Elvis Mitchell’s 2022 documentary, “Is that Black Enough for You?!?”, is a personal film essay that looks at the history and legacy of African American cinema of the 1970s and includes recent interviews with a wide assortment of African American artists including Margaret Avery, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Dee Williams and Zendaya. While not perfect, it is important in terms of analyzing some attitudes and contentious issues that should be addressed as part of the US dialogue on race and racism, and that’s apparent from the very beginning.

Starting with flashes of movie posters from “Black Narcissus” (1947), “The Black Pirate” (1926), “The Black Pirates” (1954), “Black Beauty” (1946), “The Black Moon” (1934) and “Black Widow” (1954), Mitchell narrates unseen, “For me the most exciting period in the history of film is when movies with the word ‘black’ in the title went from this…to this,” meaning “The Black Gestapo” (1975),  “Black Samson” (1974),  “Black Shampoo” (1976) and “The Black Six” (1974). He continues by explaining, “My excitement was not just because there was finally truth in advertising” but also because he finally got to see “a procession of Black talent.”

The problem here is, of course, that there is more than one meaning to the word “black.” Previously, in the US the word “Negro” had been used, but there was a shift in usage that can be traced with the US Census in a Pew Research Center article. The US Census would have been reactive to changes within the US society as opposed to initiating the change. 

• Race and the Census: The “Negro” Controversy (2010)

• A Debate Over Identity and Race Asks, Are African-Americans ‘Black’ or ‘black’? (26 June 2020)

Ferris State University asks and answers, “When did the word Negro become socially unacceptable?” (October 2010). 

It started its decline in 1966 and was totally uncouth by the mid-1980s. The turning point came when Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase black power at a 1966 rally in Mississippi. Until then, Negro was how most black Americans described themselves. But in Carmichael’s speeches and in his landmark 1967 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, he persuasively argued that the term implied black inferiority. Among black activists, Negro soon became shorthand for a member of the establishment. Prominent black publications like Ebony switched from Negro to black at the end of the decade, and the masses soon followed. According to a 1968 Newsweek poll, more than two-thirds of black Americans still preferred Negro, but black had become the majority preference by 1974. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times abandoned Negro in the 1970s, and by the mid-1980s, even the most hidebound institutions, like the U.S. Supreme Court, had largely stopped using Negro.

But here’s where the difficulty lies. The 64-year-old film critic Elvis Mitchell (born 6 December 1958) was alive during this change. Los Angelenos might be familiar with Mitchell. He has written for the LA Weekly and was the curator for LACMA’s new film series Film Independent in 2011. He is currently a film scholar and lecturer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 

Some of Mitchell’s choices seem to be humorous. Black Beauty was a horse and the term “Black Widow” references first a specific spider which is, like the horse, black in color, and secondly a woman who acts like the Black Widow spider by killing males of the same species. A Black Moon is a specific moon phase.

But for people, Merriam-Webster notes how “black” can be used. 

 

There are various explanations for the “black” Irish, but there are other people who are identified as “black.”

• Who were the Black Irish, and what is their story?

• The Black Irish 

What’s important is that the term “black” was used to describe people who were not necessarily from SubSaharan Africa. That was true centuries ago when Vikings of Mongolian descent were called “black-skinned” (Geirmund Heljarskinn, 850 to 905 AD). In the films Mitchell references seem to use the adjective “black” to mean the color of the hair. In “The Black Pirate,” the lead, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. had dark hair as did Anthony Dexter, the lead in “The Black Pirates.”

Yet there are other problems, when Mitchell talks about ethnic groups. He decries the darkened face Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din and Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier as Othello. The 1939 American adventure film (RKO Radio Pictures) starred Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It was loosely based on Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 poem, “Gunga Din.” Kipling’s poem is set in British India and the titular character is an Asian Indian water carrier.  The film is also set in India (the Northwest Frontier).

The cinematic Gunga Din is an Asian Indian man who serves as a water carrier and wants to become a British solider. Most importantly, he is loyal to the end.  But this Gunga Din is not Black as in African American or SubSaharan African. He is a low caste native Asian Indian. The actor who played him, Jaffe was a minority, born to Russian Jewish parents in New York. By KKK standards, he was not White. 

In Kipling’s poem, Gunga Din is described as:

Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.

Gunga Din is a “limping lump o’brick-dust” and a “squidgy-nosed old idol.”  Gunga Din was black and Asian Indian like Little Black Sambo.

Mitchell also decries the blackface of Laurence Olivier (1965) and Orson Welles (1951), but Othello first described as  “the Moor” and “brave Moor.”  According to National Geographic (12 December 2019), “‘Moor” came to mean anyone who a Muslim or  had dark skin.” There were occasional attempts to deferential between “blackamoors” and “White Moors.” But what would Shakespeare, having never been to Spain or any part of Africa know of such distinctions?

According to Merriam-Webster a Moor is “one of the Arab and Berber conquerors of Spain” or “Berber.” A Berber is, “a member of any of various peoples in Northern Africa West of Tripoli” or “a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family comprising languages spoken by various peoples of Northern Africa and the Sahara (such as the Tuaregs and the Kabyles).” 

• Who Were the Moors? 

• The Moors Community, a story

In Shakespeare Othello is described as “an old black ram” who is “topping your white ewe.”  But nothing really tells us if Shakespeare differentiated between the blackamoors and the White Moors or even that the Muslim Turks (the enemies) and the Moors were so drastically different in skin color.

Further into the film, when Mitchell begins to describe “Shaft,” you should feel a confusing dissonance. 

Of Shaft, Mitchell says,  “The newness and audacity of a camera following a Black man in a leather coat through Manhattan, a private eye, dressed like a combination or a revolutionary and director Gordon Parks as the sizzle of the hi-hat cranked up the audience . The camera wasn’t spying on the star. It was staring at him. This combination forever altered the course of movies, right down to coming from a studio that was long known for delivering product about an ideal America that framed straight hair and blue eyes as the standard of beauty.”

The example given of straight hair and blue eyes is a young Frank Sinatra from when he played a sailor in the MGM 1945 musical “Anchors Aweigh.”  Sinatra was 30 at the time of the film and still had a full head of dark curly hair, held down by plenty of slick product. He would eventually lose that crown and replace it with toupees that made his hair look straight. Sinatra, unlike Tony Bennett (born 3 August 1926 Anthony Benedetto) or Dean Martin (born 7 June 1917 Dino Crocetti), kept his Italian surname. 

Remember the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 attempted to restrict migration of people from Eastern and Southern Europe (as well as from non-European countries such as Japan). Italian Americans were also the targets of lynchings such as in New Orleans in 1891, in Tallulah, Louisiana in 1899, Tampa in 1910 and in Boston in 1920. 

• New Orleans to apologize for lynching of 11 Italians in 1891, among worst in American history (1 April 2019)

• 128 years later, New Orleans is apologizing for lynching 11 Italians (1 April 2019)

• The New Orleans Massacre in 1891, when Sicilians became ʻwhiteʼ (12 February 2021)

According to the Sicilian Post article, this lynching is what brought about the proclamation of Columbus Day by then-president Benjamin Harrison.

• FIVE ITALIANS LYNCHED; Shooting of a Louisiana Doctor Avenged by Many Citizens. HE WAS SHOT IN THE STREET Trouble Caused by the Physician Killing a Goat Belonging to One of the Italians.

In public schools, usually the Boston 1920 trial and deaths of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are covered. The two were suspected of murder, but the guilty verdict and death penalties (by the electric chair) were likely heavily influenced by the anti-Italianism, anti-immigrant and anti-Anarchist bias. Sacco was from Southern Italy (Torremaggiore in the Province of Foggia) and Vanzetti from Villafalletto in the Province of Cuneo which is in Northern Italy. The Italians lynched in New Orelans, Tallulah and in Tampa were all identified as Sicilian. 

Sinatra’s lineage comes from the North (mother) and the South (father). He was raised Roman Catholic. One wonders why Mitchell decided to use Sinatra as an example when for “Anchors Aweigh” he could have chosen Gene Kelly. Kelly had dark, straight hair, but like Sinatra, he had been raised Catholic. He was of Irish and German heritage. Irish Catholics had a rough greeting in the US where there was anti-Irish sentiment. 

This made me wonder when people in the US began to broaden the definition of “Whiteness” so that it included more than the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). To be clear, Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics and Catholics in general were targets of the KKK. There people, like White-passing Jews were not White enough.

• The Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Catholic School Bills of Washington and Oregon (Fall 2006)

• When America Hated Catholics: In the late 19th century, statesmen feared that Catholic immigrants were less than civilized (and less than white). (23 September 2015)

• Catholic response to the Ku Klux Klan in the Midwest, 1921-1928

• MADE MEN: THE WHITENING OF ITALIAN-AMERICANS 1950-1975

An interesting note about MGM. It also produced two films with a predominately African American cast. The first was in 1929: “Hallelujah.” This was director King Vidor’s first talkie and he was nominated for Best Director Oscar. Warner Bros. currently owns the rights to the film and warns that it is a product of its time, reflecting many stereotypes. In 1946, there was “Cabin in the Sky,” which was based on a 1940 Broadway musical and starred Lena Horne. Directed by Vincent Minelli, who was part Sicilian (paternal grandfather), the film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song (“Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe”). The film rights is currently owned by Warner.

• Racial Ambiguity in the Age of Integrationism: Lena Horne

But was Horne “Black enough”? According to the above link:

Her complicated sense of identity was aggravated by the experiences she had in the entertainment industry, where she was shunned by some venues because they didn’t think her style was Black enough, and who often encouraged her to pass as a Latina woman, an option she fiercely rejected.

The Atlantic, in “The Red-Baiting of Lena Horne” (27 August 2015) notes: 

From the beginning, Horne was troubled by her inability to fit in anywhere. She refused to play the maid and prostitute roles usually reserved for black actresses of her time, which narrowed her prospects in Hollywood. At the same time, many black artists accused her of using her lighter skin to “pass.” Horne herself was ambivalent about her looks. “I came from one of the First Families of Brooklyn,” she once said, “yet it was the rape of slave women by their masters which accounted for our white blood, which, in turn, made us Negro ‘society.’”

What Mitchell does is point out is that there were many independent films by and for African Americans. This documentary gives us an idea of how one man was influenced by these independent films and Mitchell asks us to consider how those films and others influenced US films in general.

At the same time, this Mitchell’s documentary came out, there were two things happening at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. The first was a groundbreaking exhibition on Black cinema: “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.” The second was a series on Chinese American films, curated by my acquaintance, Arthur Dong during November of 2022. 

All three remind film lovers and film historians that we need to take a better look at independent films of minorities in order to accurately evaluate the flows and influences of films on other films. For Asian Americans, Dong has done an amazing job for Chinese Americans, but the first API group in what is now the United States, was the Filipinos. The Philippines was also, after all, a US territory for several years (1898-1946), during which it was also briefly (1941-1945) under control of Imperial Japan during World War II.

Furthermore, for the largest minority in the United States and the culture which began the colonization of the Southwest and Florida, the Mexican Americans and by extension, Latinos, would likely have had some impact on Hollywood as well. I know from talks and the LACMA exhibition on Guillermo del Toro that he was heavily influence by Mexican films and he has brought those influences to Hollywood.

In the past, Hollywood has included Latino/Hispanic filmmakers  and actors since the beginning.

• 10 Groundbreaking Hispanic Filmmakers who Cut their Own Path in Hollywood (15 September 2021)
• Latino Legends Helped Pave the Way in Hollywood, But the Road Is Still Rocky (15 September 2022)

As I have noted previously, particularly in my evaluation of representation at the Golden Globes and the Oscars, Latinos/Hispanics are under represented. However, living in California, a state which owes its name to a Spanish novel and has a long history of Spanish cultural influences, one would expect Hollywood to do better. 

“Is that Black Enough for You?!” reminds us that in past decades ethnic and racial enclaves were the audience for independent films and some of those films influenced the way films were made for general audiences. The history that we learn in schools about cinema largely ignored this kind of independent films, but exhibitions such as “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” and films like “Is that Black Enough for You?!” and films series like Dong’s are helping cinemaphiles to rediscover these histories. That means we live at an exciting time, when the history of cinema is being rewritten before our eyes and this work has just begun. 

The documentary, “Is that Black Enough for You?!” takes is name from a recurring line in the 1970 film “Cotton Comes to Harlem.” The action comedy thriller was co-written and directed by Ossie Davis (based on a Chester Himes’ crime novel of the same name. The documentary “Is that Black Enough for You?”  premiered at the New York Film Festival on 9 October 2022 and released for streaming on Netflix on 11 November 2022. That’s a few days before Columbus Day, or what now many celebrate as Indigenous Peoples Day. The film isn’t perfect, but it’s the kind of film that can start necessary conversations.