Watching
the Oscars was something I did with my grandmother. We talked about
the nominations, discussed the clothing, whether or not she could
remake them (she was a professional seamstress), and how wonderful
they would look on me, if I were old enough to wear them and walk
down the red carpet. She taught me from birth to assume that I would walk the red carpets of the world, not sweep them when I grew up.
When we
watched, the red carpet was just that, a rug to keep the Hollywood
heels from getting dirty. It was not an event, just ground cover.
We watched
in tandem for many, many years, until she died, our viewing fueling
conversations in the days that followed, until something else caught
our attention. My music tastes and movie preferences closely
mirrored my grandmother's so much so that when she died, I stopped
watching the Academy Awards for a while.
Other
things were expanding my consciousness by that time. I had grown up
and had ripped off the blindfold that had been installed at
birth. Instead of ignoring white people and their very obvious
obtuseness toward people of color as I had been taught to do, for the
sake of survival, I looked at the world in it's phoney pale glory and
got angry.
My anger
wasn't a nuclear explosion. It was more like lighting a fuse, a long
fuse to a dynamite bomb, that took some time, and traveled some
distance, before exploding, with only the sizzle noise of the fuse
speaking of the coming danger.
Detonation
time was 1968 when I was taken from school to view the movie, Gone
With the Wind, at the Valley Theater in Roselawn. The mini shopping
mall is still there on Reading Road, but the Theater is long gone
replaced by a liquor store, while Roselawn flipped from a Jewish
neighborhood to a Black one. No traces of the theater exist today, except in
my mind's eye as I drive past sometimes.
GWTW was
a big deal in 1968 because it hadn't been seen in a couple of
decades, the negative destroyed by fire or some catastrophe. Most
people alive at the time had never seen the movie, and only knew of it
from the Hollywood hype machine, the surviving snippets shown during
Oscar ceremonies and the memories of the film from those old enough
to have seen it after release in 1939.
Restoring
and re-releasing Margaret Mitchell's masterpiece was a very big deal.
It was the biggest and best of blockbuster cinema, we'd been told. GWTW became a field trip for my high school, considered a history lesson of the the way we were for real.
I
honestly couldn't wait to see it, movie and history buff that I was and remain.
Seated
midway back in the dark, I remember going from jubilant anticipation
to feeling like somebody was making me suck lemons. The rest of the
audience was silent, remaining jubilant, cheering and talking back
to the screen, which I thought was funny, since I had been led to
believe that only happened in colored theaters. Some girl sitting
down front was so overwhelmed at the sight of Scarlett O'Hara that
she cried out hysterically, causing the rest of us to laugh out loud.
We
quickly returned to quiet so that the historical narrative of the vibrant Old
South could continue.
I felt
like I was drowning. My anger was simmering, choking me, not that I
could do anything about it. I was the only colored female in the
graduating class of 1968. There were only 4 of us out of 293 seniors.
I don't
remember if the other 3 were there that day. We didn't sit together,
so I was uniquely aware of being the only Black female in the Valley
Theater that day watching Gone With the Wind. I went in happy and
came out pissed off, and there was no one to talk to about my
feelings except my grandmother. Later that night after her long day
at Tall Fashions fitting taller than average white women in tailor
made dresses and suits downtown, she listened while I vented and then
told me to be cool and to stay “lady-like.” It would pass she
always told me. She probably used the word "calm" instead of "cool." Cool was not in her vast vocabulary.
But it
didn't. I tried reading the book thinking maybe the people in
Hollywood had gotten it wrong by interpretation. Couldn't get past
the nigger, nigger, nigger litany on the first page. Still haven't
read it to this day.
Seeing
Gone With the Wind changed a lot of things for me.
By the
same token, 12 Years a Slave changed nothing except it made me
wearily angry. I haven't seen the movie and honestly don't know if I
will. I have read the book. It was a difficult read. It was journey
that I could not make in just one sitting. Had to read and then cool
off.
By now,
I am numb in my readings be they fact or fiction, because I've
covered a lot of ground in my personal search for my peoples'
history. An American story that should be learned in school, but is
still omitted purposefully from public curriculum. Our history
exists in special museums or special displays in public libraries, in special order from bookstores, or in badly made Hollywood
spectacle where magically, the white guy somehow ends up becoming the
Darkie Savior by the time the credits roll, The End.
In my
adult mind, I know that white Hollywood makes Black movies to make
white people feel good about themselves and I assumed that 12YAS was
just another example. It was, on one level.
But it
was something else too, a movie about slavery, directed by a black man,
with a screenplay adapted by a black man, with black people in the
leading roles who really were black. Not African American black, but
close enough. All Black people born in the western hemisphere fall
from the same slavery tree anyway, so no biggy.
Hollywood
stayed true to form about being by and for white people with 12 Years
a Slave because they would only hand over the money to a white man to
get the movie made. Enter Brad Pitt as the money man and bit part
player in the film. No Pitt, no 12YAS.
The
whites started bad and stayed bad, as in monstrous, to the point that
some people said it was too brutal to be real. Personally I don't
think Hollywood can make a movie that is brutal enough to show the
true story of slavery in America. The real story still waits in the
wings.
In the
afterglow of the Oscars, !2YAS was named best picture of the year,
and Lupita N'Yongo was given the Oscar as best supporting actress,
and belle of the ball.
At least
for this year, Hollywood swapped out Scarlett, a ballsy, man-pleasing
southern belle ready and willing to do anything to save her
plantation for Patsy a small colored slave woman trapped between her
deviant white owner and his very jealous and vicious wife.
It's
official...Hollywood is no longer racist..
Truth..or
some of it anyway.
