Name: Enza Rosato Student number: 10588515 Master Thesis Film Studies University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Abe Geil Second reader: Catherine Lord Date: 29 June 2018 Words: 21666

Representing the Civil Rights Movement in Contemporary American Cinema: The Dominant Narrative

Abstract

In this MA thesis, I explore the dominant narrative of the United States’ civil rights movement in film. This dominant narrative, often represented within the “based on true events” genre, puts Martin Luther King Jr. inevitably in front, implying that the entire movement died with him in 1968. In this narrative, American society is presented as if racism has been overcome. However, a recent wave of protests against racism, and the production and release of the films The Butler (Lee Daniels 2013), Selma (Ava DuVernay 2014), Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi 2016), and Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow 2017), have brought the subject back into focus. I will examine the way in which the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement is represented in these films, by using a textual analysis. This analysis shows that The Butler and Selma contribute to keep the dominant narrative in place, in contrast to Hidden Figures and Detroit which demonstrate stories outside this narrative. However, all films are able to connect the representation of the civil rights movement with the contemporary racial context of the films’ production, especially by combining film and social media. The mediated one-way communication of this historical past has changed into a multi-voiced approach which gives organizations greater opportunity to address present issues. Therefore, the link between the actions of the civil rights movement and the problem of contemporary racism can be made. This link does not only apply for these case studies, and could be developed further on in other research.

Keywords: African American, racial politics, civil rights movement, dominant narrative, “based on true events”, discourse analysis

Table of Contents

Abstract 1 Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Theoretical Framework 5 Framing Racial Inequality Embedded in American Cinema 9 Chapter 1: Representing the Civil Rights Movement 13 1.1 The Dominant Narrative’s Presentation of the Post-Racial Society 13 1.1.2 Documentary: An Addition 20 Chapter 2: Historical Films in Contemporary Hollywood 23 2.1 A White Dominant Perspective 23 2.2 Difficulties of the “Based on True Events” Genre 26 Chapter 3: Contemporary Historical Fictions Revisiting the Civil Rights Movement: 30 The Case Studies 30 3.1 The Butler and Selma 31 3.2 Hidden Figures and Detroit 35 3.3 Cooperation of Cinema and Social Media 37 3.3.1 Application of Social Media: The Case Studies 39 Conclusion 41 Bibliography 45 Filmography 49 Music 50

2 Introduction

This year, on 4 April 2018, was the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In the week surrounding this anniversary, his life and actions as leader of the civil rights movement were remembered, not only in the US, but also in other Western countries such as the Netherlands. The metanarrative of this remembrance presents a dominant narrative that is formed by the media and continuously reproduced, in which King is the one figure representing the entire movement that existed in the fifties and sixties of the last century. The consensus of that dominant narrative is that the movement started in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision regarding the segregation of schools in the South, and that it ended with King’s death in 1968 (Leigh Raiford and Renee Romano xiv; Richard H. King 473). Therefore, most representations of the civil rights movement are set within this period. The amount of representations of the civil rights movement appears to differ per period. For example, more films about the movement were produced in the nineties alone than in the sixties, seventies, and eighties combined (Jennifer Fuller 167). Moreover, the subject seems to have emerged again in the 2010s. Scholar John Robinson explains that when President Barack Obama won the 2008 election, this led to the misconceptions that racial difference had been transcended in American society that there no longer existed a division between African Americans and white Americans, and that the two racial groups had equal opportunities in American society. Most mainstream films produced since the ostensible end of the civil rights movement support the idea that the movement fully accomplished its goals. Hollywood’s popular fictional genre of films “based on true events” is naturally one which deals frequently with the civil rights movement, but is also a complicated genre because of its claim to be connected to reality and the way in which its narratives produce meaning for audiences. Four recently produced “based on true events” Hollywood films about the civil rights movement are The Butler (Lee Daniels 2013), Selma (Ava DuVernay 2014), Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi 2016), and Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow 2018). These four mainstream films, in their own way, help to keep the dominant narrative in place through the means of entertaining, educating, and informing a broad audience about the civil rights movement. I want to indicate here that this is not a historical investigation into whether the films represent the real events accurately. Rather, through textual discourse analysis I explicate the way in which events are represented by the filmmakers, from which point of view, and what meaning these images convey to a mainstream audience that might not consciously grasp its meaning, viewing the genre only as a form of entertainment. The Butler and Selma present a narrative made up of well-known events relating to the movement, events that are often remembered and represented. These films can therefore serve as appropriate examples of the dominant narrative perpetuated by Hollywood representations. On the other hand, Hidden Figures and Detroit complicate the dominant narrative, since the relation of these stories to the civil rights movement is not explicit. These two stories are about events not well-known to

3 the audience, so they provide information about the context of the civil rights movement and complement understanding of race issues in American society. Therefore, these films complicate the ideas presented by the dominant narrative, which represents one clear, linear story with a beginning and an ending and repeatedly re-presents the same general knowledge for Western audiences. Moreover, it is problematic that all four films present racism as a struggle that has been overcome, erasing contemporary race issues. Consequently, these four films are biased in their presentation of the civil rights movement. However, due to developments within the media field and our globalized world, these cinematic representations, through their reception on social media, facilitate a critical discourse around contemporary race issues. Combining the above issues, I will claim the following throughout this thesis: The representation of the civil rights movement in American cinema is a biased one, in which the same story is continuously reproduced. Moreover, this dominant narrative presents contemporary American society as if racism no longer exists. The recent “based on true events” productions The Butler and Selma help to keep this dominant narrative in place. However, two other recent fictional representations Hidden Figures and Detroit complicate this dominant narrative by providing new information not generally known to the public. I argue that the cooperation of cinema and new social media-based forms of communication are able to counter the claim that racism has already been decisively overcome, making it possible to fight contemporary racism. I substantiate this claim across three chapters. In the first chapter, I discuss how the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement appears in American cinematic objects after Martin Luther King’s death in 1968. Especially, cinematic representations produced until our contemporary post-Obama world existed and where more and more information about the civil rights movement became accessible through these representations. This chapter functions as an overview of various examples of cinematic objects representing the civil rights movement discussed according to the narratives presented. During this chapter it will become clear people of African American origin strove to use the media to put the topic of contemporary racial inequality high on the political agenda during the civil rights movement and continued to do so after King’s death. However, as these films are an attempt to put the subject of racism back into focus, the discourse of the cinematic representations presents this subject more as a closed story, instead of provoking the audience to take action to fight contemporary racism. All of the films discussed contribute to keeping the dominant narrative in place by presenting King as the one and only leader, and all films are situated during the period of his leadership, between 1954 and 1968. If more of these mainstream films extended the narrative of the civil rights movement into contemporary Western politics, the link with contemporary racism would be more visible. Therefore, documentaries as non-fictional genre seem to be a valuable contribution to the fiction genre about this subject that are able to broaden the dominant narrative and in this sense explain more of the context of the civil rights movement.

4 The second chapter revolves around the production strategies of Hollywood and how its “based on true events” genre contributes to the dominant narrative. In addition, I examine the complexities of this particular genre in relation to this subject and the aspect of being veracious objective of being truthful. This chapter links the content of the first chapter to contemporary discussions of a divide between African Americans and white Americans within the mainstream American film industry. This discussion intensified after the Academy Awards of 2013, during which the equal representation of African Americans in American cinema was questioned. This shows that this topic is still highly relevant fifty years after King’s death. The “based on true events” genre is a fruitful one for representing the civil rights movement, supplementing documentaries since these films are able to show scenes a documentary cannot, and this genre is able to reach a broader public. However, the conventions of this genre as fiction complicate the idea that these films are educational for Western audiences. In the third and final chapter, I indicate the relationship of the civil rights movement to our own time by explaining how the dominant narrative appears in the films The Butler, Selma, Hidden Figures, and Detroit. The chapter is divided into three paragraphs from which two regarding the case studies. The Butler and Selma are explained as examples of what the dominant narrative explicitly contains, by using same techniques. Hidden Figures and Detroit are discussed as films outside the dominant narrative presenting stories untold before. However, as I argue, these films are still relevant to educate the audience about the years surrounding the civil rights movement, especially seen in relation to each other. These four recently produced films are a way of reviving the subject of racial inequality and restoring it to the public memory in Western societies. However, there exists a difference in the way these films contribute to this knowledge when seen on their own. Therefore, I argue in this chapter that these films have a greater impact on their audience when seen in relation to other cinematic representations of the movement. In contemporary society, other developments such as social media contribute to audiences making the connection between the civil rights movement and contemporary race issues, thus contributing to the fight against contemporary racism even outside the United States, for example in the Netherlands. Besides this, these new kinds of media increase and reshape the practical opportunities people have to organize themselves in order to fight racism.

Theoretical Framework While discussing the representation of history within contemporary cinema, historiography and historiophoty must both be taken into account. Historiography concerns how history is represented in language and written discourse. In the context of this thesis, that means how the institution of slavery and the actions of the civil rights movement have been written and remembered. Historiophoty, meanwhile, is the way in which history is represented within visual discourse (Hayden White 1193; George F. Custen 26). In this case, historiophoty concerns how these stories are remembered, what is highlighted and passed on,

5 and how this is later translated onto the screen. For example, take the iconic photos of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the large number of spectators, images eventually studied by filmmakers and reenacted for cinematic representations. As explained earlier, there appears to be a dominant narrative while discussing the civil rights movement (Raiford and Romano xiv). This dominant narrative appears as clearly in the historiography as in the historiophoty, since the former feeds into the latter, and the same dominant narrative informs much of contemporary mainstream cinema. The dominant narrative is a selection of key events from the fight for freedom in the last century, combined into one story with a clear ending, appearing in literature and different forms of media, and contributing to keeping this history in the public memory of Western societies. Within the dominant narrative exists a dominant gaze that arose from the norm existing within Western societies about the civil rights movement. Due to a global world culture with international exchange, the Western dominant perspective has changed drastically, but nevertheless, the norm is still the perspective of a “white male,” and this is also the case within the film industry (Margaret M. Russel 244; Richard Dyer White 145-148; Jason Smith 780). This implies that what Russel indicates as the dominant gaze assumes the perspective of a white person. This gaze is ubiquitous in the majority of our contemporary media, having endured across different periods. In 1952, Frantz Fanon was one of the first theorists to discuss the white perspective that is unconsciously repressed in Western societies (112-114). As Fanon explains, this white perspective is embedded in Western societies in the postcolonial and post-Jim Crow era1, and the dominant narrative consequently inflects in popular culture, such as cinema. In addition, this white perspective is also implemented on different levels in society, and the media sustains the ideology of the white perspective through mainstream channels continuously to this very day. Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) examined slavery’s heritage and how it had remained embedded in society; Fanon was one of the first theorists to define postcolonialism. Shortly, after the civil rights movement, this postcolonialist organization was a move towards equality for African Americans and towards a multicultural society. Within this representation exists a white discourse informed by the white perspective, as explained earlier according to the idea of the dominant gaze. Edward Said calls this discourse orientalism, a term indicating the perspective of Western countries on other countries, such as those in the Middle East, which originated after Western imperialism. He states that after the time of colonialism, white Westerners

1 The Jim Crow era indicates the time in which races were separated in the United States after 1890. African Americans were segregated from white citizens, and signs indicated separate with signs areas and services for “colored” people. This legislation mostly affected the South. From the twentieth century onwards, African Americans started to fight for their rights, but it wasn’t until 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education, and later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that these segregation laws were removed to combat institutionalized racism. This is called the post-Jim Crow era, although the legacy of the Jim Crow era still impacts contemporary race issues.

6 (Caucasians2) began to consider themselves superior to other races. This ideology was perpetuated by media such as Hollywood films, and indoctrinated white people. Said indicates non-Westerners with the concept of the Other; these are the people who do not fit this white perspective norm (9). Stuart Hall elaborated Said’s work by applying it to the media, where this perspective is formed into a discourse related to a media object. Hall calls the elements of a person’s background which inform their perspective enunciation (“Cultural Identity” 222-223). However, within filmmaking and film viewing, enunciation is influential in the process of encoding and decoding. Encoding is the way in which the filmmakers produce a meaningful discourse within a media object from their own positional frame of knowledge. In this thesis, I apply this definition to an examination of the civil rights movement and how it is translated onto the silver screen. Decoding, on the other hand, is the way in which this discourse presented by the filmmakers, translates to the framework of knowledge of the spectator and creates meaning from these messages (Hall “Encoding/Decoding” 164-165). For example, encoding describes how a white American Hollywood filmmaker translates his own interpretation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life into a representation biased by the filmmakers’ background. Thereafter, decoding takes place when this film is seen by a white Dutch student, born after the civil rights movement, who was previously only familiar with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and no other aspects of his life. Furthermore, we can consider how, directly after watching this film, the aspects of King’s life are remembered in the mind of this spectator, and also how this view on King’s life and the civil rights movement is biased in the mind of the spectator, since the filmmakers’ interpretation is represented. This implies that a non-American spectator has to consider the filmmakers’ background and the political and social atmosphere surrounding the making of the film. Besides this, scholars Ashley “Woody” Doane, John Robinson, Jared Sexton, and Jason Smith argue in multiple articles that the aim of presenting a color-blind or post-racial society in the United States from the seventies onwards is overambitious. Color-blindness is the idea originating in the seventies that people’s skin color would no longer be a social or economic obstacle for US citizens. I argue that parts of Fanon’s theory to suggest, conversely, that embedded racism in Western society is still applicable to our contemporary American and European societies. Color-consciousness in contrast to color-blindness is the explicit attention that is paid to peoples’ skin color in order to prove inequality. In this sense, this thesis embraces color-consciousness in order to explain that the ostensibly color-blind society represented in contemporary American cinema should be reorganized. The United States has major influence over other Western countries, and color-conscious discussions such as those in Hollywood have a large impact. Since the civil rights movement, the general consensus among Americans is that the United States exist as a post- racial society in which racism has been overcome, and this perception influences European countries like

2 The Caucasian race is a term still mostly used in the United States to indicate white people who are the offspring of the European colonists.

7 the Netherlands. This post-racial idea should be challenged, because the ideal of a multicultural society after the civil rights movement does not imply immediately that all races are already treated equally within this society. The portrayals of characters in film are in this case always representations of American society, in which the film medium exaggerates the divide between African Americans and whites. Therefore, many discussions of stereotyping exist. Film scholar Richard Dyer explains that stereotyping is effective within fiction because the conventions of filmic language encourage the use of stereotypes as recognizable markers through which the audience is able to understand a film’s context (“The Role of Stereotypes” 14- 15). Moreover, these characterizations correspond to norms to make the story understandable for the audience and profitable for the makers. Here, I agree with Dyer on the necessity of clarifying these historical-fictional stories for the public. Representations of the civil rights movement and other cinematic objects representing racial inequality sustain these stereotypes by telling stories of different races for which typecasting is necessary. However, I would like to add a point of discussion regarding the commercial production process of historical fictions. Namely, I have difficulties with the fact that the majority of roles given to actors of African American origin seem to be for a character who has to have a brown or black skin color. In this case, the film industry is being color-conscious, but neglects to pay attention to equally divided roles of non-stereotypical characterizations. It strikes me that African American actors in Hollywood films are frequently typecast. Moreover, the characters commonly known and represented within films about the civil rights movement are given stereotypical characterizations. The portrayal of African American characters has often been one-sided in the past. Over the years, African American characters have become more nuanced, making their personalities appear three-dimensional. One example of a person who used to be given this stereotypical characterization is Malcolm X – one of the civil rights movement leaders besides King – who is presented in the media with his hard personality. The film about his life Malcolm X (Spike Lee 1993) presented him in a more human and sympathetic persona, as a three-dimensional character (Edward P. Morgan 154). Since Spike Lee made him more relatable, this film serves as a starting point for viewers to get to know more about Malcolm’s (personal) life, which other films did not portray. By focusing on his life, his family, his assassination, and other personal aspects surrounding his ideology, this film afforded Malcolm a more respectful representation, differing from earlier representations as a flat character. By making this film, Lee tries to move away from the King-centered dominant narrative and to allow the audience to gain more information about other aspects of the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, King makes an appearance in this film, to show how the two leaders related to each other, which suggests some level of adherence to the standard narrative. Moreover, the issue of stereotyping is of special importance in my chapter delving into Hollywood’s biased method of filmmaking, since discussions arose about Hollywood’s diversity, in response to which the Academy Awards tried to present greater diversity.

8 However, the dominant ideology represented in the depiction of African Americans in Hollywood cinema must be challenged. I argue that it is important that in this case historical films for which these actors are typecast are made. However, the roles for which African Americans are typecast should be complemented with roles for which an actor need not necessarily have an African American background. Thereby, I argue that not only these historical films are of importance, but other fictions representing diversity as well, especially those in which a character’s skin color is not of importance to the plot.

Framing Racial Inequality Embedded in American Cinema Before I explain which cinematic objects contain the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement, I will situate my research within the field of cinematic representations of different races and racial inequality of the US throughout film history. One of the first cinematic exposures of racial difference is the silent film Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Porter 1903), from which narrative many adaptations have been made. Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall emphasizes, in her influential article about looking beyond the general idea of what the narrative of the civil rights movement is, that inequality has been embedded and institutionalized in American culture, with white privilege outliving slavery by many generations (1261). Dyer also states this, years earlier, as he explains the non-obviousness of a white skin color which is seen as the norm within media and society (White 3 and 149; Doane 6-7). Uncle Tom’s Cabin is based on a novel of the same name written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 and is the first cinematic representation of anti- slavery and racial inequality. This shows the cooperation of literature and cinema in the early stages of cinema; Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of the first cinematic examples of the exploration of racial difference in American society. In addition, an example of cinematic racist representations in history is D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and is discussed by many film scholars. The film was controversial in its representation of African Americans, who were represented by white actors in blackface, and is about the Civil War3 in the United States. Film scholars Andrew M. Gordon and Hernán Vera argue that this film introduced the possibility of rewriting history through this new cinematic form of media (166). This is still relevant today because of the media’s representation of our contemporary society. Russel mentions Birth of a Nation as a perfect example of what she calls the dominant gaze. By this she means the Western white perspective that is represented in mainstream culture. The white perspective is biased and dominating in Western societies (Russel 244). Griffith was an innovative filmmaker in terms of camera techniques such as close- ups, which help to involve the spectator, although this film was only for the eyes of white Americans.

3 The Civil War between the Northern and the Southern States lasted four years and occurred as a result of President Abraham Lincoln’s fight against slavery. After this Civil War in 1865 the Congress and the States agreed on the 13th Amendment, changing the constitution to end slavery. Nevertheless, ex-slaves were not allowed to participate in public life equally, marking the beginning of the Jim Crow era.

9 Therefore, more than a hundred years later, a film of the same name and based on true events The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker 2016) was released, emphasizing the importance and revival of the subject of (contemporary) racism in the United States. Unlike its namesake, the new film gives priority to the point of view of the slaves, having deep, well-rounded characters and evoking emotional reactions from the viewer by showing the slaves’ side of the story. The film is written and directed by Parker, who also plays the main role; he made the film in reaction to the influence of the first version. By remaking The Birth of a Nation with the knowledge of segregation in the United States, this film revisiting slavery in the US attempts to explain the origins of contemporary racism and to express that it should be fought against. However, much has changed since the first Birth of a Nation, one such change being that not only white Americans now participate in the making of a film like this. The subject is revived to tell the history of the institution of slavery which has been overcome, but also to explore its legacy for contemporary Western society. In addition, an early popular fictional series, Roots (ABC-TV 1977-1988), depicts the history of slavery in the United States in detail. The series was received very positively, despite being one of the first media objects about slavery and its cruelty to air on national American television. Moreover, the series was able to give the white viewer a perspective on their ancestors’ contributions to earlier racial inequality, despite the public perception of the US as a multicultural and post-racial society after the civil rights movement. Roots was a first attempt to fill a gap of amnesia about the history of slavery in the United States, as Professor of American Studies Leslie Fishbein explains in a chapter dedicated to the series (281). This is true especially because the series was produced after years of cinematic silence on the subject of slavery in the United States, after the production of the popular Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Birth of a Nation. However, a remake mini-series of Roots was released in 2016, again emphasizing the present need to represent the values of America’s multicultural society. Two more recent and highly praised films about slavery are Amistad (Steven Spielberg 1997) and 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen 2013). Both of these films present the experience of slavery from the perspective of the slaves with a closed ending. The films allow the audience to glance the lives and motives of the enslaved African characters as they are presented as well-rounded characters. Moreover, these historical fictions attempt an explanation of life in the time of slavery. Therefore, although the actors play roles of stereotypical characterization of a slave, these films are contributing to make these African American characters more understandable, not just depicting them only as slaves but as people with real personalities. In the recent discussion of the Oscars being too white, 12 Years a Slave can be considered a progression in terms of representing African Americans at this prestigious yearly event, since Chiwetel Ejiofor won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as an enslaved man. I find this problematic however, since the film is used as a counter-reaction to prove that African Americans actors are participating in the film industry as well. However, this is for the role he plays as a stereotypical characterization of a slave.

10 Although there are exceptions, it seems to me that most African Americans play a role where it is of importance to tell a particular story of racial difference. This film wasn’t enough to prove African Americans’ contribution to the film industry, since the discussion of the Oscars revived two years later. Both films, because of their immense audience reach, are helpful in putting the subject of racial inequality back on the political agenda in the nineties and 2010s, but because this seems to be the subject matter in which African American actors will be rewarded most for prominent roles, it becomes problematic because they are less praised for non-stereotypical roles. This constitutes a paradox in which action and reaction continuously follow each other, demonstrating that earlier criticism could be false to prove that times are changing, and happens over and over again. I argue that it is a positive occasion that these films are produced to educate the audience, but also that stereotyping African Americans is still a part of these films’ production. In making these films, a story is told about African Americans in which every character is typecast for their skin color. In this sense, a film like 12 Years a Slave does not represent progress in terms of having non-stereotyped African American actors, but actually contributing to the stereotypes that exist about African Americans and their history. Besides this, many films are made about the United States’ segregated society after the Civil War. The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg 1985), based on the 1982 novel of the same name by author Alice Walker, shows the life and living conditions of African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century. The actresses Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey both play important roles in this film and are examples of African American women committed to make films like this for a broad public including white people. To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan 1962), based on a novel of the same name written by author Harper Lee, is also about the American segregated society, although produced already two decades earlier than The Color Purple and set in the thirties of the last century. As a film that was produced during the civil rights movement, it explains how racial inequality was embedded and institutionalized in American society many years before the dominant narrative claims that the civil rights movement began. Although the town where the protagonists live is fictional, the court case of a white lawyer fighting for an African American’s rights is drawn from reality. In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison 1967), based on the 1965 John Ball novel of the same name, also shows citizens’ distrust of African Americans in the period of the civil rights movement. This narrative of distrust in American society is clarified by comparing the storyline of To Kill a Mockingbird to that of Ghosts of Mississippi (Rob Reiner 1996). Both films present a similar storyline involving a white lawyer defending an African American. Together, these films demonstrate the revisionism of the subject of racial inequality within American society. Moreover, it is notable that The Color Purple, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and In the Heat of the Night are based on novels of the same names, indicating again the collaboration of literature, cinema, and commerce within film production. Furthermore, since these films all comment on US society, the production period has to be taken into account. The film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer 1967) represents the social

11 segregation of African Americans during the movement. This film critically debates interracial relationships in the context of that period. In this film and others starring Sidney Poitier, his celebrity status as one of the first African American actors makes him representative of all African Americans. He plays the main role in two groundbreaking productions, namely In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, released in the same year. Since he was cast in many other productions, I will discuss his contribution to American cinema in later sections. Moreover, many of these films about racial inequality in the United States present it as something that has improved or even disappeared, relating to the presentation of a color-blind society from the seventies onwards. However, the recent film Get Out (Jordan Peele 2017), depicting interracial relationships just like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, suggests that little has changed in fifty years. This thriller about contemporary racism explicitly exaggerates the horrific effects of daily racism that are recognizable to the audience. The makers of Get Out explain that although white Americans assume that they live in a multiracial society, racism is still not overcome. The four case studies of The Butler, Selma, Hidden Figures, and Detroit contribute to this argument. By revisiting the subject of the civil rights movement, the makers of these films attempt to put the civil rights movement back on the political agenda. This “based on true events” genre is able to present both well-known and largely unknown details about the motives of the civil rights movement. In combination with the release of a film like Get Out, a link can be made to commentary on contemporary racism. In addition, all these previous examples, although totally fictional, describe the lives of African American citizens of other times. Therefore, by seeing these films in relation to each other, a more understandable reality is presented. Slavery seems to be a subject often represented within cinema, currently in an attempt to educate the audience about the horrific events involved. However, films that are just reflections of the United States’ society before and after the civil rights movement are also educational in that they allow people to understand the context of the civil rights movement. My four case studies take the perspective of our contemporary time, in which people are gradually gaining information about the civil rights movement and reflecting on it. Since racism has recently been high on the political agenda again, these films are able to show a broad mainstream public where these ideas originate from. Therefore, the idea within the United States that there exists a post-racial society is tackled through these cinematic representations before and during the Obama presidency.

12 Chapter 1: Representing the Civil Rights Movement

“Many of today’s conflicts revolve around how the civil rights movement should be remembered” (Raiford and Romano xii).

This chapter is an elaboration of many of the representations that have been made of the civil rights movement. All these cinematic objects contribute to the knowledge of many Western citizens about the racial history of the United States. However, most cinematic representations are presented alone, not in combination with others on the same topic. These fictional representations are presented as closed stories in which the civil rights movement is considered a successful movement in the past. If we analyze them together, a much broader story of the civil rights movement emerges, in which these films collectively provide more comprehensive information and even reflect on current-day racism. This is especially true when the production context of each film is considered, since the political circumstances of a society are reflected within the films themselves. The media has made Martin Luther King’s life the main focus in depictions of the civil rights movement, and the idea exists that the movement died with him in 1968. Although the US is presented in the media as post-racial after his death, this does not imply that racism no longer exists. Even today, fifty years after King’s death, racism has still not been overcome, although many (recent) fictions imply that it has. In mass media such as television, acts of racism are suppressed to preserve the idea of color-blindness, and this also applies to fictional films. However, documentaries seem to approach the truth, by presenting information outside the dominant narrative, which makes them valuable for this discussion. When Barack Obama became the first African American president of the United States, the idea existed that individualism had finally overcome racism in the US. The rules concerning what fits the dominant narrative are embedded in consumer culture, so that the narrative continues to present only the highlights, especially from King’s leadership, and diminishes other key players in the pursuit of equal opportunities for African American citizens. In practice, inequality in American and other Western societies remains, which is reflected in the Hollywood film industry.

1.1 The Dominant Narrative’s Presentation of the Post-Racial Society The dominant narrative of the civil rights movement tends to assume a white perspective. This narrative can be demonstrated when all cinematic objects about the movement are combined and seen as a metanarrative. However, this narrative is problematic, since much of the movement is overlooked and rejected in the process of media representation. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall explains that the dominant narrative did not only develop retrospectively but in collaboration between the movement’s strategists and the media, which represented these happenings during the movement and thereafter in a particular way (1235). This idea implies that the narrative as we know it today was already developing during the civil rights movement, since the organizers of the civil rights movement were able to use the media fruitfully.

13 This narrative is known all over the world, as for example explained in the Dutch documentary In de schaduw van King “In the shadow of King”; (Hans Hermans and Martin Maat 2018), broadcast on 2 April 2018 on NPO 2 in remembrance of King’s assassination fifty years earlier. As presented in this documentary, Harcourt Klinefelter is one of King’s white followers and became a member of King’s inner circle. Klinefelter became King’s press officer and still has access to all the recordings of all King’s speeches, which emphasizes the movement’s focus on preserving and reproducing their actions. As Jacquelyn Dowd Hall states, the different organizations of the civil rights movement recorded their actions and actively considered how they wanted to be represented. This large amount of found footage is still being continuously reproduced, and these images shape the dominant narrative. As previously stated, King is inevitably the focus of this narrative, even being given a celebrity status. American journalist and writer Edward P. Morgan explains that within the process of story-making King is used as an overarching figure to make the story less complex. He is iconic, and his speeches, marches for voting rights, and ideology of non-violence are what is still most known and depicted about the movement today. Producing the story of a single person, the narrative conflates the efforts of many other freedom fighters into a single protagonist. In the narratives of these films, groups such as The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC; led by King), the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are mentioned. However, they are difficult to distinguish for the uninformed public because of the abbreviations used and because their different focuses and functions are not indicated in these narratives. All these different organizations are in some way linked to King, although the NAACP was already founded decades before King was born. Since King led only the SCLC, it is misleading to present the other organizations as part of the King-centered narrative. The organizations did cooperate, since they shared one main goal, but they also functioned separately from each other. Richard H. King, a professor of American Studies specializing in the civil rights movement, states that in however much detail the civil rights movement is explored in cinema, King will always stand in front as a leader of all those organizations, erasing the story’s nuance (467). Every film made about the period of the civil rights movement mentions King, and all these films claiming to be about the movement are situated in the period favored by the dominant narrative, between 1954 and 1968. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall claims, conversely, that the movement already started before the Supreme Court vs. Board of Education4 case, and that it was not yet finished

4 Because of suburbanization after the Second World War, a process during which African Americans moved from the South to the North, African Americans were living relatively close to white Americans in a segregated society. Racial inequality was embedded and institutionalized in American culture with white privilege for many generations after the times of slavery, which led to high tensions (Jacquelyn Dowd Hall 1235-1242; King 478; Dyer White 36). In 1954, the Brown vs. Board of Education court case outcome allowed black students to attend public schools and in the dominant narrative is often seen as the first victory of desegregating the South of the United States, marking the beginning of the civil rights movement. However, it took years for this outcome to take effect across every state.

14 when King died in 1968. It is untenable to claim that racial inequality no longer exists, so I agree with Hall’s desire to expand this narrative. Furthermore, current discussions of contemporary racial inequalities in the United States should also be taken into account within the dominant narrative, since mediated objects like fictions allow the audience to reflect on the film’s political implications for their own lives. The actions taken to fight racism changed over time and are currently left out in the discussion of cinematic representations of the civil rights movement. These acts of racism seem to revolve more in the media around the release of a film, which emphasizes the importance of the context of a film and its release. For example, newspaper articles exploring the motivations of the filmmakers foreground these discussions, which are subsequently discussed on social media platforms. However, all of these cinematic representations of the movement, when seen in isolation, imply that racial inequality no longer exists. As sociologist Ashley “Woody” Doane explains, race is socially constructed in the color-blind or post-racial society presented as succeeding King’s death, in which race no longer “matters” (13). By this she means that American society suppresses discussion of racism and that acts of racism are ignored. When inequality is not on the political agenda, the illusion of a multicultural society is presented. Moreover, the seventies American ideology of individualism played an important role in making the case for post- racialism, as did the right-wing dissemination of the ideal of the American Dream. This ideology presented a consumer culture in which color-blind conservatives focused primarily on obscuring individual acts of oppression while ignoring institutionalized oppression on African Americans as a group. Television was an important medium in this time, since it was able to present color-blindness covertly. This kind of obscurantism became prominent especially in the eighties, during the Reagan era. Police violence against African American citizen Rodney King in 1991 was filmed, increasing the visibility of the racial divide. The divide became even more visible after the O.J. Simpson trial, media coverage of which was highly sensationalized. Jennifer Fuller examines the importance of television and film in the nineties in representing the color-blind society. The media presented sensational images of these two individuals to the public, indicating that for some years the United States seem to fulfill their promises of a multicultural society by showing acts of racial inequality on television. Because of all this, racial progress stagnated due to the media which presented a hegemonic view that the civil rights movement had already succeeded in the sixties. Therefore, the concept of color-blindness suppressed the conversation around race and presented the American society as if everything was fine. A solution to this problem is proposed by Smith, who claims that color-consciousness is necessary in the media to reject the illusion of color-blindness. This color-consciousness is a perspective assumed in coverage of many recent cases of racial inequality which put the subject high on the political agenda again, for example with the Academy Awards (considered in the next chapter), where the organization is now paying increased attention to participants’ skin color.

15 In addition to television, film has played an important role in defining the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement as we know it today. These kinds of media are a way to express the need for reconciliation of racial differences in representing the civil rights movement. However, these representations are biased. In shaping this narrative, some aspects are foregrounded while others are forgotten. Hollywood continuously rediscovers the civil rights movement and represents it as if inequality no longer exists. Communication scholar Timothy Laurie explains in his article that Dreamgirls (Bill Condon 2006) presents American society as color-blind and post-racial, produced in the time just before the Obama presidency. Although, as he argues, this film is actually an example presentation of racial inequality as something of the past. I agree with him on this point according to this and other historical fictions produced in the time before and during the Obama presidency that ongoing seem to represent the American society as equal towards its citizens. This perpetuates the idea of a post-racial society, as I will argue with the aid of various examples in the next section. All fictional films revolving around the civil rights movement present these stories as if everyone is equal nowadays and these inequalities no longer exist. These filmmakers used Obama’s presidency especially to prove this point. However, the media’s fabrication of public memory of the civil rights movement limits the boundaries of the overall accomplishments of the movement – in which process a specific media “reality” is designed in order to use it for mass consumption – this hegemony is embedded within consumer capitalism, and the media are selective in what they represent. In this one-way form of communication, the market-driven mass media’s focus is to entertain and present stories and certain personalities. This main goal is to be sensational by presenting only certain parts of history. Though the Obama presidency saw certain improvements, this is no reason to claim that the United States are now definitively post-racial, especially considering the backlash leading to Donald Trump’s presidency.

1.1.1 Fictional Representations One of the first major actions led by Martin Luther King Jr. was the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. During this boycott, African American citizens of Montgomery, Alabama boycotted public buses in order to oppose the segregation of public transport. The rules of segregated buses forced African American citizens to sit in the back of the bus in the “colored section,” and they were forced to stand if their section was full, even when seats were still available in the “white section” at the front. During this boycott these protesters walked to their destinations instead of using the bus. The boycott lasted over a year, after which the Supreme Court decided in 1956 that segregated buses were in contradiction with the constitution. This bus boycott is one of the most represented non-violent actions in the early years of the movement led by King. The Rosa Parks Story (Julie Dash 2002) shows the struggle of Rosa Parks as the first African American woman fighting for equality. She was arrested when she protested against segregated public transport by sitting in the front of the bus. The film assumes Parks’ perspective and shows that the bus boycott began

16 the day after her arrest because of her refusal to give up her seat in the front of the bus. In addition, Boycott (Clark Johnson 2001) dedicates the entire film to this bus boycott and explains the surrounding actions from inside King’s organization. In this way, these two relatively small television film productions, produced in quick succession, work together to explain this story from (in the dominant narrative’s perception) the early stages of the civil rights movement when seen in relation to each other. Both films claim to be about the actual events, so that the meaning of these films becomes even more authoritative for their audience, since they explain something about reality. Because of this, these films contribute to maintaining the dominant narrative, by presenting these entertaining, informative, and educational stories as closed, from the perspective of the twenty-first century. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that segregated buses ever existed, but these films show the history of contemporary racism by exploring racial inequalities which were normalized until relatively recently. Moreover, the bus boycott and segregation in the South are also represented in American cinema from the perspective of lesser-known African American citizens in the South. In my opinion, these films are more fictionalized since they are about untraceable citizens in contrast to Rosa Parks and King. The feature film The Long Walk Home (Richard Pearce 1990) explores the participation of fictional African American housekeeper Odessa Cotter, played by Whoopi Goldberg, in the bus boycott. Many African American women in that time were housekeepers working for white women. However, The Long Walk Home expresses not only the emotional impact of inequality for African American citizens like Odessa, but also the domestic struggles created by the divided opinions of white people, and the different impacts the civil rights movement had on their lives. This film claims to be about the fight of African American citizens of Alabama to maintain the bus boycott until the goal was achieved, but eventually gives priority to exploring the torn domestic relationships of white American families during the boycott. Moreover, this whitewashed perspective is another information source supporting the dominant narrative by representing white women as maintaining the boycott by driving the African American protesters to their destination. A more recent example of a film covering a similar subject is The Help (Tate Taylor 2011). This film is comparable in its narrative and perspective to The Long Walk Home, since it shows the relationships between these African American housekeepers and white women. The Help is about African American housekeeper Aibileen Claire, played by Viola Davis, who mainly looks after the daughter of the white woman she works for. Furthermore, the narrative follows white journalist Skeeter, who decides to write a book about Aibileen and her housekeeping friends to give them a voice of their own. However, by assuming the perspective of a white woman, this story situated in the civil rights movement in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi expresses white citizens’ support in the fight against racism, instead of showing the suffering and struggles of daily life for African Americans. Assuming the perspective of a white woman makes the story more accessible for a white audience. These choices in the storyline present the civil rights movement from a white perspective. Moreover, the continuous reproduction of the same individual stories

17 exemplifies Hollywood’s rediscovery of these few stories about the civil rights movement, which are continuously reproduced within the dominant narrative, in which priority is given to stories that can be told from the perspective of white protagonists. According to Morgan, the media have presented three themes of the civil rights movement. He explains this regarding the market-driven reproduction of the civil rights movement. The first theme is presented as the “good” civil rights text, explaining the story of the South in a legitimized way with insights into the perspective of African Americans, and leaving institutions unchallenged. This emphasizes a humanizing mode of storytelling in which the focus is put on individual African Americans. Second, through a discourse in which critics of racial inequality are invisible, exiled, or labelled as the Other, from the perspective of white people, according to the theory of Said. Third, the movement through a current view of the media discourse on racial inequality, picking one of the conflicting sides. These sides are juxtaposed and are often the only two ideologies that exist in the remembrance of the civil rights movement. This juxtaposition maps to black and white, and both races are presented as seeing a different reality. As we have already seen in some examples, throughout the years a more “true” perspective is presented within cinema about the civil rights movement, by giving African Americans a voice. However, whitewashing of those voices still occurs, and the discussion arises around which filmmakers are allowed to tell this story. This is often the reason motivating contemporary African American filmmakers to make films on this topic, due to disagreement with the mainstream narrative. Therefore, I argue that the three themes discussed by Morgan will always recur when it comes to mainstream historical-fictional representations of the civil rights movement. An example of this is Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker 1988), considered by many film scholars to be one of the first films showing the “real” suffering of African Americans (Fuller 185; Sumiko Higashi 349; Gerald Horne 440; King 468). Nevertheless, the makers were criticized for accuracy problems, since the film claimed to be based on true events. Moreover, these film scholars explain that the film depicts a “white savior,” for which the film, made by a white British director, has also been criticized. Richard H. King agrees with this point, demonstrating that a discussion of the correct representation of the civil rights movement was already ongoing in the eighties. This happened during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, during which color- blindness was proposed to be embedded within social institutions. As Smith and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explain in their texts about color-blindness, this is still an ongoing debate which is currently heated-up again in the film industry (780; 271). As I argued before, the film Malcolm X (Spike Lee 1992) tries to oppose the dominant King-focused narrative, although King appears in this film since the two are connected to each other. Malcolm X and his followers are mentioned within the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement, although his ideology is still always presented in opposition to King’s non-violent activism, as in Malcolm X. Another group that forms part of the dominant narrative and is always seen in relation to King is the Black Panthers, which

18 received similar treatment to Malcolm X and his followers in media representations. Richard H. King’s explanation of the King-centered narrative draws further on an article from Morgan, who explained that all these other groups are in the end seen in relation to King. This biographical film about Malcolm X was received more positively than Mississippi Burning, because of its African American director, and since the film revisits and rejects earlier stereotypes about the movement leader. The film contributes to an accurate representation of the true events and had an impact on existing preconceptions about Malcolm X (Horne 440-441). These films both provide information regarding the context of the civil rights movement, but it is important to consider the filmmakers’ identities. However, as the film Malcolm X is dedicated to the life of another movement leader, it is still adding information to the dominant narrative. A slightly later example is the film Ghosts of Mississippi (Rob Reiner 1996), based on true events, which revisits the civil rights movement. This film tells the story of the assassination of Medgar Evers, another movement leader besides King, and the reopening of the case of his assassination in the nineties. One of the leading roles, that of Evers’ widow, is played by Whoopi Goldberg, opposing the white lawyer who finally agrees to fight for the widow and her family and by doing this to fight for equality between African Americans and whites in the juridical system. The discourse presented explains that the civil rights movement and its aftermath have been succeeded by a post-racial ideology, which has finally delivered justice for Evers’ relatives. The film fits within the dominant narrative representing the leaders of the movement and is an addition to the “complete” story in relation to the other films. Furthermore, this film can be understood as a sign of difficulties with the idea of the United States as post-racial, since the film shows existing racial inequalities in the South in the nineties. However, in the end, the film participates in the post-racial discourse, by showing how the justice system has changed in those twenty-seven years, leaving the spectator on a happy note which fits perfectly into the racial ideology of the nineties. The difference between the Evers cases in the sixties and nineties is above all that the jury is no longer an all- white jury in the latter case. This indicates improvement in the juridical system of the US, which contributes to the audience perception that a post-racial or multicultural society has developed and exists in the nineties. Because of these changes in the juridical system and the increased participation of African Americans, we are able to see changes in the direction of equality. However, as professor of Communication Andrew Billings indicates, there existed a discussion about Ghosts of Mississippi’s white director Rob Reiner. Taking the similar discussion about Mississippi Burning into account as well, the debate about who is allowed to tell certain stories seems to be ongoing. Ghosts of Mississippi in this case approaches the subject with less nuance than Mississippi Burning, by stating at the beginning that “this story is true.” These frictions, however, contribute to Custen’s argument, which emphasizes that all these films about the civil rights movement should be seen in their proper contexts and in combination with other films about the movement. I agree with this argument since the discussions of the many representations, by contextualizing them and acknowledging the relationships

19 between them, will produce a metanarrative account of the dominant narrative. Only if they are seen in relation to each other are they able to present a deeper meaning to the audience. This analysis of the dominant narrative proves that all these films collectively contribute to increased public knowledge of the events of the civil rights movement. However, these fictional narratives should also be seen in relation to non-fiction, since they attempt more often to transcend the dominant narrative.

1.1.2 Documentary: An Addition Besides fiction, documentaries also contribute to the representation of the civil rights movement, being less market-driven and less prone to sensationalizing events. Some documentaries seem to acknowledge the dominant narrative, but also introduce other ways of thinking. An example of this is the fourteen-hour documentary Eyes on the Prize (PBS 1987-1990), which functions as an accessible chronological overview of the movement from 1954 until 1983. This time span already departs from the dominant narrative which ends after King’s death. The series explores the years of the civil rights movement through boycotts, marches, protests, sit-ins in diners and other public spaces, and attempts by African Americans to get into white universities and schools. These sit-ins were non-violent protest actions of African Americans, and sometimes whites who joined their organizations, who went into diners and sat in the section for white people instead of the “colored” section. As these actions are also depicted in fictional examples, this documentary series provides novel information by showing many individual stories from participants of the movement without focusing on stories that are already generally known. The found footage used shows the media support the movement gained in the sixties, and talking head interviews with many of the freedom fighters explain how the organization around King worked. Since this enormous organization is shown, this documentary series opposes the fictional films that contribute to maintaining the dominant narrative. Unfortunately, because of the large time investment, this is a less popular cinematic representation of the civil rights movement among the general public. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s article on the “long civil rights movement” establishes the erased subjects of the movement by the media that are addressed in works of non-fiction like Eyes on the Prize. One of these subjects is King’s negative attitude towards the Vietnam War. Besides the masking of King’s anti- patriotic thoughts in the media, the groups that united against King are also erased. The depiction of these subjects would disrupt the media’s manufactured dominant narrative; Morgan concurs with Hall’s assessment, explaining that King’s non-violent ideology could not remain everywhere. It is not unlikely that King could not influence the entire country, although the dominant narrative suggests that he did. King’s ideas were mostly followed by African Americans in the South. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be seen as a milestone, after King’s pleading and the actions of his organization and others for a color-blind society. By signing the Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson promised that all citizens, no matter their race, would be able to use the same public facilities in the US.

20 However, in 1967 riots arose in different cities in the North of the United States. African American citizens in these cities, such as Detroit, stood up for themselves in the face of police brutality against African Americans, and because the Community Action Program5 to support minority groups did not accomplish its promises. These citizens turned against King’s non-violent ideas, since nothing had changed for them. Afterwards, King introduced Poor People’s Campaign, which was a radical way of unifying all poor citizens of the United States of all races and engaging in non-violent protest with more boycotts, sit-ins, and a large march on Washington. Besides the riots, these actions of King’s organization and the commentary on his non-violence are not represented within most fictional films. Most of the films focus on the beginning of the movement, King’s speeches, his death, and less on his critique of Vietnam or critique of opponents of non-violence that fought in their own way for equality. At the time, television companies were continuously broadcasting these events, but they are largely erased from the narrative as it was recreated in subsequent representations of the movement. However, other documentaries also attempt to resist the dominant narrative. Two feature-length examples are I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck 2016), based on the unfinished manuscript by writer James Baldwin, and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Stanley Nelson 2015). The makers of I Am Not Your Negro explain through found footage the dominant narrative of Baldwin’s assassinated friends and civil rights movement leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The film has been received very positively and contains a voice-of-god narration from Samuel L. Jackson. By discussing these leaders, the dominant narrative is brought to the surface, although the documentary also provides a deeper explanation of how racism is still embedded in contemporary American society. This is different from fictional films, which present the civil rights movement as a thing of the past. Alternating fragments of old films in with racial inequality is depicted with more recent images in which the aftermath of the movement and the ongoing discussion is established, the film differentiates itself from its fictional counterparts. Besides this, the makers of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution explain a whole new narrative, distinct from the dominant King-centered story. As its title already implies, these makers argue that the Black Panther Party were the real founders of the civil rights “revolution.” Many fictional representations ignore this party or mention it only briefly; it is almost never the main subject of a film. This documentary, conversely, introduces a new perspective on the movement, especially since the film is available on Netflix for mainstream audiences. Since this documentary is widely available on a platform like

5 The Community Action Program was part of Johnson’s War on Poverty, intended to fight poverty and improve community solidarity (Gertrud Neuwirth 157). A part of King’s program that is left out the dominant narrative is how King and his organization fought for the rights of the poor in the neglected parts of cities. For King and his organization, the skin color of these people in need did not matter. However, African Americans revolted after Johnson’s promised went unfulfilled.

21 this, and it presents a new angle on the subject, it differentiates itself from most fictions maintaining the dominant narrative. Found footage is a common technique to represent the movement in documentaries as in fictions. However, found footage used in fictional films is often used as proof of the film’s claim to be based on real events and to achieve a deeper impact and create meaning for the audience. Therefore, the different purposes of these two genres also indicate a difference in which story about the movement is being told. Although it could be argued that the “based on true events” genre lies in between the conventions of fiction and non-fiction, commercial reasons gain priority in this mainstream genre, incentivizing the continuous repetition of the same story with same information. However, documentaries attempt to fill this gap and educate the audience by conveying a new perspective.

22 Chapter 2: Historical Films in Contemporary Hollywood

This chapter elaborates on how the most influential film industry of the world currently still participates in the unequal representation of minority groups like African Americans. It expands upon the previous chapter, since most of those fictional examples were produced in Hollywood. The dominant narrative of the civil rights movement presents the contemporary United States as a multicultural society in which racism has been overcome. Hollywood, because of its mainstream films with global audiences, has an enormous influence in putting particular subjects on the political agenda in many different Western countries. Since the norm in Hollywood is to present a white perspective, unequal representations take place within these films. Although the discussion seems to be different throughout the history of film in the US, the discussion about the Academy Awards being too white has intensified since 2015. Many celebrities are campaigning against this implicit norm. The organization pays too little attention to representing the United States’ multicultural society within the film industry and at this prestigious award ceremony. The hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite” was created to bring this discussion to social media, which has proven effective since the subject has been at the forefront of Oscar coverage every year since. However, while it seems that African Americans are nominated, and win, more often nowadays, this is still problematic since they are often nominated and awarded for stereotypically characterized roles which specifically require African Americans. In other words, they are typecast. Therefore, I argue that historical films such as those about the civil rights movement are important, but should be produced alongside films which do not require African Americans to be typecast. Moreover, this suggestion involves the overall idea of the popular and profitable “based on true events” genre that explicitly tries to represent reality and what really happened in the past. I propose that if Hollywood focused more on non-stereotypical characterization of its characters in fiction, this type of film could exist harmoniously together with historical films. In addition, organizations such as the NAACP Image Awards, focused on African Americans and organized yearly since 1967, are resisting Hollywood’s Academy Awards one-sided perspective in order to educate audiences on the necessary diversity in the media. Organizations like this, which go against the current, are necessary to fight Hollywood’s influence.

2.1 A White Dominant Perspective American historian Peter Kolchin and sociologist Ashley Doane emphasize that race and its divisions are constructed by humans and change over time. Human cultures categorize differences between themselves and others and label them. This is a one-dimensional perspective, since the discourse of racial inequality solely focuses on the minority group; whites are invisible and unobtrusive. If we focus on whiteness as well, people become more aware of their white skin color, which makes it less normalized. This white hegemonic view is integrated into narration, since it is the point of view of the colonizers. However, white Americans

23 are trying to retain control of the perspective, since it keeps the horrors of racism invisible. Many scholars, such as Dyer and Doane, have been focusing on the approach to the concept “white.” This approach equalizes the theory of race, not changing the perspective. They state that with the emergence of whiteness studies in the nineties, the one-dimensional approach to race relations changed. The history of American society is largely the story of relations between black and white; indeed, the images of this division are a form of cultural citizenship. White supremacy still exists today, as whites are dominating African Americans on multiple fronts. Being an American is not immediately associated with being African American, as the media has disseminated the idea of the white perspective as the norm. This contributes to the idea that the dominant gaze, which emerges from the dominant narrative, is a white-oriented perspective. Russel introduces the concept of the dominant gaze and explains the resemblance of the concept to Laura Mulvey’s cinematic male gaze (Russel 244). Film Scholar Sarah Kozloff draws further on this idea, stating that this regular and normalized gaze is shared by multiple cultures, in this case Western cultures, and calls this normalized gaze a “level gaze” (17). When this perspective is used in almost every cinematic mainstream object, the dominant gaze is easily and unnoticeably adjusted to the minds of the audience and causes characterization or stereotyping. Smith calls the stereotyping of African Americans in cinema “cinethetic racism,” and indicates that the white heteronormative perspective is used and reproduced (782). This implies a spiral within media which is impenetrable. This white and political mode of storytelling is a way of representing the social problems of African Americans negatively. Typical stereotyped characters are often used to explain this. Film scholar Bernard Beck explains that this can be challenged by weakening previously used stereotypes. This theory is similar to Smith’s idea of using color-consciousness to fight the incorrect practice of color-blindness. This implies that changes must be made to deny the white dominant discourse. Whiteness is still a collective phenomenon with a privileged visibility and even strategic invisibilities in the entertainment industry. In this way, the political conception of color-blindness is present in these industries as well, in the idea that hard work and talent will be rewarded: The American Dream. A number of African American actors, actresses, directors, and members of other valued professions in the film industry have accomplished star status in Hollywood. However, this is only a limited number compared to the number of whites participating in the American mainstream film industry. After the civil rights movement, fiction films are still used as a tool to spread political messages about racial inequality in contemporary America. In the eighties and nineties, non-white characters became more humanized after a long tradition of stereotyping. During this black film boom, activist directors like Spike Lee contributed, for example in 1989 with Do the Right Thing. In this film, Lee depicts people of many different ethnicities living together in one neighborhood in New York City, exploring how the multicultural society that existed was still far from equal. The film still has a political impact nowadays, despite being fictional. Moreover, the film plays with the dominant gaze by inverting the typical white perspective.

24 Director Spike Lee was one of the African American filmmakers who were able to present their perspective to the white audience as well. Furthermore, a society’s racial tension is visible in the film industry, and Hollywood plays an important role in putting certain subjects on the political agenda. What is striking to me is that all these films about the civil rights movement help to make people aware of racial history and how a racial divide remains visible today. All these films are trying to minimize the knowledge gap regarding this racial history in order to finally reach the unreachable utopia of total equality. However, an example of the representation problems that exist within Hollywood is that director, producer, and writer Steven Spielberg owns the rights to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches6. This makes it difficult for other contemporary filmmakers to use his speeches’ exact wordings, and in this way represent the dominant narrative’s inseperable front man of the civil rights movement fairly. In addition, the same African American actors, actresses, directors and other filmmakers are participating in the production of these films, which indicates the low level of diversity existing in Hollywood throughout the years. Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey and others partake in these films in an attempt to fight inequality, through which their stardom is used for exploitation purposes. One of the first African American actors who broke through in the States was Sidney Poitier, who was eventually labelled as white or whitewashed in the roles that he performed. He often portrayed stereotypical African American characters in films for audiences of different races. Denzel Washington took over this role after the civil rights movement, playing many stereotypical roles but also playing roles that did not necessitate an African American actor. However, as a director he has played a positive role in putting the subject of racial inequality on the political agenda. Oprah Winfrey exemplifies some progress towards equality, as an African American middle-class woman. There is also the problem of financing these films in Hollywood. This contributing group of African American Hollywood celebrities is just a small number compared to white celebrities, which again emphasizes the limitations imposed by self- perpetuating racial inequality. Inequality in the film industry has been a topic of controversy again in recent years during the Academy Awards. In 2013, race was a central subject of the nominated films of the Oscars for the first time – although they were still produced by white filmmakers. The organization of the Oscars is trying to make the event “less white,” which remains problematic in my opinion, since it seems that this change must be forced. Leaving the notion of nominating people because of their skin color aside, these people are still being nominated for stereotypical roles, as I explained earlier with the example of 12 Years a Slave. When Chiwetel Ejiofor was nominated for Best Actor in 2013 for his role as Solomon Northup, he had played the

6 In Selma, King’s speeches are paraphrased. The rights to his speeches are licensed to DreamWorks and Warner Bros, because Spielberg plans to film a King biopic and bought them (Bilal Qureshi 64-65; Soraya Nadia McDonald).

25 role of a slave. This characterization of African American actors complicates the push towards a more multicultural film industry. When African American actors participate in an Oscar-nominated production or are nominated for a role, their skin color is always of importance in the casting process. The same applies to other African American filmmakers involved behind the scenes, since they often want to make a particular film to put racism on the political agenda. This year in 2018, for example, scriptwriter and director Jordan Peele won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Get Out. He won this Oscar for his screenplay about racism, in which stereotyping and typecasting were necessary. Jordan Peele made this film with the intention of showing contemporary racism in a remarkable light by exaggerating it with horror film tropes. I argue here that in a multicultural society, African American actors should be nominated (more) frequently for non-stereotypical roles.

2.2 Difficulties of the “Based on True Events” Genre Documentary filmmaker and Professor Alan Rosenthal explains that cinematic stories based on reality emerged from topical journalism (xiii). These stories were very popular on television in the last century, but we can’t deny that television has changed dramatically in this century. Nevertheless, a need for fiction based on reality still exists. This genre is considered more dramatized than journalistic because it attempts to tell a story, which is why this particular genre should be understood as fiction. This implies the genre’s focus on storytelling, which jeopardizes the non-fictional aspect of the genre and how the portrayed discourse is received. Films of the “based on true events” genre are a construction of the past. In this way, this medium is able to give a visual explanation of what was previously written. This emphasizes the relation between historiography and historiophoty. As I explained earlier, historiography is the designation for the way history is represented in language and written discourse, which means how the history of the civil rights movement is told to the new generations. Historiophoty is however, the way in which history is represented within visual discourse (Robert A. Rosenstone 336; Custen 26; White 1193). In other words, we are dealing with historiophoty: the representations of the civil rights movement in the media and how this story is presented. These “based on true events” films are an applicable genre for this historical subject since they are not only able to educate but are also entertaining. Furthermore, they are a solution to covering events which the camera of a documentary couldn’t film (Sita Williams 332; Jerry Kuehl 122). If these fictional stories of the real were totally truthful, there would be no need for them since the genre of the fly-on-the-wall documentary already exists. The meaningful aspect of these film is not that they are able to show how and why certain events took place, but that by showing real people with recognizable actions they add to the existing written history. These films, in contrast to documentaries, focus more on personalities and narrative. Individuals are often represented as stereotypes of certain social groups and contribute to the idea of an implicit narrative or plot (Dyer “The Role of Stereotypes” 15). Moreover, this

26 mode of storytelling increases the empathy of the viewer, which has an economic purpose. When the dramatized films based on true events are decoded with reference to the social context of the audience, the empathy in this second order experience seems even stronger because of their engagement with the characters (Derek Paget 49; Laurie 538). History is often shaped within the stories of individuals, as in the case of racism, which makes stereotyping common. Dyer states that stereotyping is necessary to make a fiction film for a mass audience profitable (“The Role of Stereotypes” 11-15). By following the individual stories of the characters instead of groups, the characters become personally relatable to the public, ensuring that the viewer becomes emotional attached. This emotional attachment to individuals will be remembered better by viewers, which makes it more profitable for the production companies. History is a construct of perception and reception, which is also a very selective process. A public history in this case is not only the history itself, but also the process of how the mass audience accessed this history through a Hollywood production and retained it as a memory. Custen examines the problems that occur when Hollywood produces historical films. Films based on true events, including the biopic – a film in which the life of one specific person is presented – can give a biased perspective due to the perspective on history Hollywood assumes (Custen 21). This demonstrates the previously discussed white discourse in the process of encoding, since specific choices have been made during the production process regarding how the lives are represented and how this is translated into the story on the screen. Hollywood has a great influence in shaping the minds of the audience in terms of what is put on the political agenda. Hollywood’s biased perspective is continuously reproduced in which a more positive story from the framework of knowledge from the (white) filmmakers about the civil rights movement is presented. Furthermore, the meaning of a film is translated through the viewer’s frame of knowledge. Specifically, when the filmmakers state that a film is based on true events, viewers become more attentive to the meaning when the narrative is linked to reality and a topic discussed on the political agenda. As Kozloff argues, these three-dimensional, evolving characters and realistic storylines are able to create a more political meaning for the character. Nevertheless, she argues that less realistic films such as Do the Right Thing are able to create a similar meaning (Kozloff 18). This main narrative represented in cinema of the civil rights movement often eliminates the point of view of the subjects it is really about. There are several elements that have to be considered in the case of mainstream historical Hollywood films with realistic aspects. The first is that these films must always tell the story within a limited amount of time – approximately two hours – which makes them selective. This means that there is often a moral message that shows a more progressive perspective on history. Besides this, it is a simple, closed story with a clear ending, which indicates that the entire story cannot be told because of time constraints. Moreover, the events are “personalized, emotionalized, and dramatized,” emphasizing the feelings of the spectator (Rosenstone 335). These components together are problematic for the genre and how it is

27 eventually received among the public. This genre only offers a glimpse of the civil rights movement, without being able to explain the entire context. Consensus often exists among film scholars about the accuracy of these films. These films are often the least accurate in dialogue, an important aspect of the narrative of the film which usually cannot be supplied by the historical record (Kuehl 122). Moreover, philosopher Michael Polanyi, interested in knowledge, introduced the “tacit dimension,” in which the audience is able to acknowledge that something is true but is not aware of the origin of this knowledge. The Hollywood film market is a huge influence on what we know about civic history (Custen 30; Thomas Fuchs 323-325). I agree with film scholars such as Tom W. Hoffer, Richard Alan Nelson, David Edgar, and Tim Libretti that it is still important for these films to be made, since they are able to put certain subjects on the political agenda by reaching viewers whom documentaries are unable to reach. These agendas can be spread because of this genre in which unique authorized views can be given on an important subject. The audience learns from these films which can influence public opinion. The filmmaker should contextualize the origin more, and the audience should be more proactive and understanding of the origin of the story. Overall, the audience is aware of the dramatized non-fictional elements of this particular genre, since this is often indicated at the beginning with the sentence “based on true events,” but since the specific details are not clear enough, skepticism prevails among the audiences about these dramatized stories that are supposed to say something about reality (Higashi 350-352; Gordon and Vera 163-164). Public discourse in a film is able to emphasize a process of social improvement when it discusses a certain political subject, while film festivals like the NAACP Image Awards, as well as scholars, are trying to fill this gap. Hollywood is very conscious and careful in their representation of the civil rights movement since they are able of introducing new ways of thinking and educate the audience (Gordon and Vera 127-128). The ideology of Hollywood reflects the political ideas of the period in which the film is produced. Currently, there is an increasing number of non-white directors producing fictional films with complex narrative structures and denying the existing conventions of different genres. Along the lines of equality, questions can be asked about these films as well since they are often made from a political perspective, which can be biased in favor of the non-white discourse as well. This refers back to Morgan’s idea that cinematic objects show a certain perspective on what is seen as “true,” and that different races see a different truth (139; Fuller 168). Festival curator and scholar Roya Zahra Rastegar explains this by looking at films on the festival circuit in 2013. For this reason, director Ryan Coogler specifically made Fruitvale Station to get a message about police brutality against African Americans across. The film starts with found footage filmed by bystanders of the unjustified shooting of Oscar Grant by a police officer. This is topical in the era of mobile phones which makes it easy to record these cases, and use these viral images to oppose brutality (Fredrick C. Harris 35).

28 The film medium is a way to support this fight, which was Coogler’s motivation to make this film. Coogler’s motivation emphasizes again the two-way divide which exists within the film industry in Hollywood, by discussing racism from different perspectives, in this case an African American filmmaker who explicitly uses the medium to get a message across. In relation to this motivation, the discussion arises of who is allowed or not allowed to tell a certain story, an issue that will be addressed again in the upcoming chapter. Furthermore, films about social injustice are mostly produced by large American production companies like those situated in Hollywood. Kozloff emphasizes individuality as such an important aspect of the films based on true events, including films about the civil rights movement, that the characters and their surroundings are reproduced down to the smallest detail. This emphasizes a problem, since the impact of the realism of these films means they are able to accomplish larger political influence upon the general public than more abstract films. Immersion in the fictional films improves the empathy of the viewer, which is caused by multiple techniques such as similarities with reality, close-ups and music. In addition to techniques for involving the spectator, multiple techniques are used to explain the relation of the fictional film to reality. This claim of truth is often used as a promotion with the economic value of potentially reaching a mass audience. Hollywood has a prominent role in the film industry and produces these films, meaning there exists a relationship between Hollywood and cultural ideology. Often, the relation to reality is already claimed with the statement in the first scene “based on true events.” This immediately sets the tone for the viewer’s experience. Other aspects also contribute, such as the use of found footage, actors looking similar to the actual people, and the representation of iconic moments Westerners are familiar with. This contributes to the meaning that is eventually presented to the audience. These factors are elaborated upon in the following chapter, in which my four case studies are analyzed.

29 Chapter 3: Contemporary Historical Fictions Revisiting the Civil Rights Movement: The Case Studies Hollywood profits from historical films that are based on true events, since these films primarily deal with subjects that are already part of the general historical knowledge among Western citizens. In this process, Hollywood continuously repackages subjects like the civil rights movement in the United States. Although these subjects are generally well-known, each of these films contains a smaller story within the larger history. Besides the era of protests in the fifties and sixties, there seems to be another rise in protest for equality in our contemporary era. Within the past few years, organizations like Black Lives Matter (BLM) have organized in response to the fact that the successes of the civil rights movement have not effectively guaranteed equality between people of different skin colors. This organization started in 2013 with the hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter”, and is committed to putting racism and police violence against African Americans on the political agenda and trying to “heal” justice (htttp//:www.blacklivesmatter.com). A developing cooperation between different kinds of media, such as new media collaborating with cinema, makes the subject of contemporary racism negotiable within (American) society. Therefore, the idea of becoming “post-racial” by putting these concerns on the political agenda is revived. The films The Butler (Lee Daniels 2013), Selma (Ava DuVernay 2014), Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi 2016), and Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow 2017) all participate in the discourse of the civil rights movement. These four films, all produced in the 2010s, revisit personal “true” stories to educate the public about these fights against racism and to make or keep these stories part of American public memory. In the first instance, they are presented as individual stories with a plot and a clear ending. However, these films are more valuable when seen in relation to each other and even more valuable when viewed in combination with recent media developments. The Butler and Selma are examples of representations of the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement, in which the same commonly known events are continuously reproduced. Hidden Figures and Detroit, however, are examples of more individual stories that complicate the dominant narrative. These films are bringing to light new events and increasing public knowledge of stories that were unknown before their release. These films go beyond the dominant narrative by assuming the viewer already has some knowledge about the context of the civil rights movement. Therefore, if these films are linked to other media representations of the civil rights movement, they can be valuable insofar as they tell this story outside the narrative. These films fail to present a deeper meaning, since the explicit relation to the context of that period, the civil rights movement, is left out. All these film, fail to present more of a context outside these individual narratives, and because of their closed-endings give the impression that racism is something that happened in the United States’ past and no longer exists. This is however an illusion, as shown within the film industry in the previous chapter. Moreover, the production of these films implies that the subject should be put on the political agenda again but fails to link the civil rights movement to

30 current acts of racism. Recently, many organizations have arisen to fight contemporary racism, and these organizations are able to link these films to our time. Since Martin Luther King Jr. died and the civil rights movement ended, technological developments in our globalized world makes it possible for these organizations to unite and act quickly. Finally, social media makes it possible to connect these historical events with contemporary racism, by providing a whole new platform with room for discussion.

3.1 The Butler and Selma Both The Butler and Selma are directed by African American directors and written by white scriptwriters. The films contain events of the civil rights movement that are generally known and remembered within American society. I contend that the spectator would be able to understand the civil rights movement better if the films were seen in relation to other cinematic representations. Beck, similarly like me, explains The Butler in the context of earlier films, but he presents this film as an accomplishment of a series of films in a move towards equal representation. I, in contrast, see this film more as a beginning, in which different stories about the movement can finally be told from the African American perspective, because of the timespan and the relation to Western memory. By this, I mean all four case studies which premiered in quick succession, indicating a desire for the subject to be discussed again. However, many detailed aspects of the movement that are explored can be missed by a broad general public without knowing the background. Lee Daniels directed The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, inspired on the life of Eugene Allen, who worked as an African American butler at the White House from 1952 until 1986. Scriptwriter Danny Strong immediately highlights that the film is only loosely factual, by naming the main character differently, which shifts the genre more towards fiction than biopic. This is stated at the beginning of the film with the text, “Inspired by the true story.” Therefore, the film plays with recognizable historical events that are known to a Western public, by showing certain highlights of the turbulent years in which the civil rights movement took place. The film ends in 2008 when Barack Obama wins the presidential election. After years of fighting for equality in the White House, this moment is presented as a happy ending after which the United States will finally be post-racial. Scholars Smith and Robinson also indicate in their articles that people saw this moment as a turning point from which moment onwards the United States would finally be post-racial (782; 213-221). However, the status of one African American as leader of the world’s most powerful country does not imply total equality. This happy ending is even problematic, because each presidency in the United States seems to be a backlash against its predecessor. Although the most influential man in the world is of African American origin, recent discussions suggest that America’s society is still far from equal. Moreover, this film contributes to the dominant narrative, because of the events explicitly shown. The film’s narrative does go beyond the death of King but explains the years after his death in less detail

31 than the years during his fight for equality. In this period after King’s death, Cecil finally secures a raise for the black staff in the White House, thanks to Ronald Reagan, by whose wife he is invited to a dinner party at the White House in recognition of this effort. Through Cecil’s voice-over, we understand the duality of this invitation from the president’s wife, because Cecil and his wife, played by Oprah Winfrey, are tokenized for their racial origins to maintain the post-racial ideal. This explains the understanding of the film’s makers that the civil rights movement continued after King’s death, but showing this in a briefer overview allows the dominant narrative to stay in place. Director Ava Duvernay is an African American filmmaker interested in translating racial issues onto the silver screen. Selma similarly maintains the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement as in The Butler, but focuses on one particular aspect of the movement, namely the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, which is known as King’s (and his organization’s) most effective action. This film written by Paul Webb was released approximately fifty years after this march, which recontextualizes the importance of these events. Since DuVernay could not use King’s original speeches, the storyline mostly focuses on private scenes from King’s life, which makes it less accurate (Qureshi 64-65). Moreover, the filmmakers reenact the happenings of “Bloody Sunday” on March 7 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where civil rights marchers were assaulted by Alabama State Troopers. As Richard H. King indicates, Obama as president of the United States with an African American background similarly recontextualizes the events of the film, since he visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 2015 on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday to firmly keep on remembering this horrific event (467). In doing this Obama followed in the footsteps of earlier presidents, a detail emphasized in Selma, since this action eventually caused President Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act7. At this specific point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, civil rights movement marchers were brutally pushed back, an event also presented in the film. Since an African American was elected president and able to visit this memorial, we are able to say that things are changing, in different cinematic representations of the civil rights movement as well. In addition, the title song of the film, “Glory,” performed by singer John Legend and rapper Common, emphasizes this aspect, because these world-famous African American performers revive the Selma to Montgomery march in the context of our contemporary Western pop culture. The use of real historical footage is an important aspect of both films. This real footage combined with fictional reconstructions contributes to The Butler’s attempt to educate its audience. Besides this, television broadcasts that are staged showing sit-ins, the Ku Klux Klan attacking the Freedom Rider Bus, and

7 The film was released fifty years after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1964, and hundred fifty years after Lincoln ended the Civil War (King 467). All these remembrances of the racial history of the United States imply a memory of American culture, which is especially brought to the front of the public mind on these anniversaries. Selma contributes specifically to the dominant narrative, by keeping these events all linked to each other as highlights of the African American fight for freedom.

32 John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in 1963 about equal rights, are traces identifying the film as historical. However, the latter scene immediately cuts to the scene of Kennedy’s assassination, which implies a misleading historical message, since Kennedy was assassinated months after this broadcast. Showing only these highlights allows the audience to recognize events, but also to potentially take wrong conclusions from them. All these fragments convey the importance of the media and its representation of the movement. News fragments are a recurring aspect that the different presidents, Cecil’s wife and co- workers, and other characters watch; these fragments immediately educate the audience and contextualize the historical background. Real footage is used in Selma, when thousands of people are finally able to march from Selma to Montgomery. Real recordings of relieved marching people and opponents on the side-line are shown. This emphasizes the focus of both fiction films on claiming to be about reality and on emphasizing that these events happened in the past. The Butler contains various traces of reality, combined with details that are unlikely to be true. As I explained earlier, this film presents an overview of an expanded narrative of the civil rights movement. The film starts with a scene in which Cecil is waiting for his appointment with President Obama, followed by a shot of two hanged African Americans with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.” This juxtaposition adds to the theory of a dominant narrative, firstly because King is immediately connected to the film as context and secondly because of the timespan of the dominant narrative of the movement, with King in front and inequality presented as a thing of the past. Showing Cecil waiting for his appointment with President Obama links King’s fight for equality to the apparent equality of Obama’s presidency, as if the civil rights movement was complete. The text “this film is dedicated to those who fought for their rights” appears at the end, indicating that changes have been made, and that such struggle is no longer necessary. This ending note in combination with the depiction of the Obama presidency is used to suggest a positive viewpoint on US progress with regard to racial equality. The audience is introduced to Cecil as the son of slaves on a cotton plantation, where his father was killed for standing up for his raped wife. This storyline emphasizes Cecil’s origin in a time of inequality. The film is an addition to the already existing footage of the civil rights movement but appeals to viewers’ emotions by detailing the intimacy of Cecil’s life, which is only possible to relate in fiction. Both these films as fiction offer a solution to missing footage of the inner circle of the movement. As the King-centered narrative insists, we are in Selma able to understand his domestic surroundings. This contributes to the audience’s empathy, by emphasizing the movement’s events on an emotional level and thereby contributing the memory of the movement. The opening shot of Selma is a close-up of Martin Luther King Jr., played by David Oyelowo, looking at himself in the mirror of his hotel room and practicing his speech for receiving the Nobel Prize in 1964. Starting with this shot immediately draws the viewer into his life on an emotional level, as Kozloff argues in her article about the viewer’s engagement with political films, by

33 showing a part of his life almost nobody knew (22). This implies that the emotional engagement of the spectator increases which means King’s life sticks in the viewer’s framework of knowledge. Both films also contain intertextual links to other media objects about the civil rights movement. In Selma, when King is put in jail for protesting, he tells a member of his organization to keep his “eyes on the prize.” This dialogue references the previously discussed expanded documentary about the civil rights movement. What has been discussed as well, is Sidney Poitier’s performance in In the Heat of the Night that expresses the duality of media representations of African Americans. When Cecil’s wife says that she loved Sidney Poitier’s performance in this film, Cecil’s oldest son reacts aggressively by saying that “he is a white man’s fantasy of what they want blacks to be.” His son makes a comparison with the Uncle Tom narrative of the African American submissive role. The film, for this matter, reflects on its own dual influence, in that it is educational insofar as it links to the context and other filmic representations but neglects to represent reality credibly. In this film, both Cecil’s sons represent different aspects of the African American experience in the period. His oldest son, David, becomes a member of The Black Panther Party, fighting for his rights differently from King and his followers. His other son, Elijah, applies for the army and is eventually killed in Vietnam. This film explains the opposition to the Vietnam War that existed, which puts the story in the context of its time. On the other hand, the film is unrealistic in other scenes, such as when President Kennedy claims to know Cecil’s son David’s political ideology as part of the Black Panther Party, which is unlikely and unbelievable. The filmmakers continuously push the spectator between the ideas of fiction and non-fiction, a duality in which the fictional aspect ultimately prevails. Therefore, the narrative of The Butler plays with the knowledge of the spectator about the realistic events, and in my opinion would be more valuable seen in relation to other representations of these events. Another example of possible misrepresentation for an unknowing audience is the storyline in Selma related to King’s troubles with the FBI, especially its director Edgar Hoover. Texts of King’s actions appear on the screen with times and dates while the sound of a typewriter is heard. These logbooks of King’s actions are symbolic of the FBI watching King’s steps during that time and trying to ruin him. His wife Coretta, played by Carmen Ejogo, accuses him of cheating after hearing sound recordings of King apparently cheating sent to her by the FBI, but this storyline is not deepened any further. Links are made to the FBI surveilling members of the movement, but for an unknowledgeable public these details will be more difficult to understand since the elaborate relationship between Hoover and King is unexplained. Therefore, the makers of the film already assume a certain level of knowledge from viewers. This real espionage that took place in the sixties was a fact about King’s life that remained unknown for a long time. Since the film does not explain it, it would have been more profitable to make this storyline more nuanced. For the people that already knew about this, Selma functions as just a reminder and demonstration of these dishonest actions of the FBI against King. However, for the audience that did not know about this espionage, the film does not put the FBI in a majorly bad light. The battle between Hoover and King as a

34 detail of the civil rights movement would have been a revelation were it part of a historical film made earlier. However, this battle is important to truly understanding King’s struggles in American society. These fiction films do provide knowledge and help the audience reflect on particular individuals and the roles they played in the movement, which would otherwise be forgotten. Selma ends with shots portraying people explaining in a short text how their lives continued after their arrival in Montgomery. King’s followers are described as loyal, since some died during the non-violent fight for rights of African Americans. King’s opponents are described as failures. This helps us to understand and remember the actions of some of these people, again ending on a happy note, to emphasize the accomplishments that have been made. However, both films describe the civil rights movement as something that happened in the past and neglect contemporary racism by presenting these closed and happy endings in which the link to contemporary problems goes unexplored.

3.2 Hidden Figures and Detroit Both Hidden Figures and Detroit expose less well-known events that took place within the years of the civil rights movement, complicating the dominant narrative and only colors inside the lines. Both films are directed by white filmmakers. By focusing on three individuals in Hidden Figures, written by Allison Schroeder in cooperation with director Theodore Melfi, this film explains the fight for equality of African American women at the West Area Computing Unit of NASA. Hidden Figures tells the story of Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson, who was the first African American woman working as a computer for NASA in 1961. Her friends Dorothy Vaughan, played by Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson, played Janelle Monáe, both also fight within this company for the equal rights of African Americans. The film is based on the book of the same name published in the same year. By covering this story within literature and cinema, a much broader audience can be reached and the urgency of spreading the story is indicated. This is expanded even more in the musical score of the film. The returning non-diegetic song “Runnin’,” written for this film by pop-star, composer and producer Pharrell Williams, emphasizes the cooperation of the music industry within the distribution of this story as well. This cooperation of multiple forms of media puts this untold story on the political agenda. Moreover, this enormous market-driven production focuses more on spreading this singular story instead of the fights of many others during the decades of the civil rights movement. As the title implies, the narrative is an untold story being brought to the surface, implying that it could not be part of the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement in the first place. Detroit, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, is about the riots in Detroit. As the title of the film implies, the film explains these riots, but the narrative of the film goes further than that. Bigelow has admitted that this title was chosen for marketing purposes to reach a broader audience (Crowdus et al). In 1967, riots in Detroit arose after the promised desegregation in the Northern cities of

35 the United States was not accomplished, something which happened in multiple cities in the North. During these five days of rioting, African American citizens of Detroit rebelled in the streets and violently confronted the police. This bloody event is well-known, but the film exposes some of the facts that were hidden by the police. Many citizens died in those days, including African American men who were unfairly shot in the back. One of the poster’s ads reads “it’s time we knew.” This promotional text implies that this is a hidden story, although these riots are a part of the history and memorialized by African Americans as part of the civil rights movement. This text implies that the film is made for a white public even outside the United States, who did not know about these riots yet, which makes it something separate from the dominant narrative that exists in the general knowledge of Western citizens. The city of Detroit looks like a warzone, and is even compared to Vietnam, as the American army is looking for snipers. Larry Reed, played by Algee Smith, and Fred Temple, played by Jacob Latimore, are part of a singing group called The Dramatics and are staying at the Algiers Motel to wait until the riots are over. The military personnel surveying the area believe that a sniper is in their building, and during the night innocent people who were staying in the building are shot by the police. The story, however, continues explaining the unequal process that took place afterwards, and shows how racial inequality “existed” in the United States, going beyond the actual riots that took place in Detroit and explains the aftermath. The various storylines in Detroit – the police intruding on the illegal African American veterans’ party at the beginning; the storyline of security guard Melvin Dismukes, played by John Boyega; the point of view of the white police officers; and the emotionally depressed singer Larry at the end – are all distractions from the real core of the story: police brutality during the riots of Detroit, which is still a relevant subject today. In this sense, a comparison to Hollywood films about the civil rights movement is unlikely, and the film does not succeed in providing a deeper meaning to its broad audience, which is a shame since the film has been promoted and released worldwide. Hidden Figures also gives other insights into events related to the civil rights movement that took place outside the dominant narrative. Different narrative choices have therefore been made on the level of the characters. The film also starts with the text “based on the true events,” and besides this, the poster has a caption with the text “based on the true untold story.” These texts immediately influence the viewer experience by adding an emotional value to making the spectator aware how American companies were segregated. However, Detroit starts with a more informative introduction, by showing animations of paintings from Jacob Lawrence “Migration Series” (1940-1941), explaining the migration of African Americans from the South of the United States to the North from the 1910s onwards after the end of slavery. When living in the same neighborhoods as whites, African Americans were oppressed. Again, both films attempt to immediately explain the relation of their subject matter to reality. In Detroit, the Martin Luther King Jr. narrative is absent from the story. Nevertheless, real film footage, photographs, and radio and television broadcasts are used to explain the film’s link to reality and its context. The film ends by

36 stating that it could not be fully realistic because of the lack of information, allowing the filmmakers to defend themselves against critiques from historians and others about narrative missteps. The use of handheld camera throughout the entire film, however, has an aesthetic value; though missing information, the film is presented in documentary style. Hidden Figures contains footage of King, Kennedy, and the Freedom Rider Bus, which fits in perfectly with the dominant narrative since these are events often represented within the mainstream historical fictions. Another link to this is Mary Jackson’s struggle to get into a white university. Although the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision happened years earlier, it didn’t apply to the state of Virginia where she lived. Moreover, both films explain at the end how the characters’ lives continued, while showing images of the real people. These narrative choices place these films within the context of the civil rights movement but show some departure from the dominant narrative. Therefore, in my opinion, though both films sometimes refer to the dominant narrative, they are better seen detached from this narrative. By this I mean that they are just individual stories that give a less clear impression of the movement when they are seen on their own than the other films mentioned. If these films were linked more strongly to the civil rights movement, they would have to be seen in relation to other cinematic objects to be more meaningful. However, both films do effectively explain the context in which the civil rights movement took place. Hidden Figures demonstrates how segregation was embedded in American society but is nevertheless too small a story to provide meaning to an unknowing public. The narrative of Detroit, on the other hand, does not focus on the riots itself, but builds up to the happenings at the motel, explaining what happened from the perspective of the white policemen as well, and shows the aftermath and its racially unequal system by showing how Dismukes takes the blame, as racism remains embedded in American society. By dedicating a large part of the storyline to the court case afterwards and The Dramatics singer Larry emotionally not being able to sing anymore because of the death of his friend Fred, the film moves away from the dominant narrative. In this case it focuses more on the aftermath of the civil rights movement, linking police brutality at the Detroit riots to the more recent cases in response to which the organization Black Lives Matter was called into life. Nevertheless, both these films still provide knowledge about the movement, though they have to be seen in relation and combination with the other films discussed.

3.3 Cooperation of Cinema and Social Media As I argued with the four case studies and other examples, the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement contains various ambiguities and complexities. The representations of the civil rights movement seem to have always worked together with other media, for example newsreels, literature, and pop music. Nowadays, these cinematic representations are able to collaborate with new and different forms of media.

37 Moreover, new media makes social and political organization and mobilization easier and quicker than before. These four films were all produced and released in the time surrounding the discussion of the Oscars representing too many white filmmakers and being insufficiently diverse, which was supported with the hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite” in 2015. Other organizations have also been established to tackle not only inequalities within the film industry but racism embedded in Western societies. The contemporary Black Lives Matter movement protests the shootings of non-resistant young African American men by white police officers. In an era of smartphones, social media becomes a documentary tool for organizations like this by capturing and sharing information on acts of racism. These recordings are later on used as evidence or reused in cinema, as in the case of the opening scene of Fruitvale Station (Harris 35). Sociologist Herman Gray, first specialized in “old” media, acknowledges these differences and argues that the individual need accepting distinctions between humans no longer takes place in cultural institutions controlled by the state, but has shifted to “internet- based social network sites (Twitter, Facebook) and user-generated content sites and distribution platforms (Instagram and YouTube)” (771). Gray indicates that the change within media where social media has become available for everyone to upload content, causes a proliferation of diversity since these media are very accessible (783-784). With more people partaking in the discussion, the differences between people are no longer only produced by one-sided production companies in Hollywood. Nowadays, a citizen of any origin or gender is able to spread an opinion to an audience all over the world. The only necessity is access to the Internet. Moreover, activist groups like Black Lives Matter specifically emphasize their differences from the civil rights movement through the use of social media. They oppose the idea of one leader and insist on a model of group-centered leadership, supporting the idea of a movement for the many. This makes the movement independent from individual leaders, meaning it can exist longer and not die with its leader, as in the case of the civil rights movement (Harris 36-37). This demonstrates the different contemporary approach to fighting racism. Through this different type of organization, these movements are able to exist longer, and evolve in response to new developments. As I argue here, in the extension of the arguments of Gray and Harris, the cooperation of Hollywood productions and social media makes clear the relevance of the civil rights movement for contemporary anti-racism. In our contemporary Western societies, (social) media makes it possible to provide a deeper context for Hollywood productions, through for example television shows discussing the release of a production or a Facebook page keeping (future) viewers updated about developments. Moreover, effective use of social media can spread the film’s reach, since commercialization changed along with the emergence of social media. When film and social media collaborate, not only the one-way discourse of the film and its makers is presented, but an entire discussion field around the films.

38 Here, I am referring to the numerous possibilities opened up by social media and the opinionated debates going on with input from all over the world. When watching a film, a viewer is able to search for information about the film online to understand its context and become part of a much larger discussion. For that matter, a spectator is able to read interviews with directors such as Ryan Coogler or Jordan Peele to understand their reasons for making films like Fruitvale Station and Get Out. Moreover, spectators are able to react on the different platforms where a discussion can develop in the comments. By associating this with the case studies that moved away from the dominant narrative, films like Hidden Figures and Detroit can become more meaningful, since knowledge of their contexts is more easily accessible than before. In addition, viewing platforms such as Netflix are even able to link these historical films to a viewer’s personal account as suggestion of what he or she likes or is interested in. All this data allows our globalizing world to make our remembrance and knowledge of a movement like that of civil rights in the United States easier, especially by learning from what happened in the past and applying it to contemporary issues.

3.3.1 Application of Social Media: The Case Studies Currently, film productions have to anticipate new developments in social media by competing to be noticed in the immense flow of content in our globalized world. Therefore, film productions anticipate by creating Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, all with corresponding hashtags to connect the different platforms to each other. Three out of the four case studies used a Facebook page to increase the public discourse around these films, creating and open platform for discussion on social media. The Butler is the only film that lacks any promotional page on any platform to provide its followers and spectators with information surrounding the release and other events. However, this film can be connected on social media platforms by individual users discussing the film and by using a hashtag to connect it to other aspects of, for example, remembrance of the “Black History of the Unites States.” Remarkably, all four films seem to be connected to “Black History Month” on the Internet, on their Facebook pages and on personal Twitter accounts. This month of annual remembrance, that takes place in February in the US and Canada, and in October in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, is on these pages linked to remember and continue remembering the history and legacy of slavery in the US (Keffrelyn Brown and LaGarrett J. King 23). As previously mentioned, hashtags are used to connect the different platforms. When clicking on these hashtags or by using them, an algorithm is created connecting these personal interests. Therefore, Netflix is an important new platform to link these interests to cinema, since this data is saved and could be used later on by this streaming site to make personal recommendations. On the Facebook pages, the amount of posts that are placed differ per period. Most posts are posted in the weeks around the American release of the films. The makers of Selma, for example, also posted an article from the New York Times on the Facebook page in remembrance of King’s death, since

39 this film is mostly about a part of his life. This connects the film again to the dominant narrative, especially since The Butler and Detroit did not post anything on this particular day. These films discuss a different aspect of the civil rights movement and therefore neglect the King-centered narrative of the movement on social media as well as in the film. However, the Facebook pages of Selma, Hidden Figures, and Detroit dry up about a year after the American release of the films, as the films have been distributed all over the world by then. As indicated before, the specific subject of “Black History Month” is a connecting theme of the films being discussed on these pages, to raise awareness of the racial inequality which is the subject matter of both the films and the month. Therefore, the connection between contemporary remembrance within this month commemorating inequality in the US and the civil rights movement of five decades ago can be made. With the use of hashtags, the user is able to visit the various pages connected to that hashtag. These are also used on the Twitter accounts, where many different people from all over the world are sharing their opinion about their viewing experiences with these films. This is what Gray argues about the proliferation that takes place on online platforms. People are able to read these reactions from people of different origins and therefore become accustomed to reading and hearing the various opinions of people from all over the world. In addition, streaming sites such as Netflix, with its “recommendation algorithm,” encourage the viewer to watch films that are considered relevant to the interests of that particular viewer. This new form of television is able to provide the mainstream audience with access to information about subjects like racial inequality in an entertaining way (Qureshi 63). Although The Butler may not have a Facebook page, this film is nevertheless available on the Dutch Netflix. When films, as in the case of the other three case studies, are not yet available on Netflix, the site provides options with similar subject matter for the viewer. Therefore, “the Netflix algorithm is positioned as the solution to the complications of fragmentation for the media industries in an era of globalization” (Benjamin Burroughs 10). The algorithms generate these suggestions and genres with reference to what a person watches and likes on the Internet. Streaming sites like Netflix therefore claim to “know” what subjects people are interested in and make this content-based algorithm part of the user interface (Burroughs 11). Nowadays, these differences in viewing experience provide the viewers of The Butler, Selma, Hidden Figures, and Detroit with a proliferation of opinions, links, and connections to other events surrounding this subject of racial inequality in the US. This important development in social media makes it important to consider how these films relate to our contemporary globalized world, where they are able to form part of a discourse denouncing contemporary racism in Western societies.

40 Conclusion

First, I would like to shortly indicate two omissions from this thesis which can be elaborated upon in another research. The first is the notion of women’s rights, something I have not discussed but which could be especially relevant to the textual analysis of Hidden Figures. This film, besides explaining the untold story of the lives of three African Americans at NASA, also has a feminist goal, since specifically women are depicted fighting for equalities in terms of both race and gender. Besides this, the input of women participating in the civil rights movement is indicated elsewhere, as in The Rosa Parks Story. Parks acted as something of a precursor for women’s rights and was treated within the movement as an equal. This equality between men and women in the civil rights movement is also indicated in The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, which explores the movement’s attempts to encourage several kinds of equality. Just as gender differences were a much-discussed topic in the sixties and seventies, during the advent of second wave feminism, they are still relevant today based on current Hollywood discussions of equality between men and women in the film industry. Ava DuVernay and Kathryn Bigelow, two female directors of the case studies, are interested in examining in the “white man’s world” of the film industry. Second, another element that I became interested in during this process is the generalization of all African Americans. There are enormous differences within races in American society and other Western countries. However, a limited distinction is made between African Americans and, for example, residents of the Caribbean or South Americans. Moreover, again due to globalization, the amount of people with one white and one non-white parent increases. This group is generally categorized as “black,” despite technically being only half-black. These separate groups within the “African American” community are just as interested in making their voices heard, suggesting a whole new discussion within cinema and its cooperation with other medias that could be elaborated in a future research. With regard to the conclusion of this particular research, I have indicated that cinematic representations of the civil rights movement seemed to go through revivals in the nineties and 2010s. In these revivals, the zeitgeist of the particular period is highly important, since film is a reflection of the political circumstances and other influences of society during the period in which production takes place. The representation of the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement illuminates the difficulties of the “based on true events” genre, since it combines reality and fiction. Color-consciousness on- and off screen is a heated topic within representations of American society. Through film and its cooperation with social media, the subject becomes more easily accessible for a broad global audience. Even the Dutch news and public broadcast corporations spent many broadcast hours on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. It seems that some time must have passed in order to make a history like this part of collective memory. When the collective memory becomes part of a cultural memory, it solidifies into a form from which it is unlikely to change (Jan Assman and John Czaplicka 127-129). This can be said to have happened

41 with the civil rights movement, since only one dominant narrative is remembered and passed on to different generations, especially in within the media. However, many recent films that are not based on true events contribute to the discussion of racial inequality as well. These films are not explicitly part of this remembrance, but a reflection of what topics are current in society. Popular films including Moonlight (Barry Jenkins 2016) and Black Panther (Ryan Coogler 2018) are more universal because of their supererogation of representation of African Americans on the screen and behind the scenes as a counter-reaction against the white “norm.” These popular fictions are, in my opinion, necessary as part of this counter-reaction to represent and depict American society within the film industry more equally. Moreover, their success is proof of commercial viability that shows other filmmakers that these stories are actually liked among the public. Although I argued before that less typecasting of African Americans for their skin color is desirable, I believe that contemporary Western societies can benefit from this type of color-consciousness. The subject of racism, along with feminism, is high on the political agenda again. Social media makes it able to provide a movement of many for which it will eventually outlive its leaders. This was the civil rights movement’s strength, but also became its destruction. Many people are trying to change the Hollywood film industry and make it more equal. However, the small degree of diversity in the industry is demonstrated by the limited number of African American actors, directors, writers, and other filmmakers involved. When all the films I have discussed are seen in relation to each other, the same people seem to be participating in many of the films on this topic. Moreover, the eighties trend of the token black character – designed to introduce greater diversity onto the screen and often representing an entire minority group alone – seems to have experienced a revival. The discussion can seem contradictory, since I and other diversity advocates want African Americans to participate equally, but at the same time we are skeptical of apparent tokenism. Other trends I have not discussed here, such as the Blaxploitation genre, indicate that the diversity is difficult and that different races preferably seem separately represent themselves within the film industry. Nevertheless, living in a globalized world as we do now, representing different races becomes more commercially viable, adding another financial motivation for doing so. Western countries influenced by the United States are unconsciously being indoctrinated, a process in which social media seems to play an important role. As we have seen throughout this thesis, the dominant narrative contains various ambiguities and complexities, and these developments in media contribute to make the narrative even more complex. However, because of globalization, the subject becomes part of a framework of knowledge for people of many races, such as myself, a white person in the Netherlands. The cooperation of different kinds of media and different organizations such as Black Lives Matter make it possible to revive the civil rights movement and put racism high on the political agenda. Rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar made the soundtrack for Black Panther, and he wrote the song “Alright”

42 together with Pharrell Williams to express their views on racism through music. This song has become a popular protest chant in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement (Ben Gilbert). In sports, too, the demand for racial equality is currently a hot topic. In recent years, many football players of African American origin have protested by kneeling down during the national anthem before their game, in protest against racism. Accompanied by the hashtag #TakeAKnee, this protest within sports confirms that these movements are finding support in other fields (AJ Willingham). The current President of the United States, Donald Trump, represents a backlash against the positive idea of post-racial ideology represented by the Obama presidency. These kinds of organizations and actions are places where film, television, new media, music, sports and more aspects within American society are all working together in our globalized world to fight racism. Nevertheless, the subject will always be viewed with a certain bias from the perspective of whites, due to the legacy of colonialism. Furthermore, social groups will always be in discussion about representation issues. For example, frustration arose when prominent African American filmmaker Spike Lee challenged the establishments of whites and African Americans by producing films about Italians (Matt Mueller). This implies the question which people are allowed to tell which stories, and whether this representation is done properly, bringing me back to the main statement of this thesis. I claimed that: The representation of the civil rights movement in American cinema is a biased one, in which the same story is continuously reproduced. Moreover, this dominant narrative presents contemporary American society as if racism no longer exists. The recent “based on true events” productions The Butler and Selma help to keep this dominant narrative in place by providing the commonly known story of events during the civil rights movement. However, two other recent fictional representations Hidden Figures and Detroit complicate this dominant narrative by providing new information not generally known to the public. Within cinema, these smaller stories inside the grand narrative are not able to provide a deeper meaning, especially because of the limited amount of time. Therefore, all these “closed” stories are presenting the subjects as problem that has been overcome. I argued that the cooperation of cinema and new social media-based forms of communication are able to counter the claim that racism has already been decisively overcome, making it possible to fight contemporary racism. As shown, these films are all picked up by an audience that moved from a passive position to actively partake in the discussion, by reflecting on the production of these films in our current time and current problems of racism. In short, after discussing many representations of the civil rights movement, it becomes clear that there is a revival of interest in the civil rights movement in contemporary media. It cannot be denied that these films represent rising equality and greater diversity within the media, but taken on their own, these cinematic representations lack the ability to properly reflect our contemporary race issues. The influence of other types of media has made it easier to facilitate collective campaigns against racism, allowing

43 departures from the conventions of the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement. Therefore, the King-centered narrative and leadership also became its downfall. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published on 31 March 2018 an article about the effects of desegregation in Jackson, Mississippi, in relation to that week’s remembrance of King’s death. The article explains that desegregation allowed the middle-class African Americans to move to other cities, which led to only the poor African American citizens staying behind in this city. Jackson, Mississippi was a main focus of the civil rights movement however eventually caused the equal rights gained during the civil rights movement for more inequality within this city (Michael Persson 2-3). By demonstrating these unsolved problems for African Americans nowadays, the journalist suggests that action is needed to find a solution. Nevertheless, the failings of the American government also illuminate the inadequacies of how the Dutch deal with the legacy of their own history of slavery. This implies that film industries, especially Hollywood, should work more on putting the right message across for a wide public, especially considering their influence on other Western film industries.

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48 Filmography 12 Years a Slave. Dir. Steve McQueen. Lionsgate et al., 2013. Amistad. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Dreamworks Distribution et al., 1997. Birth of a Nation. Dir. D.W. Griffith. United Artists et al., 1915. Black Panther. Dir. Ryan Coogler. Buena Vista Distribution, 2018. Boycott. Dir. Clark Johnson. HBO (TV film), 2001. Detroit. Dir. Kathryn Bigelow. Annapurna Pictures, 2017. Do the Right Thing. Dir. Spike Lee. Universal Studios et al., 1989. Dreamgirls. Dir. Bill Condon. Dreamworks Animation and Paramount Pictures, 2006. Eyes on the Prize. Created by Henry Hampton from Blackside. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1987 and 1990. Fruitvale Station. Dir. Ryan Coogler. The Weinstein Company et al., 2013. Get Out. Dir. Jordan Peele. Universal Studios et al., 2017. Ghosts of Mississippi. Dir. Rob Reiner. Castle Rock Entertainment and Columbia Pictures, 1996. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Dir. Stanley Kramer. Columbia Pictures et al., 1967. Hidden Figures. Dir. Theodore Melfi. 20th Century Fox, 2016. I Am Not Your Negro. Dir. Raoul Peck. Magnolia Pictures and Amazon Studios, 2016. In de schaduw van King. Dir. Hans Hermans and Martin Maat. Evangelische Omroep, 2018. In the Heat of the Night. Dir. Norman Jewison. United Artists et al., 1967. Malcolm X. Dir. Spike Lee. Warner Bros. et al., 1992. Mississippi Burning. Dir. Alan Parker. Orion Pictures et al., 1988. Roots. Dirs. Marvin J. Chomsky, David Greene, John Erman, and Gilbert Moses. ABC-TV, 1977 -1988 (remake in 2016). Selma. Dir. Ava DuVernay. Paramount Pictures, 2014. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Dir. Stanley Nelson. Public Broadcasting Service et al., 2015. The Butler. Dir. Lee Daniels. The Weinstein Company, 2013. The Color Purple. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Warner Bros. et al., 1985. The Help. Dir. Tate Taylor. Touchstone Pictures et al., 2011. The Long Walk Home. Dir. Richard Pearce. Miramax et al., 1990. The Rosa Parks Story. Dir. Julie Dash. CBS et al., 2002. The Birth of a Nation. Dir. Nate Parker. Fox Searchlight Pictures et al., 2016. To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Universal Studios et al., 1962. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Dir. James Searle Dawley. Paramount Pictures, 1918

49 Music Legend, John. Glory. New York: Columbia Records, 2014. Lamar, Kendrick. Alright. Hard Working Black Folks Publishing (ASCAP) et al, 2015. Williams, Pharrell. Runnin’. New York: Columbia Records, 2016.

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