Jordan Peele made ‘black history’ today by becoming the first black screenwriter to take home the Oscar for the best Original Screenplay for his socially relevant movie ‘Get Out’.
And why is that? Because to get Hollywood’s attention, people like Peele have to adapt to near satirical notions of stereotyping about the black community, in order to get a greater social message across.
Simply put, Hollywood- that by its own admission is significantly white- seems to only get “woke” about something as problematic as the racism faced by the black community, when they watch a movie about the black community, made by the black community.
And it’s been the same for nearly 80 of its ‘golden years’.
Hattie McDaniel: The First Black Oscar-Winner
Back in 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first person of African-American descent to have been awarded an Oscar, for her character ‘Mammy’ in Gone with the Wind - a Southern slave to a rich white family, subject to pointed jokes and abiding by the racial hierarchy of the Civil War era.
An archetype, who’s life revolved around her ‘Masters’ and ‘Mistresses’ in a sense, and echoed no more soul than that.
While McDaniel’s name is certainly one that remained in the star-book of struggling achievers, especially for being a woman of the community to make that breakthrough, she also received a lot of heat from writers, social activists and the laymen of the community for, in a sense, selling the very identity they were trying to change, to an industry like Hollywood with all its impressionable fan-clubs.
As reported by The Daily Beast, dramatist Carlton Moss had once greatly critiqued McDaniel’s character ‘Mammy’, arguing that she “loves this degrading position in the service of a family that has helped to keep her people enchained for centuries.”
Coupled with this, the report adds, was the fact that after ‘Mammy’, McDaniel played the role of a stereotypical black maid another 74 times, that made up for a large chunk of her career in the industry.
As a result, a significant percentage of the black community was of the opinion that McDaniel’s recognition as an actor, was in direct proportion to her playing the role of a sub-servient black character.
And Hollywood lapped it up. Would McDaniel have received half the attention if she had taken up a non-conforming, non-stereotypical character? Probably not.
Hollywood and Black Representation
One can argue that McDaniel was forging a legacy in Hollywood at a time when slavery wasn’t truly a foreign concept and the world hadn’t even witnessed the two wars yet. But fast-forward through 80 years and what’s really changed?
An article in Washington Post states that movies such as Dear White People, Selma and 12 Years a Slave had to struggle to get financing from the biggest Hollywood studios and had to, instead, reach out to independent producers and resort to crowd-funding to be made at all
The same report, quoting figures of 2011, states that while minorities made up more than 36 percent of the US population, they are represented by only 10 percent of lead characters in Hollywood movies and only 12 per cent had occupied the director’s chairs.
Why is this?
Darnell Hunt, a Professor at UCLA told Washington Post: “Part of the problem is it’s an incredibly insular industry. The people who make decisions, who green-light projects, tend to surround themselves with people pretty much like themselves.”
So Why Does Hollywood Need Movies like ‘Get Out’?
Coming back to Jordan Peele’s Get Out, that was nominated for the ‘Best Movie’ category of the 2018 Oscars, his idea to present it as a horror story, with racism replacing the traditional ghost or monster it connotes, definitely grabbed the collective Hollywood eyeball.
As the Los Angeles Time put it: “This is surely the nerviest, most confrontational treatment of race in America to emerge from a major studio in years.”
Speaking with Oprah Winfrey at the Apollo Theater on his vision behind the film, Peele said:
This was a way for, I think, a lot of white people to experience the world through the black perspective. White people watching the movie don’t identify with the white people in the movie; they identify with Chris.Jordan Peele told Oprah in an interview
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