Time magazine has compiled a list of what it’s calling “The 25 Most Important Films on Race.” Film critic Richard Corliss amassed the films that have been included and introduced the offerings with an explanation of his criteria:
To celebrate Black History Month, we’ve chosen 25 movies to honor the artistry, appeal and determination of African Americans on and behind the screen.
Tire screech #1: Why call it a list of “Important Films on Race” if it’s essentially a list of “important” Black films collected to celebrate Black History Month? Are Black people the only “race” in America? Not quite. So the title alone is misleading. Why not call it a list of top 25 films addressing African American issues? By calling a list of “important” films “on race,” the reader’s set up to expect a discussion of films that address and examine race–not a list of 25 films with Black people in them.
That’s just the beginning of the eyebrow-raising fodder. Corliss then goes on to set forth a series of befuddling picks with even more befuddling commentary. Suspect wording, suspect observations, and suspect selections.
Tire screech #2: How is Madea’s Family Reunion there, for instance? And peep how Corliss says that the stage play should be preferred to the film version because, “It’s when the characters launch into song, which they do seven or eight times a show, that these works sound most authentically black.” What the hell is “authentically black” about launching into song seven or eight times in a two-hour period?
Tire screech #3: Why add I Am Legend as the most recent selection? Really? I can name at least four more relevant racial examinations to come out of Hollywood in the past two years. And, if we’re following Corliss’ explanation of “important films on race” as just… decent movies with Black people in them, I can name at least ten better than I Am Legend to emerge in the past two years.
Other oddities, various and sundry:
On a list of this caliber, pretentious enough to tout itself a purveyor on race films’ “importance,” where are Nothing But a Man, The Spook Who Sat By the Door, or A Raisin in the Sun?
And in what universe is Cooley High a “flat-out comedy,” as Corliss describes it? How does it “give us a brief break from the anguish and anger in so many of the other films on this list?” Is there anything more tragic than having to cope with a childhood friend being beaten to death over a misunderstanding–while you two weren’t speaking?
And now for a few cherry-picked problematic quotes:
Eve’s Bayou showed writer-director Kasi Lemmons invading Faulkner-McCullers territory and made it her own…. [It’s] an indelible tale of childhood wonder and terror, and one of the finest works by a black filmmaker….
Oookay, then. I dug Eve’s Bayou as much as the next person. But to call it “one of the finest works by a black filmmaker” a. minimizes Black filmmakers; b. comes across as a little dismissive of Black films; and c. borders on (or barrels over, depending on your point of view) hyperbole. Also: why does Lemmons’ story have to be viewed through the Eurocentric lens of William Faulker and Carson McCullers stories?
Sidney Poitier was fortunate and cursed: lucky to be the first black man to become a full movie star, unlucky to arrive in the 50s, when Hollywood tried to atone for its guilty racial conscience by creating parables of black sanctity under white oppression. So Poitier got to be a credit to his race first, then an emblem of a sleepy industry’s slow ethical awakening, and only last an actor.
… And only last an actor? Great. And since when has it been unanimous that Poitier’s work proved him “a credit to his race”–among White or Black audiences?
Without top co-stars or grade-A material, [Will Smith] stills brings audiences in. How does he accomplish this? Not through Poitier-Washington nobility, or Sweetback-Pryor raunch. He brings that undefinable essence of likability to characters who Never Give Up. He is both black (obviously) and beyond blackness. That makes Smith’s pre-eminence as cheering as Barack Obama’s Presidential plausibility.
Aaaand the archetype of the “acceptable Black” rears its bulbous negroid head to be petted by a placating white hand, yet again.
To be fair, Time’s list isn’t a total wash. We were happy to see that Richard Pryor Live in Concert cleared the cut. And we learned a great deal about the back story behind the production of 1951’s Native Son starring Richard Wright himself as Bigger Thomas.
What are your impressions of the list? Can you make any more sense of its contents than we could?
