Films about race

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]

Early years (1915-1960)

D. W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation set the precedent of 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 like Dark Command (1940),[3] Song of the South and Gone With the Wind (1939) repeated some of those stereotypes.[4]

Other films, like the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races and Hellzapoppin' showcased early black performers like 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 were marketed to black audiences, like 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 like To Kill a Mockingbird, West Side Story, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night 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 like Shaft, Superfly and Foxy Brown, which became known as Blaxploitation films. Still, 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 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, South Central and Juice. Rap music, too, has given a new dimension to black gang films, with All Eyez on Me about the life and death of Tupac Shakur and Notorious 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 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 showed a small platoon of Redcoats fighting against thousands of Zulu warriors at Rorke's Drift at the end of the nineteenth century. Later John Carpenter achieved a similar effect surrounding a police station with a coalescence of Puerto Rican gangs in Assault on Precinct 13.[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 film Selma has shown there is much more in the civil rights era. The Civil War also got a different historical treatment in the film Glory about black Union troops.[15] Civil War dramas like Lincoln (2012) and Free State of Jones. Historical dramas proved a rich seam for Hollywood which went on to deal with slavery in Steven Spielberg's Amistad and Steven McQueen's 12 Years a Slave.[16] More radical black leaders, like 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 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 present day. Films like such as Justin Simien's 2014 comedy Dear White People, the Academy award-winning Moonlight 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

Year Film Director Notes
2018YardieIdris ElbaAml Ameen and Stephen Graham in a film of Victor Headley's novel about West Indian gangs in London.
2018Crazy Rich AsiansJohn M. ChuConstance Wu and Henry Golding star in a comedy/drama based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan.
2018WhitneyKevin McDonaldDocumentary on the life of Whitney Houston.
2018Black PantherRyan CooglerChadwick Boseman stars as the Marvel Comics character in a film that grossed $1.345 billion.
2018SuperflyDirector XTrevor Jackson stars as Youngblood Priest in the remake of Super Fly.
2017DetroitKathryn BigelowShocking depiction of police brutality in the Algiers Motel incident during riots in Detroit in 1967.
2017Get OutJordan PeeleSci-fi horror about a predatory white conspiracy to implant their consciousnesses into black bodies grossed $252 million
2017KingsDeniz Gamze ErgüvenA South Central recluse helps a working-class mother during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, with Halle Berry and Daniel Craig.
2017All Eyez on MeBenny BoomThe biopic of rapper Tupac Shakur
2017MudboundDee ReesTragic drama of two farming families one white and one black, based on the novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan.
2017GookJustin ChonTwo Korean-American brothers in the midst of the 1992 Los Angeles riots
2016ZootopiaRich MooreA cop solves a case about predators turning savage, led by an prey supremacist organisation who is known for a hatred against predator species
2016The Birth of a NationNate ParkerNat Turner's slave revolt in Virginia, in 1831
2016MoonlightBarry JenkinsTarell Alvin McCraney's story of growing up black and gay in America grossed over $65 million worldwide against a budget of $4 million
2016LovingJeff NicholsThe 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
2016Hidden FiguresTheodore MelfiTaraji P. Henson is Katherine Goble leading a section of black women mathematicians working at NASA to computerise the Mercury Seven space mission
2016I Am Not Your NegroRaoul PeckThe story of writer and activist James Baldwin told through contemporaneous footage
2016FencesDenzel WashingtonThe 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
2016A United KingdomAmma AsanteBased 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
2016Free State of JonesGary RossThe story of Newton Knight's revolt against the Confederacy during the American Civil War
2016NinaCynthia MortBiopic of jazz singer Nina Simone starring Zoe Saldana
2015Straight Outta ComptonF. Gary GrayThe Story of rappers N.W.A grossed over $200, four times its budget
2015The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the RevolutionStanley Nelson Jr.Documentary on the Black Panther Party and their repression under the FBI's Cointelpro program
2014SelmaAva DuVernayAbout 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
2014Dear White PeopleJustin SimienA comedy about members of a black fraternity house negotiating the racial assumptions of their white counterparts at college
201312 Years a SlaveSteve McQueenThe 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
2013The ButlerLee DanielsForest 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
2013BelleAmma AsanteLoosely based on the life of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lord Mansfield's ruling on the Zong massacre in Georgian England
2013Mandela: Long Walk to FreedomJustin ChadwickBiopic of South African anti-Apartheid leader and President Nelson Mandela starring Idris Elba
2012Django UnchainedQuentin TarantinoControversial western with a slave revenge theme, starring Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson
2011Winnie MandelaDarrell RoodtSympathetic biopic of anti-Apartheid leader Winnie Mandela
2011The HelpTate TaylorBased 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
2009PreciousLee DanielsGrim story of parental rape and neglect in a deprived neighbourhood
2009InvictusClint EastwoodAbout the struggle to re-launch the Springboks rugby team in post-Apartheid South Africa
2009NotoriousGeorge Tillman Jr.The life and murder of rap star Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.
2008Gran TorinoClint EastwoodThe unlikely friendship between Korean War veteran and a Hmong family in Los Angeles
2005American GangsterRidley ScottFrank Lucas (Denzel Washington) works his way up from sidekick to gang leader, pursued by Russell Crowe's lawman
2004ManderlayLars von TrierA disturbing allegory of slavery from the Danish avant garde director
2004CrashPaul HaggisMulti-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
2002Dirty Pretty ThingsStephen FrearsThe struggles of migrants in London
2001AliMichael MannWill Smith stars as the legendary heavyweight boxing champion Muhammed Ali
1999Introducing Dorothy Dandridge Martha CoolidgeBiopic of the actress Dorothy Dandridge with Halle Berry made for television
1999The HurricaneNorman JewisonBiopic of boxing champion Rubin Carter falsely accused and imprisoned for a triple murder, starring Denzel Washington
1998BelovedJonathan Demmehorror-drama film based on Toni Morrison's 1987 novel of the same name
1997AmistadSteven SpielbergThe trial over the mutiny of the enslaved Mende people on board the Amistad in 1839
1997Miss Evers' BoysJoseph SargentHBO television film based on David Feldshuh's play about a U.S. Federal government experiment that led to men being left untreated for syphilis
1996Ghosts of MississippiRob ReinerCourtroom drama based on the trial of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers
1996When We Were KingsLeon GastDocumentary about the Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight fight between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974
1995PantherMario van PeeblesDramatization of the Black Panther's struggle against racism, based on Melvin van Peebles' book
1995Jefferson in ParisJames IvoryOn US President-to-be Thomas Jefferson's affairs as ambassador in Paris, and his relationship with Sally Hemings (played by Thandie Newton)
1994Corrina, CorrinaJessie NelsonInterracial love story in fifties America with Whoopie Goldberg and Ray Liotta
1992Sarafina!Darrell RoodtA coming of age story in the midst of the Soweto riots, filmed in South Africa
1992Malcolm XSpike LeeBiopic of the inspirational Black Muslim leader starring Denzel Washington
1992JuiceErnest R. DickersonWith Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps
1992South CentralStephen Milburn AndersonFather and son learn to break ties with a street gang, an adaptation of the 1987 novel Crips by Donald Bakeer
1991Boyz n the HoodJohn SingletonCuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube star in this story of gang life in Los Angeles
1991New Jack CityMario Van PeeblesWesley Snipes stars as Nino Brown, leader of a ruthless drug gang in the midst of New York's crack epidemic
1990The Long Walk HomeRichard PearceA drama with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56 as a background, starring Whoopie Goldberg and Sissy Spacek
1989Driving Miss DaisyBruce BeresfordGentle comedy based on Alfred Uhry's play of the same name set in the civil rights era
1989Mississippi BurningAlan ParkerParker's film of the Civil Rights era contest over desegregation
1989Do the Right ThingSpike LeeAcclaimed comedy-drama of racial tensions and rioting in Brooklyn
1989GloryEdward ZwickMatthew Broderick stars as the anxious white commander of an experimental all-black troop of the Union Army in the American Civil War
1989For Queen and CountryMartin StellmanDenzel Washington stars as a Falklands War veteran returning to riot-torn Tottenham, England
1988I'm Gonna Git You SuckaKeenan Ivory WayansA parody version of a Blaxploitation film
1987Cry FreedomRichard AttenboroughThe story of Steve Biko's detention and murder, and his friendship with the journalist Donald Woods
1986Absolute BeginnersJulien TempleBased 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
1985The Color PurpleSteven SpielbergBased on Alice Walker's novel of the same name and starring Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey in a story of pre-civil rights Georgia
1978The WizSidney LumetA black cast re-make of The Wizard of Oz (film) starring Diana Ross
1977RootsMarvin J. ChomskyABC-TV miniseries based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family starring Levar Burton
1976The Last SupperTomás Gutiérrez AleaCuban drama about a pious planter inviting his slaves to a Christian dinner, only to encourage them to revolt
1975MandingoRichard FleischerKen Norton is a slave put to exhibition fighting by planters, with illicit sex between slaves and masters driving a lot of the action
1972The Harder They ComePerry HenzellJamaica-based story of an embattled Reggae star, played by Jimmy Cliff considered a breakthrough for reggae in the United States.[19]
1974Foxy BrownJack HillPam Grier stars in this Blaxploitation film as a woman fighting back against exploitation
1973Cleopatra JonesJack StarrettTamara Dobson stars in this Blaxploitation film as an undercover agent exposing the drugs industry
1972SuperflyGordon 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
1971Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss SongMelvin van PeeblesA kaleidoscopic journey through race-torn America
1971ShaftGordon ParksPrivate 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
1970Little Big ManArthur PennDustin Hoffman stars as a boy who goes to live amongst the Cheyenne, witnessing the massacres carried out by Custer's Seventh Cavalry
1970Soldier BlueRalph NelsonCandice Bergen stars as a Cheyenne captured in the midst of a massacre of Native Americans
1970Watermelon ManMelvin van PeeblesAn 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
1970The LandlordHal AshbyThis Norman Jewison-produced film stars Beau Bridges as heir to a slum landlord, who's feelings for his black tenants - in particular Lanie (Marki Bey), a dancer at a local black club - run away with him.
1969SlavesHerbert J. BibermanDionne Warwick and Ossie Davis in a lurid tail of plantation slavery
1969Burn!Gillo PontecorvoMarlon 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
1967To Sir With LoveJames ClavellSidney 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.
1967Guess Who's Coming to DinnerStanley KramerSidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy star in this comedy of manners about liberal parents confronted by their daughter's black boyfriend
1967In the Heat of the NightNorman JewisonVirgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is a detective from Philadelphia investigating a murder case and confronting prejudice in small town Mississippi
1967Hurry SundownOtto PremingerThe complex race relations of multiple couples and community problems of the contemporary South in 1946.
1964ZuluCy EndfieldA white outpost is beset by thousands of Zulu warriors in the British Empire story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift
1962To Kill A MockingbirdRobert MulliganGregory 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
1961West Side StoryRobert Wise and Jerome RobbinsGang 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).
1959Porgy and BessOtto PremingerFilm of George and Ira Gershwin's opera of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge
1959Black OrpheusMarcel CamusA reworking of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Brazilian carnival
1959Imitation of LifeDouglas SirkSusan Kohner stars as a mixed race woman who passes for white, in a film adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel of the same name
195712 Angry MenSidney LumetA 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
1954Carmen JonesOtto PremingerSidney Poitier's airman is seduced by Dorothy Dandridge in the film of the 1943 musical, itself a re-working adaptation of Bizet's Carmen
1954The Salt of the EarthHerbert J. BibermanHispanic American miners fight against injustice based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico.
1951Cry, the Beloved CountryZoltan KordaBased 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
1947Hi-De-HoJosh BinneyA race film showcasing jazz performer Cab Calloway
1946Song of the SouthHarve Foster and Wilfred JacksonWalt Disney's mixed live action and animation film of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories
1941Hellzapoppin'H. C. PotterZany musical showcasing Slim and Slam (Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart) and Whitey's Lindy Hoppers
1940Dark CommandRaoul WalshA Union-supporting John Wayne tries to uphold the law against the Confederate hold-outs of Quantrill's Raiders
1939Gone With the WindVictor FlemingHistorical drama of a southern family in the American Civil War and Reconstruction era from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name.
1937A Day at the RacesSam WoodMarx Brothers film showcasing Whitey's Lindy Hoppers
1936Song of FreedomJ. Elder WillsPaul Robeson stars as John Zinga, an African dockworker who becomes an opera singer
1936Show BoatJames WhaleIrene 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'
1935Sanders of the RiverZoltan KordaLeslie Banks stars as the colonial officer who takes on Paul Robeson's African chief
1934Imitation of LifeJohn M. StahlFredi Washington stars as a mixed race woman who passes for white, in a film adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel of the same name
1933The Emperor JonesDudley MurphyPaul 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
1930BorderlineKenneth MacphersonAn 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
1915The Birth of a NationD. W. GriffithThe American Civil War and Reconstruction era with the Ku Klux Klan saving the white nation from black carpetbaggers

See also

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, p5-6
  9. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness. By Hernán Vera and Andrew M. Gordon. 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. "Make My Day!": Spectacle as Amnesia in Imperial Politics, Michael Rogin, 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. Ed Guerrero, 'The Spectacle of Black Violence as Cinema', in Jean-Anne Sutherland and Kathryn M. Feltey (eds) Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film, Sage, 2012
  18. http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/hollywoods-race-war/20604#.WiaTs0x2uUk
  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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