I'M WATCHING HIM
1) I don't think Lee Daniels likes black folk much,
2) I think maybe he despises black women for sure,
3) And there might be a biracial-folk fetish in the mix
Part 1: SOMETIMES ITS BETTER IF YOU CAN SEE UNCLE RUCKUS COMING
http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/11/sometimes-its-better-if-you-can-see.html
EXHIBIT A: "PRECIOUS"
Daniels managed to turn the book "Push" into a modern day "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the movie, with the casting alone. I was shocked when I found out that more than one black person had a hand in producing "Precious." (I had to rethink Aaron McGruder's claim that maybe Miss O isn't that bright)
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In the book, "Push," the sexual abuse that Precious suffers is not a punchline like it is in the movie. Her abuse is something she is overcoming day by day. You aren't wondering what's wrong with Precious that she is so powerless, so stuck, and defeated like you do when watching the movie.
While watching the movie "Precious" you're hoping for Precious to just stand up for herself and move. When you read about Precious in the book "Push," Precious is up and moving, finding her feet. You wind up feeling, a lot earlier on, that Precious is going to leave the teacher her gratitude then go on to do something great.
"Push" is triumphant. "Precious" is relief that the horror, that is Precious's early life, is finally over.
This is such a white approach to a black, inner city story. And the way "Precious" is cast, it's a half inch from a white savior story. And I'm certain that's why white Hollywood loved it so much. If Whoopi Goldberg had played Miss Blue Rain, "Precious" would have been a FUBU movie as unfamiliar to white folks as "Set It Off."
I can't stand "Daniels" for the way he showed black women in "Precious" And, I didn't like him that much better for how completely flat and two-dimensional he made black women in "The Butler" either. But that's a whole other story.
EXHIBIT B: "EMPIRE"
So now Daniel's has given us "Empire" with stereotypes piled on stereotypes, a drug dealing, gangsta -sorta, music industry family with Taraji P Henson in it. And Henson being in it, insults me because she is good at her job and she's wasting herself in "Empire."
Henson has won multiple awards as an actress and has been nominated for an Oscar. This woman had to calm the audience of "Person Of Interest" down via YouTube after her morally upstanding, police officer character was killed on that show --when she the only regular black female star and there was a slew of other white men they could have killed off for excitement. Now, Taraji P Henson is playing a neck-rolling, eye popping, angry, Cookie Lyons.
Recently, in real life, Henson parted her lips to defend her co-star, Terrance Howard, serial dater of anything so long as it isn't a black female (Thank the Lawd)
“Let’s pop the trunk to your life and see what’s dysfunctional and what’s bad … at the end of the day, we’re all human and we got flaws and we got sh*t,” Henson said.
http://www.thewrap.com/taraji-p-henson-defends-terrence-howards-checkered-past-were-all-human-we-got-flaws/
http://defamer.gawker.com/the-six-times-terrence-howard-has-been-accused-of-beati-1121955457
So it's not just that I can't stand the premise and stereotypes of "Empire." I cannot stomach the thought that Daniels or Howard might make a nickel because I watch their show.
I am not here for the new blacks, the black man that hit's women, the black woman that stands up for the black man that hits women, or the black director that goes out of his way to hire somebody that disrespects black women and hits non-black women.
The protectors of people like Howard are undermining everybody really. Holding onto Daniels and Howard harms black women in front of camera, black behind the camera, and in real life. The images they present on TV, in movies, and the things done in real life aren't helpful to women's status in society either.
Taraji? She's on shakey ground with me. She has been so supportive of other black women when winning awards and such. And she's got a vibe like a "ride or die" chick. But she does too much politicking for me to get a real bead on her.
I am not here for the new blacks, the black man that hit's women, the black woman that stands up for the black man that hits women, or the black director that goes out of his way to hire somebody that disrespects black women and hits non-black women.
The protectors of people like Howard are undermining everybody really. Holding onto Daniels and Howard harms black women in front of camera, black behind the camera, and in real life. The images they present on TV, in movies, and the things done in real life aren't helpful to women's status in society either.
Taraji? She's on shakey ground with me. She has been so supportive of other black women when winning awards and such. And she's got a vibe like a "ride or die" chick. But she does too much politicking for me to get a real bead on her.
Okay. Yeah, she popped off in an unprofessional way at first. But she still shouldn't have apologized like she was the one that did something wrong -- not without qualifying the apology with her main complaint.
Yeah, I know you have to play the game the way the white gatekeepers want you to in order to stay on top in Hollywood. But you have to know where to draw the line And it seems clear to me that Taraji knows where the line is but steps over it without any hesitation.
"Even Henson said before the show [Empire] aired: 'The NAACP is going to get us. Barack Obama is going to hate us.'
https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/28/5-reasons-why-empire-is-winning-tv-ratings-but-failing-black-people/4/
With the possible exception of Denzel Washington, most black actors have had to take a series of stereotypical roles, play the hell out of them, then graduate to not having to take those roles again. Latifah has done it. Pinkett-Smith has done it. Taraji has been nominated for an Oscar. What the hell is she doing playing a character on "Empire" and defending Terrance Howard's worthless-@$$ in real life?
And what is the NAACP doing giving her an award for playing "Cookie Lyons?" Her career should be beyond "Cookie Lyons" by now -- way beyond.
But the biggest thing that gets me about Lee Daniel's is this. Between the lines I read him as making an effort to cash in on white views of black folks. The book"Push" was twisted into the movie "Precious" so that it would match white expectations of poor, black helplessness. And casting the very pale Paula Patton as the teacher, Blue Rain, instead of a Whoopi GoldFberg looking actress takes Precious three-quarters of the way into a yet another white savior fantasy.
I'm not sure, but I'm thinking he twisted "The Butler" for white appeal as well.
EXHIBIT C: THE BUTLER(Forrest Gump-ish story about a black man
who was a butler in the White House for 34 years)
There is, in "The Butler," a two-dimensional but semi-realistic view of the main character's "black militant" son. At least the son does actually has realistic, negative views of white overt and covert racists. But the main character, Cecil Gaines? His true feelings about race, racism, and especially his feelings about white people are so watered down when he is at home with his family that the scenes feel cartoon-like in their simplicity.
Of course there were real accomodationists, Uncle Toms, and Uncle Ruckus's among us during the Civil Rights Era. There were, are, and always will be. But none of these people are as at peace with themselves and their racial lot in life as Lee Daniels' Cecil Gaines character Even Clarence Thomas, for example, has let his racism anger slip out.
Plenty of my people, grandparents, great aunts and great uncles worked in white service back in the day. When they got a promotion or a pay increase from the white boss at work they knew it was because they worked twice as hard for half as much recognition. The gratitude for this half-ass recognition went 99/100ths toward God and nobody else. I can only think of one exceptional white employer in my family's history and THAT white man was a Jewish person who was still likely experiencing overt antisemitism in the 1940s and 50s. His empathy for the kind of racism my grandmother was dealing with daily was likely genuine and three-dimensional in type.
I have never seen the kind of gratitude toward white people in the faces of my elders that I see in Cecil Gaines's face. Never.
Of course men like this Cecil Gaines existed. I've heard tales. But anger and frustration in the white direction STILL slip out. There is STILL a much different face at home away from the white gaze. Cecil Gaines was drawn flat. The Gaines character was drawn in a what you see is what you get fashion--the way white people imagine "good black people" are.
Black people have a mask they wear when under the white gaze. They take the mask off at home. But we never see the main character, Cecil Gaines, with his mask completely off at home. Not completely.
The Cecil Gaines character being afraid to step a toe out of line is explained by generational differences; Gaines is aware of having to be twice as good to be considered half as good - which is possibly eternal for blacks in the United States; but having Gaines never be overtly resentful of whiteness, white people or their racism, never glad to be out of their oppressive presence, or relieved to be able to be able to be himself is just insulting.
Cecil Gaines never says or does anything that white person wouldn't imagine he'd say or do until the last few minutes of the film. Heck, Gaines rarely says or does anything at home that he couldn't do or say at a KKK members house.
I'm sure that Cecil's unswerving passivity made "The Butler" very comforting for the white audience.
Despite all this, I really wasn't so sure that I was seeing white-sucking-up in this Forrest Gump like movie until the movie went through all the presidents except Jimmy Carter then cast a golden halo of approval over Ronald Reagan's head.
We never see Jimmy Carter after seeing all the other presidents then near the end of "The Butler," Gaines has a reason to be personally grateful to Ronald Reagan--- the president that real life black people despise because of the overt racism he made more fashionable once again in the U.S. in the 1980s. If any president should have been skipped in a "black movie" it should have been Reagan.
Even if those Ronald Reagan scenes actually happened in real life, any self respecting black director would have balanced that positive moment out with all the crap Reagan pulled on the black community and showed just how misguided the Gaines was before the very end.
If you still don't find Lee Daniels suspect consider this:
Saaraa Bailey wrote in a review for whispersofawomanist.com:
“Empire Creator Danny Strong speaks of a riding in a car and coming up with the idea of Empire while listening to a Jay Z or Puffy song. While I am sure this story read well on paper, it is problematic that a white man conceptualized Black wealth as intertwined with drugs.”
I should have known that "Empire" was a white man's concept. "Empire" totally looks like the white imaginings of black people.
In my mind it's completely predictable that Uncle Lee Daniel's would be the black director that jumped on "Empire" as a good idea.
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| Some of the BUTLER SUPPORTING CAST Have you ever seen so many biracial black men in one movie where being light-skinned or being biracial wasn't a central subject? If Daniels were straight, would he be hiring light-skin, long haired black women for supporting cast? Is the casting simply a reflection of what Daniels finds attractive? Look at the "Precious Cast" again too
All the actors that played characters with knowledge and common sense from start to finish are half white.
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CONCLUSION
"HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER"
"BEING MARY JANE"
may not be problem free as far as black imagery is concerned, likely born of being a bit soap opera-ish in 2015. Flawed characters are in, flawed to the point that "Dexter," a series where a serial killer can be the hero.
I miss Claire even if she was drawn rather flatly as well. But the black created and/or black influenced by black women do not go where Empire does.
White conceived images of blackness on television, have much bigger problems.
The only not white, not male main character gets killed for shock value and is replaced by a much whiter, but not white, female.
The first three seasons of "The Walking Dead" had a black character named "T-Dog" who had 15 lines over three seasons, the other people of color being used like kibbles to throw the zombies off the scent of the white people that really count as human. The introduction of the "Michonne" character, who appears with two black male zombies being dragged behind her in chains made my jaw drop. Every time you think they must have hired black writers on that show, something else straight out of a 1980s can of instant black stereotypes drops into the storyline.
"Empire" is a little different. Lee Daniels is black and he is capitalizing on white views of dysfunctional blackness and regurgitating this as entertainment. This takes the cake because some of black folk are eating this cake thinking it's safe because it appears to be something prepared by black hands.
All of this is the reason why I'd rather my Uncle Ruckus-es come on out with it, just be bold and overt with whatever twisted mess they've got going on in their heads. Just let 'em say it. It simply creeps me out to think that stereotypes, racism, and internalized racism can just wash over me and others without notice.
I'm still not sure I'm absolutely right about Daniels. I never did figure out what happened between him and Mo'Nique (star of "Precious"), by the way.
But I'm watching him. And you should too.
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