American Movie Makers Still Afraid Of Slavery, Says UF Researcher

July 2, 1997

GAINESVILLE —Modern American movies need to feature more accurate portrayals of slavery so the country can deal with the past and move on, says a University of Florida researcher studying images of slavery in film.

Movies from “Birth of a Nation” to “Interview with a Vampire” have difficulty portraying slavery, so instead they turn it into monstrous characters, a Gothic horror tradition, says Keith Brown, a master’s student in English.

“We look at slavery through language drawing from the imaginative character of the monster, the creature or the vampire. Images of slavery in movies are drawn from this rich tradition of horror figures,” Brown said. “The dominant media looks at slavery in different ways, but basically projects onto marginalized people, such as blacks or homosexuals, these horrors of slavery.”

Since “Birth of a Nation,” the first full-length feature film produced 82 years ago, movies have created characters to represent the horror of slavery. The first was Gus, a black rapist in “Birth of a Nation.”

“Gus allowed whites to project their fears, anxieties, desires and repressions onto this figure,” Brown said. “There were no black actors in these early movies; the actors were in blackface so the actor could deny these negative characteristics within himself and create a monster.”

Even movies that didn’t actually depict blacks as monsters tended to portray stereotypical views of blacks, said a UF sociology professor who is a nationally known expert on race and racism.

“I have never seen a movie which a good historian would say was an accurate picture of slavery,” said Joe Feagin, author of “White Racism” and more than 30 other books. “In fact, I would be hard pressed to find a movie since Gone With the Wind’ which even deals with slavery at all.”

“The media played a critical role in reinforcing racist images from the beginning,” Feagin said. “In movies like Gone With the Wind,’ there is the image of the happy slave, the fat mammy or the servile, shuffling black servant. Uninformed Americans buy into this portrayal.”

Brown’s studies of such portrayals include several horror movies from the 90s, including “Candyman.” The recent thrillers differed from earlier movies in many ways, yet still created monstrous characters representing slavery.

“In Birth of a Nation,’ society wanted separation of the races; there was no crossing of the boundaries. To show that there could be no contamination of this white purity, Flira Cameron committed suicide rather than submit to Gus,” Brown said. ” Candyman’ moved from this 1915 idea into the 90s era of postmodernism, a movement characterized by intermixing, hybridization and creating alternative cultures, leading to an identity crisis.”

In the “Candyman” movies, the lead character is an invincible, murderous slave spirit who Brown interprets as a symbol for the white majority’s fears of contamination or intermixing and losing racial identity.

Mainstream movies also have difficulty portraying slavery and related events properly.

“Even in breakthrough movies like Glory,’ the first movie about black regiments in the Civil War, the central character was the white colonel, even though the story was about a black regiment,” Feagin said. “Black men were of central importance in the movie, yet they were not the central character.”

Brown says there are movies that depict slavery accurately, but usually they are not mainstream motion pictures.

“Haile Gerima’s Sankofa,’ which literally means One must go back to the past to go forward,’ really gave some thought-provoking ideas about slavery,” Brown said. “But again, this was independent cinema.

“Depictions of slavery in cinema need to be more powerful, more sophisticated and deal with this issue in more honest ways,” Brown said. “There needs to be more evaluation of slavery, so we can come to terms with the past, accept it and move on.”