Perfection |
Being a
leading man is a very intimate endeavor—it requires an element of trust between
the movie-going public and the leading man. After all, we invite him into our
homes, onto our television screens, into our wallets, onto our bedroom walls,
and into our fantasies. In order for this to happen, he has to be palatable--nonthreatening.
This is the distinction I see between leading men and character actors. While
the latter play roles that are darkly nuanced and display the full spectrum of human
nature, the former embody the best of humanity, practically super-human in
their perfection. While this distinction does not always hold true today, the
boundary between leading man and character actor was strictly enforced in 1940s
and 50s American cinema. Consider that in 1941, movie studio RKO insisted that
the ending of the film Suspicion, which
called for Cary Grant to murder his wife Joan Fontaine, be rewritten to instead
feature the couple driving off into the sunset with Fontaine resting her head
on Grant’s shoulder; studio executives argued that it was simply inconceivable
to have one of the biggest leading men of the day play a murderer. This need
for palatability increased tenfold if the leading man was to be black. He had
to be exceptionally well-educated, exceptionally well-mannered, exceptionally well-dressed,
exceptionally safe. He just had to be all around exceptional.
This
is Sidney’s cue to come in. He was all of the above and more. He was eloquent,
graceful, handsome; determined yet gentle. You never got the feeling that he
would hurt you— on the rare occasion that he did display a temper, it seemed to
stem from indignation and disappointment, not rage. Never rage. When his
character, Virgil Tibbs, in In the Heat of the Night is slapped by a white
man, he responds in kind. But his slap is cool, restrained. Almost mechanical. As
a viewer, I didn’t worry that he would go further…I didn’t fear for the white
man’s safety. I knew Sidney was still in control because he was always in
control. Aside from this perceived lack of physical menace, Sidney also needed
to lack sexual menace; mainstream (read: white) America had to have no fear of
his sexuality. Of course he was beautiful and had an enormous amount of sex
appeal. But it was always presented as being muted and nonthreatening. In
1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, one
of America’s first mainstream films about an interracial relationship, the only
kiss shared between Sidney Poitier and white actress Katherine Houghton is
shown in a rearview mirror, as if Hollywood thought showing the kiss straight on
would blind movie viewers. If there is any question as to why this is notable,
I humbly submit 1915’s Birth of a Nation
into evidence as a visual depiction of America’s deep-rooted and violently
intense fear of black men’s sexuality, particularly when it concerns white
women. If a handsome, charming black leading man was going to be allowed into
mainstream culture and, consequently, into American homes, he had to be kept
away from white women. And if he was to be allowed near them, there always had
to be a catch.
Take
Lilies of the Field, a film in which
Sidney is surrounded by white women--all nuns. Or A Patch of Blue in which a blind white woman falls in love with him;
Sidney’s restrained response is to suggest that they wait a year to see what happens.
And then there’s the aforementioned Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which Sidney’s character approaches his white fiancé’s
parents (without her knowledge, might I add) and tells them that he will not
marry her without their unqualified and complete approval. That’s what
mainstream America needed in its first black leading man; his sexuality had to
be something kept on a tight leash, freed only by a grant of permission from
white America.
To Sir, with Love |
Aside from appearing physically
and sexually nonthreatening, Sidney had to be educated and successful by
anyone’s standards. America’s first black leading man couldn’t be just any man
off the street. He had to be articulate, urbane, well- traveled; the polar
opposite of the reigning stereotypes of blacks. And Hollywood went out of its
way to emphasize this. As Dr. John Prentice in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Sidney plays a world-renowned doctor who
trains impoverished children in distant lands to become medical professionals. This
was necessary—white America (and perhaps even some of black America) wouldn’t
buy that the lovely, white Katherine Houghton would even consider marrying a
black man that was anything but brilliant and accomplished. Or what about 1967’s
To Sir, with Love? In order to make
the idea that a black man could teach a class of white students and transform
their lives even remotely believable, Sidney had to be a cut above his white
counterparts in the film. His character, Mark Thackeray, is not a teacher by
trade; he’s an engineer. He takes on a teaching job in the East End of London while
looking for his next engineering job. Of course he excels at teaching; of
course he wins the students over despite their initial hesitation; of course he
gets the engineering job offer he so coveted, but turns it down to remain at
the school (he also had to be noble). Sidney’s Thackeray couldn’t be mediocre.
He had to excel. At everything. Finally, let us consider Virgil Tibbs in the In the Heat of the Night. This was a
tricky one. Mainstream America had to buy the notion that a racist Mississippi
sheriff would not only work side-by-side with a black detective on a homicide
case, but would also listen to and, dare I say, respect his opinions. How did
Hollywood address this? You guessed it—it made Tibbs Philadelphia’s number one
homicide expert. A reasonably good, black homicide detective would not do; even
an excellent black homicide detective would fall short. No, Tibbs had to be the
best. Sidney always had to be the best.
Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte |
What exactly is the myth of black exceptionalism, you may
ask? It’s the notion that black people who are educated, smart, articulate,
poised, and basically every other positive adjective you can think of are atypical
or rarities among the general black population. So what’s wrong with this
notion? Well to begin, educated, smart, articulate, poised, etc. black people
are not rarities or exceptions. They may seem to be exceptions based on the
biased and unflattering depictions of black people that run rampant in the
mainstream media (it seems that we’ve been upgraded from maids and butlers to angry
black women and thugs), but they are not. This notion of black exceptionalism
also bears the underlying assumption that there exists a single and one-dimensional
manifestation of blackness. A black person that does not conform to this imposed,
sole image of blackness is somehow an exception to the rule. In creating this
false dichotomy, the myth of black exceptionalism denies us the individuality
and the full spectrum of humanity that is so readily offered to the white
population in this country. When we speak or act, our words and actions are
often interpreted to say something about the entire black population, either by
conforming to the dominant stereotypes about black people or by diverging from
them. In Sidney’s case, his constructed persona was meant to set him apart from
the black masses, ensuring white audiences that he was special and therefore worth
supporting, trusting, admiring, perhaps even desiring. Hollywood packaged and
sold Sidney’s particular brand of blackness as the correct form of
blackness. “If it could gain Sidney access to the hallowed, white-washed halls
of Hollywood, think of where it could take you,” Hollywood seemed to say to
black Americans.
There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about what I’m
arguing. The existence of stereotypes about black people is not a new discovery.
And my black friends and I have numerous stories about being told by our white
friends, coworkers, and colleagues that they don’t think of us as being black,
an indication that they have a concrete and definite idea of what blackness is.
I’ve even been told by other black people that I was not “black enough,” evincing
to me that they had internalized this idea of a single and static form of
blackness. But what I’d like to highlight is how this myth of black
exceptionalism, and the stereotypes underlying it, seep into the everyday and manifest
themselves in painfully real ways.
The conversation surrounding the killing
of unarmed black teenager Mike Brown this past summer is a principal example. As
the country debated whether this was yet another instance of police brutality
against black men or whether it was simply a case of a (white) police officer
defending himself against a (black) violent suspect, both sides seemed to
co-opt Mike Brown’s personhood for their cause. “He was going off to college in
a matter of days,” one side declared. “No, he was a weed-smoking thug that
stole from a local convenience store,” the other side claimed. Beneath both of
these arguments, I heard the familiar echo of the black exceptionalism myth. Both
arguments undermined Mike Brown’s inherent value as a human being by creating a
hierarchy of blackness in which the lives of educated, promising, exceptional
blacks were to be valued more highly than the lives of stereotypical blacks, a.k.a.
thugs. But Mike Brown existed outside of stereotypes and blanket assumptions
about black people and about black men in particular. He was a human being. He held
all of the complexity and contradictions that all human beings possess. His
humanity can neither be summed up in five-minute news segments nor put in historically
created and socially perpetuated bins for “good” blacks and “bad” blacks. His
humanity is what makes his violent death at the hands of a police officer sworn
to protect and serve atrocious and despicable. Yes Mike Brown’s death speaks to
America’s violent racial past and carries weighty social and political
implications. But that should not obscure the inherent value that he had as a
human being—value that was not increased by the fact that he was going college nor
decreased by allegations that he smoked pot or stole cigars.
Mike Brown |
Amidst the fury surrounding Mike Brown’s death, I heard many
call for police officers to be viewed and treated as individuals. What’s incomprehensible
to me is that this is exactly what has been denied to Mike Brown since his
death. There has been no room for him to be an 18-year-old boy with the fears, hopes,
and nuances encompassed therein. This same “privilege” of individuality has also
been denied to black Americans since…well forever. But this denial has blatantly
been put on display following Mike Brown’s death. For example, several
individuals claimed that the rioting and looting by some black people in
Ferguson, MO perpetuated negative stereotypes about black people, essentially
using the behaviors of specific black individuals as evidence of a
characteristic shared by all black Americans. The people making these claims
are saying that the behavior of a specific group of black people in a
particular section of America at a particular time in history in response to an
event that took place in that community says something, or could be interpreted
to say something, about black America in general. Ummm no. For so many reasons,
no. When a majority white crowd rioted in San Francisco following the 2014
World Series win by the Giants (that’s right, a win), I heard no sweeping
claims made about white America. When
white people rioted in California’s Huntington Beach following a 2013 surfing
and skateboarding competition (a far more reasonable reason to riot than the
loss of a human life) I again heard no claims made about the entirety of white
America. And if you think that these rioting examples are exceptions, let’s
throw the Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut mass shootings into the mix.
The perpetrators of both of these heinous acts were white males. Yet I never
heard anyone say, “These tragedies just prove that all white males are______.” The
truth is that white people are just not as subjected to and impacted by
stereotypes as nonwhite people are. Negative narratives have not been
constructed around whiteness based on the wrongdoings of white individuals.
These wrongdoings are considered to be just that…acts by individuals. And
when a white person acts (or reacts), he doesn’t carry the weight of how other
white people will be perceived on his back. For non-whites that is a luxury. It
shouldn’t be.
So what am I trying to say? Well, a number of things. First
of all I’m saying that black people are individuals and should be viewed and
treated as such. It’s troubling to me that I even have to make such a statement
because this should be a given. But the past few months have shown me that I do,
indeed, need to declare the individuality of black people in this country, so
there it is. Secondly, smart, educated, talented, poised, etc. black people are
not deviations from the norm because there is no norm of blackness. The fact
that America seems to believe otherwise shows me that there is still an astonishing
amount of progress to be made when it comes to race in this country. Along these lines, I emphasize that black
exceptionalism does not exist; it’s not real. It’s not real because black
exceptionalism requires that there is a standard or a baseline that exceptional
blacks have surpassed, thus making them exceptional. But as I’ve stated, this
concept of a standard or baseline of blackness is absurd just as it would be in
the context of whiteness. Intelligent and capable black people are not
curiosities or freaks of nature; they are underrepresented in many top
universities, corporate boardrooms, and positions of power because, by and
large, they’ve lacked the access and opportunity that their white counterparts
have had. I’m not saying that talent and work ethic do not play a role in this;
I’m just saying that we cannot minimize the role that America’s history and institutional
structures (which have been shaped by this history) play in all of this. Finally,
I started this paper by looking at this myth of black exceptionalism through
the lens of film because I believe it is both a product of its time and a
medium that has the power to shape its time. By unpacking this myth of black
exceptionalism through Sidney’s rise to prominence, I aimed to show its
absurdity by placing it in the context of an old-fashioned and outdated film
industry. But this myth did not die out with the advent of color-film and CGI
technology. It’s very much alive and shapes the lived experiences of many in
this country; and there’s no director to yell “Cut” on those.