We know the story. A multiracial group of teenagers spend the weekend in a cabin that suddenly is overtaken by ghosts or serial killers. Nowadays it is normal to hear the refrain from movie-watchers, “Oh, yeah, the black guy is going to die first,” because we all have seen it so many times before.
It is really interesting to me when I think about the idea of the black person dying first. Needless to say, we have centuries behind us in the US where societally-speaking, the black peoples’ lives didn’t matter, so the idea of black dying first was a non-issue. When I have talked to my friends about why there are hardly any movies with black people ghosts, we decided that in order to be societally important when dead you first need to be societally important when living. I would like to talk about how black people die in scary movies. Have you ever noticed that black people get killed differently than white people? I recently watched Ratched where a serial killer attacks a group of priests in their home. The most brutal killing was the black priest’s head getting smashed in at quite a close view while you only see the silhouette of the white priest getting bludgeoned by a poker. This makes me think that the directors/producers perceived the murder of a white priest as too ghastly to be viewed, while we saw close-ups of the black priest’s murder, even though the white priests’ killing was less gruesome. Anyway, back to kissing.
I am currently watching Riverdale, which not surprisingly makes no apologies for the race tropes sprinkled throughout the suburban town. We have the “magical Negro” in the Pop character, the swapping out of one of the popular Asian characters after the first season (as if no one would notice), and the one-dimensional Pussy Cats, a sexy, all-black singing group that mostly exist on the stage. These homegrown images seem to harken back to a 1950s style lie of “innocence” that would make James Baldwin weep. It isn’t surprising that this is not terrain for a black girl to be lovable or loved.
And what about the bossy, authoritarian black woman role that seems to be the new craze? During the global pandemic crisis, I have watched Sex Education, Cuckoo, and now Riverdale. In these series, black women have been “elevated” to the authoritative boss, severe, accomplished, and one who always gets her way. One might say this is a step forward! Black women in positions of power! To me it is a little sad. Instead of seeing black women as strong because of their intelligence, compassion, humor, and grit, black women are now in “boss mode.” The role also harkens back to the emasculation stereotype reserved for black women that has persisted for decades. Here we go again with one-dimensions.
So, the lifeless being (figuratively and literally), the authoritarian, the entertainer, what do they all have in common? They are representations of a sliver of human experience. They represent a fraction of what it means to be a complete human. Unlike other characters that can screw-up, repent, fall in love, show anger, show sadness, make moral decisions, the one-dimensional characters are one-size-fits-all. And what do we call one size fits all things, that stay the same in every circumstance no matter what? Objects. In fact, it is unhuman to respond to every situation, to every problem, to every person with the same answers, the same emotions. That is precisely what happens in the movies these days; the black school principal is always yelling, the do-wop girls are always making a sassy remark, the black man always dies or is brutalized right in front of our eyes, and there is not much else they do.
So, should we hold these shows responsable? Clearly, after the BLM protests, many strides were taken to remove certain movies from Netflix, but are they just “giving us what we want to see?” Is it really so horrifying that a black girl and a white boy could have an actual relationship?
And in movies in general, too. Even when there is chemistry between the black man main character and white female main character, they can flirt but never kiss, the cinematic hallmark of a true romantic relationship. This goes for Rey and Finn in Star Wars, and many movies with Denzel Washington, and the Rock. In Riverdale, when there was a possible flirtation and romance between a white boy and black girl, how come their relationship was cinematographically cut off practically before they could hold hands? And when they broke up, why did neither of them really care? The breakup seemed like losing a pair of jeans, a little annoying but you could get over it. And in the other near-intimacy miss between a black girl and a white boy in Riverdale, after episodes of flirtation and a kiss, and recent singledom giving them the opportunity to be together as a couple, why did she suddenly come out as a lesbian?
Is it too much to ask that black people can be more than objects and props in movies and be romantically desirable, not just for whites but in general? Let them be persuaded by their surroundings, show a myriad of emotions, moral dilemmas and attempts and failings that arise from the complexity of their lives. I argue that we have to demand that black people are humanized, and that means not barring black people from giving life to complex characters as directors, writers and producers. But beyond that, everyone should be discontent with one-dimensional characters of black folks. I don’t believe that humans are unable to empathize with those who are different, so there is no excuse for anyone to dehumanize black characters. Do you really think white people know exactly what it is like to be Spiderman? Of course not, yet somehow they can write him with sensitivity and complexity. I don’t need to see the interracial couple kiss, what matters more is that when we see representations of complex human beings in films, not protagonists forming a compelling story in front of a back-drop of human props. Artistically, humanly, we can do better than this.
