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| 12 Years a Slave |
Hollywood’s One Hundred Years a Slave
By Glenn Peppers
Sunday night, August 7th, I put on 12 Years a Slave on HBO’s On-Demand last night and thought I'd see what all the Oscar hype was all about! Well after roughly 38 or so minutes into this revolting, instigative, degradating movie. I could not take it any longer! Not so much that the images are hard to look at. That is not it! Being a black man, I've seen these images, (and ones worse than the ones in the film) and these same senerio's time and time again throughout my youth, and adulthood.
I am just tired of the fact that the only way Hollywood can come up with a way to award black actors is when that play a role depicting how defeated, downtrodden, beaten, and troubled black people are. We don’t win Oscars for how dramatic, victorious, or lets say, "Funny" we can be! However buffoonish, that situation could be as well.
Hell, I'd rather see Halle Berry win an Oscar for being an intelligent, crafty Wall Street woman, than for being a poor grief stricken, drunken waitress, screwing Billy Bob Thornton on a couch in an otherwise mediocre movie of "The Monsters Ball!"
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| Lupita Nyong'o |
I'm sick of Hollywood back-tracking black performers and our modes of talent and performing and entertaining skills back to Jim Crow levels of Al Jolson-esque, Minstrel Show Excrement! The academy deals out Oscars to black actors who play slaves, butlers, and house "N" like they're tossing Hershey's Kisses to a playground full of starving children! Again, its not that I'm sick of seeing the images, as I am tired of people portraying us in a light of subservience and shame over and over again! As this is being played out on the silver screen, I notice that people, black and white never learn from those terrible images and harsh dialogue! All I ever hear after people see so-called epic films like this is "Oh that was such a sad time for black people! But he got his freedom back in the end though!” Or. “That butler sho’ is a great and noble man!” I despise hearing comments like these about blacks portrayals in movies where black folks are always subserviently beaten and degraded, emotionally destroyed, and yet at the same time, noble sufferers. For this they deserve Oscars? Give me a break!
Hell there are people living, working and breathing real-world incidences out here everyday who suffer pretty much the same, if not more pain and aggravation from being black as many of the slaves did back in the 1800's! Believe me, not a lot has changed out here, depending on where you live, and how you live! These people who suffer these same indignities their whole life through should get an Oscar as well, don't you think?
Just for once, I'd like to see a person of color get an Oscar for playing the role of someone, intelligent, powerful and clever as well as beautiful! See there!... I saw you cringe when you read that! Even you think its a ridiculous idea! That is why Hollywood won't make a picture that empowers people of color! Because even you don’t believe it or take the idea serious! That is why we do not get to play the suave heroes or the leading men or the supermen in films, on a serious scale! If you notice whenever we do play superheroes, we have to be funny (“Meteor Man”), or silly second fiddle types who are completely unrealistic and/or A-Sexual in nature! Hell, if we even live halfway through a “B” horror movie, we'd be lucky!
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| Robert Townsend as "Meteor Man" |
Hollywood (as with most american film institutions) have no real respect for black folks! In a word, we're mostly just Comic Relief! That safe character who is always that one token black guy or girl in a crowd of white folks at a campground waiting to get bludgeoned by Jason or Michael Myers! Every once and a while Denzel or Will Smith will break out and play a bad ass cop or something!... Oh wait. That was back in the 1990's or around 2000, huh? Well, now days, Denzel is still playing bad asses. He's just a wee bit older now days! And if I see Samuel L. Jackson in one more movie, playing every black man in the universe, I'll scream! Hollywood, I beg you, give that gigantic stewing pot of waiting black actors a chance at playing in at least some of the new movies on the drawing board, for goodness sakes!
And no I will not watch the movie, "The Help" (Yes I’m that far behind in my movie going adventures) even though everybody tells me its a great movie! My wife says “The Butler” is a wonderful movie! Mind you I'm considering it, although I haven't drudged up the sincerity as of yet! I just think Hollywood could do better! Tyler Perry and Spike Lee can only do so much! I also feel that as many creative writers and producers and directors there are out here, there should be much better roles for people of color available in mainstream hollywood films! Like many people in the business think. I also feel that Hollywood does not want that to happen!
“Fund and produce your own movies!” you say? Believe me, Hollywood is a global Herculean Operation! They control distribution, marketing, and promotion, and the media! So unless you play by their rules, you’ll make a wonderfully brilliant film that will go nowhere, and play (maybe) a handful of theaters at best!
It was once said that a movie exec made it plain and clear in a board meeting that "A black man should never be allowed to play the hero in a film!" Well, I say to that guy, whoever he is; “He’s a puss draining dinosaur!” As a writer, an actor at heart, and an aspiring film director. There are people out here who will prove that man wrong! Those walls will come down! Just as you've seen from time to time in the recent past.
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Every once and a while, someone new breaks through the muck and quells the stereotypes. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen! Sooner or later, there's always another “Mr. Tibbs,” or a John Shaft, or a Bruce Lee to break the mold of that Asian “Chop Chop Hopsing stereotype. Knocking that gray area wall down to the ground, in a big way!
From Hattie McDaniel to Cleopatra Jones, the Stereotypes will be broken! Then one day in the future as we see fit, we'll make our own historic period piece films, on our own terms, about us! It will be then that we'll say to ourselves. "Who the hell needs a damned Oscar anyway!"
Glenn Peppers 8-9-14
