Maryann Erigha: The Hollywood Jim Crow (2019) | Book Talk

we'd like to welcome you and thank you all for coming my name is camille Charles I'm professor of sociology and africana studies I'm also a faculty director for the Penn first plus initiative here at Penn and it is my great pleasure to introduce my former graduate student Marianna Rika Marianne is jointly appointed in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for african-american studies at the University of Georgia and her book The Hollywood Jim Crow the racial politics of the movie industry is an analysis of how everyday racial hierarchies and Hollywood de matically Mayor Jim Crow practices as Hollywood decision-makers perceive blackness as unbanned alized segregated stigmatized black film directors racial inequality appears to be an artifact of logical economic decisions and global cultural preferences rather than a product of overt discrimination revealing how racism operates in a major culture industry the book illustrates an important shift in contemporary explicit racial discourse that masks racial inequality with economic and cultural rationales more broadly her research and teaching interests include race ethnicity film and media digital sociology and african-american society their ongoing research examines the symbolic inclusion of racial groups by ideologies narratives and emotions as well as the possibilities and perils of digital technologies for racial inclusion politics in addition she serves on the editorial board for social currents the official of the southern sociological society again I'm extremely pleased and delighted to be able to look Marian and to have watched this begin as a dissertation proposal oh so many years ago and to and to be the great book it is today so welcome thank you everyone for coming out in the rain it's always hard to to make that check so I really do appreciate that and thank you to the Department for africana studies that I've witnessed the department go from a center to a department status and it really did make a big change in my own trajectory at Penn because having that extra support from the department was very important for me and they're always here for students so it's very great that they're able to become a department and to provide extra support for everyone and I'm also very grateful that my advisor dr. Charles was able to introduce me because she's provided a lot of support for you Penn as well and thank you to Real Black for coming out and filming this for their YouTube page and also thanks to the Penn bookstore so I'm going to just give an overview of the book Bradley and then we can have questions or comments afterwards so the book project started as the dissertation as my adviser said and really it grew out of this interest in representation in Hollywood I when I was at Penn as a graduate student I went to condom festival through the study abroad but that undergrad and graduate program jointly and so I was able to see American films as well as global films and I was really interested in how there was not a lot of diverse representation of American film in American cinema in international venues like the Khan Film Festival and so that really grew my interest in trying to understand more about representation in Hollywood and how that took place and how to what extent you know our director is able to get their films to global audiences so that really drew my interest and 2019 is a really fascinating year because it is the 50th anniversary of the first black director in Hollywood and that would scored in parks senior when he adapted his book The Learning Tree into a movie for with Warner Brothers and so this was an interesting time I think a fascinating time for this book to come out because it really allows us to revisit then you know to what extent have black directors been able to integrate into Hollywood and then what does that look like what does their integration look like so I want to also say that in the book I talk about other directors like Asian and Latino as well and white directors I'm gonna focus more some black directors for this talk and talking about their inclusion and most of the book is about black directors although I do talk about others in relation to their plight and their pathways so I thought was really interesting that 50 years later to examine the state of integration and so what I looked at was this idea of a hierarchy in Hollywood because when you think about representation you think about maybe symbols you know the idea that there's a presence or absence of people you might also think about numbers counting numerically what percentage of people are in a specific occupation you can think also about civic representation and by that I mean the representation in our cultural narratives and myths for example if you're part of the Hall of Fame then maybe you're part of that culture of that institution but I'm also interested in this idea of hierarchy and representation and what that means and we think about hierarchy you think about your quality of representation your quality of life so are you directing big-budget movies or small budget movies are you directing movies in particular genres so I think for Hollywood there's a question of what is the quality of representation like even as we see a greater visibility of directors maybe our quality of representation isn't where we think it needs to be so really as I as I started to look at data I looked at data from IMDB with just Internet Movie Database I looked at data from other online websites like Box Office Mojo and I was really looking at what the representation looked like beyond just numbers I also look at numbers and percentages but also what does it look like in terms of this hierarchy you know what genres are people directing and also what movies what kinds of budgets were they working with so interests in those kinds of questions and what I found and that's why the title of the book is called The Hollywood Jim Crow because I found that there was this underlying hierarchy that was similar to Jim Crow period so as you might know the period of legal segregation in which you know whites were privileged and disadvantaged blacks and other minority groups and with Jim Crow we think about this hierarchy as well with whites receiving the better resources that our access to resources such as better housing schooling employment and then we see that in this contemporary era that those overt or maybe explicit hierarchies have vanished on the surface but we do see a lot underneath the surface and beneath the surface this veneer of consensus that we might have that we may say that there's a lot of equality but underneath the surface if we really look at the those kinds of hierarchies of representation then we do see a lot of inequality still existing in Hollywood despite the visibility of a lot of directors so I was really trying to link the book and of course it's a play on Michelle Alexander's the new Jim Crow just to understand how in this era we do have this lasting sense of inequality and what that means across different dimensions so of course her book discuss mass incarceration and some to some extent policing and so this was looking at Hollywood and asking the question of to what extent is racial inequality still prevalent in Hollywood today so I think it's a very fascinating time that we have to look at the idea of racial inequality are we in a post-racial world or this race still matter and in what sense does it matter how does it matter so given that I want to read from the book some parts to allow you to understand this pathway and this line of inquiry that I'm taking this is from just the introduction called race matters in Hollywood the movie the Magnificent Seven an action-adventure Western starred the veteran actor Denzel Washington alongside the less well-known white actors Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke the movie was directed by Antoine Fuqua who like Denzel Washington has a number of successful movies under his belt despite their combined experience there was a hesitancy among Hollywood insiders those with great influence on the decision-making processes in the production of popular cinema to produce the Magnificent Seven for a big-budget with Washington starring and fook-la directing in the following quotation Steve and I've used these pseudonyms for the Hollywood insiders because another part of the book is the fact that I drew a lot of these quotations from Hollywood insiders from the WikiLeaks of of the major corporation so I was able to then see the inside story in terms of how they communicate with one another in private seemingly private correspondences and so that's where a lot of the context comes from by really trying to link these inequalities to the actual words that Hollywood insiders who are like just people who are working in the industry but have positions of power and how they really draw on those conversations and talk about race so here's one of those quotations love the script plot characters all incredibly well-written and with Denzel and Antoinette Phil's compelling my concern is that equalizer was 36 percent Caucasian and 35 percent african-american I wonder if we were to look at successful westerns like true grit how much of that audience was Caucasian I honestly don't know but if I had to guess it would be more Caucasian and less african-american so it's in the last week we're figuring out what audiences to double down on like we did with equalizer I want to be sure that audiences has the right but elements they need to buy the tickets do we double down on african-american audiences and if so does that audience show up in a big enough way at westerns to make our number or do we push older Caucasian males towards and Denzel Antoine Fuqua movie and if so will they show up in a big enough way obviously westerns pose an initial set of concerns but I'm not sure the pedigree is the perfect fit for the lovers of the genre and having just been the contemporary cool popcorn movie to the tombstones weak old-fashioned movie I don't feel as excited as I like about based on this fiscal layout so I'll continue to read here while Steve is a pseudonym for a Hollywood insider his words and the concerns he voices are real his momentary praise for the talents of Fuquan Washington is immediately followed by skepticism for their possibility of success in particular he expresses uncertainty about the financial outlook of the Magnificent Seven for reasons that appear to be outwardly related to race believing that the audience for all western genre movies skews Caucasian Steve imagines a predominantly white audience for the Magnificent Seven he reasons therefore that the casting and directing should also skew Caucasian in order to capitalize on this target audience as he puts it to be sure that the audience has the elements they need to buy the tickets and to be certain the pedigree is the perfect fit for the lovers of the genre here are the elements in the pedigree and place ly refer to the racial makeup of the cast and director with respect to imagined audience desires so this idea that we're lumping together race with economic considerations is a recurring thought in the emails and correspondence between Hollywood insiders so Steve Steve four marks indicates race enters the conversation long before the box office numbers roll in often times even before a movie script receives the green light for production so if we have this question about whether race still matters in Hollywood we can see not only with the data that race matters but also with the very conversations that Hollywood insiders have amongst one another that races oftentimes a concern and as always expressed whether it's expressed before or after the film is shot whether there's a green light for the movie whether there's a discussion about the distribution of the movie to foreign audiences or to domestic audiences race always seems to be concerned and how movies are made and produced and distributed and I call this part labeling black gun bankable because how we see Hollywood director Hollywood insiders dealing with race is that they seem to think that race bankability economics profit are linked and so we see the language of labeling black casts black actors black films or themes even unbanked all in many cases and also doing the opposite with films that have white actors or white stars suggesting that those would be more profitable and so one example of this is how Hollywood directors look at advertising movies so then bankable label effects the movies marketing strategy Hollywood executives conceive of small specific audiences for black films and large general audiences for white films that often go racially unmarked in turn Hollywood executives envision race segmented audiences and thus heavily market black movies to black audiences what transpires is a self-fulfilling prophecy race marketing plans reinforce the perception black movies are unbanked anon black audiences so an example of this is marketing the movie no good deed which starred Aegis Elba and about last night which starred Kevin Hart so marketing those movies on programs like Queen Latifah 106 & Park which is a music program Apollo live sisters of hip-hop sisterhood of hip hop Atlanta exes premiere Love & Hip Hop finale movies like or television shows like the Braxton Family Values so picking these race targeted audiences and marketing black movies or movies with black actors specifically to those audiences and not to other audiences and so in some cases this is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that it really does shut off the kinds of audiences that this movie could potentially have so another way this Hollywood Jim Crow operates is the kinds of movies in which black directors direct are more likely not to be these major studio movies so you think about the major studios are Warner Brothers Universal Columbia 20th Century Fox Disney and paramount and less often they're seen directing movies distributed by those companies and more often by smaller companies or by studio independence companies like Sony Screen Gems for example or Fox Searchlight and so we see them ghettoize into directing for certain companies and getting the distribution that is largely suppressed because if you think about the larger companies they have more access to resources they have bigger budgets and that's another way that we see this modern Holly Hollywood Jim Crow operating is that they have select budgets for their movies but also narrow advertising markets and this if you ask the question about intersectionality which a lot of people would you know how does this then affect female directors especially women of color and so for black female directors we see that there are a very small percentage of Directors across the board so less than 2% of directors are black females and they are less likely to have any representation in any given year so in one year you might see a director of a major studio picture and many years you go without seeing a director so some of the directors that people know now are like Ava Duvernay who recently had a hundred million dollar picture with a wrinkle in time and that's the highest growth highest budgeted film directed by a black female before that it was Angela Robinsons Herbie fully loaded and that was fifty million dollar picture and so if you take those two but then you go the third one there's a significant decrease there so you see that black woman don't typically have big budget pictures although you do have a couple of highlight directors that you can pin to that have those budgets but in general you can't really name more than two black woman that have had fifty million dollars or more to direct the movie so we do see that inequality is really exacerbated when it comes to black women and even for black men there's not a lot of big-budget pictures that they're directing you have a couple of exceptions with people like Antoine Fuqua but you don't see many of them entering into that upper echelon of directing whereas you see a lot more white directors especially white male directors who have those budgets of 200 million or more directing movies and that's a place where we still see very rigid hierarchies where blacks are not able to get into those big-budget movies and one part of that is the superhero genre some people might talk about Black Panther and so that's really on the level of an exception in terms of having a black director direct a movie that's such a big movie and even having a black cast get a budget that's over 200 million is really unlikely that was probably the only film that we could see that's a majority black cast that has such a large budget so in Hollywood there's a lot of ways in which blacks are not able to integrate in 2019 and one way is really when we talk about the lucrative pictures especially as genres like science fiction and the blockbuster franchise movies we see that very few are directing those big-budget movies and there's sometimes a debate about should we focus so much on big-budget movies but I think they're important for many reasons I mean one is having a director have the experience of working with a large budget I think it does enable them to further their career in a lot of ways so that they're able to work with large groups of people work with certain special effects that you can have on a smaller budget have a little more variability and creative involved in terms of having those resources so I think it matters in that way another way it matters is that if you're successful with the big-budget movie then people really look at you as a successful director and then you're able to then have more projects so sometimes there's an obstruction of their careers where you have these obstacles and then people aren't really viewing them as someone who could handle a big-budget picture so it's kind of one of those catch-22 that no one really thinks you can you're capable of doing something until you've actually done it and so that's where I think that matters in some in some way the integration into those those commercially successful movies and so with with Black Panther that was one accomplishment I think for Ryan Coogler to be able to handle that budget and people really look at him as a director you know that was standing people as personal opinions about the film but people look at him as someone who could handle a big-budget movie at least handling the cast and the personnel whereas you might not look at directors especially directors of coloring and female directors as people who can have can handle that kind of movie only because we just haven't seen it so it's not that they can't but because we don't see that representation there's always a question about can people do something so I think it's very important that we are able to see a variety of pictures as I'll talk about a little later so now I read a quote from John Singleton who recently passed away but he had a very lucrative career in Hollywood he also was one of Hollywood's bigger critics as someone who's directed a lot of movies there he he was very vocal as well about how Hollywood he feels put him in a position to where he and I also like looked at interviews I didn't conduct any interviews personally but I looked at a lot of the popular press interviews that directors had had written and had conducted and so I drawn those in the book as well and he really felt that there was this debate you know due to this on a bankable label about how could he do the movies that he wanted to do in Hollywood directing movies he wanted to direct but given this barrier and he talks about this in this quote so John Singleton distinguishes between Hollywood movies and his own movies quote I do action pictures with a lot of different people in them and I can go back and do my core stuff and then this is my writing making a similar distinction Reginald Hudlin stresses the unique challenges African Americans face as they progress through the ranks of Hollywood directing and so Hudlin was another director and he says when I look at my peers like Spike Lee and John Singleton we all reach the same point where we had great success doing personal films and then all of a sudden Hollywood said now we want you to do our movies we still wanted to do what we wanted to do but if you want to work you'll do our movies we each hit this point of frustration that none of us could figure out how to work around so that's Headlands own words about how he felt working in the industry and so I think it would be interesting some people ask should I since I didn't interview directors for this book should I go and interview them I said well they'll be really fascinating I don't know if working directors could talk without like um I guess off the record or on the record you know we we'd love to see the juicy quotations on the record but I think it may be hard to talk while you're still trying to work but these are people who did express their discontent with Hollywood while they were still working so it's very courageous and both of them to do so so I'll read a little bit more from this section both singleton and Hudlin distinguished between personal films and Hollywood films for them getting work and sustaining a directing career largely implies doing Hollywood movies seldom do Hollywood executives give a black director a big budget to make a movie with a black cast or theme perhaps at some point directors realized that their continued success and likelihood of securing future work in Hollywood especially work with big budgets and for major studios depend on their concentrating on fewer personal black films and more mainstream Hollywood or white or at the very least multiracial movies in exchange for integration into Hollywood directing films with bigger budgets and and more commercial genres black directors are pressured to abandon the types of films on which many of them built their careers films with black cast and themes and instead pursue films with black cast themes or cultural experiences that's great on music here I can loosen up a little bit yeah so it's interesting that they you know this question about well what is integration now and so I think a lot of them are questioning this idea of to what extent then moving us away from the kinds of movies that we want to direct or the movies that we're honing our talents on I think that's a big question because a lot of directors and John Singleton's career trajectory himself actually points to him directing the people know the hood trilogy what what films are involved in that so it's poetic justice there are some higher learning and boys in the hood which were his first few movies in the 90s and that's what people refer to as the hood trilogy because those were films that are really just personal to him and about you know where he grew up and really thinks that he could relate to but as he progressed in his career he was doing other films you know he started to do shaft which is more of a Hollywood movie the remake of the blaxploitation movie he also did rosewood which is a kind of a historical period drama about an incident Florida yeah and so then after that he went on to do other movies when Whoopie calls like Hollywood movies are what rational Hedlund also calls Hollywood movies where he's directing this movie with Taylor Lautner starring in the movie and then he directed four brothers and so he goes on to do and that was abduction people have seen an abduction and he also did too fast too furious which was one of those I guess now it's a global franchise there I'm like fast and furious 100 now and so he also did those movies but you see that there's this trajectory where he's not really directing movies about black themes movies about black culture black casts and to be an American filmmaker that's an integral part of American culture black culture and so we're asking ourselves I guess the directors are asking themselves so what extent is directing then in Hollywood and this idea of integration to what extent is then there a lessening of a representation of black culture as they become more successful directors as they are given higher budgets of course with a black panther notwithstanding because I always talk about how that's the only and then people also critique like this is a fictional representation of you know this fictional Africa so again this is not a historical Africa representation and this is not a african-american representation by a black director with a big budget so we always ask ourselves you know so what kinds of movies then our black directors directing when they get big budgets they're not really directing movies that are like realistic kind of movies about black culture or even if it's a fantasy movie is that this is with black panther it's a Marvel picture which again it's not from his own creative standpoint it's really I'm a comic-book adaptation and so of course there's some variability there but what kinds of movies then are they being prevented from directing as they aspire to have these larger budgets that's really part of the question of this sense of a black stigma and this chapter is about the stigma of blackness and to what extent does that impede their careers and impede their their directing and one thing that they do often is have to then label movies as universal and human you know some of the criticism they get is that you know it's this movie if it has black cast or if it has black actors or about black culture is it a movie that everyone would like is it a movie that could attract larger audiences so sometimes they have to label their movies in a way in which they believe it will attract larger audiences there's really this dilemma that then that they face when they're trying to get into larger budgets and that's what I talk about and part of the part of the story finally there's this question about well what should we do about this problem this Hollywood Jim Crow where should we go from here and I think it's I think there's a dual pathway I don't think there's a singular pathway for one I think integrating into Hollywood does matter because there is a nation and you know blacks are part of this nation and so we need to have this representation and have it be authentically black and unapologetically some would say black and also for that to be part of the Hollywood Canon and the American cinematic Canon so I think that's very important I don't think that there should be some kind of segregationist pull away from Hollywood but I think there should be a lot of attempt to integrate into Hollywood so this quote here is from Spike Lee where he talks about representation and he is pointing out the racial imbalance in executive positions in Hollywood studios and he says look take away the big stars Will Smith and Denzel and look at the people who have a green light boat where are the people of color that's what it comes down to how many people when they have those meetings and vote on what movies get me how many people of color are in those meetings that's not to say that's the only way to get a film made but you're talking about Hollywood specifically here and if you want to get a film made it has to get greenlit and I want to I want someone to tell me who is a person of color who has a green light boat in this industry today I'm talking about the people sitting in the room who have read the script looking at the full package who's in it how much is it going to cost how much is it going to make the people who have that boat there are no people of color who have that so here he's talking about this sense of hierarchy and he's he's really questioning the upper ranks of Hollywood you know if Hollywood is going to be American film industry this multicultural American film industry then it there should have representation at all ranks so executive ranks as well as directors and producers and all the other little positions that people don't think about like makeup artist and costume designers and all of those other little positions that unless you're at a film school on a film set you won't really know even hairstylist you know there's so many little positions around and they're not little because of course we you know we look at the Hollywood production and see it as one seamless production but of course there are little little pieces that are involved and so he's really saying that there should be representation at every rank that's diverse and that's inclusive and he's specifically pointing for the executive ranks because he feels as though they have all the power to greenlight movies that if there's a movie to be made then people executives should be able to green like that and he wants that to be very diversified so he's he's not alone in expressing that concern and I think since this kind of dialogue happened there have been a lot more inclusivity in Hollywood for example with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences there was a black a black ahead of that as well and there was a lot of discussion about getting the Oscars diversified and I'll give a quote here that points on that this is from a Hollywood insider in this quote the Hollywood insider and others were having a conversation about the film 12 years of slave and this was before it won an Oscar and they were considering would it actually be able to win an Oscar given the makeup the demographic makeup of the Academy so she voices her observation and a correspondence to Hollywood executives and other insiders and she says 12 years is truly a brilliant film with a compelling story this film is made by a Brit that exposes the darkest hidden history of America exposing a cruel and brutal segment of our white society these plantation owners are as terrible as a Nazis who are the only acceptable cinematic villains the Academy's experience of watching this film is not pleasant some will not see it because of the violence eventually they have to to vote if they put it in their DVD they may fast-forward or turn it off so will they vote for a Best Picture so difficult to watch many others who have seen it taught the brilliant filmmaking but are a bit embarrassed by the story and more importantly did not enjoy watching it my point is is this a story American cultural bell-ringers want to send around the world as the best story in the best picture I think the voters are patiently waiting for an excuse to vote for another film in their hearts they are uncomfortable setting a global message from a Brit that we are or were terrible people and so this quote i think is very loaded in terms of this analysis of someone thinking about not just again we're not really we think about the oscars we're not necessarily evaluating the quality of the filmmaking but obviously there's a lot of politics involved in what movies get chosen and you can look at a lot of the Best Picture winners and just examine what are the politics of the time and how does that impact two votes for a movie and who doesn't vote for that movie so I think that people are not only evaluating the merits of movies but also expressing their own subjectivity in their own opinions and ideologies when it comes to voting for movies and I don't think that sometimes we like to talk about objectivity and the idea that no one brings their own self to these decisions even when it comes to Hollywood executives but I'd like to err on the side of everyone brings their own subjectivity is because that's usually how it is so I I rather just say that we should all be able to bring our own subjectivity to the table when we're coming to make decisions about movies so I think representation is important for that reason that you know we need to hear from this idea of a multicultural nation and let everyone bring their subjectivity is to to bear on all of these decisions as they are important for affecting who is representing our culture and in what cases so some people can disagree with me there and say that they're perfectly I'm objective but I think that we're all probably a little bit subjective when we make decisions and sometimes we can't help help that so I think it's just important that we have different different people who are representing us when it comes to voting when it comes to having those meetings at the table as Spike Lee would say because it's important that we get to hear all of those subjectivity and then maybe that will help us make a better decision that could in the end be more objective than if we just air out what our positions are in our positionality as some would say what they are so I think representation in Hollywood is important for those reasons that we we want different kinds of movies in the film industry especially with large budgets but I think there's also this path that that we should take that involves also having an industry that's countering Hollywood or that's out maybe not countering but that's also producing movies on the on the part of Hollywood so I don't think that we should uniformly and unilaterally rely on Hollywood to make these big budget pictures but why can't there be some other institution that makes pictures that are 200 million dollars and so we're all forced to watch what other people think in these with these big-budget movies because one of the lures of Hollywood one of the lures of Hollywood is that they're able to make these really seamless pictures because there's a lot of money and a lot of editing involved and so we're all seduced by that kind of filmmaking whether or not we actually enjoy the movie I know we've all sat through really horrible superhero movies where there's really no story but there's just a lot of explosions and a lot of chases and so we're just really drawn into those kinds of movies just because of the cinematic qualities and not necessarily because it's a great film so I think the money matters in that case because it enables people to make a very seamless film and I think it will be interesting to see movies that are from a different perspective that aren't made in the same Hollywood Canon that we have so I argue for an addition to representation Hollywood IR for a black cinema collective and of course this is not necessarily just the idea of a black cinema collective but you can think of this for any kind of multicultural or any kind of any kind of area that in which we're under represented in Hollywood so idea is a collective of people who feel underrepresented in order for them to have their voices heard so ideally a black cinema collective would number one define what ideals visions and narratives should be depicted for mass audiences number two foster the development of directors in their films through that throughout the production process three feature forgotten or invisible works of african-americans including black films of various genres and also adaptations of black writers so all those books that are great but we don't really get them adapted content really produced yet desired by audiences for see those films through the distribution and exhibition phases because I think there's there's not enough of the on the production side of independent cinema but I think there a lot more could be done to think about not only having independent filmmakers have their own films but actually you know have a meeting around the table and say well what kind of movies do we want to see in the black community and other communities what kind of movies do we want to see and let's let's be proactive about instead of everyone making their own independent film let's try to make this one really huge movie every single year and really make decisions about what that should be so sing it through the exhibition of distribution phases and if if you know partnering with Hollywood to distribute movies there's this great distribution system already ongoing and theater system so that part I think is already laid out and just partnering with them and the way that someone like Tyler Perry gets his movies distributed with Lionsgate and others so currently independent cinema it's not at all a formalized system but rather an assortment of individual project projects by emerging or established directors producers writers and filmmakers the projects are typically small in scale and shaped by random events rather than molded by organized regular occurrences so as a whole there is not as much planning and future outlook when it comes to the projects collectively there's no meticulous design production slate of movies emerging from a central institution only one-off productions by individuals so that's really I think the call to arms here is I think understanding what are some of those areas where we'd like to see a black directed movie you know maybe if there's a science fiction movie and we don't have any science fiction movies that have black cast maybe that's one place where some some you know everyone says Oprah because Oprah is a billionaire everyone looks to Oprah but you know how however to pull money together in order to make that picture outside of getting financing from Hollywood or there could be the work of some writer that could be an adaptation even movies about slavery like with 12 years of slave as the Oscar the Hollywood inside of it talks about the Oscar mentioned it's by a British director you know so what are the perspectives that directors with the history of slavery in mind what are their opinions and thoughts and I think I don't know that Hollywood would fund a movie of that vein so trying to think of movies that we would love to have that are outside of what Hollywood has traditionally funded and trying to find out ways to pull money together to get that to happen so more collaboration on that side so thank you for your attendance and I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments and questions [Applause] American director attacking British actors so of course is having Twitter yeah well since you published a book a few things have disrupted Hollywood completely most most noticeably large availability I should say opportunities streaming space yeah I think it's important and wonderful that there is that there is another space or other spaces you can say if you're talking about the digital world beyond Netflix and Netflix included where you have blacks making movies you know black directors and black creatives making movies I wonder to what extent are those movies like like I'm the one criticism would be there are those movies like still small and scale when it comes to their production qualities you know so I wonder is that enough of a challenge and that in that respect because I guess what the what the idea of talent going to Netflix usually a lot of the actors are going to whoever's paying them the most and so I don't know that we have as much of a draw for the best black talent on Netflix although in some cases there are a lot of movies that are being made that that could be in competition for for that so I think there is a potential for digital spaces like Netflix to be a competitive space that counters Hollywood and that could also be a place for people to make make creative and transformative cinema she did a very good job no thank you what I don't like in what I hear is like to pull over Twitter why do we eat on other black people and we're in the diaspora okay just because they're not born and raised in the United States I mean our ancestors weren't born and raised in the United States either you know at one point I don't I don't understand why that happens yeah I'm Saul most like you know there okay so we have the whole Jim Crow Hollywood thing so we're actually just doing that to our own black brothers and sisters I think when we say oh well that one's from England or that one's from here or what does it matter normally it makes the same discrimination that we do yeah another country so yeah I think that's a great question I think part of it is the idea of representation being so narrow and having few spaces so if you have only a few spaces and everyone's kind of clamoring for that those spaces so I think one of the problems is that they're just not a lot of not a lot of positions or not a lot of roles for blacks and in Hollywood so there's a lot of competition for those spaces and I think the other part is the idea that there could be some kind of misrepresentation and that that is not necessarily going with the person's identity but I think there could be some kinds of some kind of concern for whether people from other continents would understand enough about especially when they're playing like in the case of Harriet Tubman when they're playing a figure who's so important to American society so they wonder do they have that knowledge or are they going to study yeah yeah exactly yeah so there's sometimes there's this there's a sense that people think that people have a certain knowledge whether or not they do so that is a question of do the people have that knowledge I think that's really what it comes down to when it when it comes down to representation actors is that whoever is playing the role has to then do the work of getting to know the character and getting to know whether or not that character is a good fit for them so I think that the work in the studying does come into play but there is a tendency to then jump on identity politics and I think that's where your question goes and just watching today's show where they're doing a movie about Serena's father complexion you know and so people are upset about that in here the casting is becoming an issue yeah yeah yeah I think it's always that question of who who should play who is always a is always a very contentious issue when it comes to representing black characters partly because of the history and also because of the misrepresent the Tennessee that people could misrepresent in the history yeah and then the issue of colorism are we even for a lot of darker skinned actors they feel like they're overlooked by people who are lighter because of issues like colorism so yeah thank you mm-hmm that's a really good movie because it shows umbrellas in powerful positions and this problem all the time there's no fill of people's majority American Indians but yeah movie about anything yeah yeah so my thought is that the one the one part is getting more executives in Hollywood who could appreciate those kinds of stories and and open up their wallets for those kinds of stories you know executives that want to represent that multicultural us and that larger perspective and the other part is trying to get a lot of people whether it's like grassroots money I don't sometimes you can use the words grassroots you know how do you how do you raise like if you think about politics and political campaigns how do you get a few dollars from each people three dollars a person for all as a person you know is it possible to raise 50 million dollars to make a movie like that by doing it grassroots so trying different models to get movies made I think or that is the other part of that advice well thank you everyone [Applause]

Channel: reelblack

Views: 6,644

Keywords:

Id: zT9cjB2vCvM

Length: 42min 36sec (2556 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2019