For all that can be said for racial imagery in Hollywood, the cinematic representations of African Americans continues mainly as clowns.  An empirical assessment of comedy vis-a-vis dramatic images is not the point of this perspective, but an argument can be made that a 21st Century buffoonery in motion pictures seems to be very prevalent.  I argue that movie-goers continue to be inundated with up-dated depictions of African Americans cut from the cloth of Jim Crow as in Coon Town Suffragettes (1914).   Such a legacy of racist cinema seems to have made little difference to the disrespect Cedric the Entertainer showed Rosa Parks or the bug-eye antics of the late Bernie Mack.  The irritating performances of the likes of Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Chris Tucker and the glad-to-be absence Whoopi Goldberg, overwhelms the dramatic impact of actors the caliber of the always impressive Denzel Washington.

Eddie Murphy, the successful alumni from Saturday Night Live, proved he is capable of straight drama in the action cop thriller Metro (1997) which approximated his Beverly Hills Cop persona.  He went further in Dream Girls (2006) and proved he could do dramatic deliveries.  Yet Murphy has consistently been, to borrow a line from The Godfather, “pulled back” into those silly, buffoon-like roles.  Or has he gone willingly?  Murphy’s film depictions remain far too often one-dimensional portraits of Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy.  He has seldom gone beyond his initially impressive though now irritating screen debut in 48 Hours (1982).  Murphy, like his use-to-be female counter-part Whoopi Goldberg, was every white person’s best friend particularly in the Beverly Hills Cop (1984, 1987 and 1994) series. Whoopi over-stayed her welcome and has gladly left the big-screen.  Murphy continues to devolve; now with distasteful fat-jokes as in The Nutty Professor (1996) and The Nutty Professor: The Klumps (2007).  His reliance on physical insults have been enhanced with CGI effects in Norbit (2007) and the character Resputia, a disgusting and insulting female (to all females) who probably cost Murphy an Academy Award nomination for his excellent performance in Dream Girls.

Murphy’s partner in crime has been the less talented Martin Lawrence, who debuted in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989).  Lawrence skillfully built his own Hollywood capital in the TV comedy series, Martin (1992-1997).  It was no secret that the series’ title rung-up sentiments of the late civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr.  With his remarkably ever-present fresh hair-cut, Lawrence appeared with Will Smith in Bad Boys (1995) and the awful sequel, Bad Boys II (2003).  Smith had the talent and foresight to move-on, but Lawrence, much less the actor and more the clown, stuck with what he knew best, the buffoonery.  He took his cue from Eddie Murphy (both were impressive, by the way, in the bittersweet prison comedy-drama Life (1991) by cross-dressing in Big Mamma’s House (2000) and Big Momma’s House II (2006).        

This morphing of African American males into overweight females is fodder for the psych mill.  Murphy, Lawrence, and now the far more entrepreneurial Tyler Perry, have achieved stardom by depicting big, fat, black women.  Perry, the rags-to riches actor, producer, writer and director, rose to fame as the central black female character in Diary of a Mad Black Women (2005).  He followed-up with Madea’s Family Reunion (2006), and Madea Goes to Jail (2009).  Perry is responsible for other motion pictures such as Why Did I get Married (2007) and Daddy’s Little Girls (2007), a TV comedy series, and stage plays. Each of his films seems to have a Christian fundamentalist bent to them.  Perry’s visibility as a female has been so prominent it was a surprise, to me, to see him as Admiral Barnett in Star Trek (2009).

The question has to be whether African Americans are simply taking the “easier” road to fame and fortune by these limited paths?  Hollywood is controlled by a white male Power Elite.  African American actors need to use their collective clout and oppose such one-dimensionality.  For instance, former rapper Queen Latifah (birth name: Dana Elaine Owens) has provided a much wider range of the African American woman’s experience in such thrillers as the The Bone Collector (1999); in the musical comedy Hairspay (2007); and in light-hearted dramas such as The Secret Life of Bees (2008).  Ice-Cube (birth name O’Shea Jackson), another west-coast rapper who debuted as a troubled gang leader in Boyz-n-the Hood (1991), provided an even scarier though still one-dimensional portrait as another urban outlaw in Trespass (1992).  He was also an appropriately brooding as an Iraq War solider in Three Kings (1999) but also has appeared in such stinkers as XXX: State of the Union (2005). I have mixed feelings about his movie comedy series: Friday (1995), Next Friday (2000) and Friday After (2002).  The Player Club (1998) which was Ice-Cube’s directorial debate, was undisciplined but showed promise.    

In his book, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (Continuum, New York, 1991),  Donald Bogle revealed how the history of African American images in Hollywood films had matured from that of jesters and clowns among other demeaning stereotypes and yet has remained the same.  Is that still true in the 21st Century?

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