The following is a Facebook note posted by a good friend of mine, Mr. Clinton McClure. This is his profound view of Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." I agreed so much I had to re-post this. I think you too will find his perspective intriguing.
Posted Sunday, November 29, 2009
For a movie like Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" to be historic, in that it features a black woman in the lead role, it sure isn't getting a lot of fanfare among some blacks. Some have criticized the movie for giving her love interest - the archetypal prince - a light skin tone. A similar charge had been lodged against the movie "Precious". Despite being a powerfully raw portrait of an inner-city teen who suffers from frequent abuse from her parents, I have read comments from blogs and friends that the casting of light-skinned women as characters who offer help to the protagonist perpetuate the stereotype that moral character is inversely proportional to the amount of melanin in one's skin. While this belief is real and held by many, I wonder if the pursuit of countering these assumptions on the big and small screens and the much broader fight to deploy positive images of blacks through traditional media is as fruitful as the fight for social and economic justice. It may be ideal to have a hundred TV shows that mirror "The Cosby Show", but I wouldn't expect that day to come anytime soon. Making television shows and movies the battlefields for control over the display of racial identity takes the attention of blacks away from much more important efforts, such as education reform, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship, all of which would contribute to the ability of blacks to gain greater control of the media structure that, they charged, grossly misunderstands them.
The reason why these critiques of movies like the ones mentioned above inevitably fizzle is because they are not connected to a greater narrative about the impotency of blacks to create and control substantive, dynamic identities that can be spread throughout society. When Halle Berry won an Oscar for her role in "Monster's Ball", the prevailing criticism was that the only time a black woman wins an award for Best Actress is the time when she has to sleep with a white man. Whether this was credible or not, it didn't really go anywhere. It didn't connect to a larger story about the limited opportunities of black actors to perform in the same roles as their white counterparts. Neither did the charge that director Tyler Perry's fast-talking, gun-slinging alter ego, Madea, is popular only because she is nothing more than a one-(wo)man minstrel show. When critiques of black imagery in film and TV are only limited to one show or movie, it is difficult to connect the dots unless they are all arranged in a way that forms a bigger picture.
Some may argue that these critiques are just as important as those against welfare policy or education laws. If the protests against Don Imus and the 'dead Obama monkey' cartoon are any indication, then they seem to show the belief that activists are stamping out institutional racism within mainstream media. I don't deny that there are features of media structures that allow the gatekeepers and decision makers to shape the deployment of racial identity without any meaningful involement from the communities who ascribe to that identity. However, calling for Don Imus to be fired did not prevent CBS Radio from replacing Imus with some other shock jock, and carrying picket signs did not retract the cartoon out of the New York Post. Protesting against media companies will never succeed because civil rights law cannot be neatly applied to programming decisions that may case a light-skinned black actor in the leading role instead of a dark-skinned one. In addition, these companies can easily retreat to the shelter of the First Amendment. If we really wish to send a message to directors, musicians, producers, and the like, then we must do so in terms that the free market understands: with our dollars. If you don't like Tyler Perry's movies, don't pay $12 to go see them. If you don't like CBS for even hiring Don Imus, refuse to watch any of their programs. In other words, when it comes to business, the bottom line matters more than the picket line.
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