Cultural Shorthand
What we give up when we fail to shape our own images
2007-08-15
By Terry Glover

I spent the weekend watching a couple of American movie classics: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) and William Wyler’s Dodsworth (1936). Though produced nearly 30 years apart, what these flicks had in common was their singular ability to convey a sense of place. Geographically, yes, but more importantly, place as it pertains to cultural conventions, social strata and the human condition. Then I watched Big Mama's House (2000) starring Martin Lawrence. Heaven help us if the same principles apply.

Wyler’s Dodsworth goes back to the more formal comportment of 1940’s America, and tackles the topic of morality as hero Sam Dodsworth struggles to preserve the relationship between himself, a man on the brink of retirement, and his wife, a middle-aged woman raging against the realities of middle age. Dodsworth dutifully trots along behind his wife through Paris, then Switzerland, then Vienna, watching her throw herself into one infatuation after another, finally demanding a divorce from the husband who simply “adores her.” She gets her comeuppance in the end, but the sharp morality tale comes across in a cornucopia of drawing room banter and cultural cues.

In The Apartment, insurance adjuster Jack Lemmon is punked into loaning out his Brooklyn flat to several philandering executives within his company. The payoff? A swift ascent up the corporate ladder. The lonely Lemmon complies without much pushback until Fred MacMurray, (in a very anti-My Three Sons turn as the married senior exec macking his way through the secretarial pool) escorts Shirley McLaine (elevator operator and the object of Lemmon’s unrequited love) to his flat for a little quality time. Naturally, it all works out in the end, but a crisp picture of the 1960s culture of highballs, white-collar industry and key-swapping morality was smartly delivered and abundantly clear. Gentlemen, start your dictaphones.

Fast-forward forty-something years to Big Mama, where our cultural snapshot consists of Martin Lawrence cross-dressing in micro braids and a fat suit. Lawrence revels in the ethnic stereotypes of Black women as tacky, loud and overweight. Where’s the sophistication? The redemption? Certainly not in the spa scene where a gross and naked Big Mama is surrounded by skinny blondes turning up their noses at the smell as Mama’s hot stone treatment turns into something akin to sizzling bacon. What about our human condition? Our humanity? And, oh yeah, while we’re at it, our dignity?

Back in 1986 when novice filmmaker Spike Lee dropped She’s Gotta Have It on us, Black folk sat up and took notice. We noticed because Lee spun a saucy tale about freedom and female sexuality and the ability to make guilt-free choices about both; because, fresh from the Blaxploitation era of the 70s, it had been a minute since we’d seen ourselves as anything other than pimps and hos trying to stick it to The Man. What Spike (and a handful of filmmakers following in his wake) afforded was an opportunity to see ourselves in all our multi-dimensional glory – in the free-spirited Nola Darling, the narcissistic Greer Childs, the buttoned-down Jamie Overstreet and even the man-child bike messenger, Mars Blackmon. We got to see ourselves as we saw ourselves – sharp, sophisticated, urbane. Lee has always said he wanted to do for New York – Black New York – what Woody Allen has done for Jews; that is, create a sense of place and belonging, a cultural shorthand, if you will, for the myriad ways we roll.

And, yet, if the slate of films produced in the last couple of years is any indication, it seems we are determined to backslide. Into Norbit, Madea and Big Mama territory. And, yes, I’ve heard these are the only films Hollywood is bankrolling (even Bob Johnson bought into the hype with his “comedy only” Our Stories Films), but Hollywood is about making money, which comes from lines outside the multiplex. If we don’t turn out to see garbage, rest assured it won’t get made.

Our salvation is surely in the hands of the indies, those independent filmmakers operating outside of the system, trolling for dollars to make a more complex vision a reality. Getting to them takes work. It means going to film festivals like the American Black Film Festival, the Black Harvest Film Festival and Urban World to obscure screenings at your neighborhood community centers and libraries, seeking out their work in the art houses and free weekly newspapers devoted to counter (as in dismissing stereotypes) culture.

Here’s hoping we get to it before another era passes us by.

Terry Glover is senior editor for ebonyjet.com. She writes about popular culture.