From ‘Menace II Society’ to ‘Poetic Justice’: Was 1993 the golden age of black movies?
ANALYSIS - Just twenty of year ago, the multiplexes gave a glimpse of a very different picture of black Hollywood...
Was 1993 the golden age of black film?
Some black movie buffs are partial to the blaxploitation era, and certainly at no time has Hollywood ever put out more films with black audiences in mind. But those films by and large suffered from problematic stereotyping, sexism and in some cases embarrassingly poor craftsmanship.
In that era’s wake, only Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor emerged as consistently bankable African-American superstars. But in the late 80s that began to change. A wave of young black directors, including Lee, Singleton, Robert Townsend, Julie Dash, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Carl Franklin (just to name a few), began to take Hollywood by storm.
This so-called “new” black Hollywood also included soon-to-be household-name stars like Wesley Snipes, Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett.
The surprising financial success of urban dramas like Boyz n the Hood and New Jack City (both 1991) seemed to get studio executives to open their eyes to a largely overlooked constituency. What followed was a decade of fairly diverse representations of black life from the Cosby-esque affluence of Soul Food to the politically-incorrect antics of the hoodlums in Friday.
1993 saw not only Will Smith’s film debut (in the otherwise forgettable Whoopi Goldberg comedy Made in America) but it also was a year in which Snipes and Washington both landed two films each among the years top 20 box office earners, and Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett were both nominated for leading actor Oscars for What’s Love Got to Do With It (the first time black actors achieved that feat since 1972).
The beginning of the end of mainstream black film.
Somehow, as the century turned, the so-called black film seemed to grow more ghettoized and crossover success (i.e. attendance from white audiences) became scarce.
For every Barbershop success story there were about a dozen B*A*P*S and Booty Calls, and while those films have their staunch defenders, they clearly signaled a fragmentation of the movie-going public.
As African-American stars began to land prominent lead and supporting roles in prestige pictures, the quality of films for us/by us seemed to decline.
It was in this vacuum that Tyler Perry emerged and ultimately capitalized. He wisely parlayed his success on the black theater circuit into a loyal film fanbase which has continued to line his pockets despite widespread critical derision (and more recently, declining box office performance).
