OTC50 #130

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The dominant culture often censors minority voices in a competition of wills among people living in close proximity to each other, and often even competing among themselves to be heard in the same communities and familial structures.

American cinema was not always the preeminent vehicle for story telling, and may still not be or may never have been in the global context. The film industry in India may be more dominant on a per capita basis and in shear financial power, at least, with a billion plus audience.

This concept of Hollywood dominance is part and parcel of the illusion created by the dominant class controlling American cinema.

French cinema had a more vigorous beginning than the American Nickelodeon industry, with the German cinema finding near allies in Paris prior to the entire continental culture of arts imploding during World War I.

Hollywood absorbed many of the brighter stars from Europe who were escaping the conflict of nations, with California being a safer haven from the culture of violence from 1914 to 1945.

These foreign voices influenced film art in America, and as the movies became more accessible, and more popular as entertainment, cinema began to also influence society.

The miracle of being able to watch film in theaters was all the more magical during a time before television in every household of suburban America, and even perhaps before radio in the dozens of dusty, lazy smaller towns of the isolated, less populated regions.

Yet, the white male voice always dominated even in the portrayal of white females and black Americans. Hegemony in America was reinforced by Hollywood, in promoting certain values and by censoring minority voices interested in joining the conversation on the big screen.

Women in film were often given their character by a white male director, while the screen was persistently dominated by white male protagonists controlling the narrative in parallel to dominance in society.

Women were depicted with emotional concerns within a culture that considered their needs secondary. Often, and for the longest time, the dreams and desires of women in society were hidden from the storyline, and remained undisclosed for women about women.

When the more marginalized groups in America were portrayed, the camera was more often than not used to reinforce cultural tropes.

Women were reduced to functioning as narrative devices, with characters involved in love triangles, unwanted pregnancies and ultimately, in the height of censorship, as sex symbols.

Body image and female charisma were important to the commercialization of film and drawing in a global audience, and distracted from the agenda of moving society toward gender-equality.

The black directors were not able to change the status quo either, but they succeeded in drawing attention to an alternative view of the world.

More often than not, blacks on film were portrayed as one dimensional characters, until director Spike Lee captured black communities, writing the stories of black New Yorkers from a non-judgmental, objective point of view.

Lee often appeared in character for his own films, reinforcing the illusion that an omniscient, all-knowing narrator was telling the story from an overhead crane shot or watching on the stoop across the street.

This anthropological approach combined the documentary genre with the feature film dramatization of life in the densely populated black neighbourhoods.

The black storyline often reinforced individual self esteem and community pride. And as a result, blacks began to be accepted without judgment for who they were and how they struggled, like any other Americans, with relationships, families and to succeed financially.

In Malcolm X (1992), Lee combines the traditional black genre motifs with the main characters plummeting into moral decrepitude until becoming incarcerated – and only then realizing they had thrown away their lives at a young age.

As Malcolm rises to a state of grace and is released into the community of Islam, Lee spends just as much time on choosing the moral path for blacks in America as showing the graces of the black communities.

Director Antoine Fuqua takes a slightly more subversive approach for the critically acclaimed depiction of police corruption in Training Day (2001).

Fuqua captures the essence of the black reality in a crime ridden Los Angeles community put sideways by the narcotics trade.

The cultural stereotypes of blacks are nonetheless challenged because the black director presents a more objective analyses of human nature, unbridled by racism and the white hegemony controlling the dialogue.

Filmmakers create a significant presence by not directly challenging the status quo, and by instead, objectively describing the unique culture coexisting within the hegemony.

Women too had a different voice than what was being presented for consumption.

Director Kathryn Bigelow takes the traditional women’s perspective in cinema, as being more emotional, and turns the male world on its head by feminizing hardened soldiers at constant risk of live fire.

In Hurt Locker (2008) Bigelow inserts her female perspective into the narrative by giving visual expression to the internalized adrenaline induced trauma of war. In this way, the need to externalize emotion thoughts into a contemporary discourse is underscored using male role models.

Director Sofia Coppola also accepts the dominant male culture but then gives a voice to the female characters living nearby in relative isolation. In Priscilla (2023), Coppola shows the other-world of female protagonists living in and around a globally recognized white male rock star.

Like Spike Lee did for black Americans, Coppola shows how the tension, continually forming and reforming around Elvis, ignored an important, unique voice. The film brings attention to the female voice, compelled by elaborate internalized emotional processes, that has an important part to play in social discourse.

Filmmakers cannot get too far ahead of politics and society, though.

The audience must be somewhat receptive to the alternate voices before those voices can be produced to influence society. Cultural hegemony operates a bit like a self propelled dynamo, reenergized by it’s own inertia, into which black artists and female artists must attempt to cross over without pause.

Director Greta Gerwig captured the internalized decent of all the generations before her by using plastic dolls as narrative devices. In Barbie (2023) the internalized struggle of gender politics and the marginalized voices came flailing forward.

Gerwig, perhaps unknowingly influenced by the others during her doll play, combines the techniques used by directors working privately from the outside.

Gerwig also reaches across gender lines and racial stereotypes, operating within the collective consciousness of a nation, by tapping into the internalized dreams and desires held in quite isolation during childhood.

This is who we are, this is the way it is, this is what we want, and this is the way it ought to be … in America.

Gender and race are given a wider audience and a more lasting voice through play on screen as opposed to depicting conflict between neighbourhoods whose demographics change ever so slowly.

At the same time, Gerwig’s timing is not by accident, following a generation of comic book theatre and adult play through superheroes. Gerwig moved fantasy from comics to dolls to cinema with great success, possibly altering the conversation moving forward.