African-Americans and Silent Films

4 African-Americans and Silent Films Paula J. Massood Professor, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, United States Paula J. Massood provides an overview of African- key focal points of early African-American cinema. American filmmakers, producers, actors, and char- Massood also examines exhibition practices target- acters as represented in movies of the silent ing black audiences and the impact of the com- era – many responding, in part, to D. W. Grif- ing of sound on black filmmakers and audiences. fith’s The Birth of a Nation and to images Her essay shares ground with Charlie Keil on of African-Americans in earlier print, vaudeville, D. W. Griffith in this volume and with Alex and screen sources. Notably, however, the first Lykidis and Janet K. Cutler on black indepen- black-directed, black-cast motion picture, The dent film in Volume II of this series, and with Railroad Porter (1912), predated Griffith’s film Ed Guerrero on Blaxploitation and Keith Harris and was produced by the black-owned Foster on black crossover cinema in the hardcover/online Photoplay Company, formed to create come- version. dies that would entertain without degrading their African-American characters. Through the work Additional terms, names, and concepts: of such key figures as Oscar Micheaux, Noble National Association for the Advancement of Johnson,andLawrence Chenault, Massood Colored People (NAACP), blackface, minstrelsy, explores entertainment and uplift as the two the New Negro Histories of African-American participation in Amer- At the same time, its images of black brutes lascivi- ican silent film often cite D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of ously chasing innocent white women and a congres- a Nation (1915) as the defining moment in black cin- sional hall filled with barefoot, chicken-eating black ematic representation. The film’s myths of black infe- coons solidified a number of myths that appealed to riority and the sanctity of white nationhood seemed a young nation furiously attempting to define itself almost nostalgic at a moment of national growth and in the face of increasing immigration from abroad, change, of which the new film technology was a part. the massive growth of urban industrial areas (and the Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Incorporated. All rights Wiley & Sons, © 2015. John Copyright American Film History: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960, First Edition. Edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. American Film History : Selected Readings, Origins To 1960, edited by Cynthia Lucia, et al., John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=2072524. Created from washington on 2017-09-26 16:14:23. AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND SILENT FILMS 55 attendant loss of an agrarian culture), and the threat of many of them African-American, into its first films. world war. For example, The Pickaninny Dance – From the “Pass- While Griffith’s film is responsible for sparking ing Show” (1894), James Grundy, no. 1/Buck and Wing African-American protest movements on the local Dance (1895), and James Grundy, no. 2/Cake Walk level through churches and civic groups and on the (1895) feature popular acts from the vaudeville cir- national level through the efforts of the National cuit. Other Edison titles, such as A Watermelon Con- Association for the Advancement of Colored People test (1895), Sambo and Jemima (1900), Bally-Hoo Cake (NAACP), it is inaccurate to suggest that its depic- Walk (1901), and The Gator and the Pickaninny (1903), tions of African-American characters were novel. In drew upon familiar character types and comic scenar- fact, besides the relatively new depiction of Gus’s lust- ios from the stage. In these early examples, we can see filled, violent black brute, many of the black character cinema’s inherent contradictions taking shape: The types included in the film were drawn, like the narra- shorts capture actual, but often identified, black min- tive itself, from older representations of black people strel performers engaged in acts of fiction that were from the page, stage, and screen.1 Therefore, in frequently taken to represent or mimic real life. The order to fully understand the relationship between only roles open to black performers, these character American silent cinema and African-American rep- types became the norm and were read as such by early resentation, we must first briefly consider earlier film audiences. moments in the history of silent cinema, for the pre- The early films were most often single-shot, one- ceding decades of filmmaking set the stage for the rep- reel depictions of characters or short events. Over resentational and political issues raised in The Birth the next decade, however, the development of story of a Nation and that were further examined, espe- films extended the complexity of cinematic narrative, cially by black independent filmmakers, throughout and white actors in blackface increasingly supplanted the remainder of the silent period. African-American performers, shifting theatrical per- formance practices to the screen. Some films, like What Happened in the Tunnel (Edison, 1903) and A Bucket of Cream Ale (American Mutoscope, 1904), are Early Background: Vaudeville, set in unspecified locations, but the majority of films Blackface Minstrelsy, and Film from this time are located in the rural South in a series of celluloid plantation dramas inspired by Plantation African-American participation in American silent School novels, most notably Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edi- cinema, whether in front of or behind the camera, son, 1902), which was repeatedly remade during the roughly follows two trajectories: entertainment and silent era.2 Other examples include The Chicken Thief uplift. The former path draws on early cinema’s roots (American Mutoscope, 1904), A Nigger in the Wood- in carnivals, vaudeville acts, and the minstrel stage, pile (Edison, 1904), and The Watermelon Patch (Edison, often borrowing from popular and familiar forms of 1905). Like their literary and visual precursors, many stereotype and caricature, particularly blackface min- of the story films (especially those detailing black strelsy, for comic relief and overall entertainment. In subservience and/or criminality) were, according to a number of ways this transition was to be expected Jacqueline Stewart, a means of “disavow[ing], via mass because many of the actors and skits from vaudeville culture, Black agency and progress” by presenting appeared in early American film, the new medium black subjects as backward, uncivilized, or as comic providing a novel presentation of what was essentially buffoons to both white and black audiences, since they carnival and sideshow material. The latter path, uplift, were available to all viewers (Stewart 2005, 34). grew out of more explicit political goals that sought There’s no doubt that Griffith, a Southerner by to counter demeaning white stereotypes of African- birth and a stage actor by training, was familiar with Americans with images of black strivers and pro- these character types and narratives. From roughly fessionals. Both entertainment and uplift films have 1897 until his film career began in 1908, Griffith sup- Copyright © 2015. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Incorporated. All rights Wiley & Sons, © 2015. John Copyright complex histories that deserve further exploration. ported himself on the stage as a member of various As early as 1894, Thomas Edison’s company was touring companies that performed legitimate theater, incorporating minstrel subject matter and performers, including Thomas Dixon, Jr’s antisocialist The One American Film History : Selected Readings, Origins To 1960, edited by Cynthia Lucia, et al., John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=2072524. Created from washington on 2017-09-26 16:14:23. 56 PAULA J. MASSOOD Woman (based on his novel of the same name), in capitalization, many companies producing films for which he had a role in New York between 1906 black audiences – and it should be noted that audi- and 1907. During his early time at Biograph, Griffith ences were often segregated in both the North and the directed a number of Civil War narratives, including South at this time – had white financing. In the case In Old Kentucky (1909), His Trust (1911), His Trust of the Afro-American Film Company, Haynes’s role Fulfilled (1911), and The Informer (1912) (Lang 1994, in the company’s decision-making remains unclear 29). Many of the themes of these early films would be (Walton 1914, 6). In fact, he may have been noth- developed in The Birth of a Nation, including a sympa- ing more than the company’s black face, a common thetic rendering of the Southern slave system and the organizational strategy for white owners looking to use of white performers in blackface. gain legitimacy with black audiences. While major film companies were expanding and The Afro-American Film Company released two moving to the West Coast, African-American show- films in 1914, Lovie Joe’s Romance and One Large men saw the new medium’s potential as a viable Evening. While reviews were initially neutral, the profit-making opportunity as well as a means of pre- company’s films soon became the target of criticism senting alternative versions of black life to audiences. in the

Load more