Have you seen Within our gates from OScar Micheaux?

[richardmurray]

 

 

[aka Contrarian]

I think I might have seen this movie years ago when there was a TV channel that show-cased the works of Micheaux.

His works typically featured the embodiment of the "Mammy" figure, the "Righteous Reverend," the "evil Trickster", the "romantic male lead" and the "tragic mulatto heroine".  They are a good study for film students. 

Incidently. I Just recently finished a book about W.E.B. DuBois and his affair with Jessie Fausett, a prominent literary figure of the Harlem Renassiance. He was, among many things, a big time playa.

[richardmurray]

@aka Contrarian Micheaux never did mammy figures or tragic mulattoes or righteous reverend figures, in any of his films i saw. he did evil tricksters, but they were rarely pantomime and he did romantic leads, but they were human men. 

Check out within our gates in the main post, it is free to view , you will see

[aka Contrarian]

@richardmurrayMarcheaux did utilize these stereotypes in his early films. He made 44 movies. He later responded to criticism and stopped doing so.

These stereotypes, who were not panomimed, had to have originated with some one.

Do you know how they came about?

[richardmurray]

@aka Contrarian 

well you know that most of Marcheaux's films , over ninety percent , have never been seen by anyone alive.  So unfortunately, we only have a small section of films to view, and of the ones that are around today don't show those characterizations. I am not even certain all of Marcheaux's films are known. MAny have cited a list but ... unfortunately, absent a time machine, marcheaux's work like black descended of enslaved history from the early nineteen hundreds to fourteen ninety two is eternally incomplete. 

 

Yes, all the black pantomime characters come from white theater. Jim Crow itself is a pantomime character. Before movies, theater plays plus recorded music was the prime media tools and were very commercial. Race music was huge, al jolsten was a white jew but the larger industry of race music/race theater, which had black writers like joplin, was huge in the united states of america. Such that when films come about they took the pantomime black characters from stage and music of the late eighteen hundreds, and put them on screen.

 

The interesting historical process for me is the analogous existence of Black fictional slave works, like clotel linked below, alongside the black pantomime. 

The black late 1800s fiction is of fictional slave narratives. High John was still popular as a fable, and high john's nemesis is literally Massa, a white man with bone white skin with bone white clothes. Clotel to me is a fictional account but a pure indictment on the white populace of the usa. To restate, black late eighteen hundreds fiction arguably makes pantomime white villains/criminals/baddies. Oscar Micheaux emitted the vibe of the black written fictional slave narratives.

The white late 1800s fiction is of fictional slaver narratives. The films birth of a nation, gone with the wind, song of the south all reflect late eighteen hundreds white fictional slaver fiction literally made as a reply to black late 1800s fictional slave narratives. 

And yes, in modernity, both late 1800s genres are no longer highly read or known or ... majority popular.

Both fictions were highly popular among the phenotypical groups they were made for with some crossover fans but blacks seemed to dislike the black fictional slave narratives as a genre. Whites slowly lost taste with the white fictional slaver narrative. 

The question is why did Blacks dislike the black fictional slave narrative genre. Arguably the first fiscally successful genre in the usa.

https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/496-clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-a-narrative-of-slave-life-in-the-united-states-by-william-well-brown/

 

https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/495-le-mulâtre-from-victor-séjour-two-versions-split-by-an-essay/

 

[ProfD]

4 hours ago, richardmurray said:

And yes, in modernity, both late 1800s genres are no longer highly read or known or ... majority popular.

Both fictions were highly popular among the phenotypical groups they were made for with some crossover fans but blacks seemed to dislike the black fictional slave narratives as a genre. Whites slowly lost taste with the white fictional slaver narrative. 

The question is why did Blacks dislike the black fictional slave narrative genre. Arguably the first fiscally successful genre in the usa.

Films depicting slavery aren't going to be very popular.  Mainly because it does not make people feel better about themselves. 

 

Entertainment is a form of escapism not intended to cause depression.

[aka Contrarian]

@richardmurray: this same TV channel that I mentioned watching (back in the 1960's) showed old black movies from the past that did feature the stereo-typical black characters I mentioned. That's how l became aware of them. And they were "talkie" movies, not pantomimed,  filmed during the late 1920s and early 1930s by black movie producers, lesser known than Oscar Micheaux.

Incidentally, the acting was very amateurish and stilted, the sound and camera work of poor quality. Even so, they were treasures which I hope are stored away in vaults somewhere. 

[ProfD]

8 minutes ago, aka Contrarian said:

Incidentally, the acting was very amateurish and stilted, the sound and camera work of poor quality. Even so, they were treasures which I hope are stored away in vaults somewhere. 

Well, the archaeologists had to dig up Within Our Gates from a Spanish copy of the film.  They had to edit to clean up/fix & translate it back to English. 

[admin]

I'll probably watch this film tonight.  The 1919 film is the oldest known surviving film by a Black man. 

[richardmurray]

@ProfD 

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

Films depicting slavery aren't going to be very popular.  Mainly because it des not make people feel better about themselves. 

 

Entertainment is a form of escapism not intended to cause depression.

You sound like a very good friend of mine, a director, he always says, entertainment is to escape and I always tell him hogwash. I have never felt that way with entertainment, especially growing up. I have never wanted to be anyone but me, I like myself. II have never wanted to live anywhere than the harlem of yore that is now long gone.  Now I admit, maybe having a loving home with both my parents in a small section of harlem that was happy/peaceful/black empowered meant I didn't feel bad about my home or the local area I live in the world. and thus no need to escape. As a brother of mine said, to a parent, maybe he is happy at home. 

It took me years to comprehend how fortunate I was. If anything the fact that so many people in the usa, a country whose majority populace in modernity is descended on uninvited or unwanted people from the first peoples who came to this country to be happy as they were unhappy wherever they were from, find escapism through entertainment says alot about the ability of immigrants to find happiness in the usa. 

 

When I first saw within our gates I wasn't depressed, I was interested. When I read poetry or stories in my contest/ challenges I am not looking to escape or be made to smile, I want to comprehend what the artists is saying. When I look at music, I never forget, mahalia jackson saying she would rather sing gospel than the blues cause she would rather be uplifted than sad and ... I call feces on that. I love black music, all of it, from various corners of the world and all the genres born in the land that is today the united states of america. Not all blues is sad. And mahalia should had known that. But, to your point Profd, mahalia jackson was making the same case , saying blues music is the same as fictional slave narratives, too sad, too negative, thus the need to escape, the truth, escape the things people don't want to hear or read or see because they remind them of reality that they don't want to deal with. Better to sing gospel, and not see the truth of the usa or your peoples place in it. Better to see the huxtable clan whom have none of the problems ninety percent of black people have than to see sanford and son. Even though as red fox said correctly, all black shows are dishonest, including sanford. 

 

But then, we have in the same black populace, black people saying how black people need to want to be president and ceo and all of this stuff. I think the entertainment black people like over the years is telling to our mental states as a collective. 

 

Thank you for your answer, I think , your 100% correct. I didn't want to face the answer is as simple as dismissal of certain aspects in the arts... maybe my variance is i look at things as the arts not exactly entertainment, if something I find funny happens I will laugh but I don't need to laugh de facto ... anyway, I think its interesting. 

PRofd, isn't it a thoughtful dichotomy. Black people in majority have never been happy in the usa or the european colonies that preceded it , at any time including modernity, and yet, blacks went from enjoying fictional slave narratives as the most popular black fiction, to now in modernity not wanting any mention of enslavement in any fiction. The same black people who will say love the usa and their forebears died for them to be president, will then dismiss seeing enslaved to whites, black children tortured by whites in media. To me, that says they are lying to themselves. I start with myself, if I didn't know any black history as a child, my parents for whatever reason didn't tell me the truth, provide me books with the truth , and I was just presented escapisms, I imagine my whole stance toward the usa would be different today than what it is. 

 

As a tutor I always told the children the truth, about everything. And this post has made me think about some of the other adults one time. I didn't think on it then but now I see why they looked at me a certain way... Thank you again. .. I realize now how many black people don't get black truth in their fiction, in their learning. It seems like many black adults want black children to be adults, circa twenty, before black truth is given... and this isn't something derived from whites, this is a black heritage. 

 

I must admit , this topic has aided me in something, hmm thank you

 

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

Well, the archaeologists had to dig up Within Our Gates from a Spanish copy of the film.  They had to edit to clean up/fix & translate it back to English. 

 

Do you know the spanish subtitle for Within our gates is La Negra, the black woman. It is so basic, and a little crude and yet telling. Though I must admit the real story is how a copy of the film found its way to somewhere in spain. 

 

@aka Contrarian

 

3 hours ago, aka Contrarian said:

@richardmurray: this same TV channel that I mentioned watching (back in the 1960's) showed old black movies from the past that did feature the stereo-typical black characters I mentioned. That's how l became aware of them. And they were "talkie" movies, not pantomimed,  filmed during the late 1920s and early 1930s by black movie producers, lesser known than Oscar Marcheaux.

Incidentally, the acting was very amateurish and stilted, the sound and camera work of poor quality. Even so, they were treasures which I hope are stored away in vaults somewhere. 

well yes I know what you speak. That is why i mentioned scott joplin, i love his rag works, but he did race music and it was very financially profitable for him. My point being... The hsitory of black comedians of the usa warrants a whole history section in the history of entertainment.  You have whites who historically are most entertained by blacks or whites mocking blacks... immitation/bufoonery/jestering... the cakewalk started on plantations with black people mocking whites for a piece of cake. So whites historically love to be entertained, ala, made to laugh by blacks in the usa. Then you have especailly in the jim crow era, 1865 to 1980, blacks who increasingly want to escape as Profd said correctly. This leads to black entertainers developing to serve both audiences an interesting style. magical bufoonery. But yes, Michaeux was an outlier, but he also owned his own more than most black entertainers/filmmakers. 

 

@admin 

please share what you think after you view it, I want to know.

 

[ProfD]

1 hour ago, richardmurray said:

 modernity, and yet, blacks went from enjoying fictional slave narratives as the most popular black fiction, to now in modernity not wanting any mention of enslavement in any fiction.

I wrote that slave films aren't going to be very popular.

 

Surely, some people will watch the films & enjoy them in one way or another.

 

Otherwise, films, music, books & other forms of visual & literary art provides entertainment in different ways.

 

Entertainment as escapism doesn't have to be negative in the form of self-hate or low self-esteem.

 

Many people can watch a movie or listen to music & allow it to take them away from their reality for a few minutes up to a couple hours.

[richardmurray]

@ProfD 

well said

[aka Contrarian]

@richardmurrayI watched  "Within Our Gates" and fully  appreciated it for what it was. In fact, it inspired me to do some research on Oscar Micheaux because I was both curious and confused about him, even misspelling his name. I was, however, vaguely familiar with him which was why I was of the opinion that it must've been his movies that I was seeing quite a while back on a local TV channel that did not run them in prime time but instead put them on during the early afternoon, almost as if to fill in empty air space like the wrestling matches and The Liberace Show did back during the early days of TV.

This would mean that my seeing  these old films must've been back in the 1950s.

Anyway, I learned, to my surprise, that Oscar Micheaux was born in 1884 in Metropolis, Illinois, a town I know of because I had friends from there, and that he died in 1951, so he was alive during my life time.

I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about him and have concluded that at least some of those sound movies I was watching back then were ones produced by him later in his career.

Finally, imo, some of the stereotypes I previously mentioned did appear in Micheaux's "Beyond the Gates". Certainly Sylvia Landry, the lovelorn heroine of  "Within Our Gates, was a "tragic mulatto" whose real father was white and whose black adoptive parents were lynched, her adoptive and nurturing mother, Mattie, being a "Mammy" figure, and the wicked Larry, brother-in-law of Sylvia's cousin, being a villainous "Trickster", while the tattle tale Ephraim, was the "Coon" figure.  The minister Jacobs, who ran a school for black children, represented  the "Righteous Reverend"and Dr. Vivian, who falls in love with Sylvia, represented the "romantic hero". 

These personifications, rather than being pantomimed degrading figures, were transformed in "Within Our Gates", and I suspect the improved versions, like the film itself, were used to counteract the negative caricatures that "The Birth of a Nation" depicted.

My introduction to Micheaux was probably about 70 years ago and I'm curious if those films I remember seeing were lost and no longer exist since the claim is being made that this movie is the last of its kind in existence. 

 

Also, imo, minstrel shows were not totally without merit. They show cased sly humor, buck dancing and banjo artistry among other things.

I mention this because there was a time when black Masons would stage their own minstrel shows and, having seen one put on by my father's lodge when I was a young girl in the 1940s, I remember being rather proud that my dad, was a member of a barbershop quartet that performed in a show his Masonic lodge staged.

 

Just some thoughts...

[richardmurray]

@aka Contrarian 

14 hours ago, aka Contrarian said:

@richardmurrayI watched  "Within Our Gates" and fully  appreciated it for what it was. In fact, it inspired me to do some research on Oscar Micheaux because I was both curious and confused about him, even misspelling his name. I was, however, vaguely familiar with him which was why I was of the opinion that it must've been his movies that I was seeing quite a while back on a local TV channel that did not run them in prime time but instead put them on during the early afternoon, almost as if to fill in empty air space like the wrestling matches and The Liberace Show did back during the early days of TV.

This would mean that my seeing  these old films must've been back in the 1950s.

Anyway, I learned, to my surprise, that Oscar Micheaux was born in 1884 in Metropolis, Illinois, a town I know of because I had friends from there, and that he died in 1951, so he was alive during my life time.

I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about him and have concluded that at least some of those sound movies I was watching back then were ones 

produced by him later in his career.

Finally, imo, some of the stereotypes I previously mentioned did appear in Micheaux's "Beyond the Gates". Certainly Sylvia Landry, the lovelorn heroine of  "Within Our Gates, was a "tragic mulatto" whose real father was white and whose black adoptive parents were lynched, her adoptive and nurturing mother, Mattie, being a "Mammy" figure, and the wicked Larry, brother-in-law of Sylvia's cousin, being a villainous "Trickster", while the tattle tale Ephraim, was the "Coon" figure.  The minister Jacobs, who ran a school for black children, represented  the "Righteous Reverend"and Dr. Vivian, who falls in love with Sylvia, represented the "romantic hero". 

These personifications, rather than being pantomimed degrading figures, were transformed in "Within Our Gates", and I suspect the improved versions, like the film itself, were used to counteract the negative caricatures that "The Birth of a Nation" depicted.

My introduction to Micheaux was probably about 70 years ago and I'm curious if those films I remember seeing were lost and no longer exist since the claim is being made that this movie is the last of its kind in existence. 

 

Btw, I also beg to disagree with your classifying the Cakewalk as a form of buffoon mockery. It was actually an elegant, joyful, high-stepping  dance where couples competed against each other, with the winner being awarded the prize of a cake!

Nor were minstrel shows totally without merit. They show cased sly humor, buck dancing and banjo artistry among other things.

I mention this because there was a time when black Masons would stage their own minstrel shows and, having seen one put on by my father's lodge when I was a young girl in the 1940s, I remember being rather proud that my dad, was a member of a barbershop quartet that performed in a show his Masonic lodge staged.

 

Just some thoughts...

 

Lovely thoughts, thank you for sharing them:)

 

Well use of the word personifications, in that true persons change are not pantomime. 

Sylvia a true mulatto, definitely goes through trials or tribulations but she isn't tragic cause she wins in the end. She isn't clotel. 

Mattie is motherly, in the same way Mammy's are, but Mattie is a black woman married to a black man raising a black child... when a black maid is motherly to a white child that is the mammy figure, it isn't a black woman being motherly to a black child, that is expected? right? The landrys are both hanged and burned alive for a crime they didn't commit. 

hahaha LArry is the trickster, I admit he doesn't change. If anything he is the one true caricature. and Micheaux being like Pioneer:) one of these law abiding blacks, criminalizes black street people. All of larry's crimes are financial, none are violent. but yeah, larry is the pantomime black trickster, but knowing what I know of micheaux that makes sense. I as a writer don't view black hustlers negatively so... 

Efram wasn't the coon for one reason, in the film, he recants his actions in a confession to the audience so to speak. yes, he is the prototypical coon figure gestures, talk and all, BUT unlike most coon figures, he gets killed by whites, which is a very rare touch. even among black writers, they rarely give "black traitors" aka coons the death that micheax gave efram. 

People remember samuel l jackson's characters death in django, but he is murdered by a black man, django, Oscar micheaux murders his coon, efram through the true subjects whites, displaying the simple truth that whites are the enemy of blacks folks, whether the honorable, loving, law abiding Landry's or the lying, self hating scheming eframs. But the key is that efram confesses he hates himself, confesses he is wrong which is very rare in film, even black written films. 

And your correct, the Rev is the "righteous reverend" and Dr.."good hero" But at least with the rev. he is actually challenged. when sylvia rebukes his offer of marriage, that is a real test that again, so few righteous reverends have in many stories. to be challenged is key to testing the identity.  but the doctor is an evergood hero:) which ok:)

 

I wish I could see a complete version of symbol fo the unconquered. The partial I placed below. I think it is a response to birth of a nation, not within our gates. Why do I say this? In a general sense, because all of Micheaux's work involve the south plus black people and they are not like in griffith's film, they are all partially a response to birth of a nation, on a mere stylistic point. But in terms of agrarian fantasies, i argue, symbol of the unconquered is more of an agrarian fantasy which is what birth of a nation is, than within our gates. 

Birth of the nation is dismissive of the usa outside of the south, in birth of a nation the usa outside of the south, doesn't functionally exist. In that way, within our gates isn't a reply. Within our gates is very much holistic. It is showing black unity between blacks outside the south and to the south. Sylvia makes it where the black school in the south will thrive/survive/live but she lives in the north, has found love in the north, fled the south because of white terror, but doesn't ask other black people to leave the south. Within our gates i argue is more holistic to the usa. that complete nature is absent in birth of a nation. 

But symbol of the unconquered is all about black homesteaders. It is focused on a specific area in the usa like birth of a nation. And like birth of a nation has straight messages about certain persons or groups. Whereas the KKK is heroic supporting the traditions of the south in birth of a nation, the kkk is a terrorist illegal operating organization in symbol of the unconquered. whereas "birth's" female lead is so negatively biased she can jump off of a cliff to her death rather than be violated. the female lead in "symbol"fights through wind and rain and storms, to get her land. can be frightened but will never go to her death from fear. 

 

 

 

yeah, well , even though I don't prefer comedy usually, i think comedy is the art form most in need in the usa at all times, this countries history doesn't yield to seriousness well. 

 

lovely thought, thank you for sharing them

[Pioneer1]

richardmurray

Entertaining old film, thank you for this.

 

[Troy]

I watched it last night.  I'm sure, in it's day, it was a remarkable feat to produce and film not to mention 40 others.  Micheaux worked spanned the period of the Harlem Renaissance.

 

I know the Piney Woods School, part of the film, is real and I believe there was a prominent Dr. Vivian during the period as well.

 

I have to check out Body and Soul now

 

 

[richardmurray]

@Pioneer1 my pleasure, check out more films and content

https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/677-oscar-devereaux-micheaux-books-plus-films/

 

@Troy ah cool:) 

some of the elements of within our gates are still rare to see. a black character who is publicly antiblack and confesses to it with shame before being killed by nonblacks, very rare to see //read/hear today in anything with a budget and getting paid to be made, even among black produced/financed work.

the relationship between north and south black regions in the usa, the lead female character does not like the south for multiple reasons  and yet still helps the black populace in the south , I recall I  mentioned in the past how many fiscally wealthy blacks who live outside the former confederacy have never paid for one person to go to one historical black college or universtiy (HBCU) even demanded all the people they have paid college for get money only if they go to a hbcu.