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Article black noir

Tags: war (10) , global (1) , open (2) , source (1) , urban (3) , media (1) , kevin (2)

In Belly, Hype Williams, while appropriating the devices of gangster movies, creates something else entirely. Williams, initially a director of visually stunning hip-hop videos, has transposed some of the aesthetic of the medium to this feature-length film. In doing so, he suggests the ability to transcend limitations that realism imposes on the the expression of black identity in film. On the other hand, violence, gratuitous sex, and misogyny that are on display in Belly are nothing new to Hollywood. Some would argue this attempt at forging masculine identity through the use of such tropes is nothing more than a new blackface – a minstrelsy that perpetuates modes of cultural commodification. In this paper I will offer an alternative interpretation – one that argues that the lifestyles portrayed in these films by black directors mirrors a resistance to the racism imposed upon the black communities that identify with these same lifestyles. In each of the three films I am using as examples, breaking the law figures prominently into the construction of identity and that the act of lawbreaking is a political response to pressures imposed by western society in the form of racism. “In Noir by Noirs: Towards a New Realism in Black Cinema,” Manthia Diawara writes “By lawbreaking I refer to that heroic and defiant tradition in black culture which dares every form of policing the black body, mind, or air“(Diawara 54). This resistance camouflages itself in the rebellious lifestyles of the central characters. Hype Williams, by casting rap performing artists for many of the main roles, including Nas and DMX as the two central characters, blurs the distinction between the world of the screen, and the “real” world. These hip-hop performers embody characters that become what Mark Reid calls “the mythic street hero of urban black folklore – one whose survival tactics are his ability to perform sexually, to fight, and to evade the police” (27). In contrast to the mythic characters William places at the center of his narrative are those that embody stereotypes perpetuated by almost a full century of white directors. In attempting to forge this new black myth, Williams eliminates certain cultural ties that would otherwise serve to define these central characters. For example, Williams, drawing from a lineage of blaxploitation films, perpetuates stereotypes of rural blacks as unsophisticated, and bestial. Others are portrayed as retrograde and perpetually behind the times. In the essay “The Black Action Film: the end of the patiently enduring Black Hero” Reid explains, “Before Sweetback, American films by white writers had created images which psychologically, physically, and sexually castrated black men”(28). These images are represented in Williams' movie as the targets of violence perpetuated by the central characters. Other targets attempt to feminize these central characters, while still others offer alternative representations that compete with their own. By placing the protagonist of these movies in the center of a narrative that involves the construction and performance of self-identity, and having them eliminate any and all threats to the ownership of their own identities, Williams seeks to have his characters shoot their way to self awareness. In one scene, Sincere (Nas) divulges to Tommy (DMX) that he has been reading something he finds interesting and inspirational, to which Tommy responds “fuck a book! You aren't going to learn anything from a book.” In this manner, any attempt to turn to external sources for guidance and inspiration is swiftly put down. Thus, Sincere and Tommy exist detached from any sense of history. In much the same way, the central characters in Menace II Society police the periphery of their world-view, resisting any attempt by outside forces to fulfill a parental role. Much like Belly, the narrative of Menace II society is propelled through this affirmation of autonomy and self governance. Menace II Society, a film by Allen and Albert Hughes, takes place in Las Angeles in 1993. Menace follows two black youth, Kain and Kevin during the summer following their graduation from high school. After the opening sequence, which depicts a brutal execution of a convenience store owner and his wife, footage of the 1967 Watts riots, offers historical context. A flyover of block-after-block of urban landscape, mixed with footage of police attempting to control an urban riot, suggest that the neighborhood of Watts is a prison without a roof. Through this opening sequence, the viewer becomes aware of an architecture of containment imposed on the population below. This containment is also an internal containment. In other words, this containment becomes internalized and recycled in the minds of the people imprisoned in this system in the form of stereotypes. If a stereotype is a fixed form, then these central characters attempt the prevent this sense of fixity from happening to themselves. When confronted with behavior in others that they find reflects badly upon themselves, the central characters respond with violence. In one scene, Kevin shoots and kills a homeless addict after the addict offers to perform fellatio on him in exchange for cocaine. Indeed, the performative act of distancing and distinguishing themselves from those characters that embody unflattering stereotypes is a preoccupation of the central characters in both Belly and Menace. During a carjacking Kain commits, his victim, a young man his age, appeals to some nebulous sense of solidarity by exclaiming “we're supposed to be brothers.” Thus, those characters that could be seen as a threat to one's sense of identity, are dispatched in performative acts of dispassionate violence. Derek Murray, in his essay “Hip-hop Vs. High Art: Notes on Race as Spectacle” writes “Hip-hop is a visually progressive art form in and of itself that continually fights for the control of its image. Hip-hop is all about visual agency. It fully understands the power of the visual image and its impact on ideological perceptions”(Murray 7). In both Belly and Menace, the central characters are also fully aware of the power the visual image holds. This awareness, combined with an intense desire for self-definition, mirrors those same sensibilities in hip-hop music, and underwrites much of the violence. While not as overt a political message as the one with which Marvin Van Peebles punctuates his 1971 classic, where at the conclusion of the film before the credits he displays a warning to (the white members of) his audience that they should “watch out a baaad asss nigger is coming back to collect some dues,” Williams achieves a similar effect in his depiction of a lifestyle obsessed with the violent accumulation and display of material wealth. Murray writes that “hip-hop uses economic achievement and materialistic braggadocio as a form of resistance to white racism and its economic stronghold on the black community as opposed to a politically infused transgression”(Murray 10). In perhaps a more political transgression, Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baaadass Song is credited with being the father of blaxploitation films. While the accumulation of material wealth is not the focus of Peebles' film, the idea of resisting white racism is its central thesis. The racist cops Sweetback evades throughout the movie are themselves two dimensional stereotypes. Indeed, of these three movies by Black directors, Peebles' film trades in stereotypes the most. The character Sweetback hardly talks throughout the movie and rarely shows any signs of solidarity with his peers. After freeing himself and another black captive who was being beaten by police as he watched, the other captive asks “what are we going to do now?” Sweetback responds, “what we are you talking about?” Instead of a sense of connection with any sort of historical authenticity with regard to the black power movement, the movie Sweetback offers something of a generic perspective that justifies black retaliation for violent racism perpetuated by authority figures. From a stylistic perspective, Sweetback and Belly are very similar movies. Williams, late 90's cinematic effects are no more experimental than the psychedelic, sequences Peebles stitches into his 1971 movie. Peebles' jump cuts, and juxtaposed shots must have held the same visual currency for a 1971 audience that Williams' hyper-real eye candy held for a late 90's, media saturated, MTV reared, audience. The low-budget effects of Peebles' film are accompanied by an equally low-budget sense of black empowerment and political sensibility the movie promotes. In much the same way, Belly's final scenes, where Nas heads to a monolithic “Africa,” and DMX finds a father figure in a powerful, sermonizing, Baptist minister, ring hollow. These dumbed-down political statements beg one to ask for which demographic these movies were intended. The world of Belly is not so much fantastical as it is hyper-real. Scenes shot in Super-saturated colors, are contrasted with others shot with a hyper-styled, new-noir, sensibility. While William's stylings represent a deviation from the Hughes brothers portrayal of reality as gritty, and hard, they also reflect late 90's hip-hop sensibilities. While Williams' bombastic visual style could be seen as fantastical escape, it also mirrors the mainstream success of hip hop music on the global stage. And while this mainstream success eschews consciousness-raising messages for sex, money, drugs, and violence, Williams, gestures in the direction of a sense of social consciousness at the conclusion of Belly, when Sincere moves to Africa, and Tommy finds a father figure in the form of a black minister he was sent to assassinate. In much the same way, the conclusion of Menace feels like an afterthought – a didactic Bandaid pulling together a gaping wound that is Watts after the riots following the acquittal of the three police officers caught on tape beating Rodney King. These endings seem contrived – a sort of signifying in the sense that Henry Louis Gates writes about in his seminal essay “The signifying Monkey” where he outlines the tradition of signifying in African American culture. In effect, the conclusion of Belly and Menace suggest a reform of the central character's world-view when in fact they are superfluous in the face of the events that preceded them. Like the Signifying Monkey, they say one thing while they mean something else entirely. Ayana Smith mentions in her essay “Blues, Criticism and the Signifying Trickster” that the “The trickster figure is often portrayed as one who lives outside the margins of society. He fits into no normalised pattern of social behaviour, and it is this rebel-like tendency that allows him to become the hero of the trickster tale. The trickster represents everything one would like to do but cannot.”(Smith 181) The central characters of these three movies embody this idea of the trickster. This is what gives these films the cultural currency they enjoy. They offer a glimpse of an African American folk tradition that can be traced as far back as the inception of African culture in the New World. Bibliography (MLA ) Diawara, Manthia “Noir by Noirs: Towards a New Realism in Black Cinema” African American Review, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Winter, 1993), pp. 525-537 Reid, Mark “The Black Action Film: the end of the patiently enduring Black Hero” Film History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 23-36 Murray, Derek “Hip-hop Vs. High Art: Notes on Race as Spectacle” Art Journal, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 4-19 Smith, Ayana “Blues, Criticism and the Signifying Trickster” Popular Music, Vol. 24, No. 2, Literature and Music (May, 2005), pp. 179-191

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