Precious.

All of Tyler Perry’s films.

Avatar (ok Avatar is not really a black film, but all of the non-white main actors were the Navi’s in the film).

What do these films have in common? They have received in general both commercial and critical praise.

What else do they have in common? They fit the formulaic and stereotypical formats of mainstream film and use of stock characters to draw audiences in. Also, they prove the lack of promotion for more diversity in Black (and other people of color) film.

Now, I am not saying that these movies should not have been made or that they should not be seen. All of these movies do have good elements to them. However, just as any other art, these works need to be watched with a conscious mind and parts of it should be criticized. No one watches anything with a blank mind and no one should have to either.

Also, when I talk about diversity, I do not mean only more positive images in contrast to negative images, but also less of the stereotypical images that Hollywood and audiences expect (there tends to be set ways in which both positive and negative images are shown, including ones involving race). It is more about thinking outside the box and breaking down limitations and expectations because that is the only way the world ever changes.

When Spike Lee said that Tyler Perry’s movies were “buffonery and coonery,” to a certain extent, I did agree with him. This is all of what he said:

“Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is “coonery” and buffoonery. I know it’s making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better. … I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns” and “House of Payne”) and I am scratching my head. … We got a Black president and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?

We’ve had this discussion back and forth. When John Singleton [made “Boyz in the Hood”], people came out to see it. But when he did “Rosewood,” nobody showed up. So a lot of this is on us! You vote with your pocketbook, your wallet. You vote with your time sitting in front of the idiot box, and [Tyler Perry] has a huge audience. We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make, or that John Singleton or my cousin Malcolm Lee [would make]. As African Americans, we’re not one monolithic group so there is room for all of that. But at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it harkens back to “Amos n’ Andy.””

He did make a point. The first time I saw Diary of Mad Black Woman, I actually loved the film, but, by the time I saw the shows, House of Payne and Meet the Browns, and the movie, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, I was tired of Tyler Perry and his films and shows. I felt as if I was being inundated with the same stock mammy and “Amos n Andy” character types and similar patriarchal stories of having “a knight in shining armor,” or “the perfect man” rescuing you. I just got bored.

Then Tyler Perry decided to try something different with producing Precious and once again I was not very interested. Yes, I could tell that it would be a moving and powerful story and that it needed to be told. But I feel like I have heard and saw that story already. Oh, look at the tragic lives of black people living in the ghetto! Some people even called it “poverty porn” (just look at all the hood movies produced that are very popular, even though there are some I like). As one of my former professors, Bridgett Davis, said “She’s a type. Rather than make her real, i.e., flawed, Sapphire made her someone who can elicit from us only two emotions on the same continuum –sympathy and pity.” Another stock character that lacks the sense of humanity that makes them relatable and feel authentic (though it tries), like some of Tyler Perry’s characters.

One of my favorite poets, Bassey Ikpi, also felt that the film only made the audience feel happy that you were not her, but did not give you any direction on where to go from there. It just dumps all this on you and leaves you hanging. Then the, as Professor Davis said, it gives you this easy “fairtytale redemption” (very typical) and audiences are surprised that a girl who looks like that can be lovable (even though some still made fun of the way she looked in the theatre). Everything always ends okay and fixed easily with a bow. Wrong!

Another problem I had with the film not showing the face of the father who was raping Precious and having the rape scene quickly inserted and pulled out (no pun intended) with no follow-up. That one scene felt unnecessary and failed to put a human face to the father, instead of just showing him as some monster type. Moreover, the inconsistency of Precious fantasies in which she dreams of her actual self in a Hollywood-type fashion versus the scene in which she sees a white woman in the mirror. Not only those, but also the failure to elaborate how Precious’ child, named Mongol, ended up light-skin if her father is Precious’ father and the failure to elaborate on the institutional failures of schools and social services (how, unfortunately, in reality someone like Precious would be an exception).

Even the people who “rescue” Precious are just as much as stock characters (when Ms. Rain tells Precious to write, it felt like a Freedom Writers moment). The extreme colorism in the film is obvious; I do not think it a coincidence the Paula Patton, Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz (all light-skinned black people) are the main heroes of the film, while Gabourey Sidibe, Monique and her father in the movie are dark-skinned, helpless and dysfunctional. In the original book, Push, Ms. Rain (who is played by Paula Patton) was actually darker-skinned with dredlocks (she would look more like me). Just listen to what the director Lee Daniels said about his prejudice of dark-skinned blacks: “‘Precious’ is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I’m prejudiced. I’m prejudiced against people who are darker than me. When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar. Anybody that’s heavy like Precious — I thought they were dirty and not very smart. Making this movie changed my heart. I’ll never look at a fat girl walking down the street the same way again.” This tells me that he put some of that bias into his film.

The colorism in Precious reminds me of Avatar. Why? Well, the “White Hero” motif that is often widely promoted. I can list a lot of films that fall into the category; in fact I’ll do that now:

Blackboard Jungle, Dances with Wolves, Pochahantas, The Last Samurai, Enemy Mine, Dune, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds, Blindside, Invictus, Radio, Fern Gully, The last of the Mohicans, Mississippi Burning, The King of Scotland and the list goes on…..

These consist of three story types: White guy falls in love with a non-white (or alien) princess, White guy leads a group of non-white people (or magical or alien species *hint*) to fight against his own people and help non-white people protect their culture, or White teacher or coach goes into an inner-city school to help minority kids become successful…

But I cannot help but think if this can be told differently – non-white person goes into a white suburb and leads them into a new direction and no I am not talking about the “magic negro” in which he rescues the entire world or it is not a specific group (often Will Smith). Maybe, telling a story like Avatar from the point of view of the Navi’s and someone like Sully stands on the sideline. A non-white person rescuing the aliens or magical creatures. A non-white teacher or coach coming to the aid of white kids or minority kids.

In fact the last one has been done often with less promotion: Full Court Miracle, Coach Carter, Remember the Titans, Antwone Fisher, Akeelah and the Bee, The Great Debaters, Stand and Deliver, Lean On Me, The Marva Collins Story, Hotel Rwanda, Catch a Fire and much more. However, those do not get the same recognition as movies like Avatar and Blindside.

Some people may think that I am over-analyzing and seeing things, and might not believe me. But if they do not, I will give them another example. Recently, Danny Glover started creating a movie about the Haitian revolutionary, Toussaint Louverture, and when he tried to get funding for the film, he was asked if it was a black film and “where are the white heroes?” However, with a movie like this it is almost impossible to have a white hero, still they wanted one because the producers believed it would be more marketable. If that does not convince you, I do not know what will.

I am not saying that I do not want movies with the stereotypical characters to be created because I know they exist and I am not saying that I do not want movies with white heroes because I know that they exist, too (for example, Blindside is based on a true story). What I am saying is that the over-promotion of these stereotypical characters and reoccurring themes reinforce certain ideas, creates limitations, causes us to bypass some great films, causes us not to see the complexity of humanity and lets us ignore a portion of the humans that exist in the world because they do not fit into an expected box. Please open your mind!

Lee Daniels Quote from here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25precious-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=The%20Audacity%20of%20Precious&st=cse

Bridgett Davis article: http://www.boldaslove.us/2009/12/precious-manipulation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BoldAsLove+%28Bold+As+Love%29

American Dream, Asian Hero post on Avatar: http://jasongchu.blogspot.com/2009/12/avatar-james-camerons-colonial-racist.html

Articles on Danny Glover’s Toussaint Louverture Movie: http://www.zimbio.com/Danny+Glover/articles/10/But+There+No+White+Heroes+Danny+Glover+Struggle
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_e3UYOiNEhW03rcVTpcB2e15IMg

Before I went to the Dali Exhibit, Salvador Dali was already one of my favorite painters. However, I learned so much more about Dali at the exhibit and I appreciate him as an artist so much more now. Not only was Dali a surrealist, but he also had a fascination with film. He believed that films were the extension of the dream world because of the reality versus illusion idea. So, many of his paintings used the film techniques and camera effects. The most interesting information about his life was that he was actually involved in the making of several short films and has had an influence on the filmmaking process. His surrealist ideas have affected many films since his time.

One of his first films was Un Chien Andalou, which he created with Luis Bunuell. Since Dali wrote the script, a lot of his ideas from his paintings were expressed through the film, especially the illusory images using a variety of film techniques. Scenes portraying disappearing mouths, ants appearing in hands, dismembered hands, illusion of nakedness, doors leading into other places and one actor playing to characters at the same time showed the ability of using film to create images that could never happen in real life. One of the most shocking scenes was the opening one in which the husband takes a razor and cuts into his wife’s eye. But it is done using a close-up to create the illusion that it is her eye, but it was actually a cow’s eye.

Dali also had an influence on other artists and performers, such as Andy Warhol, Alfred Hitchcock, The Marx Brothers and surprisingly even Walt Disney. He believed that Disney was one of the great surrealists. Dali actually worked on a short animated film with Disney in 1945, called Destino, which was not completed until 2003. Destino, which was about a mortal girl falling in love with the god, Kronos, used many of his paintings and drawings, such as the paranoiac-critical (optical illusion style created by Dali) image of Kronos, the melting clocks, the eyes and the ants. Dali also painted scenes for movies, such as the ballroom scene and dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound with Gregory Peck. The scenes also included some of Dali’s famous symbols, like eyes, twisted landscapes, and faceless figures. The lead character (Peck) also is seeing a psychiatrist, relating to Dali’s obsession with Freud and dreams.

Dali had a great influence on film, greater than I even knew about. His part in the avant-garde movement inspired filmmakers to think outside the box and create images that could only be see in the dream world not real life. Dali believed in pure cinema, which is film without a story, but instead evoking fantasies. Many movies and shows use dream sequences because of Dali. He also influenced independent films, horror films, psychedelic films and music videos, because of their non-traditional ideas in filmmaking. For example, I doubt Missy Elliot would make half the videos that she does now if it wasn’t for people like Dali. Dali definitely believe “Life is like a dream.”