IN HOLLYWOOD GOD DON’T LIKE UGLY. OR BEAUTIFUL. by Stanley Crouch
from THE ROOT.com
I sincerely doubt that the audience and Oscar whammy being attempted by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry will change anything for black actresses in Hollywood. Precious is extremely powerful but it is not that strong, nothing seems to be.
Even if totally successful on every level from commercial success to a cultural shift melting away the paralysis of self-pity, Hollywood will continue to go along as it has gone because too many people are satisfied with the cardboard darkies they have gotten in the past and the transformation into figures only revolutionary because of their contemporary cardboard decadence right now.
When one looks at Byron Hurt’s Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes or his equally import Barack & Curtis, everything in the way of black actresses should become clear. Most people, black or white or whatever else are not disturbed by the reduction of black women into into only beautiful but lascivious sperm buckets, abrasive bitches “deserving” of beat-downs, or overweight hams each the size of two women and whose sentimentality is as far removed from life and actual sentiment as molasses is from the taste of salt.
There seems to be no appetite for the combination of toughness, intelligence, and unpretentious empathy seen in Michelle Obama, especially when she could not hold back tears as she listened to Joe Biden speak of his dead wife at the Democratic Convention, or as she was moved to the vocal quaver just short of tears by the depth of feeling shown her by those girls of every color in London.
Black women need not be angels any more than men need be, but the greatest impact of art is through its summoning or emblazoning of humanity. Yes, I said it: h-u-m-a-n-i-t-y. One could not believe it now, given the commercial commitment that so dominates the decadence for sale that we presently see in almost anything supposedly “authentic” and black, but the world -shaking, soothing, and inspiring impact had by black Americans on the entire world has usually come through as a form of morale arrived at through its confidence in both the weight and the wings of an inner life driven by humanity.
That is what an actress both beautiful and extremely talented like Angela Bassett has and no one has known what to do with because there is only the tiniest interest in the humanity she can bring to a part. George C. Wolfe and I once discussed what Bassett brought to Lady Macbeth when she dellivered each of her monologues in an unprecedented style very close to arias.
No one noticed, no one cared. Had they, Bassett would have had at least half as many top of the line parts written for her as that Australian blonde heifter who can act her cakes off but has gotten enough work for a barrel full of high-powered and subtle actresses as good as they come--across color lines.
The literally huge star of Precious had better enjoy her fame while she can because black actresses never have less than a hard row to hoe. Even if as beautiful for the inner life they bring to characters as they are in the looks department, they have little chance.
Kerry Washington was astonishingly human in Our Song, so were Jurnee Smollett and Meagan Good in Eve’s Bayou when they were kids a decade ago and superbly contrasted by the adult complexities of Lynn Whitfield and Debbi Morgan, both of whom were nearly magical presences because the film was substantilally broaded by their completely different characters. The same is true of Tasha Smith who is one of the finest talents in Hollywood: she can be lower than a snake in wagon tracks or the actual sweetheart full of sentiment, not sentimentality, that she was in Why Did I Get Married? Nothing seriously good has happened for any of them in artistic terms.
Obviously, proven talent does not matter. It is a problem older than Cicely Tyson, who was once young, beautiful, incredibly talented but her career, for the most part, was pissed away by the system. Movies by almost anyone other than Kasi Lemmons show no interest in the layers of humanity that we have all seen every year of our lives in the the black, brown, beige, and bone thee dimensions of the women we have known up closer than almost any close-up is given the task of showing.
That is the problem and it is everyone’s fault until enough Americans make it possible for Hollywood to believe there can be commercial success in truly human roles for black women. When and if that happpens, the culture of the entire world will benefit. We all suffer when something valuable is lost to the inevitable indifference of time and frailty.
