Classified X
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"I'm part negro, Howard, so is your mother. [...] That makes you a negro too." --Lost Boundaries (1949), cited in Classified X (1998) "... Van Peebles' distinctive analyses and his ever-growing importance to new black helmers via 1971's breakthrough Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song make this a package with shelf life for cinematheques, schools and select broadcaster webs.... Scaredy-cat comedy-relief types, jungle "savages," mammies and minstrels (Van Peebles acidly observes that Caucasian players "put on blackface when they felt like doing something extra-stupid") gave way after World War II to "The New Negro" -- a put-upon "keeper of conscience" for the white protagonists. Pic briefly exits Hollywood to consider the independent black cinema that flourished -- with strict low-budget bounds -- from silent days till the late '40s, supported by a network of blacks-only theaters."-- Dennis Harvey, "Melvin Van Peebles' Classified X", Variety, February 4, 1998 "Hollywood took my formula diminished the concept of Negritude to a flamboyant cartoon and reversed the political message turning it into a counter-revolutionary one and voila, out of the commercial success of Sweetback -- to make a long story short -- the blaxploitation movie was born."--Melvin Van Peebles cited in Classified X (1998) |
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Classified X is a 1998 French-American documentary movie written by Melvin Van Peebles, directed by Mark Daniels and narrated by Van Peebles, that details the history of black people in American cinema throughout the 20th century.
The documentary includes footage from the following movies:
- The Palm Beach Story
- Africa Screams
- The Birth of a Nation
- Casablanca
- Cry Freedom
- The Defiant Ones
- Gone with the Wind
- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
- Black Like Me
- The Jazz Singer
- Shaft (1971)
- Home of the Brave (1949 film)
- Pinky (film)
See also
- New Negro
- Ungawa
- Of Black America
- Reel Bad Arabs (2006)
- Reel Injun (2009)
- No justice, no peace
- X-rating
Subtitles
now you're public property and the
watermelons Oh Willie
yes needs to go and the chicken house is
over there chicken house uh-huh
what am I waiting for I don't know
neither tell you what you say you ain't
gettin fresh with me is you coloured boy
honey don't you give me none
well what some folks find funny or the
spine tragic Alice honest is me why is
he so scared why was always so skilled
well wouldn't you be
I did say we I'm black you see
tell you what you take those
rose-colored glasses off and I'll loan
you a special pair of colored folks
shoes let's see how they feel to you
come on take a little stroll with me
that's right it was you when I first
became aware of movies messing with my mind
I must have been around 12 or 13 was
around the end of the Second World War
or they had been messing with mine
before that but I just wasn't aware of
it no that's not right
I just wasn't able to put a name to what
I was feeling when I'd leave the triple feature on Saturday afternoon at the
National rat alley that's what we call
the cinema in my neighborhood
[Music]
I learned what that emotion was it's
called shame
movie his story is always
going on about how my 1971 film was
feedback sprang out of nowhere about how
it was such a revolutionary film a true
original that did noise the leads to
anything in the past
well it wasn't part of any traditional movement out of the past but on the
contrary Oh contraire it didn't just
spring out of thin air the movies were
the advance couch into adulthood I don't
need to learn how to ride a horse climb a palm tree ski to learn how to court
a girl and even kiss
but most importantly the
movies offered a peephole into the world
outside of my ghetto
the only problem was I couldn't project the meet by me I
mean myself and the the colored folks in
the neighborhood who comprised my entire
universe with what the movies were
showing the color folks in the movies
were always quaking and Yassa Bossin and
shuffling huh didn't bear any
resemblance to the majestic hard-working
black folks strutting around the South
Side of Chicago where I was drunk
the men were tough and fearless and the
women were regal Queens a zillion miles
away from the army of broad bean Mami's
at the movies betrayed you then thanks
to God son and his kingdom all men equal
[Music]
yes
then suddenly in a flash like I said I
was 12 or 13 at the time and the Second
World War was just winding down it was
all revealed to me the newspapers and
the magazines in the radio that was this
talk of the new new globe coming to the
screen well what had happened was that
to win the war the government needed
everybody's help and not just white
folks and besides Hitler had given racism a bad name anyhow an effort to
win the war the government had done a
lot of flag waving to unite the nation
there was a lot of talk about the United
States being a melting pot with liberty
equality and justice for all regardless
of race creed or color except for a
little social engineering to get blacks
and women accepted in jobs formerly
all-male all-white desert
[Music]
in the flushing victory over the Nazis
America actually bought into its own
propaganda he thought the US was
experiencing a flood of democracy a wave
or two of which laughed upon to the
shores of Hollywood
hence the promise of movies depicting
Negro characters more honestly more
dignified ie the new Navy
private moss reporting for duty sir but
the special assignment
if Hollywood invented a new neutral
admit it had invented the old new one in
the first place question about racism in
Hollywood films everybody likes to put
the blame on DW Griffith's and his birth of a nation a cinematic masterpiece and
the first Hollywood blockbuster it was
filled with dance and chicken chomp and
rape and quaking darkness
[Music]
the nation well from the very very
beginning there was racism in American
movies even in old Thomas Edison's first
images back at the birth of cinema
blacks were only presented as
stereotypes of caricatures and sure
didn't stop there
get your parking
[Applause]
yes Hollywood about it they've
maintained it was all in the name of art
no harm being done just a little good clean fun well maybe kinda saw it if
you're white no harm being done good
clean fun the white folks in Hollywood
really rule the news they do Negroes any
way they wanted to
they even put on chalk or when they felt
like doing something extra stupid
and played it being black too
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
now he is all sisters under the skin
[Laughter]
implicit to me is that they knew what
they were doing all along y'all so Miss
bellman yes miss lang yes looking over
one shoulder at the old Federman of the
Negro the new people was an improvement
relatively speaking of course
Wesley Epps private third Engineer
Battalion so he characters were tiny bit
more three-dimensional officer sergeant
we got the explosive necessary to fix
that bridge private matowski me Connor
made a special collection
I alone escaped it was then I captured
this man to carry my pack what is your
name sergeant major Tambu for soudanese
battalion Tinseltown went running around
with this just poked out feeling all
proud of itself about how liberal we've
been in recognizing the Negro besides
they weren't worried because of the
golden rule the American golden rule
that here
he who has the gold makes moves except
to you Ben you saying no
if it's no I want the money right away
and I hold you responsible Arnold
sometimes in new neutral movies we were
allowed to dress normal and even act as
equals people don't talk with you do
they mr. Upton given square with me on
aisle five Davis
okay mr. Roberts Black's became a
vehicle for more or less in about
justice or tolerance let's get up and
walk
[ __ ] you know I can always with a
sympathetic central white character to
mediate the experience of the flatwoods
boss get up and walk it dirty [ __ ]
Gavin walk
[Music]
all right time in the new Negro movies
more time the white character doctor or
teacher or something like that
cared for is the same paternalistic
attitude that kindly old slave owners
and Little Miss Shirley Temple but
famous for in the old Negro movies
another new Negro movie was pinky slang
term for light-skinned new rule passes
for white played by white actors there
are a lot of light-skinned blacks
tinting the states by law a few drops of
African blood means you are neatly she
falls in love with the white guy real
white guy offers to take away as long as
she doesn't tell anybody about being
colored she turns him down but all is
not lost because the kind the old white
lady leaves the plantation to pinky you
pretend wherever you are be yourself
what am i you tell me you're the ones
that set the standards you whites you're
the ones that judge people by the color
of their skins will by your own
standards by the only ones that matter
to you I'm as white as you are that's
why you all hate me what should i do dye
my face grovel and shovel say Yasim and
no girl excuse me sir but why are you
two white men ma'am and her she's
nothing but a low-down colored gal tried
to steal my man heard what you said he's
got to slap her down unless it's true
yes it's true I'm calling in my
grandmother's mrs. dicey Johnson mrs.
dicey Johnson tired of slapping both
darn cheap
then there was lost boundaries
light-skinned [ __ ] played once again by
a white actor passes himself off as a
real bona fide white man to become a
doctor should I do with this doctor
I can't ship it with the others what's
wrong with it came from somebody
chauffeur and he's as black as your hat
we could refuse him of course we can't
mix his with the white plasma and why
can't we miss Richmond well he certainly
wouldn't do it where I come from we do
it here there'll be criticism if I do
they'll be worse if you don't eventually
the truth comes out and he's ostracized
by the white folks I'm part Negro Howard
so is your mother that makes you a negro
- I'm white
[Applause]
No
we're all Negroes
[Music]
host of the new films trotted out for the edification of us colored masses
deal with what was called the negro problem ... hell ... it always seemed more like a white problem to me
they treated the question of white supremacy with a little more sophistication but it was the same old racism
in Intruder in the Dust an old
black man okay because he's old and past
his sexual prime
he saved by white boy from a rabbit
southern lynch mob who fete gently into
the night without a whimper once they
realized the old black guy was being
framed I guess the moral is that lynch
mobs okay
they're just out to do the right thing
like anybody else
proud stubborn insufferable but there he
goes
keeper my conscience our conscience aqua
jar
[Music]
the sad fact was that the insults had
only gone underground and were more
insidious and psychologically damaging
than ever
the difference of the treatment of the
Negro in the old films and the new was
like the difference in the supposedly
liberal north treatment of the Negro and
the openly hostile south which didn't
bother hide its prejudice or disdain at
least down south lynch mobs
notwithstanding you knew where you stood
Jimmy call you know sign teeth I would
even did one called black like me were
you calling me boy but I didn't think me
wear a white actor plays the white man
who put on shoe polish or something like
that
to experience what a black man had to go
through watch the big idea I want to
find out what it's like to be a Negro in
the south you can know how was this
possible I mean how could Hollywood
operate with such impunity this is with
the cold war raging mind you with the
Russians looking for any team in
democracies on
[Music]
how can America set itself up as the
bastion of liberty and equality on one
hand and treated colored citizen so
sadly on the silver screen and get away
with it
well this brings us to the peculiar
plight of the Negro in America
although population wise there are more
black people in the United States and
most European nations they're in the
minority outnumbered by a margin of 10
to 1 by the whites but most importantly
the control of the media and the flow of
information about life in these United
States to the outside world remains
almost exclusively in white hands yet it
once there was a world in Negro hands
the tiny world of independent black
films in the South the American version
of apartheid segregation was still the
law and there were more than 300
all-black movie houses from the early
days of silent film - shortly after the
Second World War a span of nearly 50
years marginalized by the independent
[Music]
[Applause]
existing everybody you're a big man you
can see that the work down south leads
people like home
Black movies made by African-American filmmakers were extremely popular with black audiences tired of seeing themselves portrayed as slaves, servants Hussey's, Mami's, loafers a dumb book subject run amok.
these are the only films have betrayed
them as human beings and like everybody
else they were desperate to see
themselves as he would and they hated a
black man
[Applause]
[Music]
yes there's so much to be done you
[Music]
I made them myself they have a little
kick in them but not too much
she's a lucky woman lexis their many
years yes and she's got such a good man
many of these old films were racists in
their own right
the myth of white supremacy was so
pervasive that the African American
filmmakers accepted it treating blacks
themselves as a culture or class
category rather than a racial one with
the heroes and heroines invariably
lighter skinned than the villains what's
the big idea fella didn't have that gun
I'll show you independent African
American cinema has never been
significant in the United States neither
is the number produced or the means of
distribution or the audience eventually
reached I never even saw an independent
black film growing up and I grew up in a
black ghetto on the south side of
Chicago I only became for me with Oscar
miss you and Spencer Williams and the
other early pioneers years later went on
becoming a student of film I heard
rumors of these lost masterpieces and
tracked them down
[Music]
but the purely black cinema was driven
out of business by to market forces
promote the rising cost of making a
movie and dizzy oh the shrinking number
of theaters where the movies thanks to
the end of segregation could be screamed
yeah progress
[Music]
the so-called golden era of independent
black films is a myth conceived to cloud
the excruciating position at the
african-american in cinema
the real history of independent black
cinema has been one of struggle studded
stars and stunted careers a courageous
File of brothers and sisters who
sacrificed to bring a few precious
seconds of black humanity to the silver
screen
all that wonderful talent wasted well
host - Oh James deferred he still had to
eat if you a black actor in Hollywood
that meant you tossed a spear or cooked somebody for dinner oh you brought a
drink maybe I have to stay after school
that like that my dad way from high
school pretty much I don't have to row
do I - Pharaoh who elected mr.
Rittenhouse mr. Rittenhouse rid to you
he's capable sure as he always sleeps or
oh he never well he's got a girl up to
the Blue Parrot goes up there the only
ray of hope was Sam he used to be a much
better lives you remember the colored
piano playing Casablanca you're bad luck
time
it was the first time I ever remember seeing a black character go through an entire movie without having to kiss ass
in the ghetto the people were so proud they would make the projection stop the film and run Sam's part over and over and over again
Tsing himself you must remember kisses
just keep aside justice' throughout the
history of Hollywood there were three
sanctuary for more virulent racism one
Prince worth ironically the Hollywood
version of an all-black movie
you see the trouble with you is what I
mean is when it comes to women you just
don't know are else man you rambling
what hit you look at that gal standing
over there
there's nothing like that netbook use
talking about
better not be the second place sometimes
anyway but blacks were allowed at
dignity was the truth the pulpit being
considered a trusted ally in the
subjugation of black brings and he said
is until the civil rights movement began
anyway Negroes were given a bit of
leeway to swagger and feel good about
themselves when attending to religious
matters let the fish fry proceeded
[Music]
entertainment was the third sanctuary
outside of being required to mug it up
the Negro entertainers were encouraged
to do their routines strut their stuff
to sing and dance their hearts out
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
now you'll hear a song you all like by a
singer you all like miss Lena Horne
[Music]
well paper doll that I can call my own
a doll that other felons cannot steal
and all those flirty flirty guy
these black routines were kept
incidental to the plot so that if the
cavorting [ __ ] were too uppity for
some southern white theater owner the
offending section could be edit out of
the film without disrupting the flow of
the story
[Music]
and all those flirty flirty guy
where there flirty-flirty Ives will have
to flirt with dollies
[Applause]
end of song beginning of story
[Music]
these blackened teens were
systematically scrutinized by white
producers looking for something
[Music]
and no sooner had a black person created
something new then it was preempted by
the whites who claimed it as their own
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
and insulting even if a white character
came upon a group of blacks doing the
routine the white person immediately
took stage sin and began to teach him
how to correctly execute what had been
stolen from them in the first place as
far as Hollywood was concerned anything
a black person can do even if you've
been doing it since birth could be done
better by a white person in three
seconds
[Music]
not only that blacks were required to
stand around grinning is taking their
kinky hairs and amazing mmm Lord of
mercy look at them massive looking
little misty
[Music]
well these films didn't exactly set the
box office on fire with the colored
audience I would do Abbas hand and
declared that the colored audience was
overly sensitive and they were going to
give up on trying to appease us
ungrateful belly aching [ __ ] we went
from the new Negro era to the no Negro
here for while their blacks almost
disappeared from the silver screen
but the boycott couldn't last because
Hollywood knew there was money burning
in those evany pockets and they wanted
some of it the business of America is
business
Hollywood had discovered that they use a
black guy as part of the group of good
guys in an action movie putting him
somewhere in the posse all platoon and
not killing him off too soon
the Negro audiences came and drove the
only problem was Hollywood wasn't too
fond of having a virile lusty black guy
running around and when it came to
sexual matters they fade wound
well why take a chance so Hollywood
split the difference
I'll take him for you I went only the
best they use Negro honks okay I'll take
the deep black one but whenever there
was a white woman around he had to lurk
in the distance sometimes ahead us
around to be taken in by white cottony
but house I did that
[Music]
and a mighty hard time
but I'm on my way had a mighty hard time
but I'm on my way it's a mighty hard
climb I'm on my way
on my way
we were personas non-grata that's your
freedom there a free man just unless it
was absolutely necessary to the story
and if it were there we would be up
there bumbling Belial ready to die at
the drop of a hat for our master or
mistress thank you sir colonel boy you
see I'm a free man that's right well if
I'm free and I got a right to decide
what I'm gonna do seems to me that's
what you may not fighting for so I
reckon I'll I'll stay
lay quiet hook now catchy Jim please let
me down
you gotta go free you gotta get back to
your wife and Joey
put me down Jim we've gotta get you to a
doctor Jim the actual behavior of a
neutral character in any given show my
team to be predicated on the dramatic
needs of that film
[Music]
but through the accumulation of similar
images from a zillion such films the
same behavior repeated in film film shot
after shot
a less benign picture emerges
[Music]
oh why does to kill him kill him but
what's the matter now
cam kill him you imbecile
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
you you gonna make somebody final later
one day while making concessions to the
Negroes progress in society at large
American movies clung tenaciously to the
cliches of the past in one form or the
other all in all it was business as
usual
the concessions Hollywood made were only
tactical in nature the strategic goal
remained the same to protect the status
quo perpetuate the myth of white
supremacy and thereby undermine the
Negroes struggle for equality in the
United States but the brothers and
sisters were born impatient with waiting
for quality
they took the speech in orderly Marge's
the good old Hollywood only heard the
rumblings as a business opportunity once
the hill decided to do a movie about
what they were sure black audiences
wanted more than anything in the world
every Negro secret desire the jewel in
the crown so to speak intermarriage
the studio figures they had a box-office
Bonanza of course they billed as a great
step forward through quality anyhow
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is about
a black man's engagement to a white
[Applause]
that's the story that's the glory
equality oh never mind that the black I
was a scientist a Nobel Prize candidate
a Pulitzer Prize winning butter wouldn't
melt in his mouth type we could practically walk on water and that she was only a
pimply-faced nobody they were equally matched because she was white right
right the power is dominating how he was
not only raise specific totally white
it was gender specific totally male it's
not the thing to change that much
there's a continuing stream of books
documenting the mistreatment of
actresses at the hands as a macho
misogynist moguls of Hollywood the
Integrity's in pay part power etc in
this epoch of the second-class treatment
of women you too little and too late
things were tough for white woman
they were draconian for black woman
however rarely are black actresses even
mentioned in the books about Hollywood's
exploitation of female I've got a living child in me
you let that [ __ ] Nakia ah nobody but
you this is your baby really jail all
your you know he just might be bad as
white as you still gonna be in a nigger
yes daddy and he's gonna be something
[Music]
[Music]
out in the street mumbling was going to
louder and louder and the marchers were
losing their gentility in Hollywood even
has decided to open the doors to
minorities and each one hired a minority
or two and told me to behave themselves
someday one of their race might even get
a chance to actually touch the reins of
creativity 1967 I come back from France
show up at the San Francisco Film
Festival's a French delegate with a
future film I just written indirect la
permission it was pretty embarrassing
for the USA it had been 15 years since a
black director had been able to scrape
up enough to make a film and Hollywood
had never even had one
[Music]
in the meantime the ramen in the streets
had grown to a lord
Hollywood hired three black directors
Ossie Davis Gordon Parks myself to prove
to the world they weren't racist of
course they tried to sabotage our
efforts by giving us substandard budgets
and gravy scripts to do nevertheless
these films were modestly successful but
it was axiomatic in the corridors of
Hollywood that no black film could be a
big-time
blockbuster success my answer was that
was how would they know they never made
a truly black film only white fantasy -
what they thought black should want to
see to piss me off
[Music]
Hollywood was wondering dream
well Hollywood was clinging to
make-believe balances America was
exploding the speech were running blood
maybe wrong wasn't burning but Houston
la Chicago New York sewer I decided to
kick Hollywood's ass which brings us to
speed back like I said I didn't just
bring out of thin air feedback was a
huge financial success
it was also take no prisoners political
manifesto so much so until the Black
Panther Party who J Edgar Hoover the
hair the FBI had declared public enemy
number one
endorsed the film unconditionally and
made it required viewing for all of its
moon DOE market a sweet back
I'm sorry Ben I got you two were
attached together let's see we can get a
little air between you you step over
here the way I saw it then and still see
it nam is that the biggest obstacle to
progress in America is our condition
susceptibility to the white man's
program
our minds have been colonized by images
of black humiliation marginality
subservience impotence and criminality
that are ubiquitous in mainstream
American cinema these are supposed self
images seen when African Americans look
into the socio-cultural mirror of the
cinema
we've been violated confused and drained
by this colonization and from this
brutal calculated genocide the most
vicious racism has grown
And it is this starting point mind and the intention to
reverse the process that I went into
cinema in the first [ __ ] place
[Music]
[Music]
I think the highly vaunted visual power
of the film came from the fact that
having taught myself
I missed the technical colonization for the white aesthetic but back then the
way I put the images in the color and
utilized the sound folks call me crazy now they started calling at the
beginning of the black film aesthetic and then when the film was finished and I had to have it rated the jury was all white and I refused to go to them so they gave me an automatic automatic x-rating well that didn't bother me because as far as I was concerned I'd been going to x-rated movies all my life
Hollywood took my formula diminished the concept of Negritude to a flamboyant cartoon and reversed the political message turning it into a counter-revolutionary one and voila, out of the commercial success of Sweetback -- to make a long story short -- the blaxploitation movie was born.
[Music]
Squad
[Music]
[Music]
but the images of black students in
defeating whites even if the whites were
slimy villains
didn't sit too well with Hollywood and
the financing began to dry up the
blaxploitation films got shoddier and
Shia and the genre finally petered out I
would no longer says that a black
audience doesn't exist now it proclaims
that a black audience only want to see
action films the simple fact is that
african-americans are not allowed to
tell African American middle class
stories without studio ie
white intervention and it's this white
perspective forced on the material in
the form of guidance that is so
disastrous to the film an African
American cine a soon realized that the
deeper into the ghetto the story is set
and the Lord down the economic scale the
more likely he or she is to be financed
i'ma trouble one can see the legacy of
the negative images of the past
still reflected in the films today
[Music]
I got you I got you but I've still got a
supposedly black movie actually being a
thinly disguised showcase for white
cleverness and all the entire
paternalistic white social structure you
still got the Negro being saved by the
liberal white man
there is an ever-increasing number of
blacks working in the film industry in
the last 20 years the cost of making
independent film has been greatly
reduced and many young filmmakers have
seized the opportunity if we step back a
minute to view the ear as a whole we see
the trick is no longer getting the film
made but getting it shown and for now
distribution is in white hands they're
the gatekeepers and rule makers of what
reaches the silver screen for every
Spike Lee John Singleton Julie - there
are many other practical makers wilting
in the wings unseen cinema was born in
1896 that was the same year that
segregation became official in the
United States discrimination was
abolished in 1954 but film wise we're
still waiting whoa I'm not through don't
go taking those shoes off yet the
Treasury never stops
every era brings its new tricks the
latest is if a black filmmaker does
somehow managed to make a relevant black
film like Malcolm X a panther the box
office receipts a siphoned off at the
city pledges to other more acceptable
movies by the races exhibitors thereby
denying the profitability of such films
plus was holding the fiscal benefits
from anyone daring to confront the
system
Americans like to go on about money
being money neither black or white but
green but when the hand holding the
money is white and the head connected to
the hand is mired in the same old racist
attitudes to the same boss stereotypes
[Music]
[Music]
in my time
[Music]
got mean used up behind the welfare line
[Music]
[Music]
because he talked about
talk about here how about beat yo
speaking about ranges kind of tons of
them well white folks not up use it
sighs cool so we feel that your bones
better put your a-game
ain't nobody wins
[Music]