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No Matter of Black and \\ hite
by George Stoney
chief characters in Mr Noble's newest divertissemenl on films, named in ascending
order of righteousness, are: Old Devil Hollywood, who. when he occasionally does something that seems admirable, is merely being two-faced; British Film-makers, often misguided but essentially Good: Foreign Filmmakers, who form a seraphic chorus with those from the USSR singing most sweetly.
But patience a moment. Mr Noble has put into print for us the dilemma that greets anyone who sets out to make an honest and useful film in which Negroes are to appear.
'The really ideal film.' he says, would be one in which Negroes and Whites are shown walking together and living together in complete harmony, as neighbours, with only the occasional discords arising from any normal human relationships.' Then in the next sentence he asks for realism.
Again, after asking repeatedly that Negroes not be treated as special individuals on the screen, he says, '. . . the intelligent cinemagoer very naturally condemns all films which show the Negro in an unsympathetic light. . . .' Now, in Mr Noble's view any Negro who appears on the screen is. willy-nilly, also 'the Negro', no individual but a representative of his race. By massing quotations from the letters and review s of Negro actors and intellectual leaders the author indicates that his remarks are a fair consensus of their opinions, too.
Illogical? Perhaps, yet Mr Noble illustrates through such contradictions the basic film reactions that cluster about this problem.
These reactions film-makers who are trying to make useful films in which Negroes appear must keep for ever at the front of their minds. This is especially important for cutters, since it is through what one might call "psychosociological editing' (pardon the coinage!) that one can solve, or at least avoid, many of the difficulties raised not only by Negroes but by other groups whom society has caused to feel sensitive about the way they are represented on the screen.
Let us apply this to a familiar sequence in a documentary: You have a scene of rickety houses, ragged children, primitive toilet facilities, a scene which to you, the editor, says, 'Look how these poor people must live; something needs to be done". Yet if there are Negro children shown the sequence may say to members of that race simply: Here is how typical Negroes live — like pigs.' And so it speaks to most white people, too, whether they live in London, Lagos or in the southern US where I make films. Negroes know this stereotype in most white minds all too well. (See, for example, the storm of protest from Londoneducated natives that greeted the showing in Lagos of 77n's Modern Age — Nigeria.)
Editing can avoid many such reactions by prefacing the scene of slums with a contrast that features people of the same race or. as we do very often in our films for the southern US, use a scene with white people in slums immediately preceding thai with Negroes. Thus the
conditio! rather than the race of the people shown is made the important thing.
Similarly the immediate reaction ^\ an audience (particular!) a hostile one) to the race of your character before thej considei his individual personality or his actions can be avoided very often by introducing long or midshots in which he is shown doing something, e.g. long-shot of a school teacher who . . . (m.s.) happens to be a Negro; or (l.s.) a man in overalls . . . (m.s.) is loading a crane, and as we watch him (c.u.) he appears to be a Negro.
There is no rule-of-thumb for this kind of cutting. Most strangely, for example, what seems a perversely provocative cut in earlier sequences of a film becomes quite acceptable in its latter stages. This seems equally true for both White and Negro audiences.
Thus the important thing for the film-maker to keep in mind is not just what appears to him true and obvious, but what the presentation of this visual truth will mean to his audience. Somehow he must take into consideration all the preconceptions, the stereotypes and prejudices that the viewers will add to what he, the film-maker, is going to put on the screen.
Though a protester against stereotypes and distorted pictures. Mr Noble indulges in these sins himself to a remarkable degree when he discusses America in general and the south in particular. Many statements he makes about film censorship in the south are simply untrue. He appears to think the censor in Memphis controls the film programmes for all of Dixie, which is about as true as saying that the "Wee Frees' control the drinking habits of all Scotland.
Nowhere does he indicate a consciousness that the US has but ten per cent of the world"s roughly 137,000,000 Negroes (of whom forty per cent live within the British Empire!, for he concludes:
'There is much ignorance and prejudice in the world concerning the Negro race and it is certainly the duty of the US Government to dispel this lack o\' knowledge. . . .' True enough. vet leadership among all Negro groups must be developed before this can be done. The vast majority of Negro educators, scientists, artists. writers and intellectual leaders whose lives Mr Noble asks to sue portrayed on the screen are found among America's ten per cent. The US was the training ground and home of all except two of the Negro actors whom he considers worthy of individual biographies. Judging bv his own accounts, too. these men and women have had lives not unlike white members of their profession while the two actors drawn from the British Empire whom he gives honoui could get a stall in this country only after making names for themselves as professional wrestlers.
... All of which goes to prove that the role
user becomes neither oi us. (And it also
proves. I note with amusement, how much
'psycho-sociological' cutting we southerners
require ' )
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