Cinema and the God-given Right to Play

Cinema and the God-Given Right to Play

During the great migration of African Americans into major southern cities, Black people were beginning to form their collective, urban cultural identity. Much of this identity was associated with how people spent their leisure time, and much of this leisure time was centred around the church and religious communities. But the African American community was split between the middle- and working classes, which had slightly varying social and cultural nuances. Working-class Americans rejected middle-class ideas of appropriate behaviour and vice-versa. This was sometimes a contentious dynamic in church settings as people had different and varying expectations of one another. It was only through these cross-class leisure venues that a collective identity was formed, whereby ‘rowdy, sensuous public amusements’ were tolerated by the middle-class and the desires for excitement, innovations, and modern free living sought by the working class.

     The church was often the venue in which race film was exhibited, in part because churches needed funding in order to be built, in order to state the permanence of the Black community in these locations. This gave rise to a new type of pastor: ministers who would travel from church to church exhibiting religious and race films in Black churches around the country. This was a sort of quasi-capitalist-religious work and the exhibitors would often refer to themselves as ‘Professors’. While the motives of some were more sincere than others, these exhibitors were key to the spread of these films.

     With regards to the title, the ‘God-given right to play’ referred the the notion that African Americans were claiming their lives as free people, and as free people claiming their ‘God-given’ leisure time, “collectively forging a culture of freedom”.