hollywood for Black directors has run the gamut from full exclusion to a growing inclusion. Throughout the vast majority of the twentieth century, African Americans were barred from directing Hollywood films. In the onset of the American film industry and the Hollywood system, African Americans were excluded as directors at major Hollywood studios. Barred from the mainstream film industry, African Americans such as Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams labored outside Hollywood studios, starting independent film companies and disseminating “race movies”—films that, from the 1910s through the 1950s, centered on Black themes, featured Black casts, and targeted Black audiences.35 Some producers especially stood out from the bunch. During the silent-film era, Bill Foster’s Chicago-based Foster Photoplay produced short films such as The Railroad Porter (1912) and The Fall Guy (1913). Soon after, the Universal Studios actor Noble Johnson founded the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, which likewise produced short films, its first being The Realization of a Negro’s Ambition (1916).36
Following the production of short films, African Americans ventured into feature filmmaking. By far, the most prominent filmmaker during the silent era was Oscar Micheaux, who in 1918 started the Micheaux Film & Book Company and in 1919 directed the first feature-length film by an African American filmmaker: The Homesteader, a film adaptation of his second novel. Over the course of his prolific career, Micheaux made twenty-six silent films and seventeen sound films.37 In the late 1920s, however, Black cinema’s progress faced strong obstacles including the depletion of financing in the time of the Great Depression and a lack of resources during the transition from silent to sound films. Still, independent Black filmmaking and race movies thrived up until the 1950s, with filmmakers such as Spencer Williams, who started the Lincoln Talking Pictures Company. Despite early filmmakers’ successful careers outside Hollywood, all the while, Black Americans remained entirely excluded from directorial work within mainstream film companies. Like the racial order of the broader society, this situation was bound to change in the coming decades.
During the 1940s, the top priority for Black Americans in the film industry became the push for integration into Hollywood. These aspirations followed a growing integration ideology of antidiscrimination rhetoric, spurred by African American troops fighting for equal treatment in the armed forces during and following World War II.38 Increasingly, African Americans brought pressure on institutions to end racial discrimination and integrate schools, communities, and workplaces. Led by the Hollywood chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), African American directors challenged their exclusion from white Hollywood companies.39 Advocates lobbied to improve the on-screen portrayal of Black characters and to increase the behind-the-camera presence of Black creative talent on mainstream films. African Americans also participated in letter-writing campaigns, picket lines, protests, and boycotts to advocate for film-industry jobs on-screen and behind the camera. This activism during the civil rights era orchestrated the entry of Black directors into Hollywood in the post-civil-rights era.
Since the end of the civil rights era, African Americans have gained increased access to directing films at Hollywood studios. With Gordon Parks Sr.’s film adaptation of his novel The Learning Tree, he became the first African American to direct a Hollywood film, for Warner Brothers, in 1969. Yet amid the 1960s era of social-problem films, on-screen fictional advancement far outpaced behind-the-camera working conditions for racial minorities. During the 1970s Blaxploitation era, Melvin Van Peebles directed The Watermelon Man (1970) for Columbia, Gordon Parks Jr. directed Superfly (1972) for Warner Brothers, Ivan Dixon directed Trouble Man (1972) for 20th Century Fox, and Michael Schultz directed Car Wash (1976) for Universal Pictures—to name a few who pioneered entry into Hollywood.
Whereas before the 1960s, there were no Black directors in Hollywood, by the 1980s, African Americans accounted for between 2 and 3 percent of film directors, according to Directors Guild of America membership. Subsequently, the 1980s and 1990s brought about what the film scholar Ed Guerrero calls the “Black Film Boom”—a spike in directing, with Hollywood studios optioning independent works of Black filmmakers for commercial release.40 This group of commercial independent trailblazers included Spike Lee, the writer/director of the 1986 romantic comedy She’s Gotta Have It, about a woman and her three lovers; Robert Townsend, the writer/director of the 1987 satirical comedy Hollywood Shuffle, about stereotyped roles for Black folks in show business; and John Singleton, the writer/director of Boyz N the Hood (1991), about the lives of three young men in South Central Los Angeles.
Black women also gained access to Hollywood film directing, beginning with the Haitian-born Euzhan Palcy, who directed A Dry White Season (1989) for Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM). Years later, the Miramax film Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1993), a coming-of-age story about an adolescent girl in Brooklyn, became the first mainstream film released to theaters that was written and directed by an American-born Black woman, Leslie Harris. In 1994, Darnell Martin’s I Like It like That, for Columbia, became the first Black-female-directed film distributed by a major Hollywood studio. Martin’s entrée into directing was followed by that of other Black female directors. In 1997, for example, Kasi Lemmons wrote and directed Eve’s Bayou, a period drama that followed a mystical Louisiana family during the 1960s. Three years later, Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote and directed the popular sports romance Love and Basketball (2000). By the 2000s, the percentage of Black directors had nearly tripled to between 6 and 8 percent and also included a number of female directors.41 In just a few short decades, Hollywood became more inclusive of Black directors. The pendulum of Hollywood film directing swung from complete exclusion to growing inclusion.
Still, directors and audiences witness an unsteady number of Black movies in theaters. Tyler Perry, known for his Madea comedies and dramas, describes this pattern as waves of Black movies that come and go: “Hollywood always has a wave, and in these waves comes films about people of color. It’s just a wave that happens and once it crests, it goes away. Back in the nineties there were lots of movies about African American people, then I come along for many years and it’s only me out there.”42 Over the years, there has hardly been a strong, uninterrupted output of Black-directed movies in theaters. Rather, there are ebbs and flows, highs and lulls. The media researcher Stacy Smith and colleagues report no meaningful change in the percentage of Black directors of top-grossing films between 2007 and 2013. In fact, only 6.5 percent of the one hundred top-grossing films in 2013 had Black directors: Malcolm D. Lee’s Scary Movie 5 and Best Man Holiday, Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas and Temptation, McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Lee Daniels’s The Butler, and Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen.43
Beyond the sheer inconsistency in the presence of Black directors behind the camera of Hollywood motion pictures, these trends also reflect that when the film industry as a whole takes a hit and the total film output for all studios decreases, racial minorities receive the hardest blows and suffer the most in lack of employment. This harsh reality is consistent with other studies that report that Blacks are the first to be fired from companies when business subsides.44 At any rate, their level of representation throughout the history of Hollywood remains below their 13 percent share of the general U.S. population.
Despite an overall promising increase in African American participation in film directing over the past decades, the problem of racial inequality in the film industry remains a constant fixture in contemporary public discourse and among scholars of film, media, communications, sociology, and economics. Film professionals, content creators, activist groups, critics, and audiences also sense problems amid progress. Accusations of racial inequality and discriminatory treatment still remain prominent, and the subject of racial representation has not departed from the minds and platforms of activists seeking a Hollywood reformation. With no palpable movement toward reaching parity for African Americans in recent years, the industry’s racial disparities impede progress to achieving full equality in cinematic production. However, improving numbers alone cannot alleviate Hollywood’s extensive race problem. The missing piece is taking sustained and persistent action to diversify critical positions of power.
More than Mere Numbers
Though the directing profession still remains largely and disproportionately white, those who believe Hollywood is alleviating its racial woes point to the numerical and symbolic progress as evidence of a commitment to promises made in the spirit of the familiar civil rights rhetoric—that slowly but surely, in the words of the soul singer Sam Cooke, “change gon’ come,” eventually. To a great extent, the vision of change that has been articulated is a change of numbers or demography. The sociologist Herman Gray reports that demography became an essential point of reference following the push for representational parity in media industries. To assess representation and monitor its effectiveness, the salient benchmark became literally counting the number of workers in jobs.45 Scholars and industry professionals turned their focus to the issue of employment and unemployment, to the question of how many workers occupied each space. The central site for contestation and regulation naturally became a numbers game.
Even while representation in the film industry matters a great deal for directors, the interpretation of behind-the-camera representation has focused almost exclusively on a single dimension—numerical representation—and ignored other ways of conceptualizing representation. Calculating numerical representation, studies have assessed the level of inequality or equality primarily on the basis of the percentages of people present or absent. On these terms, the key measure of progress in Hollywood directing is the addition of more directors from underrepresented racial groups behind the camera, while the key obstruction to integration becomes the problem of underrepresentation.
Framing the debate about inclusion into Hollywood solely in binary terms of representation (presence) and underrepresentation (insufficient presence or absence) raises problems. If the primary issue is underrepresentation, then the singular resolution to racial inequality is increased representation. By this standard, true integration would be realized when African Americans and other underrepresented racial groups have reached parity with regard to their proportional representation in the U.S. population. In other words, once the proportion of Black directors of Hollywood movies reaches 13 percent, all inequality would be overcome. However, it is problematic to make a leap to equality from mere parity in numerical representation. Framing the debate as an either/or issue—either presence and inclusion or underrepresentation and exclusion—elides the key problem at hand. Many scholars and observers would agree that demography is a necessary but insufficient factor for adequate representation in cinematic production.
Indeed, Gray problematizes the idea of using diversity as a proxy for inequality. Namely, diversity is a sociocultural goal, while inequality speaks to a multitude of components: a specific history of exclusion, the vicissitudes of protest and unrest, and an ultimate mission of gaining access and equality. The sole reliance on demographic representation and the quest for greater diversity holds dear the assumption that becoming more diverse—achieving social parity via increasing numbers—would alleviate inequality in the film industry, redress stereotypical images and content, and usher in social justice.46 Adequate demographic representation is required to achieve diversity and is an important aim in and of itself for reasons of employment and citizenship, but demographic parity alone is insufficient to achieve equality.
While some measure of progress is captured through increased representation—if there are greater numbers of Black, Asian, Latino/a, and Native people working in Hollywood—only tackling the issue of numerical underrepresentation would not eradicate all racial inequality within Hollywood directing. Demography alone tells us little about the contours of directing careers, as numerical representation does not take into account qualitative differences that directors experience within their workplace environments. Numerical representation alone cannot explain whether there are qualitative differences in the movies Blacks and whites direct, a difference that in no small part facilitates racial disparities in career trajectories. Merely relying on numerical representation can result in observing progress that is more symbolic than substantive. African Americans can appear to have a greater presence in Hollywood, but upon closer inspection, their presence could remain only marginal to core film-industry operations. Having racial minorities occupy key decision-making positions is important to their prosperity in the film business. As Cheryl Boone’s leadership in the Academy illustrates, executive position matters in the opportunities generated for racial minorities. In cinema, what is being green-lit, by whom, and with what kinds of production budgets matter a great deal. These kinds of details cannot be captured by measuring demography but require a finer prism through which to examine the full spectrum of representation.
As studio executives in positions of power, African Americans are influential in bringing movies with Black casts, stars, and directors to audiences. For one example, Devon Franklin worked as a studio executive at Sony Pictures and MGM. At MGM, he worked on movies such as Be Cool and Beauty Shop. As senior vice president of production for Columbia Tristar Pictures for Sony, Franklin worked on The Karate Kid reboot, starring Jaden Smith, and The Pursuit of Happyness, Hancock, and Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith. In addition, at Sony, he developed and supervised movies that were geared toward the urban and faith-based markets. He worked on the faith-based hit movies Not Easily Broken and Jumping the Broom, both produced by Bishop T. D. Jakes, as well as Heaven Is for Real and Miracles from Heaven. Few executives from racial-minority backgrounds exist in Hollywood. The chief executive at Warner Brothers, Kevin Tsujihara, is a rare Asian studio executive in Hollywood. Just as white studio executives bring white movies to audiences, integrating the executive ranks would likely lead to more racially diverse movies on-screen.
Beyond inequalities of numerical representation, further obstacles to equality persist for Hollywood directors such that increased representation behind the camera cannot single-handedly close the racial inequality gap. There is no denying that Hollywood has made progress, since its exclusionary years before the civil rights era, toward greater inclusivity of African Americans in film directing. Yet it is premature to suggest that Black directors who do break into the film industry automatically experience work conditions on par with white directors working in the industry. Rather than asking how many racial minorities occupy directing positions, the more telling question is: How do the work experiences of directors from different racial backgrounds differ from one another? To allow for a more complete and complex understanding of obstacles to equality for film directors in twenty-first-century Hollywood, it is necessary not only to monitor the demographics of representation but also to understand recurring patterns of representation that result in racial hierarchies and unequal outcomes. Besides visibility and demography, other metrics for progress—such as access to lucrative opportunities and ample resources—are important for assessing inequality in film-industry work. Examining the hierarchical level of cultural representation, as it relates to who occupies what types of positions in Hollywood, gives a more refined portrait of privilege and power in the director’s chair.
Hollywood Black directors encounter an enduring racial inequality that is a direct product of the society that they inhabit and in which they work. In order to thoroughly investigate how racial inequality operates in Hollywood, it is first vital to comprehend how racial inequality operates within the larger American social context. Racial hierarchies of privilege, power, and oppression have been prevalent in the United States since the nation’s inception. Racial inequality was built into the fabric of the United States, residing deep within the bones of the nation’s social practices, pastimes, and organizations, while creating a kind of racial skeleton undergirding social life that shapes interracial relations among members of various groups.
In the early centuries of American social life under the prevailing system of slavery, to name one racial regime, white Euro-Americans trumpeted an ideology of white superiority and Black inferiority in order to justify hundreds of years of enslavement of Black people. During slavery, the social order stratified whites and Blacks, labeling the majority of whites “free men” and the majority of Blacks “chattel slaves”—forced laborers brought in chains from African coasts across the Atlantic Ocean to become the property of free whites. With regularity, African people were subject to inhumane treatment and brutality of savage proportion—lynchings, whippings, rape, and killings at the hands of white Europeans who were themselves newly arrived on North American shores. The system of slavery not only relegated African Americans into inferior positions in society but also perilously threatened their life chances. On the other hand, the slavery era reserved advantaged positions, with privileges of property ownership and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, exclusively for whites. Entirely on the basis of racial membership, whites and Blacks were subjected to unequal treatment and outcomes. Nationally enforced laws and practices solidified persistent racial inequality, while weakening African Americans’ ability to fully participate in society.
Though the capitalist enterprise of American transatlantic slavery has ended, the centuries-long American system left behind an ingrained institutional legacy. The institution was formally dismantled, yet the disparate distribution of material resources and social conditions along racial lines was merely reproduced in other forms.47 The orchestrated social divisions between racial groups in the United States, along with the lawful discrimination and marginalization of African Americans that initiated during slavery, were manufactured in other ways even after slavery was officially abolished. Soon after slavery, the era of Jim Crow segregation bore its institutional legacy, once again establishing relations of domination and subordination, of privilege and disadvantage, between racial groups.
The organization of Hollywood is not far removed from the operation of racial inequality within the larger American context. Racial hierarchies prevailing in Hollywood privilege or disadvantage creative workers. In the face of obvious gains in proportional representation, racial inequality still persists in the film industry. Although Black directors have increasing access to Hollywood directing compared to earlier decades, the Hollywood Jim Crow prevents them from attaining full integration into the directing profession. The Hollywood Jim Crow creates obstacles to the advancement of Black films and directors, in the same racially hierarchical fashion that has disadvantaged African Americans during each era of U.S. history. Notions of representation in Hollywood are inextricably attached to the profit motive. Predetermined cultural and economic rationalizations made on the basis of race shape the projected value of popular cinema. Hollywood insiders perpetuate the myth that Black films and directors are unbankable, or unprofitable, and that they draw smaller audiences compared to white films and directors. As a result, Black directors face marginalization, segregation, and stigmatization that limits the scope and progress of their careers.
In the racialized film industry, resources and opportunity are distributed along racial lines, such that Black directors experience disadvantages compared to white directors. Rarely do Black directors obtain lucrative, high-status positions. The Hollywood Jim Crow thwarts them from achieving true equality in the motion-picture industry. Race divisions in the film industry have real consequences in the form of barriers that obstruct access to jobs and constrain the scope of American images and worldviews that are disseminated around the nation and the globe. Images from Hollywood are thought of as embodying American cinema, yet this slice of the American cinematic pie omits or obscures whole racial groups. The portrait of a liberal Hollywood and a complete integration for African American directors, as well as for Asian, Latino/a, and Native American directors, is thus far a fairy tale without a happy ending.
Despite the film industry’s outward projection of equality, racial disparities persist. Hollywood liberalism appears to display what the sociologist Christopher Winship calls a veneer of consensus, a mere surface appearance that differs from the true reflection that lies beneath the surface.48 By this view, Hollywood’s liberal front is emblematic of complete racial integration only superficially, while beneath the surface lies a racially conservative industry that remains monopolized by white men. Although substantively this book focuses on film directors, this lens of hierarchical representation can be used to interrogate how inequality works in other creative professions off camera, from writing to producing. Rethinking representation to closely examine the quality of work within a systemic U.S. racial hierarchy provides a comprehensive way to assess progress toward racial equality in the film industry and beyond.
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Representation in a popular-culture industry involves the interface among creative workers, media organizations, movies, and audiences around the globe. The character of representation takes on different forms. Representation is as much about securing jobs and depicting images as it is about having one’s voice heard, being counted, and belonging in a nation. Images and award recognition constitute a symbolic form of representation that stands for something beyond sheer numbers. Representation in the form of numbers ranges from seats around a table of decision-makers to people behind and in front of a camera. Both symbols and numbers are common ways of thinking about representation as a form of demography—counting the tangible presence or absence of racial minorities in a particular medium.
