Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey

"I started imparting wisdom about men--wisdom gathered from working more than half a century on one concept: how to be a man.  I also spent countless hours talking to my friends, all of whom are men.  They are athletes, movie and television stars, insurance brokers and bankers, guys who drive trucks, guys who coach basketball teams, ministers and deacons, Boy Scout leaders, store managers, ex-cons, inmates, and yes, even hustlers. And one simple thing is true about each of us: we are very simple people and all basically think in a similar way."

from ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A MAN by Steve Harvey

     Sunday afternoon I went to see Think Like a Man, which is executive produced by Steve Harvey and based on his book, with my Mom Faith Ringgold and my sister Barbara Wallace.  Rarely does it happen since I live in Englewood that we decide to go to the movies. My mother and I don't drive and my Dad has given up going to the movies apparently.  So the only way it can happen is if my sister Barbara decides to come out and drive us.  Miracle of miracles on this Sunday Barbara did just that.
What we really wanted to see was the documentary Bully because Mom has initiated a project on bullying for her children's art competition for her Anyone Can Fly Foundation this year.  She has written a number of songs about bullies, which she has shared on facebook, on twitter and with the children who are the target population of the foundations activities--the Thurgood Marshall Academy run by principal Dawn de Costa, an artist herself, and a key player currently in the foundation's activities with public school children in Harlem and the visual arts.  However, Bully, which is a limited release documentary, wasn't playing in New Jersey any closer than Montclair which is a major haul.
   I suggested instead that we see Think Like a Man in particular because it has occupied the number one spot in box office receipts for a number of weeks.  This is the first time such a thing has happened with a black film, by which I mean a film written and produced by black folk and acted in mostly by black performers.  It's been a difficult and long haul to get to this place I think because the problem of occupying the number one spot at the box office is that a great many whites must decide to deliberately go to the theatre with the understanding that there will also be significant numbers of blacks in attendance, and everybody can sit wherever they wish.

   It has been my observation that the prospect of occupying a movie theatre with a significant number of blacks can be (and always has been) pretty much enough to keep white audiences away from the movie theatre.  Others might also suggest that whites are not terribly eager to go to the movies to watch a predominantly black cast perform but I have never bought that perspective for the following reasons: whites seem perfectly willing to travel halfway across the country and lay down major cash to get to Broadway (a pain in the butt on the best of days) to thoroughly enjoy black cast musicals and dramas.

    At the last show I was honored to attend (I sat maybe six rows from the back of the house high up enough to give me a nose bleed but I had my Dad's binoculars with me), Porgy and Bess (high up on the bucket list) not only were there beaucoup white folks in attendance but white children as well.  I sat next to a little girl who could not have been more than 5 and her behavior was flawless even when the action grew slightly turgid and the music rather complicated and high brow (the music was fabulous by the way--can't wait to get the album).  And she wasn't the only perfectly behaved child in the house. 

    White folks definitely go to black shows perhaps not in astronomical numbers I will grant (that is to say a black show still isn't a rock solid investment on Broadway) and maybe some portion of the audiences who bankroll Broadway might prefer in their heart of hearts to view a predominantly white cast production (with no racial theme) but the point is that a black cast is not a deal breaking disincentive for enough people to prevent there from being at least two or three black cast shows running on Broadway pretty much all the time these days.

Not the way it was when I was growing up.  I will never forget how the media tried to killed the Wiz even after it was drawing standing room only crowds back when I was a shortie.

    But not a single black show on Broadway can reach even an opening night without the possibility of attracting a significant portion of the caliber of white audiences (and black but we are only 20% of the pop and given to poverty and unemployment besides) who can consider paying $200 for an orchestra seat and/or actually traveling distance (meaning airfare), maybe even putting up at a hotel--in other words folks who vacation in New York City (something I have never understood given that I was born and raised in NYC except that now that I live in New Jersey, I too have joined the herd albeit via NJ transit. )

   In any case, it seems as though Think Like a Man has solved the problem of bringing black and white movie audiences peacefully together without the seat assignments I suspect Broadway attendees find somewhat comforting.

     I reasoned therefore that the audience would be largely integrated racially, which is a rarity in movie theatres (especially outside of NYC) in itself for a black film and that there was something about this film which raised the comfort level of multi-ethnic audiences being together.  It had to be content based. I knew it wouldn't have a racial focus.  I knew that it had to have attributes which drew together the interests of black and white audiences, much as The Help did, except this was by all indications a romantic comedy, and therefore a feel good movie--definitely a plus.

    Think Like a Man deserves to be paid close attention, especially by somebody like me--fascinated by the history and the impact of the cinema on audiences as indicated by my determination to complete a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at NYU in 1999, and to continue to write about and follow film production worldwide despite the overwhelming financial discouragements of doing so.

     Nonetheless I might not have pushed the family to attend if I hadn't had a specific goal in mind.  At the age of 60 I need specific goals for my every move and rarely act upon whimsy.  I am not your typical audience member because entertainment is not on my bucket list.  I am entertained enough by enlightenment and the enhancement of the knowledge I have already built in this and other fields.  The spiritual and philosophical pay off of expertise tends to increase with time.

    Witness all these blogs I've got (I know you've never read any of them but curiously that doesn't seem to matter so much anymore) every one of which focuses upon visual culture, particularly of the black variety.

    So I had a clear goal in going to see this film and dragging family with me.

Since I've agreed to write a critical introduction for a black feminist anthology on the work of Tyler Perry, I immediately realized the success of Think Like a Man as an outcome of the successful movement of black films spearheaded by the output of Tyler Perry in the last decade, but by no means exclusive to the films of Tyler Perry.

These films tend to focus on relationships between men and women--usually very attractive men and women of a certain age (roughly twenties to thirties)--their snags and successes.  They always feature a certain amount of soul music, sometimes significant quantities of gospel and perhaps even scenes regarding church attendance or (Christian) religious propaganda gently applied. At the same time, an important collateral objective of this movement is to figure out how to reinvent the formula--which largely appeals to black audiences--in a manner that will propel it into the interests of a mainstream audience composed largely of young and middle aged whites who make up the bulk of film theatre attendance.

     Nobody doubts or laments the success of these films via streaming and video but the financial bottom line (in the first year) expands exponentially if one can add to it large numbers of the mainstream in box offices during weekends close to the opening.  In order for this to happen, the film needs wide release on the opening weekend.

Another benefit perhaps is the elusive foreign and world distribution, which continues to be an obstacle for black films thus far, or so the critics may say.  I am not sure whether this is actually true or will continue to be true much longer because of how people consume films. The longevity of the broad interest of people in films has changed so much.  Also, it seems to me two huge film markets are constructed and composed by the film professionals of a number of nations not clearly white--India, China and Japan, to name the ones I follow regularly.

Because of the technology, which I assume is also changing in similar ways although maybe not at the same rate in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, what we choose to watch and when we choose to watch it is changing as well.

     For instance, in regard to Bully, with its rating and distribution issues (almost unavoidable in the documentary form unless the product is both frilly and irresistable like Madonna's Truth or Dare), and the fact that it is not a feature film with special visual effects (3D or other high concept qualities), I am thinking that in a few weeks, it is going to show up either on my apple television where I will probably have to pay something to see it but nobody will have to drive to Montclair.  This realization represents a disincentive in terms of getting me to a movie theatre.  I went to see The Artist in a movie theatre also in Edgewater precisely because I could see that the strategy for the release of the film had kept it out of the streaming and video market and that I could no longer wait.

    So the 3 of us went to see Think Like a Man and even though there were a lot of distractions of being with the family, there were advantages as well in that I got their opinions of the film at the same time as seeing it myself.  One of the things that struck me right away was that this was a film that was heavily tied to the circulation of an actual book in a very explicit way (Steve Harvey's Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man) like Precious, based on the novel by Sapphire, which was a critical success although not I think a success with black audiences because of its depressing content (only one woman in my family would even agree to see it either in the theatre or streaming), and The Help, which also had the depressing factor as well for some albeit not all black female audiences (it seemed to depend on how you regard the history of black women as domestics in the South).

When Viola Davis was nominated for Best Actress in The Help, whatever issues I had with the film were pretty much resolved.

In all three cases the prior success of the book served to underwrite the interest and prior knowledge of movie audiences.

   Nonetheless, I had never heard of Steve Harvey's book (on leave from the job right now so I don't pick up as much random flow as I ordinarily would teaching in Harlem) until I saw this film, which is very much all about the book.

 But I now have a copy of the book on my kindle, haven't read much but it strikes me as quite readable, maybe even slightly more so than the film, itself, which sometimes seemed a tad overly light weight--not that I wouldn't expect light weight right off the bat from any film that could occupy the number one position at the box office in the United States for weeks at a time.  When it comes to quality in films, the typically successful U.S. product is not ordinarily one of the top contenders. American film audiences seem to gravitate toward high concept films, with lots of action, special effects, and a high body count if possible, always regarded as infinitely preferable to psychological depth or complexity.

I've just started reading the Steve Harvey book, which is frankly and directly a self-help advise book for young women (black and white?) who are trying to get reluctant boyfriends to marry them--an inherently overly developed topic. But nonetheless I already think it is going to be very helpful in the process of analyzing the attractions of these new black films for audiences, especially in regard to the particular way in which black Christianity seems somehow woven into the mix.

The Help: Black Women and Hollywood

Viola Davis, the real star of The Help (2009)

    The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a bestseller and a big favorite with black women’s book clubs this year, is appearing as a film this month with Viola Davis (Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Doubt 2009), featured in the role of Abilene, the child-loving and conscientious black maid and nanny in 1960s Mississippi who risks life and limb to tell her story.  
      

If there were, in fact, lots of other opportunities for black women (of every hue) to strut their wares in the marketplace of American films, I would affirm The Help in its addition to the spectrum, providing a deeper resonance of an experience (working class black women) ordinarily underrepresented.  But black female acting talent rarely gets attention these days.
      
 In contrast to the stunning accomplishments of black men as actors and directors in the last decade, there continue to be only three variations on black female participation in American film. The more common of these is a “colorblind” role in which a black woman is cast in a part that would ordinarily be played by someone who was white, and in a story in which there is no attention to racial issues.  The second kind is the black cast film in which pretty much everybody is black, the most recent prominent examples of this type are the films of Tyler Perry.  The third kind of film (the category to which The Help belongs), which has always been the rarest, is one in which race is an issue or a problem, and the black woman plays a specifically black role, usually not the leading role.  
       
In the history of feature films, black maids have had a long and distinguished history: beginning significantly with Louise Beavers in Imitation of LIfe (nominated for an Academy Award as a Supporting Actress in 1934) and Hattie McDaniels in Gone With The Wind (Oscar Award Winner of Best Supporting Actress in 1939), both of whom had to struggle valiantly on set for every shred of dignity mustered on screen.
        In an era in which black female employment was primarily confined to domestic or acgricultural labor, black actresses were most frequently excluded from the silver screen entirely or forced to play maids regardless of abilities.  Thanks to interventions by NAACP President Walter White with the Hollywood studios, singer and actress Lena Horne never played a maid. Still her major appearances were confined to leads in two black cast films in 1943--Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Billie Holiday even played a maid in New Orleans (1947).
        Viola Davis, who is stunningly gifted, has had an important and promising career thus far on stage and on screen but The Help isn’t likely to bring her any closer to breaking with the other less talked about Hollywood convention of not featuring dark skinned black women in dramatic (romantic) leads. The role this part is positioned to play in Davis’s career is to show her capacity for serious dramatic roles. Would that the role weren’t so entirely sexless as well, but rarely are black maids in the movies allowed to be sexual. There were some notable exceptions in the heydays of the 60s and the 70s (such as Diahann Carroll in Claudine and Abbey Lincoln For Love of Ivy) but The Help isn’t one of them.
     Davis's role in Help (Disney 2011) fails to break with the past in any respect. Featured in a supporting role as a maid in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, Davis is dressed down without makeup, to age her by a decade or so, and in order to disguise her striking good looks and fabulous figure.  Her work as Abilene, and that of the equally stellar Octavia Spenser in the role of her best friend as the rambunctious Minny, pivots around the central part which goes to the white actress Emma Stone as the young and spunky Squeeter (Emma Stone), the recent Ole Miss grad.  Squeeter, who is home for the summer, has the bright idea of secretly interviewing black maids in town about their work conditions under their white mistresses, who also happen to be her best friends.
   The film significantly mutes the dangers inherent to this plan for the black women in Mississippi in 1962, where James Meridith had just broken segregation by registering for law school at Ole Miss, touching off a riot which required the intervention of President John Kennedy and  U.S. Marshalls, and in which two people were killed.
    At the very point at which the story begins, the cooperation of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council are making life in Jackson frequently harrowing for black people.  Hundreds of Freedom Riders, arrested in Jackson in 1961 for the temerity of integrating the waiting rooms in the bus terminal, were sentenced to hard time at the notorious Parchman Penitentiary.
     While events in The Help revolve around the sometimes humorous, sometimes ghastly interactions between the white women and their maids, the fatal shooting of NAACP Field Coordinator Medgar Evers on his front porch by the infamous Byron De La Beckwith (finally convicted in 1994) takes place off camera and in the distant background of the film.
    For white women in Mississippi in the 1960s it could be as dangerous to be perceived as sympathetic to blacks as it was for blacks to be perceived as hostile to whites.  Legal segregation was still in effect and crossing the boundaries could and did cost many people their lives.  Nonetheless by the early 60s, Mississippi was the scene of a major Civil Rights Movement initiative spearheaded by Bob Moses and SNCC that would culminate in the Freedom Summer of 1964.                
    Kathryn Stockett's fictional work casts this interaction between black maids and Skeeter as a minor yet significant chapter in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet no such chapter exists in the annals of the Movement, now extensively documented. Stockett, who is herself only 40 years old, may be reflecting unintentionally on more recent working conditions for domestic help in Jackson, Mississippi.  
    Stockett has a brother who has for many years employed a nanny for his children named Abilene, currently 60 years old, who complains that the character Stockett created is based on her (same name and they both have a gold tooth), causing her great personal discomfort and embarrassment.  Fully supported by her employers, she is suing the author for damages in the amount of $75,000, an seemingly intentionally symbolic amount given that  the book has already sold nearly half a million copies and is sure to sell even more upon the release of the film in August.   I can well imagine that it might be uncomfortable for Abilene Clark to consider the prospect of thousands of readers confusing her life as a 60 year old woman (I, myself, am 59) in 2010 as a cipher for that of the character Abilene, a total victim of the Jim Crow South half a century ago.  

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