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Actress Hattie McDaniel\u2019s<\/a> role of \u2018Mammy\u2019 in 1939\u2019s \u201cGone With the Wind<\/a>,\u201d in which McDaniel played the trope of the heavy-set, scarf-wearing, loud-mouthed Black nanny, whose image closely resembles that of the infamous \u201cAunt Jemima<\/a>\u201d character, complete with the same jive-talk manner of speaking used on the latter\u2019s early advertisements. 1974\u2019s \u201cGood Times<\/a>\u201d broadcast the character of \u201cJ.J. Evans\u201d (played by Jimmie Walker), whose bug-eyed Al Jolson-esque facial expressions and signature catchphrase (“Dy-no-mite!”) made him and \u201cGood Times\u201d itself a frequent guest in living rooms all across America during the show\u2019s six season run. Morgan Freeman, in 1989\u2019s \u201cDriving Miss Daisy<\/a>,\u201d assumed the role of Hoke Colburn, a grinning, doting, mild-mannered chauffeur for an elderly, wealthy white woman\u2014playing what can be seen as a male version of the \u2018Mammy\u2019 trope. 2004\u2019s \u201cSoul Plane<\/a>\u201d turned the dial up to eleven, with seemingly every black stereotype that the average \u201cNational Review\u201d reader can conjure up in their imagination broadcast on the big-screen (fried chicken, forty ounces, gold chains, 3XL t-shirts, gold grills, blunts and twerking). Looking back on it now, this was clearly an act of satire\u2014but satire can be easily misconstrued. Then, in the early phases of the Obama administration, a big shift happened in the realms of Hollywood and the print media. Related Article: With the minstrel-style tropes used in representations of Black Americans throughout the twentieth century being ripped apart by critics and nearly phased out of modern media (for the most part), the themes attributed to black people in films switched from buffoonery and joviality to violence and despair. The first instance of this was 2009\u2019s \u201cPrecious<\/a>,\u201d a film directed and produced by Lee Daniels<\/a> and which starred actress\/comedian Mo\u2019Nique<\/a>, earning her a Golden Globe, a SAG award, a BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award and an Oscar<\/a>. The film was highly-acclaimed and serves as the progenitor of the current narrative that peppers the landscape of modern-day black film and television: Pain. Starring lead actress Gabourey Sidibe as an illiterate, poverty-stricken teenaged girl named Claireece \u2018Precious\u2019 Jones, this film wrote the blueprint for what I see as the \u201cBlack Pain Equals Financial Gain\u201d marketing gimmick. The dialogue is sparse to a degree, as most of the film unfolds by way of trauma after trauma: Precious is shoved to the ground as a group of neighborhood boys mock her, physically and emotionally abused by her mother, has frequent nightmares about the times her father raped and impregnated her, learns that she\u2019s HIV-positive and ultimately views herself as worthless. The movie ends on a pretty flat note, with Precious eventually breaking away from the grips of her tyrannical mother by moving into a halfway house with her two children and planning to complete a GED test. Curiously enough, the film features an early scene in which Precious steals a bucket of chicken from a restaurant and eats the entire thing while fleeing down the street as the restaurant\u2019s cashier yells at her. I guess Daniels and his staff just couldn\u2019t resist harkening back to an age-old trope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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