OSCARS GO BLACK
2019’s chase is mainly about race
What have this year’s Academy Awards got to do with SA? A lot, actually. Many of the nominated films, for Best Picture in particular, focus on themes close to home. There is a very clear emphasis on racial issues among the nominated films, pointing to a shift in the issues audiences are willing to confront. But are South Africans — and especially privileged South Africans — ready to look in a mirror scrawled with words like racism, inequality, prejudice?
Perhaps it is easier to face up to such themes through the lens of another country, but the question then remains whether, when we exit the cinema, our perceptions of our own country have changed.
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman tells the true story of a black detective in the 1970s, who bravely goes on the hunt to prosecute members of the KKK and to expose how their hate speech has been modified to appeal to the masses.
Green Book, set in the US deep South in 1962, tells the true story of Dr Don Shirley, a renowned black pianist who recruits a white Italian-American driver to transport him around the country. It is set in the era of the Jim Crow laws and takes its name from The Negro Motorist Green Book, an annual guide listing establishments open to African-American guests.
There is also the smash-hit superhero movie Black Panther, which does not deal explicitly with race but which implicitly changed the conversation. By having a black superhero as its protagonist, a black cast and an imagined land that foregrounded the normality of black power — rather than pitting it against a diverse background — the film was its own message.
Then there is Roma, set in Mexico in the politically tumultuous early 1970s. The film paints a detailed picture of the complicated relationship between a domestic worker and her middle-class employers, a theme uncomfortably familiar to South African audiences.
Sikhumbuzo Mngadi, a professor in the English department at the University of Johannesburg, says most South Africans are not yet able to face racerelated issues head-on.
“There is a very public interest in the topic of racism in America today,” he says. In SA, however, “there is interest in these films that raise race issues, but it is an abstract sort of interest”.
Mngadi says that, in a country in which racism was a state policy and practice for many years, “sensitivity about the topic of race is both unfortunate and to be expected”.
“Ironically, it is those whom one could call racist who seem uncomfortable whenever the issue of race and racism comes up, besides the liberals who think race doesn’t matter. It’s not always possible to say who is worse.”
Mngadi thinks there is no shying away from such topics for young black South Africans, among whom “there is no ambiguity about confronting racism and other forms of oppression that apartheid entrenched and ‘post-apartheid’ has not honestly addressed”.
With locally made films, those tackling the hard issues are not always seen as commercially viable, but some of the numbers tell a different story. South African filmmaker Daryne Joshua says there is a hunger for socially aware stories.
An unexpected hit
Joshua directed the critically acclaimed 2016 film Noem my Skollie, which explored gangsterism in the Western Cape. Last year, his gut-wrenching film about Ellen Pakkies, who was driven to murder her own son after years of being tormented by his drug habit, was an unexpected box-office hit.
On its opening weekend, Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story earned just under R1m and 14,800 viewers went to see it. It then ran for an additional 12 weeks.
Joshua says that if filmmakers create movies that are emotionally relevant to a South African audience, viewers will come.
Film has the power to draw South Africans from different groups together. Dr Martha Evans, a senior lecturer at the Centre for Film & Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, says: “It’s often not because of the things we expect. Something like Invictus — made elsewhere, but featuring a great South African sporting victory — is probably more likely to build social cohesion amongst citizens because we share the excitement as well as criticisms of the film’s inaccuracies.”
Films that directly tackle racism, says Evans, need to pay attention to “the predisposition of the audience as well as the narrative structure of the film”.
“I don’t think any film — local or foreign — is likely to reach a dyed-in-the-wool racist,” she says, “but it might be illuminating for somebody living in a racist society who has, say, more liberal parents.”
On the narrative structure, she says there is the danger that a film about sensitive issues can be too cathartic. “It runs the risk of provoking audiences to make the local connection while watching, but then forget all about it because the narrative structure is too resolved and everybody lives happily ever after.”
There is also the distance of setting and time to consider. Green Book, with its historical backdrop, might be easier for Americans to digest than a movie that slices to the heart of current prejudice.
The same happens in SA, says Joshua. “We are usually saddled with the old history of SA, not the societal issues of today. Unemployment, depression, suicide, corruption … these are relevant, contemporary themes.”
The key question is what we do with hard-hitting messages when we leave the cinema. Are we willing to challenge norms in real life, not just on screen?
Mngadi thinks some of the Oscar finalists might achieve this. “These American films will continue to provoke debate, and this debate will find resonance on our shores.”