In positions of influence on movie sets, Black Americans in larger and more powerful roles are able to advocate for and demand inclusion for Blacks in other positions. Their involvement facilitates a process by which they can break down color barriers on historically “lily-white” film crews, trade organizations, and technical unions.19 Underrepresentation in directing jobs leads to decreased opportunities for Black Americans in the workplace, which means less authority in the decision-making process and fewer profits.
More African Americans working in Hollywood would mean greater control over images that travel to audiences worldwide.20 Hollywood exerts a widespread domination of mass dissemination, production, distribution, and exhibition of popular culture in both American and global markets. According to the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, dominant groups monopolize control over public communication and therefore over public meaning and cultural influence in society.21 Dominant groups, which are best positioned to use cinema to serve their own interests, encode cinematic texts, for instance, to shape public events and to reinforce their ideologies. In contrast, marginalized groups are not generally well situated to create and disseminate their own meaning systems through popular movies. As it stands, marginalized racial groups exert little control over the production and content of cinematic images that are consumed by mass audiences. However, it is important for racial minority groups to penetrate all levels of the film industry in order to harness power and control over global media systems.
Representation in cinematic production and distribution is essential because directors hold immense power to influence what images come across our television and movie screens. Hollywood plays an important and critical role in the creation and dissemination of ideologies through images, narratives, themes, and genres. Calling cinema “a mind molding art form,” the director Neema Barnette stresses, “There are some of us who are storytellers who understand that film is the strongest political tool that we have. Some of us got into the art form because of that, and I’m one of them.”22 Barnette reflects on cinema as an art form that possesses unparalleled strength in its ability to move and affect audiences across the world, even in the face of new digital and communication technologies. Through the medium of cinema, film directors, as drivers of vehicles that influence and affect thoughts, perceptions, self-esteem, politics, and policy, play an important role in disseminating, legitimating, and rationalizing worldviews.
This is not to suggest a unidirectional relationship between movie directors and audiences that is uncontested; audiences also play a role in interpreting movie messages. For example, viewers heralded the decision to make a female reboot of Ghostbusters (2016), but many were unimpressed that the only Black female character (played by Leslie Jones), who is also the only nonwhite member of the Ghostbusters team, was the only nonscientist of the group. Instead, she played the role of a transportation worker. Jones responded to critics on Twitter: “Why can’t a regular person be a Ghostbuster? And why can’t I be the one who plays them, I am a performer.”23 On the one hand, viewers felt that the role kept Black women circumscribed into their narrow box of roles in mainstream cinema. On the other hand, the role brought the lived experience of workers to light through Jones’s performance.
As cultural objects, movies can be interpreted and evaluated in various ways, sometimes in manners that contradict intended meanings. Audiences embrace some portions of media and reject others. Social experiences and characteristics such as race, gender, class, education, political affiliation, religious affiliation, and locale also structure how people make sense of movies, often depending on how much a social category is privileged in a film. Besides individual readings, social-group interactions and dynamics can lessen or intensify evaluations of movies and movie characters.24 Even though audiences exhibit control over how they react to movies, cultural producers and creators, such as film directors, set the stage for what cultural objects are available for consumption and interpretation. Controlling this sphere of fictional reality gives cultural workers vast authority over the imaginings that the majority of audience members devour uncritically at leisure. The director of Meteor Man and The Five Heartbeats, Robert Townsend, remarks, “Films are powerful. Images are powerful—they can travel around the world.… Even though [Hollywood Shuffle] was my first film, it gave me an education on the power of images.”25 No doubt, directors’ presence or absence behind the camera helps shape what images are seen and what images remain invisible. But more than creation of images alone, representation in film directing is a measure of power to execute one’s vision of art and life in an influential culture industry.
Discussions around the politics of representation emerge in decisions about who should direct movies showcasing Black issues or icons. August Wilson, who wrote the play Fences and optioned the movie as a feature film before his death in 2005, said that he wanted a Black director to helm the film adaptation: “I declined a white director, not on the basis of race, but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of African Americans.”26 Besides Wilson, other directors believe there is something more to directing movies of cultural or historical significance beyond technical proficiency. John Singleton chose not to direct a studio biopic about the late rapper Tupac Shakur, posting on Instagram,
The reason I am not making this picture is because the people involved aren’t really respectful of the legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur.… [Tupac’s] real fans just know I am still planning a movie on Tupac.… It doesn’t matter what they do mine will be better.… Tupac was much more than a hip hop artist.… He was a black man guided by his passions.… Of most importance was his love of black people and culture.… Something the people involved in this movie know nothing about.… Real talk! How you gonna make a movie about a man when you suing his mother to get the rights to tell his story?! They have no true love 4 Pac so this movie will not be made with love!”27
Both Wilson and Singleton are tuned into the rampant misrepresentation and stereotyping of African Americans that occurs on U.S. screens. For Wilson, knowledge of culture is paramount in the execution of movies about African American communities. For Singleton, love and appreciation of Black culture and people is a key ingredient in making a movie that is not only antiracist but also respectful of popular Black artists. The intentions, awareness, and empathy of the director make a difference in the outcome of the film and portrayals of characters and stories.
The assumption underlying most calls for increased representation of marginalized racial groups is that more representation would lead to more humanizing images on-screen. Although directors’ presence or absence behind the camera does not necessarily mean that less stereotypical or more multidimensional and complex racial representations are sure to follow, there is reason to believe that people of color behind the camera would improve on-screen images. For example, Robert Townsend remarks, “When you look at my career, I’ve tried to stay on course in my mission to uplift people of color.”28 Black Americans’ employment in high-paying and lucrative occupations in a competitive industry such as Hollywood holds immeasurable weight for the well-being of broader communities beyond the benefits it bestows on any single individual.
Cultural Bell Ringers
Another pressing concern is how underrepresentation in the film industry undercuts rights to citizenship. Citizenship rights are additional facets of representation in Hollywood that deserve recognition. Assessing the level of representation in media is one method of gauging a racial group’s access to cultural citizenship, which includes standard components such as voting rights and free speech but also the right to produce and be recognized in a nation’s dominant cultural myths, narratives, and images.29 In this sense, African Americans have been disenfranchised during Oscar season when the film industry votes for the highest awards for creative talent of the previous year.
Awards ceremonies are as much cultural as they are political and geopolitical. Awarding a movie with an Oscar sends a symbolic message to people across the globe. Earlier, we heard one Hollywood insider, Laura, lament that 12 Years a Slave might send out an “uncomfortable” global “message” that whites in America “are or were terrible people.” She called Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members “American cultural bell ringers.” Symbolically, their awards function as a sounding board that calls attention to certain art works and, in doing so, labels some movies and not others shining examples