Al Sharpton and his Action group
were interested in calling for a Boycott of 2015 Academy Awards for lack
inclusion of African American films, especially the ‘Selma’ produced by Oprah
Winfrey starring David Oyelowo and Oprah Winfrey. But the real issue is the
lack of African American films at the theaters in the last 10 years. Whereas Selma is a difficult film to make
especially when it addresses the relevant issues of film production, it may
raise the expectations at the Academy Awards.
Selma is not ‘Boyz the hood’, ‘how
Angela got her groves back’, ‘Menace II society’, ‘New Jack City’, ‘Do it right
thing’, ‘She got to have it’ many of the films done directed by Spike Lee - some
of his films a bit boring – others John Singleton and Mario Van Peebles, and in
some extent, David Clark Johnson, Tim Reid, and Julie Dash But these are all
mainly a product of the 90’s, may give hints of Selma and conspicuous absent of
African American films at the 2015 Oscars.
For what is missing and it’s
relevancy to the American society, no film just like no production stands alone
and in 2015 Oscar, Selma stand alone. Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington have
all won the Academy Awards, but this is not because of their trying, but like
Gooding Cuban Jr and Lawrence Fishbone, these acting recognition is not without
the pathfinders such as Sidney Poitier and Paul Robeson who were the in the
30’s and 40’s the American Super Star – Robeson didn’t win anything from the
Academy. But the question is whether or not they continued, for true actor or
film director expect you to create the industry he or she is part off. It is
all connected….
Oscar 2015 87th Academy Awards
winner for best picture (Birdman – The unexpected virtue of Ignorance)
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and last year’s Oscar was won by Alfonsu Cuaron,
both of whom share a characteristic. There will be others from that rising pool
of talent given their involvement in studios that emphasis day to day
production, which African Americans don’t really have saving for exclusively
such as Oprah and OWN. If these men and women involved in the processes of film
production such a Selma film, the outcome may or may not be different. Although
between Babel and Birdman is a dimension in films that need to be balanced,
there is no doubt that nurture and nature find their way in a theater with edge
when there is competence.
Julie Dash stated is quoted in
popular source that, "I stopped making documentaries after
discovering Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara, and Alice Walker.
I wondered, why can't we see movies like this? I realized I needed to learn how
to make narrative movies." Julie Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’ – a
product of lush imagery and dream cast between lives lost in Georgia in what
was called Ibo landing in the 19th hundred concerning a group of settlers
kidnapped from Africa drowned than subject to slavery. But this is not where
Selma is coming from or what it all means, for all intent, the Selma scored
less its budget in spite of its late rally.
Whether the story was connected to
the one of the last king of Bini ‘Oba’ extraction cannot be saved historically
given the presence of Arabic writings and use of Gullah. They were obviously a
crass of indigenes between mainland Ibos, farthest Yoruba or Ijaw* and Bini
from hinter-land in what is now Nigeria. It will however not explain the Selma
at the theaters.
In the 80’s before it was a
different taste; ‘Coming to America’, ‘Color Purple’ ‘Last Dragon’ etc.,
directed mainly by non-African Americans. In the 70’s were increasingly lingered
towards Blaxploitation, Buck and the Preacher, Sweet Sweetback, Uptown Saturday
Night, Super fly, Shaft, Black Caesar, Three the Hardest, etc., but their
success also rely mainly on characters from African American legends and from
issues that affected African Americans directly, including the fans. But these
films appealed directly to American audiences, especially African American, it
tackled issues that were relevant and issues that mattered the most. Any Black film director must first and fore mostly attempt to please before anyone else –
that is going by Sidney Poitiers. It will not also explain Selma and African
American films at the 2015 Oscars.
Without the patronage of these African
American at the theater, nearly all films including historical narrative such
as Malcolm X by Spike Lee – which Denzel Washington gave a kind of shine – will
all fail. In the late 60’s, 70’s and some part of 80’s was the consistent Drama’s
such as Titus Andronicus and Othello played by excellent actors; Morgan Freeman
as Aaron at Shakespeare Company for New York City and others in later years,
James Earl Jones as Othello in the same outing in New York and others that follow,
especially Laurence Fishburne in 1995 production of Othello.
But it may prove something else,
that a production need to tow a certain if needs to succeed, above all, there
is issues of intended audience and lack of productive auteurs among some groups,
for if we suggest that the Selma could have done better, the story about the
Tuskegee men starring Laurence Fishburne and a comparative Red tail starring
David Oyelowo as Lucky, didn’t meet its target. The acting in Red Tails was not
bad, his accent tipped off a bit unlike ‘Middle of Nowhere’ where the actor and
the star actress were just natural and phenomenon. The production quality of
Red Tails was strictly one dimensional and nowhere on the same pedestal as
‘Idle Wild’ and like Selma, the stories present good conversation and the
characters dive sideways.
The script therefore did little
justice to the characters and its development. It seems that David may have a
knack for acting but needs a film with longer projection or mini-series to
vitiate on his talents. This is why you need more than one acting African
American Academy.
A study of Sidney Poitier’s
successes at the theater including his ‘Buck and the Preacher’ will have all
flopped at the theaters without the patronage of African American audience.
There are lots of historical narratives with stylish dispatches that many Black
entering the theaters will have little problems choosing with to see. But in
terms of what really motivates an audience, perhaps a trend it’s an important
way of guesstimating what they like.
According to Sidney Poitier in a briefing he gave in the 60’s about his
successes at the Box office, he mentions that you ‘…have to pursue those
subjects that will satisfy a black community…on the bases of entertainment.’ His success in the 60’s and 70’s was due to
this premise which need to be emulated for this generation of African Americans
film makers looking to define a genre for themselves.
Ivan Dixon’s involvement in a long
chain of movie and production such as ‘Something of Value (1957), Porgy and
Bess (1959), A Raison in the Sun (1961), carefully define era, but his attempts
at Cross overs were not exactly successful. In his words which appear in Melvin
Donaldson ‘Black Directors in Hollywood’ (2003), he is quoted as saying that
“There are human situations that people have regardless of color…I just want to
see it take place from the point of view of the Black ethos or social group.”
Although Donald Boogle books on
African American film making industries is also important, lacking perhaps the
issue of budget and final cuts, and why some of the films made money others did
not. With regards to Michael Shultz and his dazzling careers in African
American films, he was better known for making American films, which
incorporates basic elements of the society. His values are not well celebrated
at the films, but cinematic opening of large aerial set pieces which narrows to
the story line was used by Eddie Murphy and more than once.
The success of ‘Nutty Professor’
based on original production was based on the combination of many things, but
to the point that the Eddie Murphy’s ‘Coming to America’ remained a Box office
hit for an African American film – majority of the actors were African
Americans. It is from the engines of
self-imaging no less in wealth no less in person no less in ideas can pictures
meeting the needs of Africa Americans for a start triumph, and the Academy
Awards will become over time a different matter. In one word, the Academy
Awards nomination is secondary recognition whatever the politicos - Dreamgirls and Eddie Murphy
notwithstanding – the winning it’s a consolation and not the prize. The prize
is the Box office and something close and hardly separate from it it’s making
pictures that people really want.
Race is a passport that bad for
traveling in the United States, but a man’s fowler fortune do not prepend to
the moral dictates of others, for when we dismember the normative caricature of
general theories which presumes all good to have begun and ended with a lone
star or lone kind, we are fruitfully misleading the vultures that await the
tarnish and descriptive flesh of the souls long suppressed aging differently.
But none of these above cited
movies can actually be said to have to have won anything, especially, Malcolm X
saving for later day shows such as 12 years a Slave which came through at the
buck and heels of Quentin Tarantino’s Django which is less of method acting and
shooting, more original, follows a reactionary tendency of an Actor with
taciturn and Christopher Waltz best Performance yet, earned 12 years a Slave a
standing at the Oscars.
The Better Angels of African American nature in films is experiences
through Comedy which is a chain of perceptive athleticism of the audience in
question, for with all respect in question, the ability to laugh over things in
America is inherited bias of its historical past, but it also mirrors the
saying of Poitier that if you intent on making the bucks at the entertain
industries, you should as an African American make films that the Community
identify with.
Selma is very absorbent and one of
the films that tow new lines from the old. But from the imaginative reality of
the stars and the unsparing performance that need a new coming to redeem from
orphan indulgence of Hollywood films. Perhaps a film about the attempt of an
African American trying to solve the problems of HIV distilling HIV virus from
Ebola and from the Zaire Interleukin as opposed to Congo Virus which descended
from the Monkeys, may throw some sound on the organ that manufactured Selma for
our viewing audience.
These films take time, and no one
movie stand aside even among the main stream others, the film industries is
inter-related, does not mean that there are cases of attrition which Al
Sharpton inferred, inveighed and in vaction
threatened act on. The message is saved in the exercise, for only in mock
exercise of the forgoing of other vital stream of American industries without
specifying it, can we in reality miss the real point.
II
For what is missing and it’s
relevancy to the American society, no film just like no production stands alone
and in 2015 Oscar, Selma stand alone. Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington have
all won the Academy Awards, but this is not because of their trying, but like
Gooding Cuban Jr and Lawrence Fishbone, these acting recognition is not without
the pathfinders such as Sidney Poitier and Paul Robeson who were the in the
30’s and 40’s the American Super Star – Robeson didn’t win anything from the
Academy. But the question is whether or not they continued, for true actor or
film director do not expect you to create the industry he or she is part off.
It is all connected….
But in a voice that speaks the
loudest including the receding and current members of the Academy’s lack of
opulence and representation of African American films at the Oscar is perhaps
due to lack of Day time dramas that defines American inner African American
Societies. There are no real time dramas which provide a training ground for
African American producers, actors and film directors; the whole film making
unit will really benefit from hands on training and exercises and with it may
come the sense of originality in products line.
There are self-directed autographs
that tend to reflect Africa America movies without these people first of all
waiting for some super man to appreciate the films. Like the Italian saying, ‘Blood
watches blood’, it pales from reason to grant audience to a story that does not
reflect your trials and triumphs, perhaps a bit of artist such as Steven
Spielberg and the Color Purple but the film is based in limelie to Michael
Shultz ‘Purple’ and based on decided good book Alice Walker.
Film making is a sponsorship process,
it vivifies the long term association of certain drama series with champions
and captain of the industries seeking to do it again. To raise money a film
studio either goes begging for it - through Banks, But it hard work to break
the jinx which some of us by star do break, but continuity is the success and
failure of any industries, especially African American film industries. You are
seeking more original production of movie as part of entertainment and there is
no complains about African American movies and films industries which is close
to its music industries. It’s all in the Context.
Lack of genre in acting is
contributing factors, Steve Hardy has given life to the Apollo Theatres –
during the opening day of its renovation I was there in person at Apollo
Theater at 125th Street and Broadway on this day, and a few block away from the
Apollo is a so called African American National Theater or National Black
Theater which only a sparing of the African America Stars, Authors, and Theater
goers has visited.
The vignette posse of the snake
symbols, the convocation of near voodoo imbroglio with the theater was a
reasonable strategic turn off, but then, the theater is quite small and under
Bloomberg as Mayor New York, majority of the churches in Harlem came under
primitive takeover preambles and the Theater suffered in quality and finances
for payment.
Of the trying figures of late 80’s
Harlem and eventually made his presence known in Harlem is Mervin Johnson,
known today for Magic Theaters which was first launched in Harlem, took off in
Harlem and hired assortment of African Americans, but the poverty rate of
Blacks in New York under Bloomberg era which we need not rehearse. Having in
interest which Amiri Baraka ‘…spoke highly off - it’s a disconnect between the
stars who are now part of the larger interactive and the common African
Americans that have other problems with it besides the issue of identity.
For that, a return to the
statuesque it’s very important and the similitude between States in the America
where African Americans are still active participating need to connect their
expression different and create industries which the best of us are made for,
for films in this case, perhaps with experts for production and training and
breeding grounds for both actors and directors, for line producers and
production specialist and the distribution and sales who work with owners or
part of the ownership.
II
One studios is no enough and a few
loosing track of their conscious ability is not enough, failure to grasp this
very helm of productive abilities will still diminish, movies such as Super Fly
readily set the stage for Fashion in Harlem and several parts of the State of
New York, it defined an era, it defined the turn coats from the Shaft
impersonation, It has sort to exploit the business opportunities for African
American society by creating a money sustaining industries, which are far and
few in between.
But opulence it’s important, if not
in movie at least in Music. William Shakespeare ‘Merchant of Venice’ ; ‘A man
that has no music in himself or is not moved by the concords of sweet sounds
it’s fit for treason, spoils and stratagem, his ways are dull as the night and
his movement as dark as Erebus and in all, let such man not be trust’. Some movies reward us with experience and
however suppressed and however staged in variety of language, creed, or
language, it is important it lifts us for at least a conspicuous few hours with
people important to us.
Cyril Fielding, a British educator
in E.M Forster’s ‘Passage to India’
“The world is a globe of men who are trying to teach one another and can
best do so by the help of good will plus intelligence” – (first appeared in the
book ‘Beyond the Epic; the Life and Films of David Lean’ (2006),). These assumptive
facts and the lack of generosity of African American film making and funding,
may occasionally contribute to the short falls in competence but there are
other things from a film from Selma or like Selma, which may add to the
incident of fashion. Sybil Thorndike apparel in the 50’s was a clever letter to
the society about the impact of film making to dressing, but Marilyn Monroe.
What and how a film about
‘Pithoris’ (murdering a beloved with many bullets in names of rogue entrance
and false break in) leads to different conclusion it’s only due to the stars
and the line producers, producers; film makers; and directors involved. The
story if treated and viewed from a vintage of the others can assume a different
ending sometimes averse to what happened, when and how. In this opening and
reconnoiters view of the lame expectation of coloration or discoloration in
media and television, business and human psychological interpretation of the
self (infantile psychology as a premise) from the apses of confidence built
from themes and other emotional apses of cultural and mental representation
leads one tail of the other ending, confine the expression to a patina of
experience and from that experience filled with impure material, we discover
that they are different from us.
Assume that we shoot for instance
an African American in another world and from a different world, we experience
degrees of restrain in handling sensitive matters, when the depth of the
cultural history is shallow, we catch up to the past by sending good after it.
Images of slave trade is one elementary position anyone could reach for in
discussing the history of African Americans, that these images even in all
secondary and primary translation replay pains no longer at ease in 21st century
purchase a second meaning of the representation and culture.
Put it elegantly, the culture of
representation and meritocracy of amelioration is a self-indulging capacitance
that recreates images as according to kinds, can only suffer in quality when it
matters the most given the tendency for it to happen as they come to appear,
the look of materials from the movies are no idle imagination but working and
proficient memorials. For if we see American as a culture remotely dissent over
the boundary of types, it is not because of the racial intricacies of the
society, which should in fact be celebrated, the discernible of the colors
and types it’s rigmarole which need to be understood have the capacitance
inveigh with hope.
Race is a passport that bad for traveling
in the United States, but a man’s fowler fortune do not reprehend to the moral
dictates of others, for when we dismember the normative caricature of general
theories which presumes all good to have begun and ended with a lone star or
lone kind, we are fruitfully misleading the vultures that await the tarnish and
descriptive flesh of the souls long suppressed. Black television is a step is a
right direction, it is an example of how a people can represent themselves
however distinct and however shallow, but it reminds us on what it’s still
positive about African Americans in US but being the only group that work these
lines, there is poor quality entertainment which is the scarcity of precisely
African Television would offer.
The Business of public television
dedicated mainly and ultimately by Africans Americans is shockingly absent,
that at least, out of the 1000 approved channels, we should have any given day
100 Channels solely and ultimately dedicated to Blacks or African Americans,
another 50 channels if we are to deal with the colored people and special races
in the Country. We speak carefully of the finances of possible for these
ventures, and we speak entirely of the culture of demonstration when money is
planted in one’s neighborhood and harvested according to kinds.
Imagine African American business
that there is such a thing as profit, which is the ultimate wish of all asunder
and all system dynamic, but the lacing of these profit line is a mirage
obviated from those who patronize it the more, we notice that we are no longer
important in the party and assembly line we started. If these were not to mean
profiling or racial reconnoiter it leads to some assumption about the poverty
of Blacks in a culture that is also equally theirs.
In common theory of rich and
affluent which in money language is different from Wealth and Foundation, these
skirmish and surged item no longer appeal, what works is money, from any source
and from any means, and here, nearly every group of the Americans can pick and
choose who they want to sale and if not largely from fronting of talent
exploitations of a repressed market value who will be happy to Uncle Samuel
Jackson in hit and run movies, where he had starred in over 120 movies along with
over 80 featured films. There is also Will Smith who has made more money
Studios and productions than many African Americans and many in the Industries,
full stop. The only African American Actor that has generated more money than
perhaps any African Americans is Eddie Murphy.
But of these three including Will
Smith, only Jackson could be said to have actively taken Black film production
seriously – if there is such a thing. Tyler Perry – another definition of
neo-conservative film making makes pictures that would be taken seriously where
other filmographic among the elderly blacks to mention Eddie Murphy and his
‘Coming to America’ is viewed side by side with any Perry’s.
Perry has matured, but his antic
needed a second coming, his mien in television is large discipline but in
quality of material available in total America he is a new comer, he has tapped
into the main vents of Americans fiber – the African American - he has not done
better than Step-in Fetch in, all laughable parable of a past that will not
die, died in Perry.
Perhaps in company of the more successful African American
business men and women, some of them lacking his generalissimo, a successful
partnership between African American portraiture and struggles at money making
and film making was partly achieved with Perry. But look the films his making
and it may explain the audience, that they are interested in Comedy with reason
is box office invitation. But he is just one vital break neck maverick that is
well documented especially the mama-diya (madiya) which he created from a
caricature in his stunts in New York, a place where he did not do well. Why he
worth is so well and much in so much few years, I say he is a neo-liberal black
with surpluses miens for conservative black-hood.
This is a suppressed item given its
trillions of dollars- worth only by patronage. It is a market that is divided
across meaning and time, with many looking to finger roll of these idiots who
have nothing else to offer than have it delivered to them. The total mass of
all that is given divided the equal measure of none that is given is equal to
abundance of something which nothing is more than half of nothing trying in
this case.
With African American audience is a
suppressed asset and from Selma there is not whole lot that we are expected to
have learnt other than what we know transpired, but a few years ago, Oprah
Winfrey also did some movie about the Whitehouse ‘Butler’ although the old
documentary and docudrama was far more compellingly. With the black audience, what
we are looking at is a suppressed asset that is in fact dragging the American
behind, to an extent that patronizing Black final products of any types is not
been disloyal to the Americans or un-Americans, it is fact part of a God-given
heritage, part of the general global demand that businesses in US with some
degree of bottom-line can vest with on any community of interest without
marking distinction with and without the self-imposed restriction.
At least Film making industries are
left open to all asunder, but in all capacity saving the blighted BLACK
Entertainment Television that is mainly still Black in retention but the
possession of secondary buyer, US film industries is achingly rooting for black
entrepreneurs - at least in formative level of film production without sinking
into historical narratives are derived genre. The cases of say Oprah Winfrey
and her chain of Television outfits, and the Tyler Perry are considered sine
qua non in US only from where Winfrey stands, for if as I argued that
production qualities of Perry based production is given the comparative light
of other production houses in US, it would have suffered reversals.
But from the fact that he is broken
the ceiling suggest that his talent was far more trying that his production
until recently essentially shows. The Carton networks where some Nigerians
experimented with could not survive, because of patronage on one hand and poor
quality on the other. It briefly survived because it had its ways in South
Africa and mainly implies that patronage failure of that arm of the television
was not responsible; they probably didn’t break enough ceiling as did say Tyler
Perry or enough daring as did and still do Nollywood which arrived from
nowhere. What some estimators of Film production present as a possibly reason
why a film hits and misses, is half the number from Chinese neighborhoods or
China towns in US.
In fact it is said that what you
need to make any films successful in New York is a good measure all Chinese or
Asians in New York only. Here is the punch line, or a strikingly skewered few
from China Town has the time and day for any American production, but these, in
true Americans spirit, would line for hours for the latest Chinese flick with
assurances from homeland China. It does not betray the willingness to find your
foot in US, but in comingled themes of Hollywood based movies; it is largely difficult
to find Asians in very key roles, not that Jackie Chan and Jet Li and the
Michele Yeoh are not picturesque but from meaning of stardom these are known
all over.
Film making, like the Television
shows reflecting blacks and blacks alone or blacks mainly is a dead rat theme
on how to make money the easy way, but between price comparison and comparative
prices, the chances of anyone in any industry making money is reflected by the
quality of healthy competition between the ‘lions’ in the business. Perhaps alligators
is what you have in mind. When and if one production dominates for a population
within 30 million, these cannot be measured a significant blimps in the world
of film making. It may seem that there are blacks in all classes of businesses
and others in all classes of businesses, but these are called American
Television authority, does not mean we and they are eagerly well represented,
it means they and we are eager to make and break the frontiers of American film
industries by baying for representation under the sole canopy of our fellow
citizens of full or near full estimate of having America a leader in the world
with as many of us as possible.
Even Donald Bogle books on Black
films is distilled from the vistas of ‘Sweet Black’ and the Blaxploitation as
they term it, and that his discipline on Black Films ranging from the Oscar
Micheaux to Sweet Sweat back, prove its accounting on how the church and other
Christian organization gave weight of support and avenue for these kinds of
movies it’s stuff of history and it can do better with adequate enough films,
yearly. Perhaps the argument that exclusion between Whites and Blacks after the
turn of the 19th and 20th century it’s no longer the issue is also secondary,
the intellectual photosynthesis on African American identity took a largely
active feature and the church readily proved the right avenue for these film
resources, shot and displayed by Micheaux.
Interpretation of African American
experience in these films gave way to the new realities of the whole process of
film making as a primary force of entertainment in a new information age. But
the money which is devoted to meeting up to date production and commercializing
and promoting these films and other entertainment forms answers to something
else, and there are long term comfort of the future economy. The African Company and Groove Theater and
the actors such as Paul Robeson gave meaning American film industries, but like
the emphasis on the profit curve may be reasons why these challenges privileged
discourses on black is manicured to the realm and not without reasons that fans
don’t want to hear that, yet that reason is that fact that in the industries
where these black are champions are in keeping to some past, Machiavelli in
recherché that laughter has been for the public tap dancing, display a perfect
anecdote for obvious lives in permeated denials.
1
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