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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Sure, Denzel and Will and Eddie have conquered Hollywood. But as Halle Berry's lonely Oscar nod makes all too clear, black actresses still get no respect in the movie biz.
Mar 18, 2002 | Halle Berry burst into tears as she accepted a Golden Globe award in 2000 for her starring role in the HBO movie "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge," a picture she had produced herself and fought for tirelessly. Starlets' tears are always suspect, particularly at awards shows. Whenever a pretty actress sobs at the podium, she becomes an open target for both critics and the viewers at home: "She's beautiful, she's successful, she just won a prize," the thinking goes. "What's she got to cry about?"
People (a writer for Salon among them) criticized Berry for her tears and her speech, in which she said, "In just five seconds, by announcing my name, hopefully that burden of discrimination will be removed from me. This is for my inner struggle." On its surface, that speech did seem self-serving or at least misguided. But what Berry's critics didn't take into account was that she was a black actress who had just won an award for playing an extremely talented black actress and singer, one who, after being touted as an up-and-coming star, had barely had a movie career and could never have won a major acting award of any kind.
In the 1950s, an era many of us consider ancient history at this point, Dorothy Dandridge tried hard to be a movie star and to reap all the concomitant awards: good roles, big money and top billing.
In 2002, black actresses are still trying.
Maybe you'd cry, too.
Black actors of both sexes have had their problems getting recognized for good work. Part of the problem, of course, is that African-Americans, who make up some 13 percent of the total U.S. population and about 25 percent of moviegoers, are sorely underrepresented in Hollywood, both on the screen and behind the scenes. Sidney Poitier, who will be given an honorary Oscar at this year's awards, was the last black actor to win an Academy Award for best actor, for "Lilies of the Field" in 1963. (That was before we put a man on the moon, and think how long ago that seems.)
Simply put, though, there are more movie stars -- actors who can carry top billing in a film -- among contemporary black male actors than among their female counterparts. Denzel Washington, Will Smith and Eddie Murphy lead the pack; others, like Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence are less luminary but are nonetheless instantly recognizable to most moviegoers.
But does anyone ever refer to "the new Angela Bassett movie"? Does anyone rush out to see new pictures featuring Regina King, Thandie Newton or Nia Long based on those actresses' star power? Worse yet, how many moviegoers actually recognize those extraordinarily talented actresses when they see them? Those actresses and plenty of others remain below the radar of the average moviegoer in a way that Washington and his colleagues do not. In fact, Berry, nominated for an Academy Award this year for her performance in "Monster's Ball," is the first black actress in years to make that kind of mainstream impression. (Whoopi Goldberg, who won an Oscar in 1991 for her role in "Ghost," is a peculiar exception; her reputation rests largely on comedy and she has rarely been allowed to express any kind of romantic or sexual presence on screen.)
There's no shortage of terrific black actresses in Hollywood. So why do we have to look so hard to actually see them in the movies?
At this point I want to address any of you who think I'm simply being an apologist for minorities. Go ahead and accuse me of saying that actors of color should always win awards because of their race and regardless of the quality of their performances (I'm not), or of claiming that actors are always deliberately cheated out of awards purely because of their race (debatable, although not entirely dismissible). Please also feel free to accuse me of condescension: I am, after all, a white liberal making a special plea for a group to which I don't belong.
The truth is that my reasons are purely selfish. The hardest thing about going to the movies for a living isn't sitting through bad movies; it's seeing good work go unrecognized. Anyone who genuinely loves movies and the actors who people them has at one time or another come across a performer and wished to see him or her in bigger, more challenging (or even just different) roles. A few years back, when I wrote about the sad state of contemporary romantic comedies, I offered a list of movie actors I'd like to see paired on-screen. I received several letters asking me specifically (and not belligerently) for more examples of black actors.
Those letters made me realize that many of us (myself included) are guilty of putting African-American actors in their own separate category: They're perfectly acceptable as the stars of glossy, enjoyable comedies like "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" or "Two Can Play That Game" -- pictures aimed specifically at black audiences -- but we're not clamoring to see them in "our" comedies. There's no good reason for that other than cultural conditioning. And while cultural conditioning isn't racism, it's one of the elements that allow it to thrive.
