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Tuesday, June 23, 1998 By Tony Norman
Last week, there were knowing nods of agreement all around when the American Film Institute released its list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time.
As gimmicks go, it had its desired effect of stimulating discussion around office water coolers. Usually anything that gets people talking about movies as if they were more than the sum of opening weekend grosses and ancillary rights is fine by me.
But it was weird that so few people picked up on the white-bread nature of the list without some prompting. It was especially awkward for me because I didn't want to be perceived as Mau-Mauing on something as ticklish as racial inclusion.
Still, many of my colleagues were oblivious to the list's ideological tilt, if not suspicious of my motives for bringing it up. The most frequent comment I heard was: "I'd quibble with a movie here or there, but I'm basically comfortable with the list." But when I look at the AFI list, it's obvious what a white, white, white, white, white, white world Hollywood has foisted on its vast and (mostly) uncritical audience for nearly a century.
No, I'm not especially disappointed that "Shaft in Africa" didn't make the cut, but why was Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" passed over in favor of "Pulp Fiction," "Fargo," "Forrest Gump" or several tedious Spielberg films that advanced special effects at the expense of genuine human drama?
I haven't seen enough of the films of African-American trailblazer Oscar Micheaux to know if he belongs on the list, but a whole lot of the films that made the cut are nothing more than moneymakers of dubious quality despite an exalted spot in the pantheon ("It's a Wonderful Life," "Tootsie," "Easy Rider," "Amadeus").
Now, I know better than to question the primacy of the white experience as the cinematic norm in mixed company, but it's getting to the point where even a casual acknowledgment of life beyond Mayberry is equated with racial pandering of some sort.
Is it overstating the case to say that a list of 100 movies that blithely fails to take non-whites into account except in the most paternalistic circumstances ("To Kill a Mockingbird," "Casablanca," "Dances With Wolves," "Gone With the Wind") perpetuates the notion that minorities have nothing to say that the majority is obliged to respect or consider?
Isn't it interesting how sentimentality gets a patently ridiculous movie like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" to make the list along with self-consciously racist fare like "Birth of a Nation," a Klan recruiting film blessed with brilliant turn-of-the-century production values?
But Hollywood has always reconciled conflicting ideas of race by stripping narratives of threatening elements long before Middle America passes judgment on them at the multiplexes. Movies are a vast racial dreamscape where dreamers, in this case white male directors, dream the parameters of the cinematic universe. Let's face it. In America, if there aren't movies with people who look like you in them, you don't exist.
The dream universe of the top 100 AFI films is safe and homogenized, consisting of "colored" supporting characters usually of noble mien and infinite patience. Subversive dreamers need not apply, not even white subversives. That's why we get "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" instead of "All the President's Men."
In many ways, the AFI list mirrors the arguments between the multiculturalists and the traditionalist-oriented defenders of the Western literary canon. Instead of recognizing the argument as another example of a false dichotomy - dead white males vs. Toni Morrison - we should simply expand the canon. Why is it always either/or?
Silly Negro that I am, I'm still hopeful American cinema will eventually evolve into something nobler than segregated neighborhoods on the American dreamscape. But frankly my dear, I don't think Hollywood gives a damn.
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