Hollywood, stop seeing black history through a white frame

Woody Harrelson and Jennifer Jason Leigh in LBJ

I have not seen director Rob Reiner's upcoming biopic LBJ and I suppose if the reviews are phenomenal I might be compelled to give it a chance. I think Lyndon Johnson is one of our most complex and personally fascinating ex-presidents and certainly worthy of a deep cinematic dive.

The thing is that we have already had a near-definitive take on Johnson just last year in the HBO film All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston, not to mention Tom Wilkinson's performance as the 36th president in Selma, and a host of other versions of the drawling Texan in some lesser recent films of note.

From what I have been able to glean from the early ads for this film, it seems to center of Johnson's undeniably significant role in advancing pro-civil rights legislation during his tenure in the White House, and in these same ads, there is nary a person of color to be seen.

My thoughts exactly

Now, Johnson's cabinet was not exactly diverse, and most African-American viewers are not so naive as to think that high-ranking political power brokers were not key to getting these historic bills over the finish line -- but do we really need another narrative about bigoted white men overcoming their prejudices (or refusing to) amid the rise of civil rights?

The success of a movie like Hidden Figures -- which told a remarkable true-life story of black civil rights era heroes -- from their perspective -- should have yet again, once and for all, proved that there is a real interest in seeing films where people of color have agency in their own equality movements.

There is also clearly an appetite for seeing stories we have not already seen told and re-told several times before. Back in 2014, with Selma, we finally got out first film centered on the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And what was the biggest, loudest criticism of that acclaimed film? That it didn't give Johnson enough credit.

Time and again, Hollywood wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to portraying the civil rights era. It wants to pat itself on the back for plunging into commercially risky territory by revisiting a dark chapter in relatively recent American history but it also wants to make that journey safe for white audiences by centering the narrative on do-gooder white liberals.

The Help was one of the most egregious offenders. Although it contains two beautiful performances from Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, it is an Emma Stone movie -- and it was marketed as such.

The sad reality of movies like these is that they are almost always made by well-intentioned liberals. Reiner, a director who has made several films I admire, is one of the most politically outspoken progressives in Hollywood and yet he has made this same mistake before -- his film Ghosts of Mississippi, which is supposed to be about the murder of civil rights icon Medgar Evers, is almost entirely focused on the crusading white lawyer who brought his killer to justice, played by Alec Baldwin.

I am not calling for filmmakers to universally impose 2017 values on stories steeped in the past. I wouldn't watch a film about the Russian revolution and complain about the lack of diversity in it. But to act as if black Americans were largely bystanders in their quest for freedom is foolish at best and a condescending act of contempt at worse.

There are many great untold stories of heroism both big and small that deserve cinematic treatments with big stars and Oscar campaigns -- where is the Fannie Lou Hamer story, for instance? Instead, we are being asked to yet again mythologize an American president, albeit a deeply flawed one who acted out of political expediency just as often, if not more, than out of moral rectitude.

Why? Well, obviously because behind the camera and in the upper echelons of the studio infrastructure, people of color are still scarce. So you have a chorus of largely white people, who, well intentioned or not, have convinced themselves that the only way audiences will flock to see a movie about black people is when there is a white hero to root for at the center of it.

Again, perhaps LBJ is far more expansive than it appears to be and maybe it does a more-than-adequate job of elevating the voices and roles that people of color played in persuading the former president and the public to support the cause of civil rights. I certainly hope so, but I also grow tired of whitewashed takes on black stories.