NYT: Too Good, Too Bad or Invisible

In 2013, Nelson George of the New York Times published an article called “Still Too Good, Too Bad or Invisible” following the Oscars, discussing the tendency for African-Americans to be misrepresented in the film industry as either unnaturally pure or inherently criminal—that is, if they are given any representation at all. In George’s words, “Are black characters given a real back story and real-world motivations? Are they agents of their own destiny or just foils for white characters? Are they too noble to be real? Are they too ghetto to be flesh and blood? Do any of these characters point to a way forward?” Unfortunately, there seems to be hardly any middle ground between the fabricated “too good” - “too bad” dichotomy for African-Americans in the American entertainment industry.

Take Viola Davis in The Help, 
for example. Her character, Aibileen Clark is portrayed as excessively pure, gentle and wise, which seems indicative of a hegemonic tendency to stereotype older African-American women as grandmother-like—especially when it comes to cooking, cleaning and other modern manifestations of an identity traditionally synonymous with the “help.” Although the stereotype is not inherently racist or unappreciative of African-American women, it lessens hegemonic viewers’ perceptions of them as equals by associating them with service roles, which can then have an effect on the way African-American women are perceived in the modern world. While countless films reinforce the “too good” stereotype of African-American women, the tendency is perhaps even more common with representations of African-American men in contemporary films. Many of Morgan Freeman’s characters are a good example of this, as his roles typically range from holy depictions like that of God in Evan Almighty and Bruce Almighty to wise roles like that of Nelson Mandela in Invictus and Eddie Dupris in Million Dollar Baby. Yet these depictions, like Davis’, are not inherently racist. Rather, they reinforce the notion that older African-American men are somehow inhumanly wise, which creates an incredibly difficult standard for black men in real life to attain. This begs the question, what is life like for the great majority of elderly African-Americans who aren’t overly nurturing like Aibileen Clark or bursting with godly wisdom like God or Nelson Mandela? How are they treated by hegemonic viewers of The Help and Million Dollar Baby?

The opposite affect occurs when African-Americans are disproportionately depicted as overly bad, criminal or deviant in the entertainment industry, which poses an even greater dilemma for real-life members of the black community. Almost any American gangster film demonstrates this kind of racist stereotyping, as gang leaders like Ving Rhames' character, Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction are typically played by exceptionally dangerous looking black men. This tendency, when combined with the over-representation of black male criminality in the news, creates the notion that black men are dangerous and should therefore be feared to some degree by a hegemonic audience. Likewise, African-American women tend to be portrayed as deviant, sinful and overly sexual in certain types of films, which supports the Jezebel stereotype and ultimately encourages both black and hegemonic men to perceive real-life black women accordingly. Take Tracy Camilla Johns' character, Nola Darling in She's Gotta Have It, for example. Darling's deviant, hypersexual "nature" causes her to be involved with three men at once, making her an exotic sex symbol that is then reproduced through the devaluation of African-American women in society. Such a portrayal is not representative of black women any more than it is of white women, yet it is far more common to see black women selected to play deviant sexual roles in contemporary American films. 

While both the "too good" and "too bad" portrayals of African-Americans in the entertainment industry are flawed and degrading to African-Americans, neither is worse than the total erasure of black men and women in the film industry. And unfortunately, this is often the case. It is not inconsequential that African-Americans are often absent in romantic comedies and are over-represented in crime/gangster films. In the words of Herbert Marcuse, author of One-Dimensional Man, "The fact that the prevailing mode of freedom is servitude, and that the prevailing mode of equality is superimposed inequality is barred from expression by the closed definition of these concepts in terms of the powers which shape the respective universe of discourse" (pg. 88).