The legacy of James Baldwin in cinema

Sitting atop a Brooklyn skyscraper in his black Spider suit, red hoodie, and Nike Air Jordan 1 sneakers, a young Black boy, Miles Morales, dons his mask and prepares for his leap of faith. Inspired by his family through voiceover (“I see this spark in you… Whatever you choose to do with it, you’ll be great… Our family doesn’t run from things… You’re the best of all of us, Miles. You’re on your way. Just keep going.”) he is reminded of who he is and what he represents. Leaping off the building, with his hip-hop anthem in the background, the camera inverts as he is emancipated and “rises” to take his place as the saviour of his city.

This is a world descended from the writings of James Baldwin (Baldwin’s book ‘The Fire Next Time’ is seen on Miles’ table), and the power of cinema and representation. Over 100 years after The Birth of a Nation, the Spiderverse films reimagine the concepts of authority and identity. Blurring the lines between reality and the mythic, cinema has the power of imagination as “the language of the camera is the language of our dreams.”

James Baldwin, the famed writer and civil rights activist, was one of the most important voices in 20th century America. In his book-length essays ‘The Devil Finds Work’ and ‘The Fire Next Time’, he wrote about the role of race and its relationship to family, authority, pop culture, and politics in American cinema. Baldwin argues that Black parents and authority figures such as the church, teach their children a model of inequity and oppression. Leaving his life as a Pentecostal preacher, he believed a change in race relations and social acceptance could eventually come from writing and the arts. On the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin advises his nephew to actively participate in constructing his own identity, rather than accept the narrative handed down to him by previous generations.

As a teenager, Baldwin recalls attending Orson Welles’ Voodoo Macbeth in Harlem – “the first time I ever really saw black actors at work was on the stage: and it is important to emphasize that the people I was watching were black, like me”. In this self-reflection, Baldwin expresses that representation is important as it validates self and social acceptance in society. Baldwin wrote about the difficulties of the “Black hero” in Hollywood. He believed that Black actors “lied about the world” he knew and debased it. In American film, Baldwin argues that “heroes, so far as I could then see, were white, and not merely because of the movies but because of the land in which I lived, of which movies were simply a reflection”. Black heroes were used as vessels for White audiences to justify white history and ideology and could never break free from stereotypical depictions.

White heroes on the other hand expressed the self-image and desires of 20th-century America. In film, Baldwin’s experience as a Black man differed from what he saw on screen and critiques the subjectivity of the “white gaze” and the camera. Baldwin describes Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night as “conveying the anguish of people trapped in a legend.”, noting the filmmakers are indebted to the legend of White America and encourage White Americans to keep dreaming. White audiences wanted to feel safe and perceive a reality that they had the commands of morality. Critiquing the “fade-out kiss”, Baldwin felt for White Americans, it was a device of “reconciliation” and “needed among a people for whom so much had to be made possible”.

At the beginning of 1968, Baldwin travelled to Hollywood to adapt ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’. In the writing of the screenplay, Baldwin was assigned a “technical” expert where his delivered scenes would be “translated” into cinematic language. Peering behind the curtain, Baldwin saw the loss of individual creative autonomy as filmmaking is a collective process. In cinematic translation, Baldwin writes that adaptation involves doing considerable “violence” to the written word, and the subtle choices in translation result in an act that presents a film the way authoritative figures want to. Witnessing the background machinery of the oppressive White authoritative figure, Baldwin asks the audience, “What do the filmmakers wish us to learn?”

In the allegory of Plato’s Cave, prisoners are chained and forced to watch a wall where puppeteers and fire project shadows. The shadows become the prisoners’ reality, which distorts the real world. Once released, a prisoner adjusts to actuality, and when he tries to convince his fellow prisoners to leave, they do not desire to go as the cave is their reality. Film audiences are imprisoned in this system as their perception of reality is distorted based on what they see on screen. Black audiences must be emancipated from this imprisonment, observe the world’s actualities, and become authoritative figures to change the perceptions of their representation on screen. In modern cinema’s new collective autonomy, Black artists have the freedom to express their social identity on screen. With the emergence of Black artists including actors, directors, costume designers, editors, and writers, these artists are not bound to the racial characterization and stereotypes of White audiences but become the authority of the narrative of Black stories on screen.

When Baldwin died in 1987, a new wave of Black artists were already beginning to explore the social-political themes of Baldwin’s writings. Led by Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, this marked the beginning of the freedom to explore the challenges of being Black in America. This period was groundbreaking in its ambition of portraying the Black experience in diverse genres and styles. Other touchstone films during this period include examining Southern Gothic family tensions in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust and Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou, exploring the role of Black actresses and being gay in Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, and the portrayal of political figures in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. Black filmmakers were creating films for the “black gaze” and audiences could finally see themselves in the “Black heroes” of these stories. From Black Panther as a saviour of Black utopia to Get Out as a cautionary tale of Black dystopia, modern filmmakers continue to find new ways to reflect the image and feelings of the Black experience.

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and his adaptation of Baldwin’s novel ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ represent the core themes and image of James Baldwin. The struggles of living with injustice in America while exploring generational and self-love offer a glimpse into Baldwin’s experiences and expression of modern cinema. Baldwin saw the potential of cinema to provide a celebration of the Black experience and social acceptance if it could overcome the foundations of the “white gaze” in America. In this emancipation, cinema offers a revelation of new authorities and identities.

Published 16 Jan 2025

Tags: James Baldwin