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My Extended Reply to "Who will solve Black cinema’s marketing crisis?" from Maya S Cade
Event created by richardmurray
This event begins 08/29/2025 and repeats every year forever
MY SUMMARY REPLY
There have been a slew of modern Black box office failures. Who (or what) will solve Black cinema’s (marketing) crisis?
How many film productions are following Sinners guidelines?
What is up with all the trauma in Black film/media?
I ask anyone Black who feels to much trauma is in Black media, what books with stories with Black heroes in mythical or fantastical ways written by Black people were available in their home as kids growing up?
Why do we need sex on screen?
The question I always have to any who question allusions to fornication is, what is wrong with allusions, including lustful ones, to fornication?
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MY EXTENDED REPLY
There have been a slew of modern Black box office failures. Who (or what) will solve Black cinema’s (marketing) crisis?
Well crisis? In the art world no film is guaranteed success. I know many writers/illustrators/musicians say some formula works, some formulaic path works, but I have never seen any validity in that. For every film that succeeds being processed one way from preproduction to production to post production, another film failed doing the same things. Now looking at the most financially example in the most recent context for Black Films [films I say are produced/directed/written/mostly starring Black people ] Sinners is the reply. For other films [not produced/directed/written/or mostly starring black people] called Black by many black people I have nothing to say. I don't consider said films with significant non Black participation Black films.
To me
Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur isn't a black film.[and I like that film]
Black Panther produced by Disney isn't a black film. [and I like that film]
Shaft from a white writer isn't a black film. [nice soundtrack and love Gordon Parks or Richard Roundtree rest their souls but not my cup of tea]
The Foxes of Harrow written by Frank Yerby is not a black film [it is a black book, yes, but it isn't a black film, as a writer if I write a story with mostly white characters that is black fiction, alongside Devil in a Blue Dress or A Raisin in the Sun but a film from my theoretical book is not a black film to me]
So to what I call Black films, what do we learn from Sinners?
A movie needs to have a large but accessible budget [100 million budget returned 300 million]
Having a number of up and coming or well known or brightest thespians to the Black populace who are known outside the black populace doesn't hurt [Michael B Jordan /Hailee Steinfeld/Wunmi Mosaku/Jayme Lawson/ Omar Miller/Delroy Lindo ]
Having a one and done focused story [No Sinners 2 is coming, the story was complete from beginning of the film to the end, Black Nightclub in early 1900s southern USA is attacked by vampires, all characters accounted for ]
Having a genre black people + non black want to pay ticket prices for [how many saws/aliens/movies get made a year, horror films are a safe genre to reach all audiences, must keep the budget wise or danger, ala Tom Cruise's the Mummy]
How many film productions are following Sinners guidelines?
What is up with all the trauma in Black film/media?
Growing up I remember the People Could Fly, High John the Conqueror, Black Fable collections my parents had, Sun Man, Milestone comics, Daughters of the Dust. And as I got older and Oscar Micheaux and Alice Dunbar Nelson and Zora Neale Hurston works, plays by August Wilson [I have all but Michaeuz in my literature library ] and others I have never felt trauma is overwhelming in the Black fiction. I think too many Black parents didn't do what my Black parents did and made sure a wide array of Black literature was available. Yes, no shame in having Brother Malcolm's and Nkrumah's words on the shelf for Black kids to see. But also have High John the Conquerer, and Fables from the Caribbean. I think many black parents simply fail black children in making sure a wide array of media content from black people is present in the home.
My parents were not rolling in dough or diving in coins, but they made sure. Make the effort. Black writers have always existed with uplifting tales. If OScar Micheaux proves anything, he proves that. He went from Black door to Black door presenting his stories all with happy endings for black characters after only some of those black characters had antagonistic scenarios from all sorts of antagonist. Black writers have always made uplifting positive work absent slave whippings by whites or mass rapings by whites or mass destruction by whites. Find them, show them to black children. No excuse.
I ask anyone Black who feels to much trauma is in Black media, what books with stories with Black heroes in mythical or fantastical ways written by Black people were available in their home as kids growing up?
Why do we need sex on screen?
Do we need fornication on screen? I have to step back and admit. The United States of America, cross phenotypical lines, is very religious in a negative way to the issue of fornication.
Lets say for example, start commerical, Fade in
Jennifer Lopez/Beyonce/Taylor Swift/Michelle Yeoh stand side to side bare breasted and start shaking their torsos as hard as possible and say simultaneously "Bare Breasted"
Fade out and on the black screen two hashtags in white positioned side to side #barebreasted #barebreasting
End of commercial
The media world will go crazy. All of these women have fans throughout humanity, are millionaires, control their lives. But if they show their breast many will say slutty , unwarranted , some negative. But, is it because they are women or because this alludes to a fornicative desires to women?
When Monica Bellucci said while married that she can't promise to only sleep with her husband that was a media uproar. Again it isn't that she is a woman but that fornication with women in many religions is not equal in openness to men.
Lot slept with his own daughters, this gets read by many christians of all ages every year with acceptability. Lot isn't considered a bad guy, no metoo for his daughters. Samson who runs around killing people with the necks of animals hasn't broken any jewish farm girls hearts in the tale but Delilah is a great sinner cause she is beautiful and Sampson is enthralled to her, not that she is enthralled to him, even though they slept together. It is the inequality in fornication that is the key and it is a human thing.
In Islam women can only be to one man but a man can be to multiple women.
When married male thespians go naked, women googling at them is acceptable. The desired fornication of a woman running after a male stranger is acceptable. But if an unmarried woman has her nipples showing through her dress, men googling at her is unacceptable. The desired fornication of a man running after a female stranger is unacceptable.
Both genders or sexes are criminalized when a female stranger is enticing to a male stranger. While both genders or sexes are accepted when a male stranger is enticing to a female stranger.
And in such an environment, all fornication is poorly crafted.
The Tan magazine shared has questions: love life of a midget [which is a criminalization of the fornication of midgets], will hollywood let negroes make love [will hollywood let anyone make love?]
I argue that many Black people have to first find a more positive place with fornication in their lives before they start asking about it in films. And I can say the same for the non black as well. A Warm December, Buck and the Preacher, Queen and Slim, if Beale Street Could Talk, Mississippi Masala, Claudine, Oscar Michaeux's swing all have scenes in various grades of intensity or style showing love absent nudity or lust. But lust is not evil, and male lust to the body of a female is not evil. At the end of the day Carmen, [and I have seen quite a few variants of Carmen over the years] is a multiculturally embraced story in modernity. Where the men who lust for carmen for her beauty and carmen herself for being beautiful and unbound to any of the men lusting after her are criminalized through the fate of the play.
The question I always have to any who question allusions to fornication is, what is wrong with allusions, including lustful ones, to fornication?
Saidiya Hartman’s curiosities in “Scenes of Subjection
James Baldwin's review of Carmen Jones are cited in the post
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