In 1963 Sidney Poitier was awarded the Oscar for best male actor. In doing so, the Bahamian native became the first black man to win the award. Thirty-Eight years later, Denzel Washington became the second black man (and first African American) to win the award for his performance in Training Day (2001). No African American man has won the award since.
Since the inception of the Academy Awards, only two black men have won the award for best male actor in a feature length film. While I do not believe this is a product of racial bias on the behalf of the Academy, I do believe that a combination of African American actors being pin-holed into certain roles alongside the refusal of both actors and producers to handle controversial subject matter carry the brut of the responsibility.
Over the last decade only one big-budget Hollywood film dealing with African American identity even received the Academy Award for Best Picture – Paul Haggis’s Crash (2004). While the cast of Crash included plenty of familiar faces from the black acting community such as Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Don Cheadle, the film does not include any of the A-list black actors American viewers have become accustomed to. Yes, the film was given the Oscar for Best Picture, but no individual African American actors in the film were even nominated for an award. This leads into the idea of African American actors shying away from roles dealing with controversial ideas.
Will Smith is arguably the single most sought after actor in Hollywood. Will Smith is paid $20M per film. Few people will ever question his acting chops, and even fewer will question his brilliance. But Will Smith has a formula. He is widely known to study statistics to a ridiculous extent. He is handed dozens upon dozens of scripts every year, but each one he ultimately chooses falls into a formula he has designed after compiling heaps of information that he believes will guarantee a film both box-office and critical success. Films dealing heavily with race relations seldom fall into his parameters. Will Smith stars in “safe” films, which is fantastic news for Hollywood producers that are putting up the capital to get these movies made. Safe investments are the easiest one’s to make, and Will Smith has become the safest investment in the business. Will Smith will not take on the controversial role that could bring forth the first African American Best Actor in over a decade, and only so many of these roles even make it to the screen to begin with.
In discussing African American’s in cinema, it would be unfair to leave out the work of Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry has a formula. He will have financial backing for every film he ever makes for as long as he pleases. Not unlike Will Smith, Tyler Perry is safe. While his films do not typically appeal to mass audiences, they certainly do to the African American audience. I do not believe Tyler Perry is “bad” for American cinema, but I do think that he has become content and/or enjoys what he does to the extent which he will never break his mold. He is one of the most successful African Americans in television and cinematic history, but the lighthearted and comically inclined products he turns out will never produce critical acclaim. Hollywood loves Tyler Perry because he turns drastic profits on everything he touches, but even if he wanted to, the odds of a studio backing a “Tyler Perry” film that attempts to extend beyond his typical audience is incredibly unlikely because it wouldn’t be “safe.”
How can an African American actor or filmmaker break through to the top of a system that rewards them for being safe? Who’s going to do it? Hollywood has developed their conventions to the point that the top echelon of African American actors won’t take on controversial roles in fear of losing their audiences. Quentin Tarantino, arguably the most well respected auteur director in Hollywood, recently finished his next script titled Django, Unchained. The film deals explicitly with slavery in the American south, specifically, an escaped slave seeking revenge on his former master. The film will undoubtedly be controversial, but it will present a rare character—a black man fighting back against those who have robbed him of both his human and racial identity. It is heavily rumored that Tarantino wrote the script with Will Smith in mind for the title role. He turned it down.
This is a very interesting post, Brendan. The depiction of the black male/female in American cinema is a loaded topic deserving of discussion. The factors that affect poor depiction of blacks tie to both producers and the actors and actresses themselves, as you’ve stated. This idea of “safeness” as it relates to character roles, film topics, and casting strongly correlates with financial outcome. Will Smith is a television and cinematic icon, a cultural commodity of sorts. One can’t think of Will Smith and not think about Fresh Prince, I, Robot, Men in Black, and Independence Day. However, I’d have to disagree with the idea that he’s an actor of “safe films.” What about Ali and The Pursuit of Happiness? Can’t we tie a conversation of race to the science fiction thriller, I Am Legend? Although I don’t know why he turned down the Tarantino script, he certainly has performed roles in the past that have defied the boundaries of safeness as it relates to depicting race-themed roles. Will Smith is safe to many producers because he’s always going to have an audience behind him, no matter what role he takes; that’s due to his versatility as an actor. Furthermore, he knows that whatever he touches has a high probability of financial greatness, which allows him to be more liberal with his selections.
ReplyDeleteLastly, I hate to be that guy, but Denzel Washington wasn’t the last African-American man to win the Oscar award for Best Actor. Jamie Foxx won it at the 77th Academy Awards in 2005 for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the biographical film Ray, and a year later, Forest Whitaker won the award for his performance in The Last King of Scotland (2006). Here’s a link to a list of black Academy Award winners and nominees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees
No worries, Jonathan. I actually appreciate your input specifically as "that guy" because it sort of leads into another tangent. Both of the roles you mentioned which I neglected - Foxx's portrayal of Ray Charles and Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin (along with Smith in Ali) are largely biographical. While these films do all deal with race, they all do so through subtext (for the most part).Yes, Ray Charles, Idi Amin, and Ali are all black men, but it is Charles's blindness and talent, Amin's insanity and eccentricity, and Ali's skill and confidence that take center stage. This is not to say that their collective "blackness" does not play an important role, but it is certainly show within these films to be secondary. I also think that roles such as these, that being biographical in nature, are incredibly limiting. These characters have already been created through history. While the actor can add his own nuances to the character, they are limited to do extremely by the boundaries of the historical man, himself.
ReplyDeleteI will give you Ali and The Pursuit of Happiness for the purpose of arguing on behalf of Smith's role choices, but the fact that those two films both fall within the bottom five Will Smith films in terms of gross ties back into the limiting of racially driven films by Hollywood Producers. Did these films receive the same distribution or publicity as I Am Legend or even Hitch? Of course not! So even in films such as Ali and The Pursuit of Happiness, when the A-List black actor takes on a racially powerful role, the backing of the studio is rarely going to be there!
Finally, thank you for pointing out the fact that there is a racially related argument to be had on the subject of I Am Legend. I think the fact that the film itself is so visually striking almost pushes it too far into a subtextual level, but once I caught it, I just couldn't believe I missed it to begin with.
(This is in response to Jonathan's post.)