Black Power and Black Cinema

Black Power Movement and Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s: A Discussion of Overlap
As many scholars agree, all art is a product of its time. The social tensions, trends, patterns of thought and political issues of an era can’t help but influence the art that is created and consumed. This is particularly true with cinema and all forms of media arts. This paper will examine how the Black Power movement influenced cinema (and at times was influenced by cinema) in three distinct films of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Defiant Ones
“The Defiant Ones” (1958) directed by Stanley Kramer was a film that succeeded and failed in making meaningful commentary on race and race relations. It was perhaps its failings that helped provoke the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s most acutely. The movie is a “buddy film” a genre of cinema that details a story around an immediate or eventual friendship. In the film, the lead actors Sidney Poitier (Noah Cullen) and Tony Curtis (John “Joker” Jackson) play prisoners who escape their work truck when it turns over. Chained wrist to wrist they have to get ahead of the police force and search hounds as they hide in a the swamps and forests of the surrounding area. The two are eventually caught and face death though receive a last minute reprieve. “Their bound-together plight—blacklisted radical writer Nedrick Young won an Academy Award he could not collect, having co-written under a pseudonym—eventually produced solidarity and something like love” (Roediger, 2018). The film was also celebrated at the time as being a strong box office draw and able to attract both black and white ticket holders.
The film is very polarizing, though it shouldn’t be. It should be celebrated for its successes and still explored for its deplorable failures. Both the successes and failures of the film had an influence in helping to spark the Black Power movement that eventually followed. It’s important to place the film in a particular time that it was created. A film of 1958 it was just a few years after the Montgomery bus boycotts, in the prime of the Civil Rights movement. Many film critics argue that this film was able to pave the way for other more three-dimensional examinations of ethnic relations in the American experience. Nominated for nine Oscars, the reception was largely warm, as the work received nods for being avant-garde and well executed.
However, as James Baldwin notably illuminates in his essay “The Devil Finds Work” the problems of the film are invasive and originate at its core. As a buddy film, it is unable to accurately capture the real relationship between the two races. This is because it represents a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the hatred between black and white (Baldwin, 524). Baldwin acknowledges that there is hatred between black and white that is portrayed in the film, but it’s misrepresented via a lack of understanding. When it comes to this resentment between the races, “…the hatred is not equal on both sides for it does not have the same roots. This is perhaps, a very subtle argument, but black men do not have the same reason to hate white men as white men have to hate blacks. The root of the white man’s hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. But the root of the black man’s hatred is rage, and he does not so much hate white men as simply want them out of his way, and more than that, out of his children’s way” (Baldwin, 525). Baldwin here is able to expressly pinpoint the problem of the film: it was written by a white screenwriter who had a generally myopic view of race relations. Nedrick Young, the screenwriter, clearly didn’t possess enough self-awareness about the white man’s fear of black men. Likewise, there’s a lack of understanding of what an average white man symbolizes to an average black man: an obstacle. A force that needs to be removed from the path as it blocks the way forward.
Another massive issue with the film, is that Poitier and Curtis are not equal matches. Poitier has a grace and a class onscreen that Curtis doesn’t come close to, and this creates a lack of believability that they would ever be friends. This is problematic and undermines the integrity of the whole film. One even wonders if this issue served to infuriate the black community who received the film and motivate the black power movement. After all, the inaccurate portrayal of the proverbial mountain between them alienates black members of society, making them feel misunderstood and misrepresented. As Baldwin illuminates, in such circumstances as two men being chained together, “No black man, in such a situation, and especially knowing what Poitier conveys so vividly Noah Cullen knows, would rise to the bait proffered by this dimwitted poor white child, whose only real complaint is that he is a bona-fide mediocrity who failed to make it in the American rat-race. But many, no better than he, and many much worse, make it every day, all the way to Washington: sometimes, indeed, via Hollywood. It is a species of cowardice, grave indeed to pretend that black men do not know this” (525). The failings of Curtis’s character were meant to seem relatable, making him more of an every man. However, to black audiences he just seems like someone unable to make use of the opportunities given to every white man upon birth. There’s very little portrayal of the enormous obstacles constantly affronted Poitier’s character in comparison. Curtis’s malaise with life and the “rat race” makes him seem spoiled and far beneath his Cullen.
This issue undermines the entire “friendship” presented. Poitier delivers a performance of unshakeable excellence and extreme truthfulness, but as Baldwin points out, the entire friendship seems like a lie (525). That Poitier would play along with this imbalanced “friendship” and forge a partnership with someone so beneath him perhaps helped to initiate the fury and impatience that was at the heart of the black power movement. Many black audiences saw The Defiant Ones as yet another film that didn’t understand the black experience in the world and among white, and was going to clumsily represent it in whatever way suited them—regardless of how untruthful. “Liberal white audiences applauded when Sidney, at the end of the film, jumped off the train in order not to abandon his white buddy. The Harlem audience was outraged, and yelled, Get back on the train, you fool!” (525). This is an example of the highly contrived ending that so many audiences had problems with. It demonstrates that at the heart of the film was nothing more than a series of “well-meaning politics” that didn’t portray with accuracy the realities of the era. Cullen is so forgiving that he offers absolution in a manner that Curtis’s character doesn’t necessarily deserve or hasn’t earned. The ending creates a clear springboard for the black power movement to come to life from because the black male lead is expected to forgo what’s best for his own interest for the sake of his friendship with the white guy. It’s an unrealistic and insensitive idea to suggest to audiences of any race. Here it is almost suggested that there’s almost a sense of service inherent, and that the black man feels obligated to help the white man, at the expense of his own needs and goals. This creates a sense of an overall slipshod ending marked by a sense of overall unevenness. What’s so problematic is that there’s a lack of a real resolution and these characters seem less like complex people, and more like caricatures of someone who wants to whitewash race relations in America.
Hence, it’s no wonder that a film that received such acclaim, could do its part in helping to spark the Black Power movement in America. The film’s inaccuracies in portraying the black experience and the film’s denial in acknowledging fear of white people towards blacks, created something that was frustrating and ultimately insincere. The frustrations created helped to do their part in creating a section of American society that was dissatisfied by the status quo.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
A similar film that sparked perhaps even more controversy during the heart of the black power movement was the famous Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) directed by Stanley Kramer and starring, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracey, and Sidney Poitier. One thing about the film can be agreed upon, it definitely provokes strong reactions and opinions: “the film was a mannered Hollywood take on an incendiary topic. Some critics found it bland and patronizing, but it was a commercial hit that epitomized mainstream Hollywood's liberal leanings at a time” (Fleishman, 2017). While the film does nothing to really capture the black power movement that was occurring all over the nation, as it is such a sanitized portrayal of race relations in America, it is clearly influenced by the black power movement. All over the country, the black power movement was taking the autonomy back of the average black citizen, and of what it meant to be black, offering notions that black is beautiful—ideas that had never been expressed before. However, one cannot argue that the film was not brave and innovative--because it was.
It is important to appropriately place the film in history: The mid 1960s were still a time when interracial marriage was considered taboo—something that is taken for granted today. “This was illustrated by the impact of the verdict in Loving v. Virginia (1967), a case which involved ‘a black woman and a white man who had been sweethearts since childhood.’[4] The verdict removed laws banning interracial marriages in the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment ‘only 6 months before the release’ of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.[5]” (Dunne, 2018). This means that it is likely that the film was in preproduction and production when it was still illegal for a white and black person to be in a relationship together. While modern society might have tolerated it, in the strictest terms of the law, the film portrayed something illegal.
However as one scholar notes, “A legal ruling does not instantly catalyse a change in public opinion. In 1968, one year after the Loving v. Virginia verdict, and the release of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, only ‘20% of Americans approved of marriage between blacks and whites’” (Dunne, 2018). This is largely because of the terror that Baldwin spoke at length about in regards to how whites view blacks. The white power structure that had dominated society for centuries was terrified of what intermixing would mean for white society (Dunne, 2018). It’s also important to note that in 1967 was the year that the Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s daughter, Peggy, was married to Guy Smith, a black man. Portraying an interracial union of this type is something courageous that the film did. The case of Loving v. Virginia involved a white man and a black woman, something that did not upset the ancient southern patriarchy that rarified and pedestaled the notion of a white woman. Rather than replicating this type of racial relationship, the film in turn, dared to portray a white woman with a black man—something that would repulse and infuriate many members of the intolerant Deep South. The choice of the genders and racial make up of the lead characters in the interracial relationship of the film Guess was an act of daring. There is no denying this. The proof is in the fact that the directors and lead actors received death threats upon the film’s release (Fleishman, 2017). This is because the film challenged so many of the antiquated and barbaric rules about what dating was and whether it had to be within one’s own race or not.
Or course, this film is criticized for the addressing the crucial issues of interracial marriage in a more casual manner. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner missed an opportunity to make a true impact on conservative viewers relating to interracial relationship; probably because the film is a light-hearted comedy…” (Dunne, 2018). This seems a bit heavy-handed. The film makes meaningful commentary and influence on the notion of interracial dating and race relations because it is a light-heated comedy. The fact that such a genre tackles such a heavy subject in society means that more people might be able to accept the overall message of the film. Meeting resistance to interracial dating with a heaviness and stern response isn’t always the most persuasive method. It’s like fighting fire with fire—something that often just create more fire. Often the best way to get a message across is gently, with the lighthearted touch and the universal language of laughter. In fact Sidney Poitier’s daughter even spoke about this exact issue during the 50th anniversary of the film, asserting, ““I think that it was very telling for the writer to create the characters that he did, so that white America could relate to the situation I think in a more humane way…Everybody believes that the character he (Poitier) played and the characters of the family were very relatable. So I think that was very unique and powerful during that time” (Williams, 2017). Making something more relatable meant that more people could connect with it. The comedic element made it more accessible to others, allowing them to understand and absorb the simplicity of the concepts.
In addition, it’s possible that the Black Power movement had an influence on this film manifesting in the manner and genre that it did. The Black Power movement had much about it that was positive and important. It caused youths to embrace their history and culture of being African. This manifested with young black people wearing traditional hairstyles of African culture and to wear traditional patterns of African nations and peoples. The slogan “black is beautiful” was a powerful one. However, the tensions and resentment of the black power movement were noticeable and an aspect of the social crusade. Resentment and tensions did flare under black power (ushistory.org), and this is in part why it was such a successful undertaking: people did want an alternative to Dr. King’s non-violent resistance, as successful as it was. Thus in the 1960s and 1970s, there were strong racial tensions at work in society. The film sought to address them in a way that was sunnier than the realities of the pressures of society at the time. Hence, the severity of the black power movement in some ways made sure that this film stayed cheerful.
However, it is important to address the many criticisms of Kramer’s film. Critics argued that the film, by remaining so cheerful, was almost a denial of so many of the realities of the day. Many skeptics of the film find it to be pandering to most audiences (Harris & Toplin, 700). “The movie detractors maintain that the story is particularly saccharine, cautious, and ‘liberal’ (in a negative sense of the term). It is preachy and contrived, they charge… [the film’s] denouement is, essentially, a cop out, say the detractors, since Kramer and Rose refuse to confront racial prejudice as it really existed in the sixties” (Harris & Toplin, 700). While this is a fair perspective, just because the film represents one mindset dominant in the time, doesn’t mean that it is shying away from a more “accurate” portrayal of racism in the era. The racial tensions and frustrations brought to the focus by the Black Power movement was one manifestation of race relations during this period. It was not, however, the only one.

Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song

On a different note, the film Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song (1971) by Melvin Van Peebles, is largely found to be a more literal celebration of the Black Power movement. Sweet Sweetback might not have manifested as the hero of the Black Power movement that its leaders wanted exactly, but such a film was able to give a greater sense of morale to the overall black community. “What friends and foes agree on is that Van Peebles created a hero with whom black audiences could uncomplicatedly identify, one who was barely distinguishable from Shaft (Mellen specifically makes this connection). Few seem to have taken into account just how odd Sweet Sweetback is when seen as straightforward exploitation or agit-prop” (Stevens). There’s a simplicity to rooting for a character like Sweetback that allows the viewer to cheer for him in a manner uncomplicated. While his portrayal wasn’t perfect at all times, it was able to offer the black community a leading man that they had never really had before in cinema. This was a leading man who operated on his own terms. It’s definitely possible that the complications of the Black Power movement influenced this work of cinema by attempting to make it more political than it had ultimately desired. Alternatively, the tensions of the Black Power movement and the resentments that boiled over, could have had an impact in forcing the filmmakers to treat the subject matter in a more jovial manner. On the other hand, it might have made them want to treat these subjects in a more enigmatic manner. For example, so many film critics today can’t agree what the internal commentary of the film is really asserting: “borderline pornographic potboiler, political commentary, transmission mechanism for black social frustration, and vehicle for African-American empowerment, just to name a few. It eventually evolved from cult-classic status to becoming an exemplar, rightly or wrongly, of independent black filmmaking” (The Grio).
To this day, so many critics don’t know if they should celebrate some of the underpinning themes of the film or discard it for being the beginning of many painful cinematic stereotypes of black people. For example, one scholar vilifies the film
And Peebles and one who engaged in “marrying [his] criticism of racial injustice in America to the myth of the inexhaustible sexuality of the black male, refurbishing the old racist stereotype of the ‘buck’, the black stud… [Sweetback] is nothing more than an embodiment of how white society has fantasised black sexuality” (Mellen, 45). This is another example of how inequality has been able to flourish through cinema and the repeated portrayal of these damaging stereotypes. Over-sexualizing black males is another way of othering them and making them less than and separate from whites. It’s another way to isolate them from whites.
However, given the complexity of the film, it is hard to pin it down in one direction as either being offensive and limiting towards blacks, or celebratory and expansive. “While Van Peebles’s position as auteur allowed him to present an unreconciled, multifarious blackness with which black possessed mutable subjectivities and the agency to change over time, the film failed to fulfill the hopes of black power leaders. Instead it birthed Blaxploitation” (Wiggins, 28). This is another heavy-handed assault on the film, one that flagrantly does not acknowledge the impact that the Black Power movement had on this genre of cinema.
The very fact that his genre of cinema featured black actors and actresses as the heroes and heroines of their own narratives was a direct manifestation of the black power movement. Previously in cinema, with the exception of actors like Sidney Poitier, most black actors and actresses were confined to small parts and supporting roles. They were never cast as the star of the film; they could never save the day. They were either in service to the hero to provide help to the hero in achieving his goals, or they played the villain, or some small character no one really cared about. The ability of black actors to star in films about them and their experiences was a direct reflection of the dogma of the Black Power movement. Sweetback was a film that rendered the black experience of life in America to cinema in a more innovative manner, one that suggested patterns of human behavior in society and political quandaries that other realms of cinema had never touched. The Black Power movement one which was founded on Marxist ideas and these often translated in to the themes of Sweetback. Hence, while the film is a ripe display of sex and violence, there are still many examples of both social harmony, awareness and camaraderie that so often characterizes the Marxist ideology.
Thus, while Black Power leaders did not receive a perfect reflection of their ideologies through a film like Sweetback, it did prove useful. Such leaders were able to capitalize on this genre of filmmaking as a means of giving exposure to problems in society that impacted blacks in singular ways they wanted to enlighten. One could even go so far as to argue there was a certain symbiotic relationship taking place between the two factions: the Black Power movement and the Blaxploitation genre were able to enhance one another and gain strength together.
However, as much as this movement influenced a film like Sweetback, this was a movie, which deliberately refused to be pinned down. Indeed, much about the film engaged in a refusal to embrace anything other than ambiguity, sometimes in ways that suggested a political statement. For example, the conclusion of the film suggests that Sweetback is returning at some point, which contradicts an earlier storyline that has him
escaping to Mexico. This disjointedness is not an isolated incidence but works alongside other devices such as certain repetitions and dreamlike sequences—“in which dialogue is repeated, as in a loop, and the already dark cinematography further distorted by superimpositions, split-screen effects, stills and dissolves – indicates that Van Peebles’ project may be far more radical than even Sweet Sweetback’s most fervent admirers believe, its aim being to render everything – gender roles, political protests, narratives, images – unclear” (Stevens). This is a very startling interpretation of perhaps the final political influence on the film. Perhaps the film is such that it seeks to undermine all the forces that attempt to influence it. The director takes pains at times to create a feeling of nebulousness within the spectator and a general lack of clarity. Some people will dismiss this as simply those who do not wish to acknowledge the importance of the Black Power movement on the film, but the issue might be more intricate. It is possible that Van Peebles was aware of the political influence on his film and at once wanted to embrace it, but also wanted to eliminate it. Some have argued that perhaps this haziness of message is one of the greatest strengths of the film, as it means the overall story telling removes the labels, constrictions and boundaries that people, often black people, have to reconcile within society.

Conclusion
All things considered, one can conclude that the Black Power movement had an influence on all facets of society during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the art world, and cinema most of all. Just as the cinema that preceded the 1960s influenced how blacks wanted to be treated and wanted to see themselves in the world, the Black Power movement was so overt that it forced storytellers to address it. Filmmakers either rejected its pressure and robustness of tone, as we saw in a film like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, or did the opposite. Blaxploitation films of this era might not have been perfect vehicles for the black community to gain exposure, but they still shed light on social and political issues that mattered. More than anything, they reflected the values of the Black Power movement.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. The Devil Finds Work. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.
The Defiant Ones. Directed by Stanley Kramer, Perf. Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier. 1958.
Dunne, Sarah. "Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Hollywood’s Misrepresentation of the Politics of Interracial Relationships in 1960s America – The Midlands Historical Review." The Midlands Historical Review, 2018, www.midlandshistoricalreview.com/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner-and-hollywoods-misrepresentation-of-the-politics-of-interracial-relationships-in-1960s-america/#_ftn7. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Fleishman, Jeffrey. "'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' is 50 and Racial Tension Still a Problem in America." Latimes.com, 2 Feb. 2017, www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-guess-dinner-anniversary-20170131-story.html.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Directed by Stanley Kramer, Perf. Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracey, Sidney Poitier. 1967.
Harris, Glen A., and Robert B. Toplin. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?: A Clash of Interpretations Regarding Stanley Kramer's Film on the Subject of Interracial Marriage." The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 40, no. 4, 2007, pp. 700-713.
Mellen, Joan. Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity in the American Film. Elm Tree Books, 1978.
Roediger, David. "The Defiant Ones, 1958." For All The World To See - UMBC, 2018, fatwts.umbc.edu/the-defiant-ones-1958/. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Stevens, Brad. "Why Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song is a Radical Blaxploitation Classic." British Film Institute, 18 Oct. 2016, www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/bradlands/sweet-sweetback-s-baadasssss-song.
Thegrio.com. "'Sweet Sweetback' at 40: The Birth of Modern Black Film Revisited." TheGrio, 26 Apr. 2011, thegrio.com/2011/04/26/sweet-sweetback-at-40-the-birth-of-modern-black-film-revisited/.
Us.history.org. "Black Power [ushistory.org]." US History, www.ushistory.org/us/54i.asp. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Wiggins. "“You Talkin' Revolution, Sweetback”: On Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Revolutionary Filmmaking." Black Camera, vol. 4, no. 1, 2012, p. 28.
Williams, Brennan. "Sidney Poitier's Daughter On The Groundbreaking Life Lessons Of 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner'." HuffPost, 22 Feb. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sidney-poitier-50-year-anniversary-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner_us_58ab1c43e4b045cd34c3c39c.