On Friday morning, The New York Times’s editorial board published a column titled “Where Are Black Actors’ Black Audiences?” that took aim at the notion of the “black box office.” The column argued that Hollywood has a habit of blaming black audiences for failing to support projects starring people of color and called out the industry for not creating content that appeals to African-Americans.
The column was written by Roxane Gay, an author who is also writing a Marvel comic book series with a black lesbian superhero. It appeared on the Times opinion section’s Instagram account and its website as part of a Times series called “The Year in Opinion 2017.”
In the piece, Gay wrote:
Hollywood has failed black audiences. That failure is astounding, given how much money Hollywood makes from black audiences and how many projects are made about us with us as the sidekicks or not present at all. I don’t understand why we must be told time and time again what we will and will not watch.
Where are Black Actors’ Black Audiences?
By A.O. Scott
Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in the film “Green Book.”CreditUniversal Pictures
I enjoyed “Green Book,” and I think it deserved to win the Oscar for best picture — though it could be argued that the real winner was “Black Klansman,” which took home best adapted screenplay, or possibly “BlacKkKlansman,” which, despite being spelled differently, is the same movie. This may seem like a petty distinction, but some black people felt snubbed by the fact that Spike Lee’s film didn’t win anything else. The outrage over this imagined slight is more understandable than “Green Book’s” victory itself.
The last two years have seen an unusual number of films with African-American performers in starring roles and stories about black life at their center. Given how rare that is, it is easy to understand why so many people were hoping for a historic breakthrough: a black director (Lee) winning best director; a woman of color (Alfonso Cuarón) winning best cinematography; a black performer
The old saw about “black folks not going to the movies” has been given a new twist in recent years. The assumption is that black audiences are too busy on Friday nights — or maybe prefer going to church — to frequent the theaters that so often ignore them.
But what does box office history show? While African-Americans as a group have always made up a relatively small percentage of the nation’s moviegoers, race has never stopped Hollywood from churning out films for black audiences. But this season’s movies are largely ignoring them — and the numbers prove it.
Of the top 10 movies at North American theaters over the last two weekends, only one, “The Butler,” which stars Forest Whitaker and is directed by Lee Daniels, aimed at African-American audiences. That movie, which was produced by Oprah Winfrey and had its world premiere at the Howard University homecoming gala in 2012, has earned $104 million since it was released on Aug. 16.
Notably, of those 10 movies, only “The Butler” had a director of color (Mr. Daniels).
This year also brings an interesting contrast: Only one of Hollywood’s most anticipated awards contenders for 2013 — “
The box office news that “The Butler” had a bigger opening weekend than “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” was followed by the usual hand-wringing about why African-American audiences don’t support black films.
But what if the problem is that African-American moviegoers don’t feel they have enough of a choice?
Hollywood rarely makes movies for black audiences, but when it does, it rarely seems to invest in marketing them. The two most high-profile recent examples were this summer’s “42” and last year’s “The Help.” Both were well liked by critics and audiences alike, but their box office receipts — $95 million for “42,” $169 million for “The Help” — were less impressive than those of other, similarly budgeted films (like “Fast Five,” with $209 million).
In the early 2000s, with a few notable exceptions, there wasn’t a whole lot of great stuff for black actors to do on television. Instead, they flocked to Hollywood. In 2002 alone, black actors starred in more than 30 movies. It was the beginning of a “black movie renaissance” that would last for roughly two years and yield some classics (“Barbershop,” “Bringing Down the House,” “2 Fast 2 Furious”) and some not-so-classics (“Deliver Us From Eva,” “Biker Boyz,” “The Fighting Temptations”).
One of the best of those films was Antoine Fuqua’s “Training Day.” Denzel Washington won his second Oscar for his portrayal of Alonzo Harris, a morally ambiguous Los Angeles police detective who takes Ethan Hawke’s rookie cop under his wing. The film grossed $104 million worldwide on a $45 million budget.
The success or failure of a movie is often determined by how it performs in its opening weekend (this is especially important for smaller films without massive marketing budgets). Black audiences showed up for “
We all know that Hollywood has a diversity problem. The Academy Awards are under fire for the second year in a row for having nominated only white actors for the second year in a row. And yet, there’s another, more hidden aspect of this issue that doesn’t get much attention: the fact that black moviegoers are not supporting black-themed movies.
This was brought to my attention after I wrote an article suggesting that people who were upset about the lack of black nominees at the Oscars boycott “Creed” and “Straight Outta Compton,” two hugely successful movies with predominantly African-American casts. The story received a lot of criticism on social media, mostly because Creed is one of the few movies with a prominent black lead that actually made money over the past year and because Straight Outta Compton was very successful as well. And while it’s true that these two films did well, they are hardly representative of the bigger problem: Black Americans don’t go to see black actors in general.
Last weekend, the latest Tyler Perry film opened in theaters. The movie is a period piece that follows a black woman and her family who, upon being evicted from their home in Washington, D.C., move to the suburbs during the Great Depression.
Mr. Perry’s films are routinely criticized by some black people and white people alike as buffoonery that reinforces stereotypes of black inferiority while blunting the sharp edges of racism. Such assessments don’t historically prevent black audiences from flocking to his movies. But “A Madea Family Funeral” was a box-office bomb, opening at No. 5 and taking in just $27 million in its first two weeks.
What happened?
The film stars Mr. Perry as one of his signature characters, Madea, an oversize tough-talking elderly grandmother who dishes out life lessons with a slap on the forehead or a smack on the behind. This time around, she is forced to attend a funeral in rural Georgia while serving as a caretaker for her sister’s children and grandchildren.
Madea is hardly the only character in this film played by Mr. Perry wearing an oversize fat suit, wig and makeup; he also plays Joe, Madea
