How the Movies Made a President

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Sidney Poitier with Katharine Houghton and Spencer Tracy in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” (Everett Collection, courtesy of The New York Times)

Sidney Poitier with Katharine Houghton and Spencer Tracy in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” (Everett Collection, courtesy of The New York Times)

In today’s New York Times, film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott argued that “Evolving cinematic roles have prepared America to have a black man in charge.” In light of  the many films–annoyingly too many–that confine black men to stereotypical, demeaning, and one-dimensional roles (the “yes massuh” slave, glorified gangsters, absent fathers, rappers with nothing else to talk about than rims and bling, oh and the latest trend of the fat-suit wearing, cross-dressing black comedian), my first response to Dargis and Scott was “Have you two missed the last 50 years of cinematic history?”

Well, clearly they think not. With examples like the presidencies of James Earl Jones in “The Man,” Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact,” Chris Rock in “Head of State” and Dennis Haysbert in “24”, Dargis and Scott argue that Americans were being prepared for “Mr. Obama’s transformative breakthrough before it occurred.”

Dargis & Scott: “Make no mistake: Hollywood’s historic refusal to embrace black artists and its insistence on racist caricatures and stereotypes linger to this day. Yet in the past 50 years — or, to be precise, in the 47 years since Mr. Obama was born — black men in the movies have traveled from the ghetto to the boardroom, from supporting roles in kitchens, liveries and social-problem movies to the rarefied summit of the Hollywood A-list. In those years the movies have helped images of black popular life emerge from behind what W. E. B. Du Bois called “a vast veil,” creating public spaces in which we could glimpse who we are and what we might become.”

As much as I agree that there have been some cinematic roles that have broken down and broken through barriers for black men, we have to keep in mind that the roles (“savior, counselor, patriarch, oracle, avenger, role model, hero”) played by these men are fictional – their successes and acceptance in America carefully crafted and plotted.

President Obama doesn’t have that luxury. He has no script.   – Grace A. Ali

Read more at The New York Times

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