CHAPTER II
RACIAL STRUGGLE IN THE UNITED STATES
Movies had always been a popular media to be consumed by the general public, and such had been true even when the movies were still black and white, without audio, and under a minute long. Even before the 21st century, films such as “The Battle of Algiers” (1966) or “Malcolm X” (1992) attempted to inform the American public about the struggles faced by African Americans in their daily lives (Cady Lang, 2020). Yet it could be seen that in recent years the issue of race had brought about the rise of even more politically charged filmmakers to the forefront of American Cinema, where African-American filmmakers infused the issue of racial struggle as a common theme in the films that they directed and/or produced.
All of these movies are a result of constant discrimination that was received by African Americans while living in the US, be it on a personal or even a communal level.
This chapter would be split into four sub-chapters to better portray the historical relationship between US and the African American community, which are 1) the Relationship between early America and The African-American Community; 2) Past advocacy in the 20th century; 3) Black Lives Matters and advocacy in the 2010s; and 4) Stories of African-American Filmmakers to be discussed in this research.
2.1. Relationship of Early America & The African-American Community
The relationship between America and the African American community could be described as rocky and/or tumultuous, and the most notable piece of historical
relationship between both subjects is unmistakeably the issue of slavery. The very first slaves that was kidnapped and seized from the African continent was recorded to have landed in Point Comfort, present-day Hampton, in August 1619. The slaves were landed in a settler colony, with the aim to be repurposed as servants and laborers and to only serve the interests of England their entire lives (Fairfax, 2020).
It was widely regarded that slavery was the first big business that exists in the land of America, where in which the British capitalism was highly dependent on and thrived due to the existence of slavery. Slaves that was taken away from their home became a cog in a global supply chain, and this is best exemplified by the town of Natchez in Mississippi, US, where slaves were forced to work in plantations to fulfill the demand for cotton in many European cities.
This reliance on the usage of slavery does not end even after the US’ independence from Britain. An example of the American reliance on slavery could be observed following America’s second conflict with Britain in the War of 1812, the US government’s attempt on converting lands that they took away from Native Americans into private ownership, alongside the ensuing bid to expand the import and export market, is heavily dependent on the enslaved laborers to produce the goods that was to be sold to the Euroamerican market (Calvin Schermerhorn, 2015).
The issue of slavery in the country would eventually lead to the American Civil War. The Civil War would then become the first of a long line of major struggles that would be faced by the African American community in the United States to gain full rights and autonomy for themselves. During the Civil War, it was estimated over 200,000
African Americans acts as soldiers and sailors for the US Army and Navy, serving under 163 units that formed as early as 1862 under the moniker of United States Colored Troops (USCT). However, African American soldiers were still underprivileged even inside of the army, as they were usually given inferior equipments and lower pay in comparison to their white compatriots, along with only being able to achieve the rank of sergeant major as their highest rank in the field (Sarah Lane, 2017).
The struggle would eventually build up to the Emancipation Proclamation that was to be proclaimed by then-president Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address on the 1st of January 1863, where he decreed African Americans “henceforward and forever free” from the chains of slavery that had haunted them ever since the arrival of their ancestors in the state (Silkenat, 2021)
Yet even when the issue of slavery renounced by the federal government of the United States, the issue of racism and discrimination does not die along with it. After the Civil War had finished, many White southern states, alongside its local policymakers and community, was intent on crafting and upholding policies that heavily enforces the establishment of racial segregation in the states, therefore transforming the states into what is now known as “Jim Crow states” before the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
Even the members of the African American community who had migrated from the Southern to the Northern states during the Black Great Migration does not automatically achieve better living conditions than they did before. Many of those who had migrated to metropolises such as New York, Chicago, or Detroit was forced to live in all-Black
enclaves, most of which were overcrowded and was barely able to support a better quality of life for the former slaves.
Furthermore, the bits of structural discrimination that still persists even until the modern day was prevalent during the period. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Home Owners Loan Corporations (HOLC) evaluated homes and neighbourhoods’s stability and risk using racialized standards, where only all-White neighbourhood would garner the most favourable designation. This means that it would be much easier for white people than it is for the African American community to acquire mortgages, loans, and other credits. This also exists even in regards to access for jobs, as African Americans was also racially discriminated by labor unions, therefore making it much harder for them to gain access to jobs, and therefore mobilize to a higher socio-economic status (Simms, 2019).
2.2. African-American Advocacy in the 20th Century
African American advocacy in the United States had always been a long, complex, and intricate process that involves a numerous amount of actors and events, but one of the earliest traces of African-American advocacy in the US was during the 1940s. During that time, among the biggest supporters for racial equality was the groups Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Fellowship of Reconcilliation (FOR), and a number of different interracial communities such as the Harlem Ashram, in which they were the one of the first groups to practice the use of nonviolence in their attempt to pursue liberation.
One of the most notable efforts that was done by these groups are the establishment of “institutes” as a way to educate activists in regards to pacifism and protests, where it was estimated that approximately the average attendance at a single institute was between 150 and 250 people. Between the years of 1943 to 1955, thousands of black and white activists were then exposed to the teaching of nonviolence. This then resulted to a rise of advocacy in many different cities, where in the spring of 1943 alone, the activists was able to organize eight institutes in cities across US, where they would later take part in direct action targeting theaters, department stores, restaurants, and entertainment areas (Wolcott, 2018).
Yet, the most famous period of advocacy in the pursue of black liberation in the US is arguably the Civil Rights Movements that spans the year of 1954 to 1965. The Civil Rights Movement was a wave of advocacy that started to heavily gain traction due to the infamous case of “Brown v. Board of Education”, a case that consisted of five lawsuits done by black parents all around the country that challenges the segregated school system and the vast inequality between black and white schools. However, one of the biggest turning points that pushes for the extreme support advocacy during the Civil Rights Movement was the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American who was brutally murdered and then dumped into the Tallatchie River (Bruce J. Dierenfield, 2021).
These two events, among others, caused for the urgency of African American advocacy to rise around the United States. One of the first attempts of resistance during the era of the Civil Rights Movement was in 1956, where many Black Americans in Montgomery started to boycott the city’s buses due to its rule of racial segregation. Led
by Martin Luther King Jr., for over 300 days thousands of African-Americans ignored passing buses and persevered through the cold rain and scorching heat of the city, all the while enduring death threats, violence, and legal charges that were thrown at them. This boycott would finally end on the 20th of December 1956, when the Supreme Court of the United States deemed that racial segregation in buses is something that is unconstitutional (Miller, 2018). The principle of resistance that had been executed in African-American’s protest could be seen in Martin Luther King’s words while he was talking to the thousands of Montgomery Improvement Association supports on the 14th of November 1956, in which he states that:
“the strong man is the man who will not hit back, who can stand up for his rights and yet not hit back,” (Miller, 2018)
In 1960, nonviolent resistance would eventually sweep and spread across the Southern States in the US. Young students, especially, would become an important contributor in the pursuit of racial justice, where they would later play a major role in nonviolent protests and events such as Freedom Rides in 1961, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and eventually leading up to the formulation Civil Rights Act of 1964 that actively prohibits discrimination in a societal level (Clayton, 2018).
2.3. Black Lives Matters and Race-Based Advocacy in the 2010s
While past advocacy had persisted and managed to create significant progress in a societal level, it seemed that the issue of structural discrimination and racism in the United States are yet to be truly solved. In the 21st century, specifically during the Trump Presidency, race issues had turned to the forefront of American Politics, especially due to
the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter as a collective movement in the United States.
against Donald Trump’s perceived use of far right populism, as well as the perceived decrease in racial equality during the time.
Samir (2018) mentioned that in essence, populism was used by many politicians to gain power through challenging the current government of the country, where in which they claimed that the current legislative representatives does not only fail to represent the interest of the people, but that they are actively trying to undermine those particular interests. In the case of Right Populism, usually this includes the notion of battling external forces that are deemed to be “threats” to the country, of which includes the issues such as Islamic terrorism and refugees (Gandesha, 2019) .
Linking this concept to Trump, it could be seen that Trump’s use of Right Populism is entirely visible even as early as his campaign. This is exemplified by a speech that he gave just a few weeks before Election Day in the West Palm Beach, where he repeatedly mentioned his jargon, “we will take back this country and we will make America great again,” all the while attacking illegal immigration and lambasting the current government as being corrupt. Yet, what differs this speech to most of Trump’s speeches are his allegations of Hillary Clinton, in which he accused Hillary of meeting secretly with international banks and media elites to plot the destruction of the United States under the guise of multiculturalism. These allegations that were made by Trump directly feeds into the narrative of White Supremacy that would later be rampant in his era of presidency (Nacos et al., 2020).
Picture 1. Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2022, by race (source: Statista)
The issue that would garner most of the attention during Trump’s Presidency, however, is the issue of police brutality. Statista Research Department reported that during the period of 2017 to 2022, there were a total of 1029 members of the African American community who had been victims of violence done by law enforcement, and it was also the African American community who had experienced the biggest rate of fatal shooting amongst all ethnicities in the United States, with 38 fatal shootings per million of the population as of January 2022 (Statista, 2022). This is much higher than any other ethnicities, while in comparison White Americans experiences 15 fatal shootings per million of the population.
In their research titled “Living in an Age of Colorblind Racism and Police Impunity,” Bryan R. Ellis and Nicole Branch-Ellis posits that in the current day and age, law enforcement utilises colorblind racism frames to justify their use of force against
mostly African-American individuals. In this aspect, disproportionate killings of African- American and other members of minorities are justified by law enforcement by saying that members of these communities are more prone to crime and violence, all the while advancing the belief that police work is a a difficult task that is done by heroic officers of the law, and so there needs to be time for a full and thorough investigation to be done in regards to the shooting. These aspects of structural discrimination in the US could be seen in cases such as the shooting of the 14-year-old Tamir Rice or even the 18-year-old Michael Brown, both of whom are framed to be aggressive and dangerous, and therefore a threat that is justified to be taken down by the authorities (Ellis & Branch-Ellis, 2020).
The ongoing issue of police brutality in the US would eventually give birth to the social movement #BlackLivesMatters, which started as a response to the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and later Michael Brown in 2014. Using social media, one of the first attempts of advocacy that was organized by Black Lives Matters was a peaceful protest in Ferguson, where Michael Brown was killed, where they organized Freedom Rides for more than 500 people to Ferguson from over 18 cities in the United States. Yet while the protests started as peaceful, it soon started to turn to chaos as law-enforcements and protesters clash, leading to the governor declaring a state of emergency. The same thing happens again in 2015, where in Baltimore police and protesters clash once again clash during a peaceful protest after the death of Freddie Gray (Clayton, 2018).
However, the event that would contribute most to a spike of demonstrations associated with Black Lives Matters was the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American who, after allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill, was suffocated to death by a
police officer who kneeled on his neck for eight minutes and 15 seconds. In a research conducted by Roudabeh Kishi and Sam Jones, they reported that from the 26th of May 2020 (one day after George Floyd’s killing) to the 22nd of August, it was recorded that over 7,750 demonstrations erupted across more than 2,440 locations all around the United States, all associated with Black Lives Matters (Kishi & Jones, 2020). Most of these protests are deemed to be non-violent and peaceful, where it is recorded that protesters in more than 93% of all the protests do not engage in violent acts whatsoever.
#BlackLivesMatters had also faced opposition from a number of different actors since its very inception. They had been criticized for not pursuing a specific and coherent set of goals by Hillary Clinton, lacking a systematic plan of action by Oprah Winfrey, and even was opposed by the The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (PBA) who formulated #BlueLivesMatters as a response to the anti-police sentiment that was raised by Black Lives Matters in the American society (Clayton, 2018).
Donald Trump and his supporters had repeatedly shown their opposition to Black Lives Matters in response to the emergence of the huge numbers of protests associated with the organization. Most notably he had called out Black Lives Matters as a “symbol of hate”, all the while praising and defending the police institution (Liptak & Holmes, 2020). Trump’s dislike of the organization even go as far as framing as those involved in the organization and protests as “thugs”, “anarchists”, or even “terrorists” (Samee Ali, 2020). It was even reported that in June 2020, Trump had instructed his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, to “bust some heads and make some arrests” of several Black Lives Matters activists who had decided to protest outside of White House (Wade, 2021).
Picture 2. Donald Trump Framing BLM as Thugs (source: TheKirkwoodCall)
According to Pew Research Center, the American public’s support for Black Lives Matters remains constant since the conclusion of George Floyd’s demonstrations on June 2020. Currently it is stated that around 55% of adults in the United States at least
“somewhat” supports the movement, with a noticeable pattern of higher support among younger adults alongside those with higher levels of education than those who are older with less education. A partisan divide is also very noticeable in the political circle, as 85%
of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents at least admitted to supporting the movement, all the while most Republicans and those who were leaning to party (78%) opposes the movement (Menasce Horowitz, 2021).
2.4. Forms of African-American Advocacy in the United States 2.4.1 The Black Panther Party and Millitant Advocacy
The Black Panther Party (BPP) is among the many different groups that had advocated for the rights of African-Americans in the history of the United States, where it is seen as one of the most radical of all the advocacy groups.
A belief that particularly harbours an inclination for a much more radical approach in the pursuit of liberation for African Americans in the United States is Revolutionary Black Nationalism. As explained by Jessica (2001), Revolutionary Black Nationalism is a branch of in Black Nationalism which believes that the only way for African-American to end their exploitation is through gaining control of land and political power through national liberation, while also using revolutionary socialism as their creed. Followers of this creed also believes that there is no possibility for a racial peace between those who are oppressed (in this context, African-Americans) and the oppressors, and instead pushes for cooperation with people of the Third World and (after a long scrutiny) White Radicals that were willing to cooperate. Under that context then the black under-class would overthrow the social class and end imperialism across the globe (Harris, 2001).
A huge proponent of this belief is the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (later shortened to the Black Panther Party), built after the assassination of Malcolm X and shortly before Martin Luther King Jr. during fall of 1966 by Black Militants Huey P.
Newton and Bobby Seale, whom had based the ideology of the party on aspects of socialism. Differing from many other movements back then, the party’s belief was based on aspects of socialism, as well as being heavily militant and believed in its “right to bear arms”. It was well known that the party arms its members as a way to protect themselves and their community, specifically from police (which they view as the enforcers of the
status quo), and any accounts of police brutality. To realize this, the party would organize self-defense groups and set-up system of armed cars to patrol their communities, as a way to ensure any African-American that was stopped by police had their constitutional rights protected (Harris, 2001).
This attempt of militancy and radicalism seemed to be one of the many reasons as to why the party declined in membership in its following years. The party was notorious in being involved in shootouts with police authorities, with one notorious firefight even leading to the death of the then Deputy Chairman and Chair of Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, in 1969 after a raid that was conducted by the Chicago Police Department (Mitchell, 2019). This raid would later be labeled as an assassination that was done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as the organization had been a target of FBI’s COINTELPRO operation that had attempted to shutdown millitant groups that they deemed to be a threat towards the government and its people (Ringel, 2021). The operation also had included other attempts to undermine the Black Panther, such as sending fake letters to promote distrust and divide the party, as well as hiring informants to infiltrate and leak informations (Williams, 2021). This notable hostillity exhumed from the FBI towards the Black Panther Party was expressed clearly by the Director of FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, who labeled the Black Panther Party as
“the greatest threat to the internal security of the country [United States]” (Mitchell, 2019).
Picture 3. The Chicago Police removing the Body of Fred Hampton. (Source: The Washington Post)
However, the biggest harm that the radical approach caused towards the Black Panther Party is the tarnishment of its legacy. During the time it was still operating, the party, apart from being a millitant organization, had also been known to launch several programs that was heavily benefiting the African-American and the American community as a whole. The party had set into motion “Free For Children” breakfast program as a part of their “Survival Programs”, a free breakfast program that aims to feed children nationwide, where by the end of 1969, the program had succesfully fed over 20,000 children in the United States. Other than that, the party had also launched several other programs, such as a free senior escort programs, a monthly bus trip to prison as a way for others to see their loved ones who were put in jail, and also the creation of 13 medical clinics across the country (Gebreyesus, 2019).
Yet those actions and programmes were barely reported and stayed in the public consciousness, as the press and mass media would preferably focus on their increasing number of clashes with the police. Several attention-grabbing incidents, such as Newton’s
altercation that resulted to the death of a police officer, or how twenty one members of the party was accused of attempting to set off bombs throughout New York City further worsened the group’s image in the eyes of the public. Even when the public and media covered the programs that were stated above, such as the breakfast program, these initiatives were treated simply as publicity stunts, or worse, an attempt to indoctrinate the young children to be members of the party. During April 1970, it was said that about 75%
of US citizen believed that shootings that happened to members of the party happened due to violence that was first caused by the members themselves, while only 16%
perceived the Panthers as being beneficial for the disadvantaged youth in the community (Russonello, 2016).
Thus, it could be seen that militant resistance in the study case of the Black Panther Party had only resulted into a much more violent reprisal from the United States government and a negative outlook and reception from the public. This is opposite to the peaceful advocacy that had been done during the peak of Civil Rights Movements in the US under Martin Luther King Jr., where the activists does not return any attempts of violence towards their oppressors, even after events such as the bombing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s house, in which the movement responed by praying and rallying in churches as a way to protest towards the discrimination that they had endured all their lives (Miller, 2018).
2.4.2 The History of African-American Cinema and Films as a Counter-Narrative
While this research would be mainly discussing in regards to modern (21st Century) African-American filmmakers, it has to be noted that African-Americans had long been directing and producing films in their history. One of the earliest known African-American Filmmaker is Oscar Mischeaux, who owned his own production company and produced more than over 40 films over the span of his career, starting from his first film, “The Homesteader (1918)”, in which he challenged the American public by making a film that does not denigrate the revelation of a character being an African- American descent, but instead celebrating that said revelation. He would then continue his filmmaking journey by producing “Within Our Gates (1920)” as a response to D.W.
Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation (1915)”, a movie that actively portrays African-Americans as power-hungry rapists and murderers and the Ku Klux Klan as hooded heroes who saves the day. In that said movie, Oscar would illustrate a white man repenting from his racist ideals after finding out a Black tenant that he tried to sexually assault was his own daughter.
However, one of the biggest attempts in assembling a counternarrative against the then-racist American public actually started to take off in the 1970s, where many African Americans who were angered due to the lack of social change after the Civil Rights Movement tried to reshape the image of African-American culture as a powerful, pro- active, and anti-establishment force. Melvin Van Pebbles and Gordon Parks were two individuals who independently financed and created films as a way to resist the oppressive state, Melvin Van Peeble’s “Sweet, Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971)”
was a movie that showcases a Black male lead in contention with the oppressive white
power, and this movie would later be followed up by films such as “Shaft (1971)” by Gordon Parks and “Super Fly (1972)” by Gordon Parks Jr. As a whole, these past filmmakers exists and created their work to counter the very visible oppression and segregation that was done by the state towards its African American citizens (Leigh Sharman, 2020).
These past precedences clearly visualizes that movies had long became a tool of resistance used by African Americans in their struggle, and the main reason as to why this had been done is due to the power of films as a medium of raising awareness.
According to Henry (2001), a unique characteristic that ultimately makes a film a powerful tool is in its ability to connect “pleasure to meaning”, in which an individual after viewing a film would inevitably be affected by the cinematography and narratives presented in the work of art, albeit unconsciously. Inside of the films themselves, power would be symbolized through the many different frames that were packaged by the filmmaker, represented through the use of images, sounds, gestures, and dialogues (Giroux, 2001).
This ability of films to work as an unconscious tool of influence also adds in signficance due to the fact that it could also heavily impact public consciousness and imagination. As posited by Henry, films could produce images, and ideas that could shape both individual and national identities, as its power as a commodified entity (where the film could be used to sell a variety of different products) and its place in the cultural landscape could reach a huge number of individuals. Films has also been growing in popularity as a medium of public teaching, as it offers students an opportunity to link
many of the theories they had learned to the number of social issues that were being presented in the films (Giroux, 2001). All of the reasons above further explained how films/movies became a viable tool of nonviolent actions to further the agenda of African- Americans in the United States.
2.5. African-American Filmmakers and Their Stories
From all that had been explained above, it could be seen that the issue of racial justice had always been a perpetual struggle for the African American community. The issue of race persists throughout the history of the United States, be it in the form of slavery, segregation, or even police brutality. This accumulation of trauma that lasted over generations would later be a basis for many different filmmakers, especially those of African American descents who had personally experienced the systemic discrimination, to pour their grievances on the films that they would later direct and/or produce.
Among four African-American directors and the films that would be discussed in this research would be: Spike Lee (Blackkklansman), Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), Jordan Peele (Get Out), and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight).
2.5.1 Spike Lee (Blackkklansman)
Spike Lee, born Shelton Jackson Lee, was born on the 20th of March 1957 in the city of Atlanta to Jacquelyn Shelton Lee, a schoolteacher, and Bill Lee, a musician.
During Spike’s childhood, his family moved to Chicago, due to his father thinking that there is a bigger possibility of having a better career if they were to move. Settling down in Brooklyn, the Lee family finally managed to find a permanent home in Fort Greene, a
neighbourhood in Chicago that is seen by most outsiders as “undesirable” and dangerous.
Maturing in Chicago, Spike was raised on African-American and mainstream culture by his parents, whom had introduced him to the culture through books, plays museums, art exhibitions, and even music, where Spike even listened to his father playing the bass in a few New York Clubs.
Spike’s exposure to African American culture could be seen even in his education history. For his highschool years, Spike would study in John Dewey High School, a public school in Coney Island that is heavily populated by a black student body, and later on Morehouse College in Atlanta, a historically black all-male Arts Institute located in Atlanta.
Spike’s exposure to racism and racial bias would continue after he was enrolled in the Tisch School of Arts at New York University, where he was one of the very first few black students in the graduate film program. Spike was not overly fond of studying in the university, and when asked about his experiences studying, he would answer that he sensed hints of racial bias in most of the criticisms that was launched to him by most of his professors. The clashes between Spike and his professors would continue during his time in NYU, and intensifies after Spike’s first-year film, “The Answer (1980)” was released, in which he potrayed “The Birth of a Nation (1915)”, a controversial movie that glorifies white supremacy, as a racist film, offending a huge amount of people in the process (Sterritt, 2013)
In short, it could be seen that Spike was more than ready to challenge mainstream cinema and the racist systems. His attempts of tackling racism even persists to this day,
through many historic movies such as “Do The Right Thing (1989)”, “Malcolm X (1992)”
and his attitude and perspective towards politics and the United States could be traced in many of his interviews.
An example of his views could be seen in his interview with The Guardian when they were discussing about Blackkklansman. During the interview, Spike Lee boldly states that:
“The whole foundation of this country [United States] is wack. If you go to the constitution it is written that slaves were counted as three-fifths of a human being, chattel, like cows or chickens. Unless we can come to grips
with how this nation was formed and be honest about it we will never go forward.”
Picture 4. Spike Lee Interviewed by The Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2019
This nuance is ever present in most of his interviews, and when he was asked by The Film Society of Lincoln Center about the burdens of working with materials that has so much emotional weigh, he answered:
“It’s a responsibility, it’s not a burden. I want to tell the stories of Four Little Girls, I want to tell Malcolm X.... I’m a storyteller, so it’s not a burden. I’m not saying that it’s easy, but the stories I gotta tell... cause these
stories have to be told.” (Film at Lincoln Center, 2019)
This interview denotes to us how Spike sees his work and activism. He sees his works not only as a way to gain notoriety, but as a moral responsibility that he has to bear as a filmmaker who originates from the African-American Community.
2.5.2 Ryan Coogler (Black Panther)
Ryan Coogler is an American Filmmaker born on the 23rd of March 1986 in Oakland, California, to a mother who was community organizer and to a father was a juvenile-probation counselor. Growing up in Richmond (then the United States’ 4th most dangerous city), which his family moved to when he was 8, Coogler stated that he one of the main reason he was able to be succesful is due to having one thing that many of his peers don’t in his neighborhood – two parental figures. His father, Ira, guided and introduced Ryan to sports, while Joselyn, his mother introduced him to movies and films, becoming one of the biggest inspirations for Ryan to start making movies.
Living in an area that was well known to be harsh to grow up in, Ryan mentioned in an interview back in 2007 of his dreams to build build a film business in the area, arising from his observation of his surroundings. He stated that it was tough to succeed in the area due to the intense poverty that most of his peers experience, as well as the fact that a lot of his friends does not have any mothers or fathers to support them (Newhouse, 2007).
It could be inferred from Ryan’s words that he was not raised on the best of cities and more specifically, not on the best of neighbourhoods in the United States. This lifelong experience formed him to be a man indebted to his community, and he has expressed that conviction multiple times throughout his career as a filmmaker. In an interview that was conducted by Film Society of Lincoln Center after the release of his first hit movie, “Fruitvale Station (2013)”, when asked about the making of the movie, which chronicles the shooting of Oscar Grant III, a member of the African-American community, by a police named Johannes Mehserle, Ryan answered:
“When the incident happened... I knew I wanted to make a film about this, I figured that making a film about this would be something that maybe people could relate to regardless of their background. Thought I could
maybe make something that can make some people think and help encourage discussion.”(Film at Lincoln Center, 2013)
Picture 5. Ryan Coogler Interviewed by The Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2013
The sentimentality and emotions that Ryan poured in his films, specifically about the conditions that many African Americans face in the United States, could be seen just a few minutes later in that very interview, in which he states (while tearing up):
“He [Oscar Grant II] was a person... And I felt like that got lost. Nobody was talking about the fact that this guy was 22, and he had people who he meant the world to, and he’s never coming back to them... And I thought that
was the deepest tragedy right there, and I see that lack of value for people [African Americans] like myself, for people like us, when we lose our lives in urban violence regardless of who’s holding the trigger, and I figured that
making a film like this from those intimate relationship that everyone can relate to might maybe help the situation.” (Film at Lincoln Center, 2013)
Ryan’s words are a further proof of how African-American Filmmakers sees themselves as a marginalized community in the United States. He explicitly highlighted how the majority of citizens of the country do not see much value in the lives of those who lost their lives in cases of urban violence, painting a sorrowful picture in regards to the states of racial justice in the country.
2.5.3 Jordan Peele (Get Out)
Jordan Peele was born on the 21st of February 1979 to a white mother and a black father. He grew up on New York’s Upper West Side in a single-parent household, due to his father dying in 1999. Jordan would later go on and study in Sarah Lawrence College with the intention of being a puppeteer, but would drop out to pursue acting and comedy, with him finally rising to fame as a member of the duo “Key and Peele” alongside Keegan-Michel Key.
Being born to a biracial family, Key had long admitted that he felt like an outsider, as he had to identify himself as “other” in a racial category while he was taking standardized tests (although he began identifying as “African-American” as he grow older. He had also struggled with having friends who didn’t believe his mother was white,
and was also struggling with his identity, due to him believing his voice sounding too
“white” for an African-American (Kettler, 2018).
Yet despite that struggle, Jordan had never strayed away in addressing the numbers of racial issues that existed in the United States. This attempt existed even in the many skits that he had made during his time doing comedy with Keegan, one such example is “Negrotown”, a skit that touches on the issue of racial struggle with a very simple premise, which reads:
“A black man who's stopped by the police discovers that there's a place to escape racism: Negrotown.”
The skit would start by portraying an African-American individual feeling the effect of racial profiling and police brutality, only then to be saved by a homeless man and transported to an alternate reality named “Negrotown”. This skit, while assuming a light-hearted, cheery, and humorous tone, actually introduces the viewer to a huge number of grievances which are felt by African-Americans, ranging from macro-level issues such as systemic racism or racial profiling, to even smaller grievances in the form social interactions (Ghosh, 2020) The skit packages “Negrotown” to a place free of all forms of discrimination mentioned above, and as the main character puts it, Negrotown is a “utopia” for black people.
Picture 6. Jordan & Keegan’s Skit “Negrotown (2015)”
This continuous attempt of evoking racial discussions and raising awareness could also be seen in the interviews that Jordan and Keegan did together. In an interview conducted by CBS Morning in 2014, Jordan states that:
“We [Jordan and Keegan] believe in the power of laughter, we believe it is so important. We believe that communication and laughter is one of the only
weapons we have against the evils of the world.” (Vice, 2016)
The quote above explicitly illustrates Jordan’s belief of media and communication as a tool of resistance. He notes that these two features could combine to be a form of weapon against the “evils” that are currently existing in the world, which in his lens would most probably be racism and racial injustice.
2.5.4 Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)
Barry Jenkins, director of the Oscar Best Picture winning film “Moonlight (2016)”, was born on the 19th of November 1979 at the city of Miami, United State, to a single mother. Growing up, Barry mentioned that he had never really known anything
about his father. Despite being born to a single mother, Barry had never been raised by her, and instead was cared for by an elderly women that he would call as his
“grandmother”. When asked to recall his childhood, he would claim that he had felt
“abandoned” by his mother in the first 24 years of his life, yet he would later explain that he had felt that way because he did not have much information to know how his mother grew up, how she had been sexually abused, becoming pregnant as a teenager, and still managing to raise three kids before she finally fell into a crack addiction (Adams, 2021).
This harsh upbringing, alongside the fact that Barry grew up in the neighbourhood Liberty City, Florida, one of the most violent, poorest, and “blackest” neighbourhood in all of the United States during the 1980s and 1990s formed Barry to be a lonely kid during his childhood. This feeling of abandonment, and in turn trauma, would be one of the driving factors that made Barry one of the most imaginative filmmakers in Hollywood, in which he states that the situation made him “a really good observer” and “gave me [Barry] an active imagination” (Felix, 2021).
Picture 7. Barry Jenkins (right) winning the Oscar in 2017 for “Moonlight”(source: Indiewire)
Barry Jenkin’s imagination would also in turn created several award-winning movies that deals with the concept of “Blackness”, all the while portraying the vulnurability of the African-American community and all the struggles of being a part of the community in modern day America. Movies such as “Moonlight (2016)”, “If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)”, or even TV Show “The Underground Railroad (2021)” is extremely clear in its social messaging. This sentiment could be seen in an interview that was conducted by Mr Porter with Barry in 2021, where he explained the impact of America’s political climate under Trump’s Presidency to his new TV Series, “The Underground Railroad (2021)”:
“America hasn’t always been great, there have been some heinous practices on Black people, women, Asian people… How can you say ‘make America
great again’ without acknowledging those things?... The show was very clearly speaking to this idea of the need to acknowledge these problems of
America’s past.” (Casely-Hayford, 2021)
As could be seen above, African-American filmmakers are not simply profit- seeking individuals that are searching to popularize themselves in the movie industries, but rather they are actors driven by valid grievances, building on from the values of indebtedness and belonging towards the community that they come from. As victims of oppression ever since their childhood, their movies attempts to deconstruct, portray, and disseminate the struggle that they and their communities had experienced. The next chapter would further analyze the usage of movies as a method of resistance against the oppression and discrimination that they have experienced, as well as breaking down how all of these directors proceeded to deconstruct the American society to propagate the
messages that they want to be consumed by the public in the lens of post-Colonialism through the building of discourse in the society.
