In “Capitalizing on Race: White Producers of All-Black Cinema,” Gerald R. Butters, Jr. explores the contributions of five white-owned production companies and utilizes their respective repertoires to discuss portrayals of the black community. His analysis asks if it is possible to consider films produced by white companies as valid or authentic forms of black cultural production.
Butters begins by discussing four films produced by Historical Feature Films (HFF), including A Natural Born Shooter (1915), Money Talks in Darktown (1915), Aladdin Jones (1915), and Two Knights of Vaudeville (1916). Butters argues these films reproduced derogatory stereotypes, including images of the black matriarchal figure as domineering, portrayals of black men as sites of sexual excess and stupidity, and the dismissal of black relationships and intimacies in uncritical replications of internalized racism and colorism within the black community. Butters then moves into an analysis of the The Ebony Film Corporation (EFC) who produced 21 comedic films, including A Black Sherlock Holmes, The Janitor, Spooks, and He Ran for Mayor. These films were largely marketed to white audiences and boasted “authentic” black comedy via its employment of black actors. Luther J. Pollard, a black man who was part of the management staff, argued that The Ebony Film Corporation did not utilize stereotypes. Butters argues that this was not necessarily the case and that, in fact, many problematic images which associated black people with primitivism were present. That said, EFC also produced films with black actors in lead roles. EFC films were praised by white audiences but faced criticism from the African American community, especially after they purchased films produced by HFF. The showing of HFF films under the EFC banner eventually caused a boycott of all EFC films and forced the company to fold. Butters closes this section by discussing The Harris Dickson Company which produced films like the The Custard Nine (1921) that heavily exploited racist stereotypes in its depictions of black life.
To contrast this behavior, Butters discusses the films produced by Reol Productions and The Colored Players Film Corporation. These companies were both headed by European Jews and employed black acting groups – most notably the Lafayette Players of New York. Roel Productions was a well-funded and well-marketed endeavor, primarily due to its white ownership, and represented a considerable rival to black-owned companies. Their films spanned several genres, including a set of documentaries about Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute. Some films, like The Sport of Gods address the unlawful imprisonment of black men and The Great Migration, other films addressed social anxieties around passing and inter-racial marriage. Other films, including The Secret Sorrow, utilized racial pride and uplift in their depictions of black people in positions of upward mobility. Roel boasted “authentic” depictions of black life because it drew heavily on black-authored material. Butter then discusses The Colored Players Film Corporation which, for the most part, produced melodramas. Butters notes that the impact of this genre on representations of black issues can potentially render systemic injustices as simply personal obstacles (116). Their emphasis on depictions of middle-class, upwardly mobile black families (couched in heteropatriarchy) was deeply invested in respectability politics and many films criticized alcoholism, gambling, and violations of prohibition. Other films such as The Scar of Shame tried to address classism within the black community.
Ultimately, Butters refuses a simple rendering of white ownership of companies producing race films. Instead he examines the possibilities and limitations of films created in this context and how the deployment of race fluctuated between companies
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In “Mediating Black Modernity: The Influence of Race Press on Race Films,” Anna Everett connects the socio-political commentary within black print culture to advertisements for race films and speculates on the influence of black print culture on how black audiences may have interpreted the political projects of race films from 1890 to the 1910s. Everett’s piece centers largely on the writings of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells and a critical reading of advertisements disseminated by Ebony Pictures in conjunction with A Natural Born Shooter. She contends the advertisement utilizes racist depictions of black bodies and essentializes black affect (in this case, in the form of humor) which she argues is evidence for Ebony’s brand of “cine-minstrelsy” (144). She juxtaposes this with advertisements disseminated for Micheaux’s The Symbol of the Unconquered which strategically utilized language to refute over simplified versions of black humanity. The films’ content which also depicted white-on-black violence in the North and South (thereby refuting the dichotomy of the progressive North and the “backwards” South.) Everett argues Micheaux utilized film making as a political practice which was connected to the political writing of anti-lynching activists such as Wells. Everett also suggests Micheaux’s intertextuality was present between Wells’ writing and the content of the film.
This is such an interesting and difficult question. We really struggled with it when we were trying to figure out what counted as a “race film” for the purposes of our database. Ultimately, we left out the Historical Feature Films — since there was such an outcry against them within the African American community — but left in the Ebony films, since, as Jacqueline Stewart and others have argued, there’s some evidence that African American audiences did go to them and watched them with a sort of double-consciousness.