Enraged Over ‘Harlem’s’ Portrayal of Blacks

It is long overdue for black producers, directors, writers and actors to have equal opportunity in Hollywood. In the last few years there have been some outstanding films by African-American artists, particularly by Charles Burnett (“To Sleep With Anger”) and Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Do the Right Thing.” Black talent, like white talent, also has its share of clinkers, movies that go-for-the-gold ignoring any responsibility to what message is going out to the audience--white, black, male, female, old or young.

I have read reviews of “A Rage in Harlem” (including The Times, May 3) praising the work as a delightful cartoon. Get real! If white people produced and directed this movie, they’d be hung out to dry--and rightfully.

Film critic Jack Mathews (on A&E; cable) said the movie represents “high lives in the Harlem tradition.” He was talking with the film’s co-star Gregory Hines, who readily agreed: “We’re getting a chance to tell our stories.”

Is anybody home? What stories are being told of life in Harlem in the ‘50s? A black wimp, a black pimp, blacks dancin’, knifin’, killin’ and sexin’--ain’t the “high lives in the Harlem tradition” fun!

Gregory Hines, who lived in Harlem in the ‘50s, didn’t lay a glove on the white Mathews’ comments, but he had to know “Rage” has nothing to do with the real courageous and mundane struggles of a culturally rich people in an economically deprived community that refused to disappear. But then again, “A Rage in Harlem” has little to do with Harlem. It wasn’t even shot there. They made the movie in Cincinnati.

Many years ago, Norman Mailer and Lorraine Hansberry exchanged letters in the Village Voice with Hansberry advocating total integration and Mailer warning, “Don’t integrate into our burning house.” Unfortunately, Mailer’s words are beginning to bear bitter fruit in some recent black films.

“New Jack City” shows that blacks can be as nasty, violent and corrupt as white people--all in the genre of a tired B-movie gangster flick--but, what the heck, it has already grossed more than $40 million, so that justifies the promulgation of new, old-black stereotypes, right? Wrong.

At some point we better start caring about what messages we’re sending out to our kids. I mean we whites and blacks and browns and yellows and reds. Movies are the fantasies that often shape our realities. It’s time to stop, look and listen . . . not appeal to the lowest common denominator and justify it because of the grosses. Dollar grosses can also lead to gross human behavior.

The sad thing is that “A Rage in Harlem” isn’t even a good piece of distortion unless of course you prefer seeing black people behave like a Saturday-morning cartoon. If that’s your druthers, then you’ll enjoy the movie falling on its farcical face as two cops do a bad Amos ‘n’ Andy, a talented leading actor does a heavy-handed vestal virgin and the black-on-black bad guys open the movie with a switchblade.

Director Bill Duke and co-producer Forest Whitaker have put together a film of stereotypical blacks. It is based on the novel by Chester Himes, but the difference between the book and the screenplay is enormous. It’s a racist alchemy that offers violence instead of veracity, prurience replacing sexuality and buffoonery presented as black behavior.

If this is the power black filmmakers have been gallantly fighting for, I shrink in the face of the embarrassing accomplishment. I offer a caution to Duke, Whitaker and Hines, talented and respected black talent: The greatest danger is not the quality of power but the illusion of it.

My present concern is not with a bad movie or two (from white or black) but rather the possible effect such pieces of bigoted tastelessness can have on our already polarized society and particularly on our teens. Isn’t anyone reading the papers, watching the news on TV? Isn’t everyone horrified as kids continue to maim, firebomb and kill each other? Don’t filmmakers realize that the behavior of characters in the movies who so flippantly and humorously kill one another is of great influence on our kids? Why is it I keep hearing Marvin Gaye singing, “What about the children?”

I am disgusted by the insane violence of “Tango & Cash,” “Lethal Weapon 2” et al. And I am sadly disappointed that some black filmmakers have, indeed, integrated into our burning house. But perhaps I was romantic about the transforming abilities of Afro Americans. I had the naive hope that they would turn things around from the greed, sexism and violence to entertaining and caring pieces of work. Alas and too much lack, Candide is dying.

Why is it I keep hearing Marvin Gaye sing, “Makes me wanna holler the way they do my life”?