In his historic book

In his historic book the Souls of Black Folks written in 1903, W.E.B. Dubois stated that the problem of the 20^th Century will be the problem of the color line.  The Monnihan report, the Kerner report and other studies have validated his statement.  One of the major problems in America, is the issue of racism.  Racism is woven into the fabric of America that neither the victims of racism nor the majority culture perpetuating it, can properly evaluate the reasons and ramifications of this unfavorable behavior towards people of African decent. Many who attribute African-American perception of racial hate or prejudice as paranoia, say that slavery is over, has been for some time and that African-Americans need to get over it and work to better themselves by pulling themselves up by their boot straps.  African-Americans on the other hand have found that despite their efforts to advance and live ordinary lives, there are still the ever present resistance, resentment, animosity and blockades that they must spend so much time and energy trying to overcome.

    Although many theorize and rationalize the reason, attitudes and cause of racism, it has long been my contention that media in its many forms (radio, print, and visual) and the ways in which it is presented, has had a tremendous impact on how various racial groups in this country especially people of color are perceived by the majority culture.  Barry Schwartz and Robert Disch, in their book " White Racism" states that "Hollywood has been responsible more that any other institution past or present, for creating the image of black inferiority. It created the lying stealing, childlike, eyeball rolling feet shuffling, sex obsessed, teeth showings, dice shooting black male and told the world this was the real Negro in the U.S.A."  In other words the visual media helped to create, perpetuate and embellish the negative stereotypes of African Americans in this country.

    Although I was not aware of the stereotyping in my adolescence during the seventies, my parents were.  They did not discuss tacism or the stereotypes that were portrayed on television and in the movies with us. They did however limit and monitor our visits to the movies, as well as the television programs we could view.  There were few African-Americans represented on the sitcoms and in the newsrooms, therefore we were allowed to view, on a regular basis a program called "Good-Times", mainly because it was about African-Americans.  The story plot of Good Times, was a show about an African-American urban family consisting of a wife, husband and three children struggling to make ends meet.  This program as well as the few other black programs on television was of the ever present stereotypical African-American.  Although they tried to balance the images by having a precocious daughter, a studious younger brother, the older brother Jay-Jay the clown was the focal point as far as the children concerned; he had the major role.  He was a first rate clown, a modern version of the coon. Rolling his eyes grinning and acting stupid.  The coon had characteristic of the Mammy or vice versa.  He was as Donald Bogle describes, "harmless little screwball creation whose eyes popped, whose hair stood on end with the least excitement, and whose antics were pleasant and diverting.  The Coon like the mammy was used to indicate the black man's satisfaction with the system and his place in it.  Another television show during the same period was Sanford and Son.  This show was about two grown men living together in a house, collecting junk and telling jokes about family and friends.  This show as a throw back to the Amos and Andy show on early television, where the men were always dreaming up schemes and getting into serious situation due to their stupidity.  An evening of fun to them was drinking cheap wine and eating chicken.  His sister-in-law, who was very dark in complexion, trusted in the Lord, and read and quoted the bible constantly, was, referred to as an "Ugly Duckling" Red Fox a brilliant comedian and star of the show did not come to national attention until he was signed to do this show.  Although he was well known in the African-American community, this was his first chance at making big money and he was only happy to play whatever role the directors gave him.  He was probably the highest paid junk man in America.  This message to the larger community was that African-Americans was perfectly content to live amongst junk with their impossible stupid schemes to make money, instead of working hard a regular job to make a living.  Their characters could be endearing in a strange way.  Even thought what we saw were not representative of my family or the community I lived in, we were allowed to view these programs.  As children, my siblings and I enjoyed these programs, probably because one of the main characters on the show was acting like and absolute buffoon, playing the fool.  There was no doubt in my mind that these people existed.  I did not know them, but I was sure they were out there somewhere.  I embraced them and accepted them as they were, thinking surely they would not be on television if they did not exist in America somewhere.  We as children did not realize the damage these images were causing to the psychic of black people as well as fortifying and rationalizing he inferiority of blacks to the larger white society.

    By the time I had attended elementary school and high school in an all white district I had become a little more sophisticated.  The kids in the schools were friendly and tolerant of the few black kids in the schools with the exception on the yearly racial fights we for the most part got along extremely well.   My parents were constantly in school trying to create understanding and dialogue with my teachers.  One of my teachers went so far as to call me Anne. She said, that I deserved a pretty name. She not only called me Ann, but also proceeded to put the name on my school records and report card. Things such as these kept my parents busy.  It was images and incidents such s the aforementioned that influenced my decision to study communications at the undergraduate level.  I felt that if I gained entry in the media industry, I could articulate some forms of changes with the images of people of color.  I was going to have input on the elimination of these negative derogatory images of blacks in the media. It was only after I started to work in the media industry and began to move up the ranks that I realized that the glass ceiling that existed for women, was indeed a cement ceiling for blacks.  Although more African-Americans then ever before is working in the media, they tend to work in non decision-making areas.  The control and power remains tin the hands of white males.  With this first hand experience my interest in the portrayal of African-American women grew.  When I decided to apply to the College of General Studies. I knew that my focus would be to study the media's portrayal of minorities concentrating on African-American women and how the media's image of these women have changed and evolved over the years.

    The first class I took at the college of General Studies was African-American women: from Slavery to the Present taught by Dr. Evelyn Higgenbotham.  I was amazed at the number of women of African descent played a positive and active role in the shaping of this county.  There was Ida B. Well, who lost her job as a teacher and found her calling in Memphis when she became involved in a lawsuit after refusing to five up her seat in a railroad car designated for whites.  She also helped organize the NAACP and devoted much of her later years campaigning for anti-lynching laws and promoting voting rights for both black and white women.  All this from a woman who was left all alone, to raise her younger brothers and sisters, when both her parents died in a typhoid epidemic.  Mary Mcleod Bethune founded the national Council of Negro Women and what is now the Bethune-Cookman College.  She served as an advisor on minority affairs to five Presidents and was one of the most influential women in America.  Ms. Bethune became the first African-American woman to head a federal office, appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, as director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the national Youth Administration.  Madam C.J. Walker, Known as the first self made woman millionaire in this country, was the inventor of the hot comb and numerous other beauty products for African-Americans.  I realized after taking this course that the list of African-American women who have made major contribution to this country is

 Omitted in the media.  The list of African-American women who have made major contributions to this country is endless, in spite of the many obstacles placed in their way.

 

Despite the many of achievements by African-American women throughout American history, they were usually portrayed in the media, as the happy-go-lucky mammy or as a sexual deviate.  Why then would the media present such inadequate images of African American women?  The media was/is primarily controlled by men in a male dominated society. Also money, power and the general attitudes of the country determined their decision. The producers wanted to give the white masses what they believe to be true images of African-Americans.  Roanne Edwards writes in Encarta, that racial stereotypes reflect and are facilitated by power relations in a society.  Stereotypes of a demeaned group are frequently accepted as the truth and are not understood as problematic until the group can manifest its fully human condition.

Another class that helped shapes my interest in presenting an exhibit or forum for the mammy image was Blacks in Television and film taught by Donald Bogle.  In this class I had an opportunity to look at the various levels of stereotypical images of blacks portrayed in films and on television, enabling me to look at films and TV from an analytical perception.  This class gave me the basic foundation for analyzing films from various different eras.

 

 

Literature review

The one area that has consistently been of great interest to me is the images of African-American women portrayed in various forms of the media. Of these images the most dominant to me has been the image of Mammy, also recognized in American popular cultures as Aunt Jemima.  My primary focus will be to analyze the stereotypical image of African-American women as depicted in Film and advertising, using the Quaker Oats advertising campaign as a model.  I think in looking at the evolution of the mammy image it is important to look at one of the more popular images of the mammy-Aunt Jemima.  The Aunt Jemima image was the first visual appearance of the mammy.   I think that it is important to first look at how and when the mammy image first appeared on the scene and how the media, during the early years embellished this image.

 Patricia Turner, traces the origin of the mammy image to the character, in her book, "Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies",  "Aunt Chloe" in Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic work of 1852, "Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Stowe describes Aunt Chloe as having a round, black, shiny face, and a plump countenance, beaming with satisfaction and contentment from under a well starched, checked turban.  The actual visual image of mammy emerged during slavery as a defense for slavery.  Hall Stuart said, "this propaganda put white folks at ease with the notion of slavery, because the servants appeared happy. Thus came the highly popularized image of mammy best known as Aunt Jemima.  She was Mammy's best-known commercial identity.  She not only sold pancake mix but she sold Luzianne coffee and cleansers and appeared in numerous cereal ads.  Mammy sold molasses and fruit box labels.  She also graced menus of the Old Dixie Restaurant in Los Angles and Mammy's Cabin outside Atlanta.  She became a figure in all sorts of kitchen equipment.  We will look at some examples of these early advertisments later.

 

    Patricia Turner cites the historian, Catherine Clinton, the Mammy character, says Clinton, was a romantic and nostalgic invention of white Southerners developed in response to Northerners protesting the institution of slavery. The media wanted to show that although the mammy was presented as unattractive she was extremely happy with her position as the mammy of the master household. When she was seen in the household, she was singing dancing or showing happiness for serving the master.  This helped to perpetuate the image that African-American servants were more than happy to serve the white master. Why else would they show them as happy-go-lucky.

Even in printed advertisements the Mammy figure was always shown with a wide smile.

 

    Even though the mammy first appeared as a defense to slavery by southerners traces of her image still exist for the most part in films. I will compare a few popular films from different periods to show that even though times have changed both politically and socially, some of white and black America still receives some comfort in this image.   I will also show how most African-American accomplishments were ignored by the mass media.  The perceptions and attitudes about African-American women emanated from racist and sexual myths, which existed long before feature films came into existence but have been perpetuated by film and the advertising industry.  According to Paula Giddings in her book, "When and Where I Enter": The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, the negative image of black women sexuality started when they first arrived in this country as slaves. " Black Women-described by English slave traders as hot constitutioned ladies, possessed of a lascivious temper who had an inclination for white men.  She also mentions in her book that historically the stereotype of the sexually potent black male was largely based on that of the promiscuous black female.  He would have to be potent to satisfy such hot-natured women.  It is no wonder that the mammy figure was so obese and dark so as not have any of the features of the American standard of beauty thus she would not pose a threat to the mistress of the house.

Aunt Jemima

The mammy image was created as an answer to the critics of slavery and Jim Crow.  Her existence was the ambivalence of guilt and love that white Americans felt.  According to some scholars, the image of the mammy was created before the civil war, as a southern reaction to the northern changes of sexual prowess of black women. She was the counter partner to the black sexual mistress. In order for the mammy to exist in the white master household she could not have any physical attraction so that she would not pose a threat to the masters wife.  Therefore she was almost always extremely obese, dark (was defined as unattractive) and poorly dressed The sexual mistress was usually lighted skinned, attractive and petite.   Mammy the stereotype made her first visual appearance as Aunt Jemima.  Nancy Green was hired to stand on top of a flour barrel at the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago.

     White American confronted with this new visual and commercial mammy were disarmed by laughing at her caricature but was equally sold by her positive qualities-her asserted knowledge of food and housekeeping, During this period food products made the most of the mammy image and other stereotypes as idealized servants types, they suggested heartiness, quality and the approval of those who ran the kitchen. 

    Jemima's story, as sketched out in Jackie Young's "Black Collectibles: Mammy and her Friends, began in 1889 when Charles Rutt, a St. Joseph, Missouri, newspaper editor, got the idea for self-rising pancake mix that required the addition only of water.  He took the name Aunt Jemima from the vaudeville song of the time; Davis Mills in St. Joseph brought the idea, and with it the supporting story. 

    To give character to the logo, Davis invented a whole legend.  The story went something like, Aunt Jemima had been a cook on the Louisiana plantation of a Colonel and her reputation for fine pancakes had spread far and wide.  Ads showed smiling belles and laughing older white gentlemen trying to get the secret recipe of the loyal Jemima.   Somehow Aunt Jemima had been persuaded not only to relinquish the secret to Davis Mills but also to tour the states representing the pancake mix.

Nancy Green as Aunt Jemima traveled from town to town, cooking pancakes until her death in the early twenties.  Before her death the character she represented was re-drawn in 1917 to reflect a less cartoonist, more maternal figure.  In 1925 Davis sold the Aunt Jemima brand to Quaker Oats. 

    It was from the persistence of the NAACP that the mammy image was slightly updated in 1950 and was made lighter and thinner in 1968.  It was not until 1989 and only after the company had carried out five months of delicate research in twelve cities, that her present face a sort of black Mrs. Cleaver takes the place of the image created in 1968.  The aim Quaker said was to present Aunt Jemima in a more contemporary light, while preserving the important attributes of warmth, quality, good taste, heritage and reliability.  Aunt Jemima had finally lost the handkerchief. 

    Mammy began in slavery or at least in the minds of slavery's defenders.  Catherine Clinton wrote in "The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South", Mammy is not merely a stereotype, but in fact, a figment of the combined romantic imagination of the contemporary southern ideologue.  There are few known records of Mammies who actually served, as the images have it, as the mistress right hand and the domestic and administrative head of the plantation. It was not until after Emancipation that black women ran the white households or occupied any significant position within the household. 

    As Jim Crow became institutionalized, the mammy image became firmly established in the world of entertainment and advertising. The Mammy moved quickly into the new media of the twentieth century.  In film she became a prominent figure even before the arrival of film with sound.

 

Motion Picture History

 Motion pictures have been one of the most powerful and influential means of communication used as a propaganda mechanism to manipulate worldwide perceptions of non-whites.  Although many insist that film is primarily a form of entertainment, it is irrefutable that films, now as in the past, have had an influence on the minds of both the white and black audience that watch these films. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the treatment of race or ethnicity. Gilman in his article "White of their Eyes" says, "we all create images of things we fear or glorify.  These images never remain abstract: we understand them as real world entities.  We assign them labels that serve to set them apart from ourselves.  We create stereotypes."

    The images of blacks reflected on the screen, in the early days of silent films were that of stupid lazy, clownishly, inefficient blacks incapable of performing, the most simplistic of task on their own.  During the earlier years, white performers played the roles of blacks in black face.  This tradition originated during slavery, when white performer in the popular minstrel show blackened their faces with burnt cork to impersonate blacks.  This practice was carried over to the early days of films.   In the landmark film "Birth of a Nation" which glorified racism, film historian Donald Bogle writes in his book, Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies and Bucks, that the director of this film D.W. Griffith was the first important movie director to divide his black women into categories based on their individual colors.  Lydia, the tragic mulatto and Mammy, the servant is played by white actresses in blackface.  But the Mammy was darker.  She was representative of the all-servant black woman, overweight, middle-aged, and so dark, so thoroughly black, that it is preposterous even to suggest that she be a sex object. Lydia whose black face in much lighter then the Mammy figure is seen lusting after the white master.  This movie introduced the mulattos as being tragic, because although she appears to look black she wants so badly, to be a part of the white world.

   Since whites portrayed blacks by putting burnt cork on their face it is natural to assume that whites felt that blacks were incapable of being able to play themselves. Blacks was portrayed, by the way whites perceived them. Blacks, of course, had no choice as to how they might portray themselves, when given the opportunity.

   The 1905 silent film, "Wooing and Wedding a Coon", which parodied a black marriage, was successful in these earlier films as comic relief for white audiences.  This was a practice that was elaborated on and continued through the years.  These roles continued to be played by white performers in black face make-up. The image of the mammy were likewise played by white actresses wearing burnt cork on their faces with greatly exaggerated paint on their white lips. This movie was one of the earlier documented films that show the Mammy stereotype.

 

    In 1915, D.W Griffith film "The Birth of a Nation" based on southern author, Thomas Dixion's novel, the Clansman was released.  This film was considered a spectacular mile stone in film history, and changed the concept of American movie making.  Prior to this, movies had been limited to two or three reels.  Griffith used twelve reels, and the film exceeded three hours.  The film also developed the close-up, crosscutting and rapid-fire editing, as well as the split screen image.  The film's magnitude swept the audience off their feet.[i]

    "Birth of a Nation's" in-depth treatment of black and white relationships was presented on a scale that had been never seen before.  The film presented treatment of the Civil War and its destruction of the "Old South", from a southern point of view."  The second half depicted Griffith's version of the consequences of reconstruction, black rule, and the so-called new equality in the South.

    Before the war the film showed the Cameron's a prominent southern family with a benevolent father who lived with his beautiful daughter.  They lived in a lovely home amid finery and an abundance of wealth.  Their slaves evinced happiness and content while they sang and danced in the cotton fields.  Big, black, bosomy mammy, in the big house waddled about and grinned her way through her domestic duties.

    At the onset of the Civil War, the noble men of the confederate armies were either killed or wounded in battle.  The South is now comprised of women, children and the elderly, who were victimized by the emancipated blacks.  African-Americans new found freedom according to the film, enabled them to instantly shed the Shackles of mental subservience and to arrogantly and brutally set about in their efforts to take control of Congress.  In Congress, they sat barefooted, eating chicken and tossing bones on the floor.  They were shown attempting to rape white women and proposing marriage to them.  There is the ever-present, tragic-figured mulatto; situated between the world of the blacks and the world of the whites.  In love with her master, she dares to hope that massa will marry her now that she is free.

    The Mammy in this film is shown as contented and subservient, ever ready to serve massa and mistress.  Her physical make-up was the ever fat, handkerchief head, de-sexed darky.

The only anxiety she exhibited was when she perceived her white family to be in danger from one of the "out of place" uppity, misguided blacks or some other good for nothing scoundrel.   Such was sufficient to spur mammy into action in an attempt to annihilate them with her rolling pin, broom or her enormously big mouth.

    "Birth of a Nation" popularized both the mammy and tragic mulatto images, and reinforced the demeaning stereotypical depiction of blacks that would take decades to erase. In the first half of the movie, in the first scene you see mammy portrayed by a white actress in extremely black face, padded to appear obese standing in the background as if she was waiting for her orders.  She is shown codling the "pet sister" who obviously has a crush on a visitor.  When the gentleman pays her some attention.  The Mammy is shown clasping her hands together expressing her joy and happiness.  Thoughout various scenes she is every present in the background waddling back and forth with her hands on her hips and grinning.  Just happy to be of service to her white master. Another scene that depicts the Mammy, as being happy with her lot in life as servant to the whites, is when the blacks are in rule and appear at the home of the Camerons.  An actor in black face hands his briefcase to her only for her to remark, " Yo' northern low down black trash, don't try no airs on me.  She proceeds to push and kick him in the Butt.  She continues to say, Dem free-nigger f'um de n'of an sho' crazy.  This scene clearly depicted the mammy as servile, ignorant and happy. You see a few more scenes where the mammy is defending the white rule to free blacks.

    Griffith, a southerner and white supremacist, used this film to propagandize a cause.  Not only did he present blacks as inferior, decadent, brutal savages, happy to serve their masters, but he also glorified the Ku Klux Klan as noble sons of the South who did battle with the blacks in order to defend white honor and white womanhood.  This film did more to glorify and justify the Ku Klux Klan than any words in print could have done during this era.

Film, historian, Donald Bogle, summarized the Birth of a Nation by saying: "In this film all the major blacks screen types had been introduced, and the naïve and cinematically untutored audience of the early part of the century responded to the character types as if they were the real things."

Marlon Riggs shows us in the video "Ethnic Notions", that when blacks were emancipated, Birth of a Nation was cheered as one of the greatest films ever released, because, it depicted blacks as savages and brutes and a threat to society if they were set free.  This resulted in and justified the epidemic lynching of blacks. Two African-Americans were lynched a week after the opening of this film.  This shows how the white audience visually put themselves in the shoes of the actors; they saw the world through the eye of this movie.    After the release of this movie D.W. Griffith was quoted as saying, "The Cinema is the agent of Democracy, It levels barriers between races and classes." The purpose of this movie one was not only to help us understand the racial attitudes during this era but also to realize the power of propaganda by the response not only from the white audience but the black audience.  After the New York opening of this film, D.W Griffith, yielding to pressure from the NAACP, cut 558 feet of the film, eliminating some of the more blatantly racist sequences.

 Sound was introduced in films in the early thirties, which changed how Americans viewed the images. Americans also witnessed a sight change in the depiction of the Mammy image.  She continued to have the same external image, obese, dark, happy but it was in the thirties that she became more independent and cantankerous. One of the first movies to show this slightly updated image was in the 1934, film "Imitation of life". Starring Claudette Colbert and Warren William this created a great deal of controversy.  One of the principal themes involved a black girl trying to pass as white.  Lousie Beavers played the girls' mother, a black mammy figure, devoted, submissive and wise enough to "know her place."

    In this story with black actresses Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington as well as Claudette Cobert.  The film shows the lives of two widows, one white and the other black. The black widow, Aunt Delilah, cares for Miss Bea's child and her home. And Miss Bea works at a career.   Their early days are hard.  The two suffer from the realities of the depression.  Fortune comes their way in the form of a secret pancake recipe that was passed down from Aunt Delilah family. The pancake flour was so wonderful that Miss Bea decides to market it (shades of the Aunt Jemima story). In an act of magnanimity, she offers Aunt Delilah a twenty-percent interest in the business. Miss Bea tells Delilah that she could be rich and be able to by herself a nice house.  Aunt Delilah, reply by saying, "My own house? —Yous gonna send me away? Don't' do that to me. How I gonna take care of you and Miss Jesse if I's away? I's you cook."

    The second subplot develops around the unhappiness of Delilah, the maid's daughter, whose efforts to mix socially with whites are always frustrated when her dark skinned mother appears.  Finally, she runs away from home to pass for white.  Only after her mother has died of a broken heart, does she return as the tragic mulatto.

    White film critics joined black journalists in denouncing the film for its handling of racial issues.  In the December 8, 1934 issue of Literary Digest, an article stated:  "The real story is merely hinted at, never really contemplated; it is that of a beautiful, rebellious daughter of the loyal black friend.  She is light-skinned sensitive, tempestuous and grows bitterly indignant when she sees that the white girl with whom she was reared is getting all the fine things in life, while she is subjected to humiliation and defeat….while her mother is treated with sympathy and warmth because she is the submissive, old fashioned Negro who, as the saying goes, "knows her place, the daughter is too bitter and lacking resignation over her undeserved fate."

 

   Fredi Washington, the actress who played the mulatto, left Hollywood soon thereafter for the Negro Federal Theater in Washington, DC where she spent the remainder of her career.  She said that she would never perpetuate outrageous stereotypes just to sustain the illusions of certain white people.

    

On the surface, the film appears to be a simple story of friendship between blacks and whites and motherly love and woes of raising a mixed race child.  But I believe the racial complexities of this film, perpetuated the negative image of the mammy image and the tragic mulatto. 

Louise Beavers Delilah was an Aunt Jemima magnified and glorified in full-blown Hollywood fashion. Although the recipe belonged to her and her family she felt that Miss Bea's was more deserving then she.  Who else would take care of her and her home?  Showing that white and blacks could be friends as long as the blacks took they proper place—servant, mammy, and tragic mulatto.

 

Another film during this era that depicted the image of the servant mammy was the 1939 film "Gone with the Wind" Hattie McDaniel portrayed the O'Hara family's faithful servant.  Boasting that she diapered three generations of O'Hara women, mammy is proud of the mutual affection between master and servant.  She truly appeared to have a maternal relationship with Scarlet, never biting her tongue or withholding her opinions on what was right or wrong. At the beginning of the film Mammy is seen helping Scarlet into a corset, and at the same time, almost demanding like a mother, for her to eat before going out to a barbecue.    When Scarlet refuses to eat the meal, Mammy does not hesitate to threaten her, "oh yes'um yo is-you goin to eat everybit and tells her if she does not that she is going to tell her mother. Scarlet is also upset because Ashley Wilkes, the man she thinks she loves is going to marry some someone else.  When Mammy mentions that, " I ain't notice Mr. Ashley asking for to marry you.  Scarlet, eyes widening in disbelief at being discovered sits down and eats her food like an obedient daughter.

 

  It was mammy who kept the plantation afloat through the Civil War years.  It was mammy who dictated morals and right from wrong. 

When Scarlet returned to Atlanta, to request a loan, mammy insisted upon accompanying her. She even made a dress from a pair of drapes to ensure that Scarlet would look like a lady. Once in Atlanta she and Scarlet are walking through the streets, mammy literally clears the way, pushing aside the blacks that line the streets.  Hattie McDaniel through her fine acting and brilliant performance played the role without ever coming off as an inferior human being.  For her performance, Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award as best supporting actress.  Hattie McDaniel appeared in more then 300 movies, and in all, she played a domestic.  When asked why she accepted these roles, she stated, "I would rather get paid acting as a maid, than being a maid in real life."

    When compared to Birth of a Nation and other films during this era, Gone with the Wind can be said to have excluded the malicious characterization imbedded in the earlier movies.  This film showcased the new Mammy, bold, controlling, yet still fat, desexed, and happy to serve the white master.

 

Film historian Donald Bogal says of this film,

" Gone with the Wind was often criticized because the slaves were not shown taking up rifles against their former masters.  But the really beautiful aspect of this film was not what was omitted but what was ultimately accomplished by the black actors who transformed their slave roles into complex human beings."

 

    As we move from the thirties through the next three to four decades the image of the mammy stayed pretty much the same.  You can observe the every faithful mammy in such films as Since You Went Away (1944) Mildred Pierce (1945), It was not until the 1960's that you seen a shift in the Mammy image from the servant to the whites to the servant to her family, as is the case with the 1964 film "A Raisin in the Sun". Through the next several decades the image of African-American Women showed some improvement but traces of the images of African-American women in earlier films still exist. As the politics of society changed, the old stereotypes were adapted to the new politics.  When blacks fought in the First World War they was still presented in movies as the happy servant and entertainer.  In the sixties during the rise of the Civil Rights movement the extreme negative images of blacks were softened or altered.  Then came the black exploitation films where blacks were presented as brutes or the urban coon. During the eighties the political and social scene were changing.  Blacks were endeavoring to move fully into the American system, they were demanding full rights and equality on all fronts.  In the 1980's Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for presidency.

    During this era of political and social issues, the film, The Color Purple (1985) was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. The story line of movie begins during 1909, which makes it easy and justifiable to show the familiar image of the Mammy, with the hopes of not receiving criticism for displaying this image. African-American writer Alice Walker based this film on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  "The Color Purple" was wholly about black people.  It focused on the plight of Celie, played by Whoopi Goldberg, whose life had been made miserable by abusive men.  Her stepfather raped her, impregnated her twice then gave her two children away.  Soon, after, he gave Celie in marriage to a widower who had several children of his own.

    Celie is depicted as very young, unkempt dark and unattractive.  Albert, played by Danny Glover, liked her more attractive sister, but married her so that she could clean his house, tend to his needs, and take care of his children who were are not much younger than she. When Celie comes into her new home it is a mess. Dishes unwashed, garbage on the floor chickens running around loose.  She spends a whole day transforming her new home into a livable place. When her husband shows his satisfaction, she smiles in appreciation. When Celie does not reposed immediately to any of his demands he threatens her, so in order to stay out of harms way she becomes his servant and sexual slave even through she does not show any satisfaction in his sexual performance.

Albert her husband was mean, insulting and treated her as if she was less then human. Although there were no major roles for whites in the film, Celie in a sense still portrayed a mammy-servant.  She was mistreated and abused by her husband until near the end of the film, when she was transformed by the friendship of her husband's lover, who helped her find self-respect, self-esteem, and the strength and courage to change her life.

Rex Reed the white critic hailed it as a noble compelling, powerfully acted, magnificently photographed, and richly textured film of heart-rending impact.  Black writer Earl Caldwell said that black men "saw red" over the film.

    Bogle points out that the critics clearly had their points.  Despite the decently defined performance of Danny Glover. Albert seems little more than the familiar black brute, violent and oversexed.  He also points out that the mammy has re-surfaced not as servant to her white master but to her husband.

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In the Black community the reactions were heatedly mixed.  The NAACP protested against the film depiction of the Black male character.[1] Although this film had many stereotypical images of both African American men and women.  The critics focused on the men.  This film showcased some of the greatest talents of African American women of that era, as well as some of the same old stereotypes.  Our friend Oprah Winfrey makes her debut as the hefty Sofia, a character precariously close to the mammy of the old days (fat, tough desexed and overbearing to her husband.) When Sofia's husband went to Celia for advice for handling his wife, Celie told him, to beat her because Sofia was too controlling.

     After being nominated for an Oscar for her role as Celie in the "The Color Purple", Goldberg became one of the most sort after African American Actresses of the early 80's and one of the highest paid.  Yet few stars have been as thoroughly and embarrassingly trashed time and again in their feature films, as is Goldberg.   She was our new modern day mammy.  The very idea of Whoopi Goldberg as a romantic film personality was unacceptable to certain audiences.  Moreover, in such films as "Jumpin Jack Flash and Fatal Beauty Whoopi is so unattractively and absurdly dressed in oversized clothes or sneakers that she seemed defeminized.  The filmmakers seemed to view her as an asexual creature from another universe.

    The African-American audience had turned hostile towards Goldberg, no doubt intuitively aware that here was a rich talent being wasted.  Of course she, not the industry, was blamed for that waste that treated her with such contempt.  By 1988, Hollywood appeared to have Goldberg where it wanted: playing a maid in Clara's heart. .[2]  Serving as a domestic from Jamaica, who was raped by her own son.  In the white family she worked for, -- she became attached to their son, (as all mammy's do), unfortunately again, the script desexed her character, presenting the black woman once again as a mighty nurturer -- an updated mammy – without a real life of her own. Since the child's parents seem more concerned about their social life and careers, Clara took on the role as cook and housekeeper. Since the boy always went wherever she went, her friends referred to him as "Clara Boy"

 Bell Hooks in her book on "Black Looks" says, "Contemporary films continue to place black women in two categories, mammy or slut, and occasionally a combination of the two." In effect, these images implied that the history and identity of African-American women in American society was both insignificant and minimal. The implication is that this is all that black women can do, this is what they are good at.  To say the least, these black images created by white men, and dispersed by the movies were sorely lacking in veracity.

    Historically speaking, the culture definers were male and white.

By Hollywood I mean the film industry….Hollywood is a Fake Town, the great city of make believe.  Here are the culture-makers of our society, many of which are the most uncultured of men.  Here are the true head shrinkers and brainwashes of America…..Hollywood has been responsible. More than any other institution, past or present, for creating the image of black inferiority.  It created the lying, stealing, childlike, eye-ball rolling, feet-shuffling, sex obsessed, teeth-showing, dice-shooting black male and told the world this was the real Negro in the U.S.A…..The men of Fake-town have brainwashed and the entire world with the brush of white supremacy….I accuse Hollywood of being the most anti-Negro influence in this nation in the 20^th century.[3]

 

    Why then would Hollywood present such inadequate image of African-American women?  One reason is that Hollywood was shaped by many elements.  Primarily it was controlled by white men in a male dominated society, and their decision was determined by money, power and attitudes.

    The perceptions and attitudes about African-American women emanated from racial and sexual myths, which existed long before feature films came into existence.

    After slavery, it was a clever and necessary part of the general strategy of whites to reinforce and perpetrate the inferiority and sub-human image of blacks to insure and instill profound revulsion against blacks.

    This was necessary in order to qualify and get general support for programs and issues that often damaged whites as well as blacks, and offended every American perception of equality and liberty.  The disfranchisement of blacks, their exclusion from equal education and occupational opportunity, their social and residential segregation, the violence perpetrated on them by the forces of law and lawlessness alike, not to mention slavery, could never have been enforced without implanting deep in the sub-rational emotions of whites, the conviction that blacks were a different and inferior group of beings, to be feared and rejected, as well as used by the white community.

    The psychological and consequently, the social consequences of the propaganda of the print media, coupled with graphic visual stimuli of the movie medium reinforced and perpetrated the myth of skin-color superiority or conversely, skin-color inferiority.  On one hand, you could look in the mirror and depending on pigmentation, either love yourself or loathe yourself.

    Today I am not fully convinced that I am a Negro because I have traits of other races.  I do not have thick lips or kinky hair, and my skin color is white.  Every aspect of living, being, thinking and acting or reacting was affected

 

    My dad always acted inferior.  As I grew older I noticed that when my dad was in the presence of white he always acted inferior, and agreed with what every they would say.[4]

 

The question of identity, then, was and is a crucial issue in American society.  It shapes attitudes, which determine how we see ourselves and how others view us.

     This question of identity has impacted adversely on blacks throughout their history in America. Because of their portrayal by the media, they have always been viewed negatively, by each group that comes to America.  Newcomers adopt, in large measure, their attitude from the movie imported to their country and the orientation that they receive from other non-black groups.

    Blacks as well as whites were caught up in and mesmerized by the film medium. They endured many indignities and humiliation for the privilege of sitting in isolated sections of movie house to view these earlier films.

African Americans attended the movies because it was entertaining despite the antics of Stephin-Fetchit, Mantan Moreland, Hattie McDaniel and other shiftless blacks that appeared in picture after picture.  African-Americans did realize from viewing these films that they did not fit the standard of beauty dictated by the film industry.  Lena, Horne, who could have passed for white, was the only black deemed to be beautiful.  They learned early that blacks were not beautiful until they approximated the features and pigmentation of whites.

    We then see that film imposes familiar human forms, events, and places upon the viewer on a larger than life scale.  The mixture of realism and magnitude affects the viewer's imagination and perception.  The degree of the film's influence upon the viewer is subjective.  What is crucial in understanding of that influence is the interplay between the film audience and the psychological/emotional activity, which is demanded by the viewing process.  The film will most likely ignite certain responses rooted in the viewer's cultural background and system of values.  The viewer will thus agree with, identify with or reject the images viewed on film.  Conversely, film feeds into the needs and desires of those in power by introducing their concept of how African-Americans should be viewed by the larger society.  The film's message due to this illusion of realism is far more effective than thousands of words in print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattos, mammies and Bucks. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1992

[2] Bogal

[3] Ellison, Ralph. Shadow Act. New York:: Random House, 1964

[4] Ellison

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[i] Donald Bogle. (1992) Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies & Bucks New York: The Continuum Publishing Co. p. 10

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