tl;dr
(Black people should create genre films based on old Hollywood and older genre films because of how Hollywood excluded black people in the past. Black creatives should not feel pressured to make civil rights and slave movies when they have to make movie about the past. Make a black Goonies or something . It also helps make sure not every role defaults white.)

Black media and Hollywood

In media, there are a lot of roles and time periods that default to white people. If Hollywood wants to make a movie about a historical figure there is a very high chance of them being white. The new Christopher Nolan movie, Oppenheimer features every white person in Hollywood. The role defaults to white actors because J. Robert Oppenheimer and the people involved in the story are white (obviously). There will always be an abundance of default roles for white people because of the history of America. The historical figures that are worth making movies for lived in a time period where black people were treated as second-class citizens or worse.

Fictional characters have that same advantage with so many popular characters having a long history of being white James Bond(1953), Superman and Batman (1938), and Spiderman (1962). Or they romanticize/whitewash certain eras and characters such as Vikings, Cowboys, Knights, and in high fantasy. The only roles that default to be black people are slave, entertainer or thug /gangster. For example, NCIS has black characters in the show but when they have an episode in “da hood”. You know who is going to be first in line to be casted.

Historical movies leave black people in a dilemma. It need to have extreme racial element most of the time and they only get made if they are about super prominent black figures. As listed before white people have an excessive amount of historical and iconic fictional characters to choose from.

In film, the only eras/times that can be a backdrop for black people in historical non-fictional are slave times, the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz/swing era, and the civil rights era. Trauma p*** is a topic that gets talked about a lot. The periods in which these trauma p*** movies take place are often during the same time period as the ones I listed. Such as the new Emit Till movie. While it is an important story to be told. It also is a heartbreaking story that is seen to be all too common in the world of black film.

There is a disconnect between African American and American culture. American culture discourages black culture at the same time was quick to monetize from it, from rock and roll to hip hop. Black Americans should benefit from Hollywood and American culture and not just black culture. There are too many things that are deemed as American that black people have no connection to because of the way they were treated in the past and now.

(This is speaking from an African American perspective and not a general black perspective because of the history of being black in America and how Hollywood represents America to the rest of the world.)

Think of old Hollywood, the Marylin Monroes, that old suburb image. We were never shown in these images. Think of the first American ford mustang. An iconic American car. Have you ever seen a movie with a black man driving this type of car? I was googling and the only one I think of is Samuel L Jackson driving a 1971 Chevy Chevelle in Shaft.

My idea of what black Hollywood should do is to reclaim American tropes/old Hollywood and imagery for their own almost like rewriting history in their own way as a middle finger from being excluded. Take old movie actors like Humphrey Bogart and make black characters around the stereotype.

Movies like American Graffiti but black
Rebel without a cause but black
Grease but black
Goonies but black
Cowboys
knights
sci-fi and more

I am not saying to remake white movies. But Black filmmakers should not be afraid to take direct inspiration from classic Hollywood. The movie itself become unique just by having black characters in them.

I know no one read this in 6 hours so I am going to bump it to give you another chance

I don't think the problem is that they don't want to make these films, it's that they can't because studios don't want to help finance these films. Scripts probably get passed around all the time about the kinds of ideas you're talking about, but white Hollywood won't ever see them as being lucrative.

“Black people, just do better!”

Either its going to take a collective effort by higher up black creatives or you are just going to be at the mercy of White Hollywood.

I’ll be sure to show everybody this post at the SAG union meeting later today.

Do your ignorant blog posting elsewhere

For trying to start a discussion