Classified X (1998) | Narrated by Melvin Van Peebles | A Must See

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now you're public property and the watermelons Oh Willie yes needs to go and the chicken house is over there chicken house uh-huh what am I waiting for I don't know neither tell you what you say you ain't gettin fresh with me as you call it boy honey don't you give me none well what some folks find funny or the spine tragic Alice honest is me why is he so scared why was always so skilled well wouldn't you be I did say we I'm black you see tell you what you take those rose-colored glasses off and I'll loan you a special pair of colored folks shoes let's see how they feel to you come on take a little stroll with me that's right it was you when I first became aware of movies messing with my mind I must have been around 12 or 13 was around the end of the Second World War or they had been messing with mine before that but I just wasn't aware of it no that's not right I just wasn't able to put a name to what I was feeling when I'd leave the triple feature on Saturday afternoon at the National rat alley that's what we call the cinema in my neighborhood [Music] I learned what that emotion was it's called shame movie his story is always going on about how my 1971 film was feedback sprang out of nowhere about how it was such a revolutionary film a true original that did noise the leads to anything in the past well it wasn't part of any traditional movement out of the past but on the contrary Oh contraire it didn't just spring out of thin air the movies were the advance couch into adulthood I don't need to learn how to ride a horse climb a palm tree scheme to learn how to court a girl and even kiss but most importantly the movies offered a peephole into the world outside of my ghetto the only problem was I couldn't project the meet by me I mean myself and the the colored folks in the neighborhood who comprised my entire universe with what the movies were showing the color folks in the movies were always quaking and Yassa Bossin and shuffling huh didn't bear any resemblance to the majestic hard-working black folks strutting around the South Side of Chicago where I was drunk the men were tough and fearless and the women were regal Queens a zillion miles away from the army of broad bean Mami's at the movies betrayed you then thanks to God son and his kingdom all men equal [Music] yes then suddenly in a flash like I said I was 12 or 13 at the time and the Second World War was just winding down it was all revealed to me the newspapers and the magazines in the radio that was this talk of the new new globe coming to the screen well what had happened was that to win the war the government needed everybody's help and not just white folks and besides Hitler did give him racism a bad name anyhow an effort to win the war the government had done a lot of flag waving to unite the nation there was a lot of talk about the United States being a melting pot with liberty equality and justice for all regardless of race creed or color except for a little social engineering to get blacks and women accepted in jobs formerly all-male all-white desert [Music] in the flushing victory over the Nazis America actually bought into its own propaganda he thought the US was experiencing a flood of democracy a wave or two of which laughed upon to the shores of Hollywood hence the promise of movies depicting Negro characters more honestly more dignified ie the new Navy private moss reporting for duty sir but the special assignment if Hollywood invented a new neutral admit it had invented the old new one in the first place question about racism in Hollywood films everybody likes to put the blame on DW Griffith's and his birth of a nation a cinematic masterpiece and the first Hollywood blockbuster it was filled with dance and chicken chomp and rape and quaking darkness [Music] the nation well from the very very beginning there was racism in American movies even in old Thomas Edison's first images back at the birth of cinema blacks were only presented as stereotypes of caricatures and sure didn't stop there get your parking [Applause] yes Hollywood about it they've maintained it was all in the name of art no harm being done just a little good clean fun well maybe kinda saw it if you're white no harm being done good clean fun the white folks in Hollywood really rule the news they do Negroes any way they wanted to they even put on chalk or when they felt like doing something extra stupid and played it being black too [Music] [Applause] [Music] now he is all sisters under the skin [Laughter] implicit to me is that they knew what they were doing all along y'all so Miss bellman yes miss lang yes looking over one shoulder at the old Federman of the Negro the new people was an improvement relatively speaking of course Wesley Epps private third Engineer Battalion so he characters were tiny bit more three-dimensional officer sergeant we got the explosive necessary to fix that bridge private matowski me Connor made a special collection I alone escaped it was then I captured this man to carry my pack what is your name sergeant major Tambu for soudanese battalion Tinseltown went running around with this just poked out feeling all proud of itself about how liberal we've been in recognizing the Negro besides they weren't worried because of the golden rule the American golden rule that here he who has the gold makes moves except to you Ben you saying no if it's no I want the money right away and I hold you responsible Arnold sometimes in new neutral movies we were allowed to dress normal and even act as equals people don't talk with you do they mr. Upton given square with me on aisle five Davis okay mr. Roberts Black's became a vehicle for more or less in about justice or tolerance let's get up and walk [ __ ] you know I can always with a sympathetic central white character to mediate the experience of the flatwoods boss get up and walk it dirty [ __ ] Gavin walk [Music] all right time in the new Negro movies more time the white character doctor or teacher or something like that cared for is the same paternalistic attitude that kindly old slave owners and Little Miss Shirley Temple but famous for in the old Negro movies another new Negro movie was pinky slang term for light-skinned new rule passes for white played by white actors there are a lot of light-skinned blacks tinting the states by law a few drops of African blood means you are neatly she falls in love with the white guy real white guy offers to take away as long as she doesn't tell anybody about being colored she turns him down but all is not lost because the kind the old white lady leaves the plantation to pinky you pretend wherever you are be yourself what am i you tell me you're the ones that set the standards you whites you're the ones that judge people by the color of their skins will by your own standards by the only ones that matter to you I'm as white as you are that's why you all hate me what should i do dye my face grovel and shovel say Yasim and no girl excuse me sir but why are you two white men ma'am and her she's nothing but a low-down colored gal tried to steal my man heard what you said he's got to slap her down unless it's true yes it's true I'm calling in my grandmother's mrs. dicey Johnson mrs. dicey Johnson tired of slapping both darn cheap then there was lost boundaries light-skinned [ __ ] played once again by a white actor passes himself off as a real bona fide white man to become a doctor should I do with this doctor I can't ship it with the others what's wrong with it came from somebody chauffeur and he's as black as your hat we could refuse him of course we can't mix his with the white plasma and why can't we miss Richmond well he certainly wouldn't do it where I come from we do it here there'll be criticism if I do they'll be worse if you don't eventually the truth comes out and he's ostracized by the white folks I'm part Negro Howard so is your mother that makes you a negro - I'm white [Applause] No we're all Negroes [Music] host of the new films trotted out for the edification of us colored masses deal with what was called the neutral property hell always seemed more like a white problem to me they treated the question of white supremacy is a little more sophistication but it was the same old racism in true during the does an old black man okay because he's old and past his sexual prime he saved by white boy from a rabbit southern lynch mob who fete gently into the night without a whimper once they realized the old black guy was being framed I guess the moral is that lynch mobs okay they're just out to do the right thing like anybody else proud stubborn insufferable but there he goes keeper my conscience our conscience aqua jar [Music] the sad fact was that the insults had only gone underground and were more insidious and psychologically damaging than ever the difference of the treatment of the Negro in the old films and the new was like the difference in the supposedly liberal north treatment of the Negro and the openly hostile south which didn't bother hide its prejudice or disdain at least down south lynch mobs notwithstanding you knew where you stood Jimmy call you know sign teeth I would even did one called black like me were you calling me boy but I didn't think me wear a white actor plays the white man who put on shoe polish or something like that to experience what a black man had to go through watch the big idea I want to find out what it's like to be a Negro in the south you can know how was this possible I mean how could Hollywood operate with such impunity this is with the cold war raging mind you with the Russians looking for any team in democracies on [Music] how can America set itself up as the bastion of liberty and equality on one hand and treated colored citizen so sadly on the silver screen and get away with it well this brings us to the peculiar plight of the Negro in America although population wise there are more black people in the United States and most European nations they're in the minority outnumbered by a margin of 10 to 1 by the whites but most importantly the control of the media and the flow of information about life in these United States to the outside world remains almost exclusively in white hands yet it once there was a world in Negro hands the tiny world of independent black films in the South the American version of apartheid segregation was still the law and there were more than 300 all-black movie houses from the early days of silent film - shortly after the Second World War a span of nearly 50 years marginalized by the independent [Music] [Applause] existing everybody you're a big man you can see that the work down south leads people like home black movies made by african-american filmmakers were extremely popular black audiences tired of seeing themselves betrayed us slaves servants Hussey's Mami's loafers a dumb book subject run amok these are the only films have betrayed them as human beings and like everybody else they were desperate to see themselves as he would and they hated a black man [Applause] [Music] yes there's so much to be done you [Music] I made them myself they have a little kick in them but not too much she's a lucky woman lexis their many years yes and she's got such a good man many of these old films were racists in their own right the myth of white supremacy was so pervasive that the African American filmmakers accepted it treating blacks themselves as a culture or class category rather than a racial one with the heroes and heroines invariably lighter skinned than the villains what's the big idea fella didn't have that gun I'll show you independent African American cinema has never been significant in the United States neither is the number produced or the means of distribution or the audience eventually reached I never even saw an independent black film growing up and I grew up in a black ghetto on the south side of Chicago I only became for me with Oscar miss you and Spencer Williams and the other early pioneers years later went on becoming a student of film I heard rumors of these lost masterpieces and tracked them down [Music] but the purely black cinema was driven out of business by to market forces promote the rising cost of making a movie and dizzy oh the shrinking number of theaters where the movies thanks to the end of segregation could be screamed yeah progress [Music] the so-called golden era of independent black films is a myth conceived to cloud the excruciating position at the african-american in cinema the real history of independent black cinema has been one of struggle studded stars and stunted careers a courageous File of brothers and sisters who sacrificed to bring a few precious seconds of black humanity to the silver screen all that wonderful talent wasted well host - Oh James deferred he still had to eat if you a black actor in Hollywood that meant you tossed the speed cook somebody for dinner oh you brought a drink maybe I have to stay after school that like that my dad way from high school pretty much I don't have to row do I - Pharaoh who elected mr. Rittenhouse mr. Rittenhouse rid to you he's capable sure as he always sleeps or oh he never well he's got a girl up to the Blue Parrot goes up there the only ray of hope was Sam he used to be a much better lives you remember the colored piano playing Casablanca you're bad luck time it was the first time I ever remember seeing a black character go through an entire movie without having to kiss ass in the ghetto the people were so proud they would make the projection stop the film and run Sam's part over and over and over again Tsing himself you must remember kisses just keep aside justice' throughout the history of Hollywood there were three sanctuary for more virulent racism one Prince worth ironically the Hollywood version of an all-black movie you see the trouble with you is what I mean is when it comes to women you just don't know are else man you rambling what hit you look at that gal standing over there there's nothing like that netbook use talking about better not be the second place sometimes anyway but blacks were allowed at dignity was the truth the pulpit being considered a trusted ally in the subjugation of black brings and he said is until the civil rights movement began anyway Negroes were given a bit of leeway to swagger and feel good about themselves when attending to religious matters let the fish fry proceeded [Music] entertainment was the third sanctuary outside of being required to mug it up the Negro entertainers were encouraged to do their routines strut their stuff to sing and dance their hearts out [Music] [Music] [Applause] now you'll hear a song you all like by a singer you all like miss Lena Horne [Music] well paper doll that I can call my own a doll that other felons cannot steal and all those flirty flirty guy these black routines were kept incidental to the plot so that if the cavorting [ __ ] were too uppity for some southern white theater owner the offending section could be edit out of the film without disrupting the flow of the story [Music] and all those flirty flirty guy where there flirty-flirty Ives will have to flirt with dollies [Applause] end of song beginning of story [Music] these blackened teens were systematically scrutinized by white producers looking for something [Music] and no sooner had a black person created something new then it was preempted by the whites who claimed it as their own [Music] [Applause] [Music] and insulting even if a white character came upon a group of blacks doing the routine the white person immediately took stage sin and began to teach him how to correctly execute what had been stolen from them in the first place as far as Hollywood was concerned anything a black person can do even if you've been doing it since birth could be done better by a white person in three seconds [Music] not only that blacks were required to stand around grinning is taking their kinky hairs and amazing mmm Lord of mercy look at them massive looking little misty [Music] well these films didn't exactly set the box office on fire with the colored audience I would do Abbas hand and declared that the colored audience was overly sensitive and they were going to give up on trying to appease us ungrateful belly aching [ __ ] we went from the new Negro era to the no Negro here for while their blacks almost disappeared from the silver screen but the boycott couldn't last because Hollywood knew there was money burning in those evany pockets and they wanted some of it the business of America is business Hollywood had discovered that they use a black guy as part of the group of good guys in an action movie putting him somewhere in the posse all platoon and not killing him off too soon the Negro audiences came and drove the only problem was Hollywood wasn't too fond of having a virile lusty black guy running around and when it came to sexual matters they fade wound well why take a chance so Hollywood split the difference I'll take him for you I went only the best they use Negro honks okay I'll take the deep black one but whenever there was a white woman around he had to lurk in the distance sometimes ahead us around to be taken in by white cottony but house I did that [Music] and a mighty hard time but I'm on my way had a mighty hard time but I'm on my way it's a mighty hard climb I'm on my way on my way we were personas non-grata that's your freedom there a free man just unless it was absolutely necessary to the story and if it were there we would be up there bumbling Belial ready to die at the drop of a hat for our master or mistress thank you sir colonel boy you see I'm a free man that's right well if I'm free and I got a right to decide what I'm gonna do seems to me that's what you may not fighting for so I reckon I'll I'll stay lay quiet hook now catchy Jim please let me down you gotta go free you gotta get back to your wife and Joey put me down Jim we've gotta get you to a doctor Jim the actual behavior of a neutral character in any given show my team to be predicated on the dramatic needs of that film [Music] but through the accumulation of similar images from a zillion such films the same behavior repeated in film film shot after shot a less benign picture emerges [Music] oh why does to kill him kill him but what's the matter now cam kill him you imbecile [Music] [Music] [Music] you you gonna make somebody final later one day while making concessions to the Negroes progress in society at large American movies clung tenaciously to the cliches of the past in one form or the other all in all it was business as usual the concessions Hollywood made were only tactical in nature the strategic goal remained the same to protect the status quo perpetuate the myth of white supremacy and thereby undermine the Negroes struggle for equality in the United States but the brothers and sisters were born impatient with waiting for quality they took the speech in orderly Marge's the good old Hollywood only heard the rumblings as a business opportunity once the hill decided to do a movie about what they were sure black audiences wanted more than anything in the world every Negro secret desire the jewel in the crown so to speak intermarriage the studio figures they had a box-office Bonanza of course they billed as a great step forward through quality anyhow guess who's coming to jennifer is about a black man's engagement to a white [Applause] that's the story that's the glory equality oh never mind that the black I was a scientist a Nobel Prize candidate a Pulitzer Prize winning butter wouldn't melt in his mouth type we could practice on water and that she was only a pimply-faced nobody they were equally matched because she was white right right the power is dominating how he was not only raise specific totally white it was gender specific totally male it's not the thing to change that much there's a continuing stream of books documenting the mistreatment of actresses at the hands as a macho misogynist moguls of Hollywood the Integrity's in pay part power etc in this epoch of the second-class treatment of women you too little and too late things were tough for white woman they were draconian for black woman however rarely are black actresses even mentioned in the books about Hollywood's exploitation of female I've got a living child in me you let that [ __ ] Nakia ah nobody but you this is your baby really jail all your you know he just might be bad as white as you still gonna be in a huh yes daddy and he's gonna be something [Music] [Music] out in the street mumbling was going to louder and louder and the marchers were losing their gentility in Hollywood even has decided to open the doors to minorities and each one hired a minority or two and told me to behave themselves someday one of their race might even get a chance to actually touch the reins of creativity 1967 I come back from France show up at the San Francisco Film Festival's a French delegate with a future film I just written indirect la permission it was pretty embarrassing for the USA it had been 15 years since a black director had been able to scrape up enough to make a film and Hollywood had never even had one [Music] in the meantime the ramen in the streets had grown to a lord Hollywood hired three black directors Ossie Davis Gordon Parks myself to prove to the world they weren't racist of course they tried to sabotage our efforts by giving us substandard budgets and gravy scripts to do nevertheless these films were modestly successful but it was axiomatic in the corridors of Hollywood that no black film could be a big-time blockbuster success my answer was that was how would they know they never made a truly black film only white fantasy - what they thought black should want to see to piss me off [Music] Hollywood was wondering dream well Hollywood was clinging to make-believe balances America was exploding the speech were running blood maybe wrong wasn't burning but Houston la Chicago New York sewer I decided to kick Hollywood's ass which brings us to speed back like I said I didn't just bring out of thin air feedback was a huge financial success it was also take no prisoners political manifesto so much so until the Black Panther Party who J Edgar Hoover the hair the FBI had declared public enemy number one endorsed the film unconditionally and made it required viewing for all of its moon DOE market a sweet back I'm sorry Ben I got you two were attached together let's see we can get a little air between you you step over here the way I saw it then and still see it nam is that the biggest obstacle to progress in America is our condition susceptibility to the white man's program our minds have been colonized by images of black humiliation marginality subservience impotence and criminality that are ubiquitous in mainstream American cinema these are supposed self images seen when African Americans look into the socio-cultural mirror of the cinema we've been violated confused and drained by this colonization and from this brutal calculated genocide the most vicious racism it's grown is this starting point mind and the intention to reverse the process that I went into cinema in the first [ __ ] place [Music] [Music] I think the highly vaunted visual power of the film came from the fact that having taught myself I missed the technical colonization for the white aesthetic but back then the way I put the images in the color and utilized the sound folks call me crazy now they started calling at the beginning of the black film aesthetic and then when the film was finished and I had to have it rated the jury was all white and I refused to go to them so they gave me an automatic automatic x-ray well that didn't bother them either because as far as I was concerned I've been going to x-rated movies all my life Hollywood took my formula diminished the concept of Negritude to a flamboyant cartoon and reversed the political message turning it into a counter-revolutionary one and wha-la out of the commercial success the sweet back to make a long story short the blaxploitation movie was born [Music] Squad [Music] [Music] but the images of black students in defeating whites even if the whites were slimy villains didn't sit too well with Hollywood and the financing began to dry up the blaxploitation films got shoddier and Shia and the genre finally petered out I would no longer says that a black audience doesn't exist now it proclaims that a black audience only want to see action films the simple fact is that african-americans are not allowed to tell African American middle class stories without studio ie white intervention and it's this white perspective forced on the material in the form of guidance that is so disastrous to the film an African American cine a soon realized that the deeper into the ghetto the story is set and the Lord down the economic scale the more likely he or she is to be financed i'ma trouble one can see the legacy of the negative images of the past still reflected in the films today [Music] I got you I got you but I've still got a supposedly black movie actually being a thinly disguised showcase for white cleverness and all the entire paternalistic white social structure you still got the Negro being saved by the liberal white man there is an ever-increasing number of blacks working in the film industry in the last 20 years the cost of making independent film has been greatly reduced and many young filmmakers have seized the opportunity if we step back a minute to view the ear as a whole we see the trick is no longer getting the film made but getting it shown and for now distribution is in white hands they're the gatekeepers and rule makers of what reaches the silver screen for every Spike Lee John Singleton Julie - there are many other practical makers wilting in the wings unseen cinema was born in 1896 that was the same year that segregation became official in the United States discrimination was abolished in 1954 but film wise we're still waiting whoa I'm not through don't go taking those shoes off yet the Treasury never stops every era brings its new tricks the latest is if a black filmmaker does somehow managed to make a relevant black film like Malcolm X a panther the box office receipts a siphoned off at the city pledges to other more acceptable movies by the races exhibitors thereby denying the profitability of such films plus was holding the fiscal benefits from anyone daring to confront the system Americans like to go on about money being money neither black or white but green but when the hand holding the money is white and the head connected to the hand is mired in the same old racist attitudes to the same boss stereotypes [Music] [Music] in my time [Music] got mean used up behind the welfare line [Music] [Music] because he talked about talk about here how about beat yo speaking about ranges kind of tons of them well white folks not up use it sighs cool so we feel that your bones better put your a-game ain't nobody wins [Music]

Channel: reelblack

Views: 198,693

Rating: 4.8769345 out of 5

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Id: HI7T68PUTIU

Length: 51min 59sec (3119 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 14 2019