The limited vision of black hollywood

I tried to read Push when it was being hyped to death back in the mid-90s. I didn’t get that far. It was just too ugly for me, and I found the unrelenting tragedy piled onto the main character to be laughable. I simply couldn’t take the book seriously. In the end, I concluded the rave reviews for the book were just the latest manifestation of what Ishmael Reed called “the black pathology biz.”

I understand why Push would be made into a movie. Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, the main black champions of the flick, were both victims of abuse, and they both love these type of stories. And white liberal Hollywood loves these “look at how much this poor nigga had to overcome to make something of themselves” plots. (There’s even speculation that Mo’Nique (!) will receive Oscar consideration for her performance as the monstrous mother.)

But we’ve seen this type of story dozens of times, and I can’t help that feel that black people need to demand more. And I don’t mean the “don’t you love our beautiful buppie world?” movies that we get on the other end of the spectrum. Why are these the ones that are chosen? When will black Hollywood start taking risks?

Of course, a big part of it is Hollywood’s aversion to risk, especially when it involves movies for black people. And the career trajectory of great risk-takers like Wendell B. Harris (Chameleon Street) and Charles Burnett (To Sleep With Anger) can’t be very encouraging to black filmmakers wanting to follow in their footsteps. As difficult as it is for black filmmakers to get a foot in the door in this industry, I can understand the inclination to not rock the boat.

But black filmmakers are doing us a disservice by settling comfortably into this rut. We have so many great stories to tell. We don’t need another version of Soul Food. We don’t need another Love Jones. We don’t need another blaxploitation parody (even if I am hyped for Black Dynamite). We don’t need another Drumline.

We need movies that’ll challenge our minds and our spirits. We need to see Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, with its black female space-based cult leader in a future, post-collapse U.S. We need Charles Johnson’s epic Middle Passage. We need Thulani Davis’ Voodoo and Santeria influenced horror mystery, Maker of Saints. John Edgar Wideman’s Homewood trilogy. David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident. Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle. Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child. The stories are there, we just need filmmakers ready to take up the challenge.