The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews
unsexy2011_1000x50b

Is there 'hope' in Hollywood?

Three controversial (and sure to be Oscar-nominated) films tackle race in the age of Obama
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 29, 2010

1001_precious_main
CARTOON REALITY, PART I: Precious (above) and The Blind Side have garnered award hype and box-office success, but have been criticized for their depictions of racial stereotypes.

Buoyed by President Barack Obama's campaign slogan, many had hopes for change after his election. And not just a change in the policies from those of the previous administration, but a change in the country's attitude about race. An inkling into the latter might be glimpsed in that mirror of the country's unspoken fears and desires: the movie screen.

On the bright side, in the year since Obama's inauguration, Hollywood has released three major films that feature a black president. In two of the films, however, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (in which the president is Obama himself) and 2012, the African-American chief executive presides over a worldwide catastrophe. In the third, Invictus, the president is considerably more successful, but he is President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. So far, it doesn't seem that Obama is inspiring much confidence, at least in the movie world.

Similarly, the screen image of ordinary black people, in three films that turn the focus from the big picture of national leadership to the intimate microcosm of the family, don't seem to be faring much better — even though, at first glance, this looks like a landmark year for films about race. The Blind Sidehas made more than $200 million at the box office, was nominated for an NAACP award, and its star Sandra Bullock, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama, is most likely en route to the same honor on Oscar night. Precious hasn't made as much money, but it has earned critical kudos, and its stars Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique and itsdirector Lee Daniels also appear to be on track for Oscar nominations. And The Princess and the Frog is the first Disney animated film to feature a black heroine. But each of these films has aroused controversy. The films and the responses to them suggest that, far from entering a post-racial era, we are just starting to confront the racism that still abides.

In fact, watching some of these films, you might wonder how, in a nation where some are more equal than others, Obama ever even got elected. Could it be that he triumphed because he is himself an embodiment of one of these stereotypes — what some film scholars refer to as the "black saint," or in Spike Lee's blunter term, the "magical negro"? The actor Sidney Poitier typified this figure, playing characters who, as described by Donald Bogle, one of America's leading black cultural critics and author of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks, is "the perfect dream for white liberals anxious to have a colored man in for lunch or dinner."

Bogle's description of Sidney Poitier echoes what then-presidential candidate Joe Biden said about Obama when he opposed him for the Democratic nomination in 2008, that he was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Or what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (another fellow Democrat), as quoted in the new book Game Change, said about Obama: that he was electable because he was "light-skinned," "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |   next >
Related: Good weed, Review: Daybreakers, Review: The Spy Next Door, More more >
  Topics: Features , Barack Obama, Barack Obama, World Politics,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 01/19 ]   "100 Years (version #4 Boston, 2012)"  @ Boston University Art Gallery
[ 01/19 ]   Aimee Mann  @ Somerville Theatre
[ 01/19 ]   Alex Gilvarry  @ Harvard Book Store
ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: 2011 ART HOUSE PROJECT SHORTS PROGRAM  |  January 18, 2012
    Short films are the art of omission, and those in this outstanding Sundance program transform non-sequiturs into surreal poetry.
  •   INTERVIEW: WIM WENDERS TAKES 3D ONE STEP FURTHER  |  January 18, 2012
    Some are surprised that Wim Wenders, like fellow veteran of the '70s New German Cinema Werner Herzog, has embraced something as newfangled as 3D.
  •   THE OSCARS LOOK BACK IN LANGUOR IN 2011  |  January 18, 2012
    This year, perhaps in hopes of diverting audiences with a different format, the Motion Picture Academy has again changed the number of Best Picture nominees.
  •   REVIEW: THE FLOWERS OF WAR  |  January 17, 2012
    In 1937 the invading Imperial Japanese Army killed and raped thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The atrocity has recently inspired two Chinese films, including Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death and this unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou.
  •   REVIEW: CONTRABAND  |  January 17, 2012
    True to its name, this standard heist thriller is a composite of knock-offs, but when Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America is among the sources ripped off, the quality is pretty high.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed