This year Octavia Spencer won a Golden Globe for her performance in this year's blockbuster hit "The Help". Golden Globes are often seen as a precursor to the Oscars so they generate lots of Oscar buzz whether the performance did or not. So, of course, there's been lots of Oscar talk about the talented Ms. Spencer and Viola Davis, a co-star of the film and fellow nominee; the kind of talk that takes me back a few years to when Denzel and Halle won for Best Actor and Actress. They made history and their wins were celebrated by black and white alike, but there was a quiet, vocal group that protested. Why, you wonder? I'll give you my take on it.
Denzel was quite memorably passed up for the Oscar he DESERVED for "X". While it wasn't the only role he gave an Oscar worthy performance in, if he deserved an Oscar for anything, that would have been it. Yet when he does win, it's for playing the filthiest and dirtiest of cops who cheats on his wife, has a secret family, and runs drugs on the job.
Halle played the hell out of several roles before finally being nominated for what, to me, was not her best performance. Not to mention the fact that for about five minutes it turned into a softcore porn film (the hell was that about?). The movie made no sense and she played a role that she'd played before. Well, no doubt, but she'd already done it. I guess the added element of sex on screen was all Hollywood needed.
It seems as if art is imitating life here. Watch the news. You'll see plenty of reports about all the crimes that "we" commit when the numbers prove that other groups are committing more crime than us, there are just more of us in jail. You would, however, be hard pressed to get the mainstream media to talk about the young black mother of six who went missing in Detroit months ago. We did, however, hear for weeks about a young white woman who lost an ear and a hand to a helicopter. Now let me be clear, I am terribly sorry this young woman walked into the propeller of a helicopter BUT WE KNOW WHERE SHE IS!!! No one has seen Kalisha Madden since November 28, 2011. Have you heard anything about it? No. Probably because she happened to be a stripper with six children. Yet we heard ad nauseum about Robyn Gardner who went missing after she went off to Aruba with a man she met on a swingers website who was someone other than the boyfriend she left at home without much mention, if any, of how she met him. You'll hear all day about what crime we committed or what we're complaining about this time. Yet you don't hear of our history and our accomplishments.
For those of you not familiar with the movie "The Help", it's about black maids in 60's era Jackson, MS who work for a group of rich, white Junior League Old Mississippi women. Some of these maids had been willed down from prior generations like furniture, most of them were forced to use separate restrooms from the white families, heaven forbid they should pass any of their strange nigra diseases to them since their diseases are different and all. The unmarried, "free spirit" of the bunch decides to save the day and make all their lives better by convincing them to talk about what it was like working for these white families, anonymously, of course, and write a book about it that she hoped would draw attention to their plight and somehow save their day.
Powerful performances were turned in by the ENTIRE cast, but we all know that anonymous or not, what they did would have gotten those women killed before they even made it to the second meeting. Now if the point of the movie was to tell a fairly tale, then it was a great story. But if the intent was to allude to any truth about life in that era, that truth stops at the fact that these women were still slaves to the southern whites they worked for - they just had bills now.
Spencer and Davis should be recognized for their performances, no doubt, and they likely will at the big dance. What is also likely to happen, I fear, is that these women and other black actresses may indeed be offered more roles - but as maids. Or nannies. Or old wise women who exist for the purpose of someone for the white actor/actress to play off of. Anything other than what we are or what we strive to be.
We hardly ever play police or authoritative figures unless it's on TV. It seems we're almost too desperate to see ourselves on TV. We'll get excited about anything without thinking thoroughly about what we're perpetuating when we tell everybody to spend their money or time to go see something because the cast has more than one black actor. You may think I'm being too deep with it. I say you ought to sit back and think about it for a minute. Then take a deep breath. You're probably about to hate me.
Tyler Perry is a talented guy, let's establish that. BUT, his shows and movies feature a lot of HORRIBLE acting, tired
storylines, and the same characters over and over again. Somebody's
always getting married (and getting in a fight), going to a funeral (and getting in a fight), having a family dinner on
Sunday (and getting in a fight), getting in a fight and going to jail, etc. It almost looks as if we CAN'T get creative
and come up with other ideas when I KNOW that's not the case.
Everybody is not cussing someone out at the drop of a hat and we need to stop acting like that's cute because it isn't. Every brother is not beating and tearing down his woman, and every brother isn't leaving his family to start another one with someone else. Everybody can't be smoking weed all day, getting by without working, or raising their grandchildren because no one knows where the crackhead mother is. Come on, man. (I do realize that this means Tyler Perry will not be giving me my big break as a writer/actress, but I've lived with it so far...)
We've
never had a mainstream "black movie" featuring a spy, or a police department or a bunch of Wall Street investors or
anything else like that. You know what our movies are about? Our men
tricking off multiple women, fatherless families, us dealing drugs,
robbing banks, etc. We just throw something on paper, find black people
willing to act out this crap for a check and then put it straight on DVD so our
dumb a$$e$ can go rent it at Blockbuster. We're not going to get better
entertainment until we insist on better and stop supporting anything less. It's gotta start somewhere.
Now I'm not bashing Tyler Perry,
there are enough people that have that covered. I do want to ask him if
he's really interested in improving black entertainment. It would seem
to me that if he truly is, he'd consider hiring better actors. Better
still, before he built a studio, an in house acting school would have
been a better investment. The presence of the great Cicely Tyson can
only cover so many sins. If his movies and TV shows featured better
acting performances and writing, then we might see a shift in the
tides. It is his gift to use as he chooses, and I'm not here to tell him how to use it. I'm sure he knows that as long as the name "Madea" is in the title, he can
thrown on a wig and a dress, surround himself with absolute GARBAGE,
put it out and we'll still go see it because it's a "black movie"and
we'll SWEAR it was better than anything we've seen in a long time and
DARE anyone to say otherwise. Yeah. Getting a little
uncomfortable? Too bad, I'm still not done.
Look at it this
way. Say, for example, you hero-worship your brother, then he ends up being this
serial killer. Yeah you still love your brother, but you know what he
did was wrong. Are you going to say it's ok that he chopped up ten
people because he's your brother? If you would, please never read this
blog again and forget forever what my face looks like. For the normal
ones who would say "I'd still love my brother but I can't condone or
support what he did." I ask you this: Why would you keep supporting
movies and TV that kill our image and paint us to be something less than
what we really are? We come from royalty, warriors, and people with a
strong work ethic...why do we continue to accept lesser portrayals of
ourselves? No I'm not comparing anyone to a serial killer. Focus.
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