{"id":8856,"date":"2021-02-23T07:50:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T12:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8856"},"modified":"2021-03-11T09:51:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T14:51:23","slug":"black-white-on-the-silver-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8856","title":{"rendered":"Black & White on the Silver Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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New Plaza Cinema<\/a> hosted a presentation last week by film historian Max Alvarez on how the movie industry has portrayed black-white relations for roughly the last sixty years. For decades, Hollywood had chosen the safe path and avoided interracial stories, but toward the end of the 1950s, cracks started appearing in the film industry\u2019s wall of opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both the United States and Europe, the trail-blazers were often independent filmmakers, who were less hampered by the challenges Hollywood faced. Independents were not as concerned about running afoul of local and regional censorship offices and, as a result, did not fall prey to the pattern of self-censorship affecting the big studios. It wasn\u2019t just political timidity that made Hollywood reluctant; there were economic considerations as well. They were simply not willing to risk losing the Southern U.S. market. All of this conspired to create what Alvarez called \u201can untenable atmosphere for artists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emergence and popularity of Miami-born actor Sidney Poitier<\/a> helped shatter many taboos. The doctor he played in No Way Out<\/em> (1950) and his breakout appearances in The Blackboard Jungle<\/em> (1955) and The Defiant Ones<\/em> (1958) showed that movies involving Black characters could be financially (and artistically) successful, even when they tackled sensitive topics. While his award-winning performances broke ground for Black characters (Lilies of the Field<\/em>, 1963; A Patch of Blue<\/em>, 1965; and To Sir with Love, <\/em>1967), he was criticized for taking on roles that were \u201ctoo nice.\u201d By the time Guess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner<\/em> was released (1967), a white woman marrying a black man\u2014especially if that man was Sidney Poitier\u2014didn\u2019t create the shock it would have a decade earlier; more important, it was a hit in Southern states too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1967, Hollywood could no longer ignore the Civil Rights movement, and Black characters began having a more realistic edge. Tougher stories appeared. Although five years earlier, To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> (1962) had tackled the issue of Southern racism, it was set in the 1930s, letting audiences reassure themselves that \u201cthat was then.\u201d In the Heat of the Night<\/em> (1967) with Poitier and Rod Steiger (pictured) brought viewers up-to-date. The film included \u201cthe slap heard around the world,\u201d when Poitier\u2019s character, police detective Virgil Tibbs, returned the slap of a racist white plantation owner (an action Poitier insisted be in the script if he were to play the part).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trope of the racist Southern sheriff was revisited in the 2018 film, Green Book<\/em>, set in 1962, when classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his white driver are arrested. Unlike Virgil Tibbs, Shirley doesn\u2019t hit back, he simply gets in touch with Bobby Kennedy. There still are racial justice stories to tell. Two brand new films available in streaming that delve into racial politics are HBOMax\u2019s Judas and the Black Messiah<\/em>, about the FBI informant<\/a> who betrayed Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (trailer<\/a>), and, on Hulu, The United States vs. Billie Holliday<\/em> (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Plaza Cinema hosted a presentation last week by film historian Max Alvarez on how the movie industry has portrayed black-white relations for roughly the last sixty years. For decades, Hollywood had chosen the safe path and avoided interracial stories, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Black & White on the Silver Screen - When Hollywood's barriers against portraying interracial stories tumbled down.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[269,1288,56,266,57,632,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-culture","category-film","category-history","category-movies","category-police","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2iQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8858,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions\/8858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}