Black movie stars seek to conquer Hollywood

The curtains may be slowly falling on the Black History Month, but excitement is certainly rising over how the three African-American films nominated for the Oscars will fair during the ceremony to be held in Hollywood, California Saturday night.

That the theme for 2017, “The Crisis in Black Education”, evokes the connection between education and the way of life of African-Americans. This connection is best reflected in their arts; not just film but also theatre, painting, music and literature, all of which tell the story of how African-Americans are socialised at school and at home and how this, in turn, affects how African-Americans relate with the land they call home.

Indeed, one of the films nominated for Best Picture is Hidden Figures, the story of three African-American women mathematicians who were working for NASA in the 1960s. This period is of great symbolism to African-Americans because it also coincided with the civil rights movement, which produced firebrands such as Stokely Carmichael and poets like Nikki Giovanni. This period also coincided with what came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance, a period that produced outstanding writers, musicians and activist.

Notably, it is also the period that produced the three women who had to overcome the double barriers of being African-American and women before leaving their mark in the world of space exploration through their prowess in mathematics, their resilience in the face of great odds, including racism and sexism. Despite these odds, their willingness to learn new skills, embrace technology and fight the oppressive system saw them immortalised as national heroes.

OSCARS NOMINATION LIST

For years, the Oscars nomination list could go by without an African American actor, actress, director or even movie making the honours list. This discrimination is what gave rise to last year’s virulent campaign that came to be known as #OscarsSoWhite, a Twitter campaign that put Hollywood on the spot for locking out black talent. As a result of the fightback, this year, six black actors and actresses have been nominated for the Oscars.

Happily, Octavia Spencer has been nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Hidden Figures while Denzel Washington has been nominated for best actor for his role in Fences alongside actress Viola Davis, who plays his wife in the film.

Spencer plays the role of  Dorothy Vaughan, the de facto supervisor of the group of African-American women who worked for NASA. She educated them on how to use computers, positioning them to play a pivotal role in America’s quest not just to conquer space but also to outsmart Russia in the space race. She, as well as her co-actresses in the film based on a true story, are testimony of what educating a black woman meant in 1960s America.

RACE CARD

Some viewers might come away with the feeling that Hidden Figures attempts at shoving the themes of race and gender oppression down their throats because this was done so overtly. There was too much waving the ‘message’ and shouting it so high from the rooftops without nuance. Hidden Figures nevertheless had some redeeming aspects to it, especially at the end when it introduces us to the real characters — Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine G Johnson and Mary Jackson, on whose lives the movie is based. In this regard, it enables viewers to appreciate their pioneering spirit and role in history.

Fences is the other film nominated in the writing (adapted screenplay) category. Denzel directed the film, originally a play, a version of which was performed at the Phoenix Players theatre in Nairobi.

Because a big part of the original play revolves around dialogue, Fences ended up as a dialogue-heavy movie with very little action in some parts. However, it does paint the picture of a man who, after failing to lift himself from poverty due to lack of education and opportunity, takes it as his duty to get his children to lift themselves up by the bootstraps. One ends up in the Marines and another as a musician, taking their lives one step better than their father. Denzel ably plays the role of the no-nonsense father, a garbage collector who had to fight to be allowed to drive the truck. However, he would not have emerged as the man he was in the film were it not for Viola Davis, who plays his wife, a mother torn between the love of her son and submitting to the unyielding disposition of her husband, who is locked in a battle of wits with his sons.

FIGHTING OPPPRESSIVE RACIAL SYSTEM

Though the quality of the film is debatable, it sheds light on how skin colour can affect a man’s life and that of his children. But it is also a testament that one can fight the oppressive racial system, if not for himself, at least for his descendants.

In Moonlight, the cinematography, is much more artful and experimental. Indeed, this is a film that one can watch for days. The film presents a character so awkward and sad that you want to drag him off screen and give him a hug. Its storyline is so simple and beautiful you want to remain immersed in that world. It must be said that Moonlight is not for the conventional or faint-hearted.

Moonlight, also nominated for Best Picture, remains true to what art ought to be about: The telling of a story, the depiction of circumstances and character, without any attempts to preach, deliver a sermon or pass along a message. The characters in Moonlight are not ‘good’ people in the conventional sense of the term — they are drug dealers, irresponsible parents, violent teens, callous friends — but we still feel a lot of empathy with their circumstances. Mahershala Ali, has been nominated for Best Supporting Role in the male category, alongside Naomie Harries in the female category for their roles in the film.

Ruth Negga, who portrays Mildred, an African-American woman whose love for Richard, her white husband, ends up changing laws prohibiting interracial marriages in the US, rounds off the list of six actors and actresses on the Oscars list. The Ethiopian-Irish actress has been nominated in the competitive category of Actress in a Leading Role nominee for the movie Loving.

Art being one of the soldiers in the frontlines of culture, it is not surprising that these are the “black” movies that have come to the fore. In the end, the increasing recognition of people of African heritage in the Oscars this year cannot be read separately from the Black Lives Matter movement that has redefined race relations in America in the recent past. Like the actors in the films, African-American cultural workers of the present time, just as their predecessors in days gone by, are putting race issues at the forefront, forcing American society to confront a side of its national life that it would rather not.