TheLoop21.com

By: eharris (follow this member)
Tue, 05/19/2009 - 00:00

Hollywood has come a long way in its portrayals of blacks and other minorities. And yet at the same time, as strangely impossible as it seems, we haven’t come very far at all.

I remember back in the late '70s when Esther Rolle chose to quit her famous role as Florida Evans on Good Times, because she could no longer take the clownish caricature that was supposed to be her son, JJ, played by Jimmie Walker. She felt, as did many others, that the show and that character were being pushed too much into being a stereotype of how whites thought blacks behaved and clowned. So she took her stand. And good for her that she did.

But little if anything changed after she did that, at least in the business of Hollywood, where creating simple, saleable characters is just part of the business. And frankly, this is true for all ethnic groups in Hollywood, not just blacks or Hispanics. Hollywood, which in a broad sense includes New York City’s entertainment business, is simply about making what sells. Generally speaking, I’ve got no problem with that. The movie, television and record businesses are not about charity, they are driven by hard dollars. Nothing to complain about there.

The only problem comes when we look at how decisions are made about what is put out for entertainment consumption. The reality in the business of entertainment is that when it comes to putting out product — the movies, TV shows, records, etc. — there are really two audiences. The one most people think of is the end user or the viewer/listener. And if that was the only audience that mattered, then I think we would have a much better offering of entertainment that truly reflected the diversity of who we are, and what we care about as a very diverse black community.

But you see there is another audience, an even more important audience that determines your choices — the executives at the studios and at the top of the record labels. These are the people who made the decision back in the day to make JJ act more like a clown because they believed it was funny, or at least should be. And these are are the people who today still make the decision as to whether we get more movies like Soul Plane or The Cookout, movies which I am not putting down, only using as an example of one end of the spectrum, or more movies like, say Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus or John Singleton’s Rosewood, movies that were also about black people, but done in a more thought-provoking manner and showed a more intelligent or deeply human side. The bottom line is that the decision makers, the people who have the power over what we see, and what others believe about us, are still to this day almost entirely white. And it is their ideas of what is acceptably black, or what they believe will sell to blacks, that makes the difference in whether most films, television shows and even records in many cases, ever get past the first stage.

Now the question that comes to mind when I write these words is this: How can this be when we have Oprah, Denzel, Tyler Perry and so many other rich stars and athletes out there who are black? Let me deal with that.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Oprah and all those others are not movie studios or distributors. It isn’t just about putting up the money, though of course that matters. It is also about getting the movie out and into theaters, and there are only so many Magic Johnson theaters out there. Even with Oprah’s money, that only pays part of the cost. Distributors have to be convinced the people will come to see it. And those distributors have very rigid notions of what sells. Believe me, I have heard it. I personally have had white executives tell me with authority that they know what black people want.

Imagine that.

I believe they base this notion on the fact that black audiences, in their thirst to see black people on the screen, go to see superficial and silly movies. But what they don’t understand is that we would also love to have more choices, and if given more intelligent fare, would be willing to spend our dollars there too.

And let me also deal with the Tyler Perry thing. I salute Perry and am thrilled to see the brother doing so well. But his success as The One makes the point. It is like someone, or a few someones, have decided that well, there is one black that gets to make all the movies and TV shows, and we don’t need more. That’s not Perry’s fault. He should continue to make as many movies as he can. But there are many, many talented black writers, directors and producers out there who are not getting their shot, unless of course they are willing to deliver movies that fit a prescribed notion of what the black experience is or what will sell to us, and again, this is determined largely by white executives. So when we try to pitch something more meaningful, all too often we are not funded, and only given the carrot of funds when we are willing to do the usual shucking and jiving, or ghetto-based comedies.

Television networks have lately made a big deal about promoting diversity in programming, and yet how many black-oriented shows, featuring mostly black casts are there on network television today? George Lopez made the same point about Hispanics on TV when his show, the only one featuring a positive Hispanic family in a middle-class, or any class, setting, was taken off the air. Is it that there just are not enough Hispanics or blacks in this country to justify a network doing more Hispanic or black shows? Of course not. It is that the money people have crunched the numbers and figure they can still reach these audiences through other shows, more mainstream (which means white) programs, so they don't bother. They can drop a few black sidekicks into a show and satisfy the need. Again, it is about the money.

So what do we do about it? Tough to say. None of us are going to stop going to the movies or turn off our TVs. I’m not. So I think the only solution for us is to keep pushing to get more people of color in decision making positions behind the cameras and in those executive suites. That way in time, when executives are sitting around deciding whether something is "black enough" or represents the black experience, at least a black person will be in the room and hopefully can point out that our experience is more than being funny or ghetto based. Nothing wrong with comedies or the hood of course, but there is so much more to what we are.

So while we have progressed from JJ, we surprisingly have not moved as far as we might have hoped. In a way, we have fewer choices now, both on the large and small screen, than we did even back then. Hollywood seems to feel a bunch of Tyler Perry TV shows and movies should be enough for everybody. So the new way of thinking — or is it an old way of thinking?— seems to be that as long as one person is getting a shot, that’s good enough. Well, no it isn’t. And we must not stop making that clear.

Earnest Harris is a feature film producer, director and scriptwriter, and co-owner of Marlo Productions, a feature film production company based in Los Angeles. He is also the head of Harris Image Management, an entertainment publicity and public relations agency in the same city. He has written about race, politics and business for many years, and taught a course on communications as a Woodrow Wilson Instructor at The Lyndon Baines Johnson Graduate School for Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.