Falcon and Winter Soldier
A few weeks ago I was watching the most recent show in the MCU, “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and in Episode 2 there is this moment where Sam (Flacon) and Bucky (The Winter Soldier) are shouting at each other on a street and cops pull over and make it their business. If you don’t know the show or the characters, it’s based in America, Sam is Black and Bucky is white. They proceed to ask Sam for his identification and what we get is an oddly placed iteration of the usual unwarranted stop and frisk of a Black man by the police.
The argument Sam and Bucky were having was about the fact there was a Black Captain America that was hidden by the government in part due to the abusive and dark nature of his creation.
So, we had a scene where we were exposed to the trauma of a fictional Black character, who had been abused by the US military. A fictional scenario with real roots (historical use of Black troops by the US). This was directly followed by the issue of anti-black bias in policing, something very real.
All in a show about a dude with mechanical wings and his friend with a metal arm. The same show that gave us yet another MCU Black sidekick in Hoskins and gave a Black avenger money troubles.
This didn’t really sit well with me.
Part of the issue here is that this writing feels a lot like virtue signalling. It is a problem I see more and more in popular cinema and television. The use of ‘Black Trauma’ creates some sense of depth, because that’s what’s selling - especially after the events of 2020.
While it is great to know that bias in policing survived the period of the blip in the MCU, the show’s directorate is very intentional in that it is bringing us on a journey that it believes will make us comfortable with a Black man wearing the stars and stripes. There was no way they were going to get to Sam being Captain America without addressing some of these issues. As a result, it feels a lot like they only go as deep as they feel they need to with the race discussions in the show, leaving them treading in very shallow water.
Hollywood’s handling of stories like this does create a few questions: does all Black Cinema (cinema by or involving Black people in significant roles) have to address race? Does it have to be political? Does it have to show and address our collective trauma? Does it have to dive into the depths of our truth?
Or are we allowed some peace in our cinema, some joy, some wonder, without facing the realities of life?
Ultimately, is there a way to balance truth and peace in Black Cinema?
Black Trauma
When I talk about Black Trauma I mean the daily struggles of black people, racism, bad policing, anti-Black rhetoric, micro-aggressions, racial stereotyping, the history of abuse by world superpowers of our people and our continent. The effects of all these forms of oppression that as Black people we experience early and often in life.
Slavery Films Phase
In the last decade Hollywood has churned out several notable slavery films: 2012 releases of “Django Unchained” and “Lincoln”; “12 Years a Slave” (2013); “Freedom” (2014); “Free State of Jones” (2016); “The Birth of a Nation” (2016); “Harriet” (2019). 2020 releases of “Emperor” and “Antebellum.”
In the Black community there’s been an understanding that most of these films don’t have the best handling. There was just a general yearning for a break, which is understandable. Last year the allies were experiencing ‘ally fatigue’ after a few weeks of speaking up for Black people, it makes sense that as Black people we would get tired of seeing several films depicting the worst parts of our collective history.
Following that there have been increasing calls for ‘Black [insert genre that’s typically white led] Films’, that are without race struggle and without an attempt to be political. The major issue with this is the reality that Blackness is political. ‘Blackness’ was created to be the powerless opposite to ‘Whiteness’, to ignore that dynamic in our films is to perpetuate falsehoods through our art. In the end this would only really work against our efforts to bring our truths to light.
No Truth Without Struggle
There is no prevailing peace in being black, when you can get shot by those meant to serve and protect for an air-freshener, when videos of your people being man handled show up on your timeline, regularly, without warning and without any sign of slowing down.
To have Black films without Black struggle is fantasy. Fantasy isn’t all bad - cinema is meant to be some form of escape. The issue is that when those fantasies become elevated, brought into focus and continually lauded, they end up taking space that should be reserved for real conversations about our reality and how to change it. ‘Black is King’, ‘Black Panther’ – both great moments, that provide no tangible advancement to the Black community beyond being cool pieces of art, examples of Black art at scale, and representation.
When our art shifts the focus away, our collective plight is made second to more individualistic issues. More problematic is that this plays into the thinking that if we stop focussing on racism it will disappear. It won’t.
Black Torment Is Not Art as Reflection
While cinema can be seen as a means for escape it also serves a deeper function in that it is a vital part in society’s means of reflection. The problem is when this reflection is done through funhouse tempered glass.
By all means, Black creators, draw from your real life traumas to create your art; the issue is when this is done by white people or to satisfy a white audience.
Most notably in recent history is the shadow dwelling son of ‘Get Out’ - ‘Them’. Put mildly, this series is Black Trauma porn. What Peele did with ‘Get Out’ was revolutionary. He took the nuances of black and white power dynamics and made a brilliant horror thriller out of that. In 2019 HBOs ‘Watchman’ did something similar for the superhero genre by taking the hero’s typical origin trauma and making it race based.
What we’re seeing now is the creation of a formula that takes Black trauma and throw it into anything to draw an audience and turn a profit.
Let me be clear that there is a difference between black people being in a horror movie (Like ‘Us’) and a film based around Black Trauma (Get Out, His House, Them, Lovecraft Country).
When doing the former, the crux of the story would work just as well with characters of any race. When doing the latter, Black involvement is an absolute necessity to the core of the plot and as Jason Okundaye of The Guardian puts it, the piece of art risks becoming an extension of the violence it seeks to portray.
Lovecraft Country is an example of a show that works hard at balancing the elements of creating horror while respecting Black trauma. The show occasionally slips up but overall does significantly better at moving through the historical fact of Black suffering, at times even criticising the source material for its bigotry.
There’s always the [insert genre] as a vehicle for social issues debate so, here’s why it’s not useful and deeply problematic to consistently create solely out of Black trauma.
a. No Interrogation
The shows don’t interrogate Black issues. Not why they’re there, not how they got there, not what to do about them, no radial political solutions or ruminations about how to pull us out of that. They simply show it. Their purpose is not to move forward the interests of Black people.
For too long we’ve applauded films for ‘starting the conversation.’
We’re forever having the same conversation started over and over again, then after the show it never goes anywhere. When the conversation is started again by the next show or the next blockbuster film everyone is made to feel okay that their politics hasn’t progressed since the last show because we’re all still at the start of the conversation.
These shows are never an examination of the depth of the truth but instead just an abstraction of struggle, that is already well-documented.
b. Grandiose presentation
That abstraction of struggle is always off. We receive inaccurate representations of black struggle through white lenses or over the top amplifications of our struggles for white viewers.
It’s often the move to make racism this big, overt, unruly monster, out to scream nigger and whip all Blacks into submission. The truth more subtle than this. It’s walking into a Cape Town restaurant and seeing all white patrons, all Black staff and a white hostess. It’s death by a thousand cuts; the sword is oppression and that death is a slow cutting down of self-worth. The caricature of racism usually found in these stories allows the white viewer to see that monster, distinguish themselves as separate from that depiction, then go to work and call Siphosethu “Sips” because their name is too difficult to pronounce.
c. Created for white audience
Lastly it’s not helpful because it is created for a white audience, and not for their education but for their enjoyment. As a genre horror is already in the dog box for literally making it a staple to kill the black person off first.
‘Them’ comes around and decides to make the object of the series to put a Black family through the most horrific and morbid racist lashing out possible. In the first episode they literally say, “they are here because they’ve come from worse. . .we’re going to have to make this worse than worse.”
No Black person wants to watch a Black family get tormented by their white neighbours in ten 1 hour installments (and the promise of a second season).
Like the countless viral videos of Black people being brutalised by police, this is Black Trauma Porn. Its modern minstrelsy in horror form. In the case of ‘Them’ it trades bold for sadistic, and really makes no attempt to hide this. Black people have died and are dying by white hands; that’s a reality that needs to stop being turned into Friday night’s entertainment.
“No Justice, No Peace”
I don’t think we should be looking to film to completely escape from reality. That yearning for escape can turn into a trap to never change. We should not be searching for the illusion of peace, but we definitely need reprieves. Spiritual rest is important, but it has its place because it is a necessity for the individual hoping to sustainably participate in the struggle. However, creating a culture where artists are consistently pressured against substance feeds into the idea that it is okay not to be political. In reality inaction against the prevalent system is a form of showing satisfaction with the status quo. Building struggle free fantasy is not just inaction it is distraction.
Finding Balance
In Episode 2 of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe Anthology, ‘Lover’s Rock’, we get a pure expression of Black Joy. Watching that, for the first time I understood why white kids love saying they yearn for another era. It was nice to see a different time in a light that is a warm cinematic masterpiece. As Black kids we often get culturally relatable but never without the accompanying trauma. Struggle almost always takes up the majority of the space. This is a film just dedicated to young black joy, a good night.
Despite the focus simply being a party McQueen is able to do this in a way that does not ignore the reality that these safe spaces have to be created within our communities. We’re shown this through brief moments of tension with the very few white characters in the film. He explores that although we can be ourselves amongst each other there still exists this need to dilute our being to be more palatable when interacting with the rest of the world.
This balance in lighter content is not unprecedented, Atlanta is weird as hell and it’s just Black people being themselves and filled to the brim with awkward moments and subtle commentary on race and class. The same goes with the Boondocks, which is hilarious - unapologetically Black and very brash about addressing the nuances of black issues.
Last Thoughts
Our loop movies don’t all have to revolve around a black man being shot in the street by police (‘See You Yesterday’, ‘Two Distant Strangers’); we definitely don’t need more ‘race horrors’; and we don’t need to create a Black Back to the Future. We could have a young time travel sci-fi with some black kids who acknowledge that there’s no ways they’re going back in time for obvious reasons, and we could have more films about revolutions, or more depictions of Struggle heroes directed Black radical minded individuals.
There is a way to make space for and balance the elements of Joy and Truth. There should be an allowance for these things to be skewed in different concentrations for different films but we should remain weary of any film that tries to provide one of these elements without the other.
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