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Name: Enza Rosato Student number: 10588515 Master Thesis Film Studies University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Abe Geil Second reader: Catherine Lord Date: 29 June 2018 Words: 21666

Representing the Civil Rights Movement in Contemporary American Cinema:

The Dominant Narrative

Abstract

In this MA thesis, I explore the dominant narrative of the United States’ civil rights movement in film. This dominant narrative, often represented within the “based on true events” genre, puts Martin Luther King Jr. inevitably in front, implying that the entire movement died with him in 1968. In this narrative, American society is presented as if racism has been overcome. However, a recent wave of protests against racism, and the production and release of the films The Butler (Lee Daniels 2013), Selma (Ava DuVernay 2014), Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi 2016), and Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow 2017), have brought the subject back into focus. I will examine the way in which the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement is represented in these films, by using a textual analysis. This analysis shows that The Butler and Selma contribute to keep the dominant narrative in place, in contrast to Hidden Figures and Detroit which demonstrate stories outside this narrative. However, all films are able to connect the representation of the civil rights movement with the contemporary racial context of the films’ production, especially by combining film and social media. The mediated one-way communication of this historical past has changed into a multi-voiced approach which gives organizations greater opportunity to address present issues. Therefore, the link between the actions of the civil rights movement and the problem of contemporary racism can be made. This link does not only apply for these case studies, and could be developed further on in other research. Keywords: African American, racial politics, civil rights movement, dominant narrative, “based on true events”, discourse analysis

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Table of Contents

Abstract 1

Table of Contents 2

Introduction 3

Theoretical Framework 5

Framing Racial Inequality Embedded in American Cinema 9

Chapter 1: Representing the Civil Rights Movement 13

1.1 The Dominant Narrative’s Presentation of the Post-Racial Society 13

1.1.2 Documentary: An Addition 20

Chapter 2: Historical Films in Contemporary Hollywood 23

2.1 A White Dominant Perspective 23

2.2 Difficulties of the “Based on True Events” Genre 26

Chapter 3: Contemporary Historical Fictions Revisiting the Civil Rights Movement: 30

The Case Studies 30

3.1 The Butler and Selma 31

3.2 Hidden Figures and Detroit 35

3.3 Cooperation of Cinema and Social Media 37

3.3.1 Application of Social Media: The Case Studies 39

Conclusion 41

Bibliography 45

Filmography 49

Music 50

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Introduction

This year, on 4 April 2018, was the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In the week surrounding this anniversary, his life and actions as leader of the civil rights movement were remembered, not only in the US, but also in other Western countries such as the Netherlands. The metanarrative of this remembrance presents a dominant narrative that is formed by the media and continuously reproduced, in which King is the one figure representing the entire movement that existed in the fifties and sixties of the last century. The consensus of that dominant narrative is that the movement started in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision regarding the segregation of schools in the South, and that it ended with King’s death in 1968 (Leigh Raiford and Renee Romano xiv; Richard H. King 473). Therefore, most representations of the civil rights movement are set within this period. The amount of representations of the civil rights movement appears to differ per period. For example, more films about the movement were produced in the nineties alone than in the sixties, seventies, and eighties combined (Jennifer Fuller 167). Moreover, the subject seems to have emerged again in the 2010s. Scholar John Robinson explains that when President Barack Obama won the 2008 election, this led to the misconceptions that racial difference had been transcended in American society that there no longer existed a division between African Americans and white Americans, and that the two racial groups had equal opportunities in American society. Most mainstream films produced since the ostensible end of the civil rights movement support the idea that the movement fully accomplished its goals. Hollywood’s popular fictional genre of films “based on true events” is naturally one which deals frequently with the civil rights movement, but is also a complicated genre because of its claim to be connected to reality and the way in which its narratives produce meaning for audiences. Four recently produced “based on true events” Hollywood films about the civil rights movement are The Butler (Lee Daniels 2013), Selma (Ava DuVernay 2014), Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi 2016), and Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow 2018). These four mainstream films, in their own way, help to keep the dominant narrative in place through the means of entertaining, educating, and informing a broad audience about the civil rights movement. I want to indicate here that this is not a historical investigation into whether the films represent the real events accurately. Rather, through textual discourse analysis I explicate the way in which events are represented by the filmmakers, from which point of view, and what meaning these images convey to a mainstream audience that might not consciously grasp its meaning, viewing the genre only as a form of entertainment. The Butler and Selma present a narrative made up of well-known events relating to the movement, events that are often remembered and represented. These films can therefore serve as appropriate examples of the dominant narrative perpetuated by Hollywood representations. On the other hand, Hidden Figures and Detroit complicate the dominant narrative, since the relation of these stories to the civil rights movement is not explicit. These two stories are about events not well-known to

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the audience, so they provide information about the context of the civil rights movement and complement understanding of race issues in American society. Therefore, these films complicate the ideas presented by the dominant narrative, which represents one clear, linear story with a beginning and an ending and repeatedly re-presents the same general knowledge for Western audiences. Moreover, it is problematic that all four films present racism as a struggle that has been overcome, erasing contemporary race issues. Consequently, these four films are biased in their presentation of the civil rights movement. However, due to developments within the media field and our globalized world, these cinematic representations, through their reception on social media, facilitate a critical discourse around contemporary race issues. Combining the above issues, I will claim the following throughout this thesis: The representation of the civil rights movement in American cinema is a biased one, in which the same story is continuously reproduced. Moreover, this dominant narrative presents contemporary American society as if racism no longer exists. The recent “based on true events” productions The Butler and Selma help to keep this dominant narrative in place. However, two other recent fictional representations Hidden Figures and Detroit complicate this dominant narrative by providing new information not generally known to the public. I argue that the cooperation of cinema and new social media-based forms of communication are able to counter the claim that racism has already been decisively overcome, making it possible to fight contemporary racism. I substantiate this claim across three chapters. In the first chapter, I discuss how the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement appears in American cinematic objects after Martin Luther King’s death in 1968. Especially, cinematic representations produced until our contemporary post-Obama world existed and where more and more information about the civil rights movement became accessible through these representations. This chapter functions as an overview of various examples of cinematic objects representing the civil rights movement discussed according to the narratives presented. During this chapter it will become clear people of African American origin strove to use the media to put the topic of contemporary racial inequality high on the political agenda during the civil rights movement and continued to do so after King’s death. However, as these films are an attempt to put the subject of racism back into focus, the discourse of the cinematic representations presents this subject more as a closed story, instead of provoking the audience to take action to fight contemporary racism. All of the films discussed contribute to keeping the dominant narrative in place by presenting King as the one and only leader, and all films are situated during the period of his leadership, between 1954 and 1968. If more of these mainstream films extended the narrative of the civil rights movement into contemporary Western politics, the link with contemporary racism would be more visible. Therefore, documentaries as non-fictional genre seem to be a valuable contribution to the fiction genre about this subject that are able to broaden the dominant narrative and in this sense explain more of the context of the civil rights movement.

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The second chapter revolves around the production strategies of Hollywood and how its “based on true events” genre contributes to the dominant narrative. In addition, I examine the complexities of this particular genre in relation to this subject and the aspect of being veracious objective of being truthful. This chapter links the content of the first chapter to contemporary discussions of a divide between African Americans and white Americans within the mainstream American film industry. This discussion intensified after the Academy Awards of 2013, during which the equal representation of African Americans in American cinema was questioned. This shows that this topic is still highly relevant fifty years after King’s death. The “based on true events” genre is a fruitful one for representing the civil rights movement, supplementing documentaries since these films are able to show scenes a documentary cannot, and this genre is able to reach a broader public. However, the conventions of this genre as fiction complicate the idea that these films are educational for Western audiences. In the third and final chapter, I indicate the relationship of the civil rights movement to our own time by explaining how the dominant narrative appears in the films The Butler, Selma, Hidden Figures, and Detroit. The chapter is divided into three paragraphs from which two regarding the case studies. The Butler and Selma are explained as examples of what the dominant narrative explicitly contains, by using same techniques. Hidden Figures and Detroit are discussed as films outside the dominant narrative presenting stories untold before. However, as I argue, these films are still relevant to educate the audience about the years surrounding the civil rights movement, especially seen in relation to each other. These four recently produced films are a way of reviving the subject of racial inequality and restoring it to the public memory in Western societies. However, there exists a difference in the way these films contribute to this knowledge when seen on their own. Therefore, I argue in this chapter that these films have a greater impact on their audience when seen in relation to other cinematic representations of the movement. In contemporary society, other developments such as social media contribute to audiences making the connection between the civil rights movement and contemporary race issues, thus contributing to the fight against contemporary racism even outside the United States, for example in the Netherlands. Besides this, these new kinds of media increase and reshape the practical opportunities people have to organize themselves in order to fight racism. Theoretical Framework While discussing the representation of history within contemporary cinema, historiography and historiophoty must both be taken into account. Historiography concerns how history is represented in language and written discourse. In the context of this thesis, that means how the institution of slavery and the actions of the civil rights movement have been written and remembered. Historiophoty, meanwhile, is the way in which history is represented within visual discourse (Hayden White 1193; George F. Custen 26). In this case, historiophoty concerns how these stories are remembered, what is highlighted and passed on,

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and how this is later translated onto the screen. For example, take the iconic photos of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the large number of spectators, images eventually studied by filmmakers and reenacted for cinematic representations. As explained earlier, there appears to be a dominant narrative while discussing the civil rights movement (Raiford and Romano xiv). This dominant narrative appears as clearly in the historiography as in the historiophoty, since the former feeds into the latter, and the same dominant narrative informs much of contemporary mainstream cinema. The dominant narrative is a selection of key events from the fight for freedom in the last century, combined into one story with a clear ending, appearing in literature and different forms of media, and contributing to keeping this history in the public memory of Western societies. Within the dominant narrative exists a dominant gaze that arose from the norm existing within Western societies about the civil rights movement. Due to a global world culture with international exchange, the Western dominant perspective has changed drastically, but nevertheless, the norm is still the perspective of a “white male,” and this is also the case within the film industry (Margaret M. Russel 244; Richard Dyer White 145-148; Jason Smith 780). This implies that what Russel indicates as the dominant gaze assumes the perspective of a white person. This gaze is ubiquitous in the majority of our contemporary media, having endured across different periods. In 1952, Frantz Fanon was one of the first theorists to discuss the white perspective that is unconsciously repressed in Western societies (112-114). As Fanon explains, this white perspective is embedded in Western societies in the postcolonial and post-Jim Crow era1, and the dominant narrative consequently inflects in popular culture, such as cinema. In addition, this white perspective is also implemented on different levels in society, and the media sustains the ideology of the white perspective through mainstream channels continuously to this very day. Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) examined slavery’s heritage and how it had remained embedded in society; Fanon was one of the first theorists to define postcolonialism. Shortly, after the civil rights movement, this postcolonialist organization was a move towards equality for African Americans and towards a multicultural society. Within this representation exists a white discourse informed by the white perspective, as explained earlier according to the idea of the dominant gaze. Edward Said calls this discourse orientalism, a term indicating the perspective of Western countries on other countries, such as those in the Middle East, which originated after Western imperialism. He states that after the time of colonialism, white Westerners 1 The Jim Crow era indicates the time in which races were separated in the United States after 1890. African Americans were segregated from white citizens, and signs indicated separate with signs areas and services for “colored” people. This legislation mostly affected the South. From the twentieth century onwards, African Americans started to fight for their rights, but it wasn’t until 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education, and later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that these segregation laws were removed to combat institutionalized racism. This is called the post-Jim Crow era, although the legacy of the Jim Crow era still impacts contemporary race issues.

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(Caucasians2) began to consider themselves superior to other races. This ideology was perpetuated by media such as Hollywood films, and indoctrinated white people. Said indicates non-Westerners with the concept of the Other; these are the people who do not fit this white perspective norm (9). Stuart Hall elaborated Said’s work by applying it to the media, where this perspective is formed into a discourse related to a media object. Hall calls the elements of a person’s background which inform their perspective enunciation (“Cultural Identity” 222-223). However, within filmmaking and film viewing, enunciation is influential in the process of encoding and decoding. Encoding is the way in which the filmmakers produce a meaningful discourse within a media object from their own positional frame of knowledge. In this thesis, I apply this definition to an examination of the civil rights movement and how it is translated onto the silver screen. Decoding, on the other hand, is the way in which this discourse presented by the filmmakers, translates to the framework of knowledge of the spectator and creates meaning from these messages (Hall “Encoding/Decoding” 164-165). For example, encoding describes how a white American Hollywood filmmaker translates his own interpretation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life into a representation biased by the filmmakers’ background. Thereafter, decoding takes place when this film is seen by a white Dutch student, born after the civil rights movement, who was previously only familiar with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and no other aspects of his life. Furthermore, we can consider how, directly after watching this film, the aspects of King’s life are remembered in the mind of this spectator, and also how this view on King’s life and the civil rights movement is biased in the mind of the spectator, since the filmmakers’ interpretation is represented. This implies that a non-American spectator has to consider the filmmakers’ background and the political and social atmosphere surrounding the making of the film. Besides this, scholars Ashley “Woody” Doane, John Robinson, Jared Sexton, and Jason Smith argue in multiple articles that the aim of presenting a color-blind or post-racial society in the United States from the seventies onwards is overambitious. Color-blindness is the idea originating in the seventies that people’s skin color would no longer be a social or economic obstacle for US citizens. I argue that parts of Fanon’s theory to suggest, conversely, that embedded racism in Western society is still applicable to our contemporary American and European societies. Color-consciousness in contrast to color-blindness is the explicit attention that is paid to peoples’ skin color in order to prove inequality. In this sense, this thesis embraces color-consciousness in order to explain that the ostensibly color-blind society represented in contemporary American cinema should be reorganized. The United States has major influence over other Western countries, and color-conscious discussions such as those in Hollywood have a large impact. Since the civil rights movement, the general consensus among Americans is that the United States exist as a post-racial society in which racism has been overcome, and this perception influences European countries like 2 The Caucasian race is a term still mostly used in the United States to indicate white people who are the offspring of the European colonists.

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the Netherlands. This post-racial idea should be challenged, because the ideal of a multicultural society after the civil rights movement does not imply immediately that all races are already treated equally within this society. The portrayals of characters in film are in this case always representations of American society, in which the film medium exaggerates the divide between African Americans and whites. Therefore, many discussions of stereotyping exist. Film scholar Richard Dyer explains that stereotyping is effective within fiction because the conventions of filmic language encourage the use of stereotypes as recognizable markers through which the audience is able to understand a film’s context (“The Role of Stereotypes” 14-15). Moreover, these characterizations correspond to norms to make the story understandable for the audience and profitable for the makers. Here, I agree with Dyer on the necessity of clarifying these historical-fictional stories for the public. Representations of the civil rights movement and other cinematic objects representing racial inequality sustain these stereotypes by telling stories of different races for which typecasting is necessary. However, I would like to add a point of discussion regarding the commercial production process of historical fictions. Namely, I have difficulties with the fact that the majority of roles given to actors of African American origin seem to be for a character who has to have a brown or black skin color. In this case, the film industry is being color-conscious, but neglects to pay attention to equally divided roles of non-stereotypical characterizations. It strikes me that African American actors in Hollywood films are frequently typecast. Moreover, the characters commonly known and represented within films about the civil rights movement are given stereotypical characterizations. The portrayal of African American characters has often been one-sided in the past. Over the years, African American characters have become more nuanced, making their personalities appear three-dimensional. One example of a person who used to be given this stereotypical characterization is Malcolm X – one of the civil rights movement leaders besides King – who is presented in the media with his hard personality. The film about his life Malcolm X (Spike Lee 1993) presented him in a more human and sympathetic persona, as a three-dimensional character (Edward P. Morgan 154). Since Spike Lee made him more relatable, this film serves as a starting point for viewers to get to know more about Malcolm’s (personal) life, which other films did not portray. By focusing on his life, his family, his assassination, and other personal aspects surrounding his ideology, this film afforded Malcolm a more respectful representation, differing from earlier representations as a flat character. By making this film, Lee tries to move away from the King-centered dominant narrative and to allow the audience to gain more information about other aspects of the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, King makes an appearance in this film, to show how the two leaders related to each other, which suggests some level of adherence to the standard narrative. Moreover, the issue of stereotyping is of special importance in my chapter delving into Hollywood’s biased method of filmmaking, since discussions arose about Hollywood’s diversity, in response to which the Academy Awards tried to present greater diversity.

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However, the dominant ideology represented in the depiction of African Americans in Hollywood cinema must be challenged. I argue that it is important that in this case historical films for which these actors are typecast are made. However, the roles for which African Americans are typecast should be complemented with roles for which an actor need not necessarily have an African American background. Thereby, I argue that not only these historical films are of importance, but other fictions representing diversity as well, especially those in which a character’s skin color is not of importance to the plot. Framing Racial Inequality Embedded in American Cinema Before I explain which cinematic objects contain the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement, I will situate my research within the field of cinematic representations of different races and racial inequality of the US throughout film history. One of the first cinematic exposures of racial difference is the silent film Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Porter 1903), from which narrative many adaptations have been made. Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall emphasizes, in her influential article about looking beyond the general idea of what the narrative of the civil rights movement is, that inequality has been embedded and institutionalized in American culture, with white privilege outliving slavery by many generations (1261). Dyer also states this, years earlier, as he explains the non-obviousness of a white skin color which is seen as the norm within media and society (White 3 and 149; Doane 6-7). Uncle Tom’s Cabin is based on a novel of the same name written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 and is the first cinematic representation of anti-slavery and racial inequality. This shows the cooperation of literature and cinema in the early stages of cinema; Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of the first cinematic examples of the exploration of racial difference in American society. In addition, an example of cinematic racist representations in history is D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and is discussed by many film scholars. The film was controversial in its representation of African Americans, who were represented by white actors in blackface, and is about the Civil War3 in the United States. Film scholars Andrew M. Gordon and Hernán Vera argue that this film introduced the possibility of rewriting history through this new cinematic form of media (166). This is still relevant today because of the media’s representation of our contemporary society. Russel mentions Birth of a Nation as a perfect example of what she calls the dominant gaze. By this she means the Western white perspective that is represented in mainstream culture. The white perspective is biased and dominating in Western societies (Russel 244). Griffith was an innovative filmmaker in terms of camera techniques such as close-ups, which help to involve the spectator, although this film was only for the eyes of white Americans. 3 The Civil War between the Northern and the Southern States lasted four years and occurred as a result of President Abraham Lincoln’s fight against slavery. After this Civil War in 1865 the Congress and the States agreed on the 13th Amendment, changing the constitution to end slavery. Nevertheless, ex-slaves were not allowed to participate in public life equally, marking the beginning of the Jim Crow era.

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Therefore, more than a hundred years later, a film of the same name and based on true events The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker 2016) was released, emphasizing the importance and revival of the subject of (contemporary) racism in the United States. Unlike its namesake, the new film gives priority to the point of view of the slaves, having deep, well-rounded characters and evoking emotional reactions from the viewer by showing the slaves’ side of the story. The film is written and directed by Parker, who also plays the main role; he made the film in reaction to the influence of the first version. By remaking The Birth of a Nation with the knowledge of segregation in the United States, this film revisiting slavery in the US attempts to explain the origins of contemporary racism and to express that it should be fought against. However, much has changed since the first Birth of a Nation, one such change being that not only white Americans now participate in the making of a film like this. The subject is revived to tell the history of the institution of slavery which has been overcome, but also to explore its legacy for contemporary Western society. In addition, an early popular fictional series, Roots (ABC-TV 1977-1988), depicts the history of slavery in the United States in detail. The series was received very positively, despite being one of the first media objects about slavery and its cruelty to air on national American television. Moreover, the series was able to give the white viewer a perspective on their ancestors’ contributions to earlier racial inequality, despite the public perception of the US as a multicultural and post-racial society after the civil rights movement. Roots was a first attempt to fill a gap of amnesia about the history of slavery in the United States, as Professor of American Studies Leslie Fishbein explains in a chapter dedicated to the series (281). This is true especially because the series was produced after years of cinematic silence on the subject of slavery in the United States, after the production of the popular Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Birth of a Nation. However, a remake mini-series of Roots was released in 2016, again emphasizing the present need to represent the values of America’s multicultural society. Two more recent and highly praised films about slavery are Amistad (Steven Spielberg 1997) and 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen 2013). Both of these films present the experience of slavery from the perspective of the slaves with a closed ending. The films allow the audience to glance the lives and motives of the enslaved African characters as they are presented as well-rounded characters. Moreover, these historical fictions attempt an explanation of life in the time of slavery. Therefore, although the actors play roles of stereotypical characterization of a slave, these films are contributing to make these African American characters more understandable, not just depicting them only as slaves but as people with real personalities. In the recent discussion of the Oscars being too white, 12 Years a Slave can be considered a progression in terms of representing African Americans at this prestigious yearly event, since Chiwetel Ejiofor won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as an enslaved man. I find this problematic however, since the film is used as a counter-reaction to prove that African Americans actors are participating in the film industry as well. However, this is for the role he plays as a stereotypical characterization of a slave.

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Although there are exceptions, it seems to me that most African Americans play a role where it is of importance to tell a particular story of racial difference. This film wasn’t enough to prove African Americans’ contribution to the film industry, since the discussion of the Oscars revived two years later. Both films, because of their immense audience reach, are helpful in putting the subject of racial inequality back on the political agenda in the nineties and 2010s, but because this seems to be the subject matter in which African American actors will be rewarded most for prominent roles, it becomes problematic because they are less praised for non-stereotypical roles. This constitutes a paradox in which action and reaction continuously follow each other, demonstrating that earlier criticism could be false to prove that times are changing, and happens over and over again. I argue that it is a positive occasion that these films are produced to educate the audience, but also that stereotyping African Americans is still a part of these films’ production. In making these films, a story is told about African Americans in which every character is typecast for their skin color. In this sense, a film like 12 Years a Slave does not represent progress in terms of having non-stereotyped African American actors, but actually contributing to the stereotypes that exist about African Americans and their history. Besides this, many films are made about the United States’ segregated society after the Civil War. The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg 1985), based on the 1982 novel of the same name by author Alice Walker, shows the life and living conditions of African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century. The actresses Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey both play important roles in this film and are examples of African American women committed to make films like this for a broad public including white people. To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan 1962), based on a novel of the same name written by author Harper Lee, is also about the American segregated society, although produced already two decades earlier than The Color Purple and set in the thirties of the last century. As a film that was produced during the civil rights movement, it explains how racial inequality was embedded and institutionalized in American society many years before the dominant narrative claims that the civil rights movement began. Although the town where the protagonists live is fictional, the court case of a white lawyer fighting for an African American’s rights is drawn from reality. In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison 1967), based on the 1965 John Ball novel of the same name, also shows citizens’ distrust of African Americans in the period of the civil rights movement. This narrative of distrust in American society is clarified by comparing the storyline of To Kill a Mockingbird to that of Ghosts of Mississippi (Rob Reiner 1996). Both films present a similar storyline involving a white lawyer defending an African American. Together, these films demonstrate the revisionism of the subject of racial inequality within American society. Moreover, it is notable that The Color Purple, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and In the Heat of the Night are based on novels of the same names, indicating again the collaboration of literature, cinema, and commerce within film production. Furthermore, since these films all comment on US society, the production period has to be taken into account. The film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer 1967) represents the social

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segregation of African Americans during the movement. This film critically debates interracial relationships in the context of that period. In this film and others starring Sidney Poitier, his celebrity status as one of the first African American actors makes him representative of all African Americans. He plays the main role in two groundbreaking productions, namely In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, released in the same year. Since he was cast in many other productions, I will discuss his contribution to American cinema in later sections. Moreover, many of these films about racial inequality in the United States present it as something that has improved or even disappeared, relating to the presentation of a color-blind society from the seventies onwards. However, the recent film Get Out (Jordan Peele 2017), depicting interracial relationships just like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, suggests that little has changed in fifty years. This thriller about contemporary racism explicitly exaggerates the horrific effects of daily racism that are recognizable to the audience. The makers of Get Out explain that although white Americans assume that they live in a multiracial society, racism is still not overcome. The four case studies of The Butler, Selma, Hidden Figures, and Detroit contribute to this argument. By revisiting the subject of the civil rights movement, the makers of these films attempt to put the civil rights movement back on the political agenda. This “based on true events” genre is able to present both well-known and largely unknown details about the motives of the civil rights movement. In combination with the release of a film like Get Out, a link can be made to commentary on contemporary racism. In addition, all these previous examples, although totally fictional, describe the lives of African American citizens of other times. Therefore, by seeing these films in relation to each other, a more understandable reality is presented. Slavery seems to be a subject often represented within cinema, currently in an attempt to educate the audience about the horrific events involved. However, films that are just reflections of the United States’ society before and after the civil rights movement are also educational in that they allow people to understand the context of the civil rights movement. My four case studies take the perspective of our contemporary time, in which people are gradually gaining information about the civil rights movement and reflecting on it. Since racism has recently been high on the political agenda again, these films are able to show a broad mainstream public where these ideas originate from. Therefore, the idea within the United States that there exists a post-racial society is tackled through these cinematic representations before and during the Obama presidency.

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Chapter 1: Representing the Civil Rights Movement

“Many of today’s conflicts revolve around how the civil rights movement should be remembered” (Raiford and Romano xii). This chapter is an elaboration of many of the representations that have been made of the civil rights movement. All these cinematic objects contribute to the knowledge of many Western citizens about the racial history of the United States. However, most cinematic representations are presented alone, not in combination with others on the same topic. These fictional representations are presented as closed stories in which the civil rights movement is considered a successful movement in the past. If we analyze them together, a much broader story of the civil rights movement emerges, in which these films collectively provide more comprehensive information and even reflect on current-day racism. This is especially true when the production context of each film is considered, since the political circumstances of a society are reflected within the films themselves. The media has made Martin Luther King’s life the main focus in depictions of the civil rights movement, and the idea exists that the movement died with him in 1968. Although the US is presented in the media as post-racial after his death, this does not imply that racism no longer exists. Even today, fifty years after King’s death, racism has still not been overcome, although many (recent) fictions imply that it has. In mass media such as television, acts of racism are suppressed to preserve the idea of color-blindness, and this also applies to fictional films. However, documentaries seem to approach the truth, by presenting information outside the dominant narrative, which makes them valuable for this discussion. When Barack Obama became the first African American president of the United States, the idea existed that individualism had finally overcome racism in the US. The rules concerning what fits the dominant narrative are embedded in consumer culture, so that the narrative continues to present only the highlights, especially from King’s leadership, and diminishes other key players in the pursuit of equal opportunities for African American citizens. In practice, inequality in American and other Western societies remains, which is reflected in the Hollywood film industry. 1.1 The Dominant Narrative’s Presentation of the Post-Racial Society The dominant narrative of the civil rights movement tends to assume a white perspective. This narrative can be demonstrated when all cinematic objects about the movement are combined and seen as a metanarrative. However, this narrative is problematic, since much of the movement is overlooked and rejected in the process of media representation. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall explains that the dominant narrative did not only develop retrospectively but in collaboration between the movement’s strategists and the media, which represented these happenings during the movement and thereafter in a particular way (1235). This idea implies that the narrative as we know it today was already developing during the civil rights movement, since the organizers of the civil rights movement were able to use the media fruitfully.

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This narrative is known all over the world, as for example explained in the Dutch documentary In de schaduw van King “In the shadow of King”; (Hans Hermans and Martin Maat 2018), broadcast on 2 April 2018 on NPO 2 in remembrance of King’s assassination fifty years earlier. As presented in this documentary, Harcourt Klinefelter is one of King’s white followers and became a member of King’s inner circle. Klinefelter became King’s press officer and still has access to all the recordings of all King’s speeches, which emphasizes the movement’s focus on preserving and reproducing their actions. As Jacquelyn Dowd Hall states, the different organizations of the civil rights movement recorded their actions and actively considered how they wanted to be represented. This large amount of found footage is still being continuously reproduced, and these images shape the dominant narrative. As previously stated, King is inevitably the focus of this narrative, even being given a celebrity status. American journalist and writer Edward P. Morgan explains that within the process of story-making King is used as an overarching figure to make the story less complex. He is iconic, and his speeches, marches for voting rights, and ideology of non-violence are what is still most known and depicted about the movement today. Producing the story of a single person, the narrative conflates the efforts of many other freedom fighters into a single protagonist. In the narratives of these films, groups such as The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC; led by King), the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are mentioned. However, they are difficult to distinguish for the uninformed public because of the abbreviations used and because their different focuses and functions are not indicated in these narratives. All these different organizations are in some way linked to King, although the NAACP was already founded decades before King was born. Since King led only the SCLC, it is misleading to present the other organizations as part of the King-centered narrative. The organizations did cooperate, since they shared one main goal, but they also functioned separately from each other. Richard H. King, a professor of American Studies specializing in the civil rights movement, states that in however much detail the civil rights movement is explored in cinema, King will always stand in front as a leader of all those organizations, erasing the story’s nuance (467). Every film made about the period of the civil rights movement mentions King, and all these films claiming to be about the movement are situated in the period favored by the dominant narrative, between 1954 and 1968. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall claims, conversely, that the movement already started before the Supreme Court vs. Board of Education4 case, and that it was not yet finished 4 Because of suburbanization after the Second World War, a process during which African Americans moved from the South to the North, African Americans were living relatively close to white Americans in a segregated society. Racial inequality was embedded and institutionalized in American culture with white privilege for many generations after the times of slavery, which led to high tensions (Jacquelyn Dowd Hall 1235-1242; King 478; Dyer White 36). In 1954, the Brown vs. Board of Education court case outcome allowed black students to attend public schools and in the dominant narrative is often seen as the first victory of desegregating the South of the United States, marking the beginning of the civil rights movement. However, it took years for this outcome to take effect across every state.

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when King died in 1968. It is untenable to claim that racial inequality no longer exists, so I agree with Hall’s desire to expand this narrative. Furthermore, current discussions of contemporary racial inequalities in the United States should also be taken into account within the dominant narrative, since mediated objects like fictions allow the audience to reflect on the film’s political implications for their own lives. The actions taken to fight racism changed over time and are currently left out in the discussion of cinematic representations of the civil rights movement. These acts of racism seem to revolve more in the media around the release of a film, which emphasizes the importance of the context of a film and its release. For example, newspaper articles exploring the motivations of the filmmakers foreground these discussions, which are subsequently discussed on social media platforms. However, all of these cinematic representations of the movement, when seen in isolation, imply that racial inequality no longer exists. As sociologist Ashley “Woody” Doane explains, race is socially constructed in the color-blind or post-racial society presented as succeeding King’s death, in which race no longer “matters” (13). By this she means that American society suppresses discussion of racism and that acts of racism are ignored. When inequality is not on the political agenda, the illusion of a multicultural society is presented. Moreover, the seventies American ideology of individualism played an important role in making the case for post-racialism, as did the right-wing dissemination of the ideal of the American Dream. This ideology presented a consumer culture in which color-blind conservatives focused primarily on obscuring individual acts of oppression while ignoring institutionalized oppression on African Americans as a group. Television was an important medium in this time, since it was able to present color-blindness covertly. This kind of obscurantism became prominent especially in the eighties, during the Reagan era. Police violence against African American citizen Rodney King in 1991 was filmed, increasing the visibility of the racial divide. The divide became even more visible after the O.J. Simpson trial, media coverage of which was highly sensationalized. Jennifer Fuller examines the importance of television and film in the nineties in representing the color-blind society. The media presented sensational images of these two individuals to the public, indicating that for some years the United States seem to fulfill their promises of a multicultural society by showing acts of racial inequality on television. Because of all this, racial progress stagnated due to the media which presented a hegemonic view that the civil rights movement had already succeeded in the sixties. Therefore, the concept of color-blindness suppressed the conversation around race and presented the American society as if everything was fine. A solution to this problem is proposed by Smith, who claims that color-consciousness is necessary in the media to reject the illusion of color-blindness. This color-consciousness is a perspective assumed in coverage of many recent cases of racial inequality which put the subject high on the political agenda again, for example with the Academy Awards (considered in the next chapter), where the organization is now paying increased attention to participants’ skin color.

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In addition to television, film has played an important role in defining the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement as we know it today. These kinds of media are a way to express the need for reconciliation of racial differences in representing the civil rights movement. However, these representations are biased. In shaping this narrative, some aspects are foregrounded while others are forgotten. Hollywood continuously rediscovers the civil rights movement and represents it as if inequality no longer exists. Communication scholar Timothy Laurie explains in his article that Dreamgirls (Bill Condon 2006) presents American society as color-blind and post-racial, produced in the time just before the Obama presidency. Although, as he argues, this film is actually an example presentation of racial inequality as something of the past. I agree with him on this point according to this and other historical fictions produced in the time before and during the Obama presidency that ongoing seem to represent the American society as equal towards its citizens. This perpetuates the idea of a post-racial society, as I will argue with the aid of various examples in the next section. All fictional films revolving around the civil rights movement present these stories as if everyone is equal nowadays and these inequalities no longer exist. These filmmakers used Obama’s presidency especially to prove this point. However, the media’s fabrication of public memory of the civil rights movement limits the boundaries of the overall accomplishments of the movement – in which process a specific media “reality” is designed in order to use it for mass consumption – this hegemony is embedded within consumer capitalism, and the media are selective in what they represent. In this one-way form of communication, the market-driven mass media’s focus is to entertain and present stories and certain personalities. This main goal is to be sensational by presenting only certain parts of history. Though the Obama presidency saw certain improvements, this is no reason to claim that the United States are now definitively post-racial, especially considering the backlash leading to Donald Trump’s presidency. 1.1.1 Fictional Representations One of the first major actions led by Martin Luther King Jr. was the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. During this boycott, African American citizens of Montgomery, Alabama boycotted public buses in order to oppose the segregation of public transport. The rules of segregated buses forced African American citizens to sit in the back of the bus in the “colored section,” and they were forced to stand if their section was full, even when seats were still available in the “white section” at the front. During this boycott these protesters walked to their destinations instead of using the bus. The boycott lasted over a year, after which the Supreme Court decided in 1956 that segregated buses were in contradiction with the constitution. This bus boycott is one of the most represented non-violent actions in the early years of the movement led by King. The Rosa Parks Story (Julie Dash 2002) shows the struggle of Rosa Parks as the first African American woman fighting for equality. She was arrested when she protested against segregated public transport by sitting in the front of the bus. The film assumes Parks’ perspective and shows that the bus boycott began

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the day after her arrest because of her refusal to give up her seat in the front of the bus. In addition, Boycott (Clark Johnson 2001) dedicates the entire film to this bus boycott and explains the surrounding actions from inside King’s organization. In this way, these two relatively small television film productions, produced in quick succession, work together to explain this story from (in the dominant narrative’s perception) the early stages of the civil rights movement when seen in relation to each other. Both films claim to be about the actual events, so that the meaning of these films becomes even more authoritative for their audience, since they explain something about reality. Because of this, these films contribute to maintaining the dominant narrative, by presenting these entertaining, informative, and educational stories as closed, from the perspective of the twenty-first century. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that segregated buses ever existed, but these films show the history of contemporary racism by exploring racial inequalities which were normalized until relatively recently. Moreover, the bus boycott and segregation in the South are also represented in American cinema from the perspective of lesser-known African American citizens in the South. In my opinion, these films are more fictionalized since they are about untraceable citizens in contrast to Rosa Parks and King. The feature film The Long Walk Home (Richard Pearce 1990) explores the participation of fictional African American housekeeper Odessa Cotter, played by Whoopi Goldberg, in the bus boycott. Many African American women in that time were housekeepers working for white women. However, The Long Walk Home expresses not only the emotional impact of inequality for African American citizens like Odessa, but also the domestic struggles created by the divided opinions of white people, and the different impacts the civil rights movement had on their lives. This film claims to be about the fight of African American citizens of Alabama to maintain the bus boycott until the goal was achieved, but eventually gives priority to exploring the torn domestic relationships of white American families during the boycott. Moreover, this whitewashed perspective is another information source supporting the dominant narrative by representing white women as maintaining the boycott by driving the African American protesters to their destination. A more recent example of a film covering a similar subject is The Help (Tate Taylor 2011). This film is comparable in its narrative and perspective to The Long Walk Home, since it shows the relationships between these African American housekeepers and white women. The Help is about African American housekeeper Aibileen Claire, played by Viola Davis, who mainly looks after the daughter of the white woman she works for. Furthermore, the narrative follows white journalist Skeeter, who decides to write a book about Aibileen and her housekeeping friends to give them a voice of their own. However, by assuming the perspective of a white woman, this story situated in the civil rights movement in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi expresses white citizens’ support in the fight against racism, instead of showing the suffering and struggles of daily life for African Americans. Assuming the perspective of a white woman makes the story more accessible for a white audience. These choices in the storyline present the civil rights movement from a white perspective. Moreover, the continuous reproduction of the same individual stories

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exemplifies Hollywood’s rediscovery of these few stories about the civil rights movement, which are continuously reproduced within the dominant narrative, in which priority is given to stories that can be told from the perspective of white protagonists. According to Morgan, the media have presented three themes of the civil rights movement. He explains this regarding the market-driven reproduction of the civil rights movement. The first theme is presented as the “good” civil rights text, explaining the story of the South in a legitimized way with insights into the perspective of African Americans, and leaving institutions unchallenged. This emphasizes a humanizing mode of storytelling in which the focus is put on individual African Americans. Second, through a discourse in which critics of racial inequality are invisible, exiled, or labelled as the Other, from the perspective of white people, according to the theory of Said. Third, the movement through a current view of the media discourse on racial inequality, picking one of the conflicting sides. These sides are juxtaposed and are often the only two ideologies that exist in the remembrance of the civil rights movement. This juxtaposition maps to black and white, and both races are presented as seeing a different reality. As we have already seen in some examples, throughout the years a more “true” perspective is presented within cinema about the civil rights movement, by giving African Americans a voice. However, whitewashing of those voices still occurs, and the discussion arises around which filmmakers are allowed to tell this story. This is often the reason motivating contemporary African American filmmakers to make films on this topic, due to disagreement with the mainstream narrative. Therefore, I argue that the three themes discussed by Morgan will always recur when it comes to mainstream historical-fictional representations of the civil rights movement. An example of this is Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker 1988), considered by many film scholars to be one of the first films showing the “real” suffering of African Americans (Fuller 185; Sumiko Higashi 349; Gerald Horne 440; King 468). Nevertheless, the makers were criticized for accuracy problems, since the film claimed to be based on true events. Moreover, these film scholars explain that the film depicts a “white savior,” for which the film, made by a white British director, has also been criticized. Richard H. King agrees with this point, demonstrating that a discussion of the correct representation of the civil rights movement was already ongoing in the eighties. This happened during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, during which color-blindness was proposed to be embedded within social institutions. As Smith and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explain in their texts about color-blindness, this is still an ongoing debate which is currently heated-up again in the film industry (780; 271). As I argued before, the film Malcolm X (Spike Lee 1992) tries to oppose the dominant King-focused narrative, although King appears in this film since the two are connected to each other. Malcolm X and his followers are mentioned within the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement, although his ideology is still always presented in opposition to King’s non-violent activism, as in Malcolm X. Another group that forms part of the dominant narrative and is always seen in relation to King is the Black Panthers, which

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received similar treatment to Malcolm X and his followers in media representations. Richard H. King’s explanation of the King-centered narrative draws further on an article from Morgan, who explained that all these other groups are in the end seen in relation to King. This biographical film about Malcolm X was received more positively than Mississippi Burning, because of its African American director, and since the film revisits and rejects earlier stereotypes about the movement leader. The film contributes to an accurate representation of the true events and had an impact on existing preconceptions about Malcolm X (Horne 440-441). These films both provide information regarding the context of the civil rights movement, but it is important to consider the filmmakers’ identities. However, as the film Malcolm X is dedicated to the life of another movement leader, it is still adding information to the dominant narrative. A slightly later example is the film Ghosts of Mississippi (Rob Reiner 1996), based on true events, which revisits the civil rights movement. This film tells the story of the assassination of Medgar Evers, another movement leader besides King, and the reopening of the case of his assassination in the nineties. One of the leading roles, that of Evers’ widow, is played by Whoopi Goldberg, opposing the white lawyer who finally agrees to fight for the widow and her family and by doing this to fight for equality between African Americans and whites in the juridical system. The discourse presented explains that the civil rights movement and its aftermath have been succeeded by a post-racial ideology, which has finally delivered justice for Evers’ relatives. The film fits within the dominant narrative representing the leaders of the movement and is an addition to the “complete” story in relation to the other films. Furthermore, this film can be understood as a sign of difficulties with the idea of the United States as post-racial, since the film shows existing racial inequalities in the South in the nineties. However, in the end, the film participates in the post-racial discourse, by showing how the justice system has changed in those twenty-seven years, leaving the spectator on a happy note which fits perfectly into the racial ideology of the nineties. The difference between the Evers cases in the sixties and nineties is above all that the jury is no longer an all-white jury in the latter case. This indicates improvement in the juridical system of the US, which contributes to the audience perception that a post-racial or multicultural society has developed and exists in the nineties. Because of these changes in the juridical system and the increased participation of African Americans, we are able to see changes in the direction of equality. However, as professor of Communication Andrew Billings indicates, there existed a discussion about Ghosts of Mississippi’s white director Rob Reiner. Taking the similar discussion about Mississippi Burning into account as well, the debate about who is allowed to tell certain stories seems to be ongoing. Ghosts of Mississippi in this case approaches the subject with less nuance than Mississippi Burning, by stating at the beginning that “this story is true.” These frictions, however, contribute to Custen’s argument, which emphasizes that all these films about the civil rights movement should be seen in their proper contexts and in combination with other films about the movement. I agree with this argument since the discussions of the many representations, by contextualizing them and acknowledging the relationships

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between them, will produce a metanarrative account of the dominant narrative. Only if they are seen in relation to each other are they able to present a deeper meaning to the audience. This analysis of the dominant narrative proves that all these films collectively contribute to increased public knowledge of the events of the civil rights movement. However, these fictional narratives should also be seen in relation to non-fiction, since they attempt more often to transcend the dominant narrative. 1.1.2 Documentary: An Addition Besides fiction, documentaries also contribute to the representation of the civil rights movement, being less market-driven and less prone to sensationalizing events. Some documentaries seem to acknowledge the dominant narrative, but also introduce other ways of thinking. An example of this is the fourteen-hour documentary Eyes on the Prize (PBS 1987-1990), which functions as an accessible chronological overview of the movement from 1954 until 1983. This time span already departs from the dominant narrative which ends after King’s death. The series explores the years of the civil rights movement through boycotts, marches, protests, sit-ins in diners and other public spaces, and attempts by African Americans to get into white universities and schools. These sit-ins were non-violent protest actions of African Americans, and sometimes whites who joined their organizations, who went into diners and sat in the section for white people instead of the “colored” section. As these actions are also depicted in fictional examples, this documentary series provides novel information by showing many individual stories from participants of the movement without focusing on stories that are already generally known. The found footage used shows the media support the movement gained in the sixties, and talking head interviews with many of the freedom fighters explain how the organization around King worked. Since this enormous organization is shown, this documentary series opposes the fictional films that contribute to maintaining the dominant narrative. Unfortunately, because of the large time investment, this is a less popular cinematic representation of the civil rights movement among the general public. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s article on the “long civil rights movement” establishes the erased subjects of the movement by the media that are addressed in works of non-fiction like Eyes on the Prize. One of these subjects is King’s negative attitude towards the Vietnam War. Besides the masking of King’s anti-patriotic thoughts in the media, the groups that united against King are also erased. The depiction of these subjects would disrupt the media’s manufactured dominant narrative; Morgan concurs with Hall’s assessment, explaining that King’s non-violent ideology could not remain everywhere. It is not unlikely that King could not influence the entire country, although the dominant narrative suggests that he did. King’s ideas were mostly followed by African Americans in the South. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be seen as a milestone, after King’s pleading and the actions of his organization and others for a color-blind society. By signing the Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson promised that all citizens, no matter their race, would be able to use the same public facilities in the US.

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However, in 1967 riots arose in different cities in the North of the United States. African American citizens in these cities, such as Detroit, stood up for themselves in the face of police brutality against African Americans, and because the Community Action Program5 to support minority groups did not accomplish its promises. These citizens turned against King’s non-violent ideas, since nothing had changed for them. Afterwards, King introduced Poor People’s Campaign, which was a radical way of unifying all poor citizens of the United States of all races and engaging in non-violent protest with more boycotts, sit-ins, and a large march on Washington. Besides the riots, these actions of King’s organization and the commentary on his non-violence are not represented within most fictional films. Most of the films focus on the beginning of the movement, King’s speeches, his death, and less on his critique of Vietnam or critique of opponents of non-violence that fought in their own way for equality. At the time, television companies were continuously broadcasting these events, but they are largely erased from the narrative as it was recreated in subsequent representations of the movement. However, other documentaries also attempt to resist the dominant narrative. Two feature-length examples are I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck 2016), based on the unfinished manuscript by writer James Baldwin, and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Stanley Nelson 2015). The makers of I Am Not Your Negro explain through found footage the dominant narrative of Baldwin’s assassinated friends and civil rights movement leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The film has been received very positively and contains a voice-of-god narration from Samuel L. Jackson. By discussing these leaders, the dominant narrative is brought to the surface, although the documentary also provides a deeper explanation of how racism is still embedded in contemporary American society. This is different from fictional films, which present the civil rights movement as a thing of the past. Alternating fragments of old films in with racial inequality is depicted with more recent images in which the aftermath of the movement and the ongoing discussion is established, the film differentiates itself from its fictional counterparts. Besides this, the makers of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution explain a whole new narrative, distinct from the dominant King-centered story. As its title already implies, these makers argue that the Black Panther Party were the real founders of the civil rights “revolution.” Many fictional representations ignore this party or mention it only briefly; it is almost never the main subject of a film. This documentary, conversely, introduces a new perspective on the movement, especially since the film is available on Netflix for mainstream audiences. Since this documentary is widely available on a platform like 5 The Community Action Program was part of Johnson’s War on Poverty, intended to fight poverty and improve community solidarity (Gertrud Neuwirth 157). A part of King’s program that is left out the dominant narrative is how King and his organization fought for the rights of the poor in the neglected parts of cities. For King and his organization, the skin color of these people in need did not matter. However, African Americans revolted after Johnson’s promised went unfulfilled.

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this, and it presents a new angle on the subject, it differentiates itself from most fictions maintaining the dominant narrative. Found footage is a common technique to represent the movement in documentaries as in fictions. However, found footage used in fictional films is often used as proof of the film’s claim to be based on real events and to achieve a deeper impact and create meaning for the audience. Therefore, the different purposes of these two genres also indicate a difference in which story about the movement is being told. Although it could be argued that the “based on true events” genre lies in between the conventions of fiction and non-fiction, commercial reasons gain priority in this mainstream genre, incentivizing the continuous repetition of the same story with same information. However, documentaries attempt to fill this gap and educate the audience by conveying a new perspective.

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Chapter 2: Historical Films in Contemporary Hollywood

This chapter elaborates on how the most influential film industry of the world currently still participates in the unequal representation of minority groups like African Americans. It expands upon the previous chapter, since most of those fictional examples were produced in Hollywood. The dominant narrative of the civil rights movement presents the contemporary United States as a multicultural society in which racism has been overcome. Hollywood, because of its mainstream films with global audiences, has an enormous influence in putting particular subjects on the political agenda in many different Western countries. Since the norm in Hollywood is to present a white perspective, unequal representations take place within these films. Although the discussion seems to be different throughout the history of film in the US, the discussion about the Academy Awards being too white has intensified since 2015. Many celebrities are campaigning against this implicit norm. The organization pays too little attention to representing the United States’ multicultural society within the film industry and at this prestigious award ceremony. The hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite” was created to bring this discussion to social media, which has proven effective since the subject has been at the forefront of Oscar coverage every year since. However, while it seems that African Americans are nominated, and win, more often nowadays, this is still problematic since they are often nominated and awarded for stereotypically characterized roles which specifically require African Americans. In other words, they are typecast. Therefore, I argue that historical films such as those about the civil rights movement are important, but should be produced alongside films which do not require African Americans to be typecast. Moreover, this suggestion involves the overall idea of the popular and profitable “based on true events” genre that explicitly tries to represent reality and what really happened in the past. I propose that if Hollywood focused more on non-stereotypical characterization of its characters in fiction, this type of film could exist harmoniously together with historical films. In addition, organizations such as the NAACP Image Awards, focused on African Americans and organized yearly since 1967, are resisting Hollywood’s Academy Awards one-sided perspective in order to educate audiences on the necessary diversity in the media. Organizations like this, which go against the current, are necessary to fight Hollywood’s influence. 2.1 A White Dominant Perspective American historian Peter Kolchin and sociologist Ashley Doane emphasize that race and its divisions are constructed by humans and change over time. Human cultures categorize differences between themselves and others and label them. This is a one-dimensional perspective, since the discourse of racial inequality solely focuses on the minority group; whites are invisible and unobtrusive. If we focus on whiteness as well, people become more aware of their white skin color, which makes it less normalized. This white hegemonic view is integrated into narration, since it is the point of view of the colonizers. However, white Americans

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