1989 Was a Time When

¶ … 1989 was a time "when the American quest for colorblindness sought in the seventies and eighties became a search for multiculturalism. The decades' symbols turned from 1987's July 4th cover of Time bravely announcing 'We the People' to 1991's fife and drum corps made up of all ethnic types and asking, 'Who are We?'" (McGraw). On a timeline, this was also three years before Rodney King's beating and the Los Angeles riots. The country was undergoing a transformation that was still an undercurrent.

Two movies came out that dealt with the similar theme of racism but in a very different manner: Driving Miss Daisy and Do the Right Thing. After much difficulty getting money for their movie because it had a black leading actor, Morgan Freeman, author Alfred Uhry and director Bruce Bereford were able to get Driving Miss Daisy produced for $7.5 million. It eventually went on to earn $93.6 million, as well as three Academy Awards, for best actress (Jessica Tandy), best screenplay adaptation (Uhry) and best film of 1990.

Driving Miss Daisy was based on the Pulitzer prize winning play by Alfred Uhry. In the earlier American South, an old Jewish woman, Daisy, played by Jessica Tandy, and her African-American chauffer, Hoke, acted by Morgan Freeman, have a relationship that grows and improves over the years. The film deals both with the racism toward blacks and the anti-Semitism toward Jews. Both characters have their biases and stereotypes about the other.

Uhry states, "When I wrote this play I never dreamed I would be writing an introduction to it because I never thought it would get this far... When I wonder how all this happened.. I can come up with only one answer. I wrote what I knew to be the truth and people have recognized it as such." Despite the fact that it had this original problem with funding, the movie was well received by audiences, especially mainstream whites, because "Driving Miss Daisy is a likable film.

It is a simple movie without violence with heart-warming characters, engaging situations and comfortable resolutions" (Turner).

Critic Bob Greene said, "I think it is the perfect motion picture...it is funny, it is moving, it is thoughtful, and I know for certain it will be on my mind for years." In fact, most white film critics, such as Roger Egbert, saluted the movie: "After so many films in which violent and shallow people deny their humanity and ours, what a lesson to see a film that looks into the heart." Critics liked the fact that it made the viewer feel good about the world.

It celebrated the fact that people can overcome their differences and surmount race, gender, religious and class barriers (Turner). However, some black critics were adamant in their objection to the film, because it emphasized the servitude of blacks. Its stereotypical portrayal was just as bad as the stereotypes that existed then and today. Many refused to see the movie because Morgan Freeman, who is esteemed as an actor, was playing a film with a black role that has used and reused ad infinitum.

They stress Hollywood industry's love affair with a limited variety of parts for black actors (Turner). In addition, because it was set in the past and non-violent, it was more palatable to present-day viewers. It made them feel less guilty and squirm less in their seats by disturbing scenes.

McGraw notes that Miss Daisy offered "a visual vocabulary for Southern Jewishness with its wide, bright shots of the Temple in Atlanta and southern-accented voices discussing synagogue carpooling and singing hymns in Hebrew." However, "because Daisy imperiously orders Hoke around while lauding Martin Luther King Jr., critics have cast Miss Daisy as a portrait of naive and reactionary white liberalism." McGraw states, adds "Daisy's Jewishness, however, makes this depiction itself seem naive.

In the film, southernness and Southern Jewishness become interdependent, with Daisy's Jewishness the lens through which broader questions about southern race relations are interpreted." In one scene, for example, while the two make their way to Mobile, for Daisy's brother's birthday, they each share something about their pasts. As Daisy reminisces, the camera remaining on her face while Hoke's laughter resounds, two white Alabama policemen approach them. Calling the elderly Hoke "boy," one officer asks where he got the car.

Daisy pipes up that the car is hers, and the policeman asks for Daisy's registration, then mispronounces her name as he looks at the paper. "Wertheran?" he asks. She corrects him, and the policeman says, "Never heard of that one before. What kind of name is that?" Daisy announces that Werthan is "of German derivation." The policeman's questioning demonstrates that he sees her as somehow illegitimate. She may appear white, but asking "what kind of name" she has shows that she is, by the policeman's reckoning, merely passing.

As Daisy and Hoke drive away, the policeman says, "An old nigger and an old Jew woman taking off down the road together. Now that is one sorry sight." This reminds audiences of the tenuous position each bears in racial terms along a southern road at mid-century. Although not everything is "happy ever after," and both characters despite their friendship still retain some of their biases, the ending is just that "an ending," with few pieces hanging.

Viewers can leave the theater with some satisfaction knowing that positive changes have been made and there has been some resolution in the world. Another movie in this year of 1989, much more provocative, was Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Critics were much more mixed by this film that spoke boldly to the reality of inner-city subculture. Overall, they were concerned that the shook things up too much.

Because the plot was in present-times and dealing with much more violent and non-resolved issues in America, there was a fear that it might set off sparks in an environment that is already close to being set afire. Critics focused most on the morally ambiguous and violent ending that was seen as deemed inciting and irresponsible. In fact, Do the Right Thing was shunned at the Academy Awards by having only one nomination for Danny Aiello in the Best Supporting Actor category.

Similar to the production problems with Miss Daisy, Universal Pictures agreed to make Lee's movie, which cost a modest $6.5 million, after the script was rejected by Paramount, where executives wanted the violent ending rewritten. Lee refused. "I could not be true to myself if everybody had joined hands and sung 'We Shall Overcome,'" he explains. "That is not the state of race relations in America today." The film is set in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a black neighborhood of New York City, during the hottest 24 hours of the summer.

It if full of comical character parts, such as Mother Sister, Da Mayor, the drunk, Smiley, the idiot, Buggin Out, Mookie, and Sweet Dick Willie. The only whites in the neighborhood are Sal and his two sons, the "Eye-talian" owners of a pizzeria. Lee believes that "Black audiences are starving for Black films that are made by Blacks for Blacks. His premise is certainly correct in the sense that African-Americans have rarely had the opportunity to see films in which the larger-than-life hero and heroine are Black.

For almost a century, in the medium that more than any other has constituted the images of modern consciousness (Gordon). Do the Right Thing made viewers uncomfortable because Lee did not present them with the same calming plot that everything is right with the world. The truth is that individual and institutional discrimination, along with prejudice, have been so entrenched in the American-way of life that there no easy answers exist.

The movie was a view of the realities of life in the U.S., not a fantasy about how things should be in an ideal world. However, the end of the film stressed that violence is not the answer to this struggle, as so many are hurt by it. Gordon notes, Do the Right Thing was certainly a better and more original film about race relations in America than the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy.

That film showed an elderly White Jewish Lady and her aged black chauffeur reconciled in their status as victims of social injustice. This is the traditional liberal vision of Jews and Negroes who find common cause and mutual concern in shared suffering. As we move to the end of the 20th century, Driving Miss Daisy is sentimental escapism. It reproduces the subordinating stereotypes that black artists like Spike Lee will no longer accept for themselves or present to their audiences.

The black chauffeur, even if 'uppity' and standing on his dignity, is not their role model. According to an article in the Economist, the physical violence of the film is Lee's most cynical depiction of the explosive nature of racial tensions. "Do the Right Thing presents violence without any condemnation, moralistic objectors, or heroic saviors." America is violent in its treatment of African-Americans, whose growing rage will explode if temperatures rise too much." However, it is not all violence, and that is what makes Lee's film so real, as well.

It is a mixture of what life is like in that one day in New York: In addition to anger, is humor, personal interaction at all levels and the beat of music and time. Lee provides "the saving laughter." At one point, the Korean seeking to save his store from the angry mob declares, "me Black, me Black, me no White, me Black too." Lee's style of catching life at its fullest and most real also confused the.