Filmmakers and activists alike have used media and visual projects to critique and comment on our culture during their time. Utilizing common stereotypes, disproving preconceptions, or the like in film have influenced society’s perception of people for generations. Since even before color television, movies like “Stormy Weather” have been categorized by critics as classics for their significance in defining a culture and the common representation of that culture in popular media. There are some characteristics that movies must possess for me to consider them a classic film: strong directors, audience affection, engaging storylines, and time period significance. I believe that Stormy Weather possesses a majority of these characteristics to make it, as time goes by, a timeless movie.
Racism does not seem to exist in Ted Koehler’s Stormy Weather. This classic film might seem, at first, to be yet another dancing movie. To those who know what to look for, however, this film is ripe in prominent stereotyping and racial romanticization of the African American culture. Featuring an all black cast, Stormy Weather attempts to be the force that focuses on famous black talent regarding dance and musical skill sets. The directors have created a fantasy world in which the populace consists of only the most talented and skilled African American entertainers that Harlem can offer. Glamorous and sexy black women, just light enough to be considered attractive by white standards, grace the stage with dramatic and glorified leading roles. The only troubles that exist in this world are those that concern the heart or chorus line disputes. Koehler and the directors fabricate a magical universe inhabited with only one singular, special people.
Positioning African American actors and actresses in leading roles is quite the significant matter. It was also a risky move for the directors in that majority white audiences may not have been as likely to support the viewings, since the movie mainly pertains to watching and supporting blacks. Additionally, African American actors and actresses would always be pinholed in accepting roles such as the nurse, the maid, the supporting entertainer, or the slave in popular culture media. For example, in films starring Shirley Temple, America’s favorite, little white girl, the role for Bill Robinson included playing with Temple. Robinson, in the “Little Colonel Bojangles Dance,” was tasked with entertaining Temple with tap dancing on the staircase to keep her occupied and out of boredom. These common roles were littered with demeaning stereotypes that demanded the characters to be less intelligent, unattractive, entertaining, or just plain savage.
The savagery aspect usually would apply to the African American men in theatre and media which was why many of them clung to the far more favorable “entertainer” aspect. With this, Stormy Weather did their best to break this male-centered stereotype with Bill Robinson’s character romance with Lena Horne. Robinson, a black man who clearly possesses sexual potential, is portrayed as a tap dancer with a desire for Lena Horne, also a performer with skin light enough to be considered sexually appealing. Their courtship is mostly devoid of any actual sexualization. Because of the white America’s fears of black men’s sexual appetite, this lack of sex is comforting in that his attraction for Horne’s character is seen as that of a gentle, nurturing and loving father figure who lacks any sexual aggression that would greatly intimidate this white audience. As such, Stormy Weather produces a relationship between the two protagonists that is contrary to the normative stigma of savagery and barbarism that was associated with many of the African American males at that time.
Not only were the roles accentuated for black actors, but the characters’ fates were also dependent on the color of their skins. For instance, Bessie Smith, one of the most popular and successful American blues singer, has darker skin and, in the video we watched in class, she played a character that was financially used and eventually left by her man. This starkly juxtaposes with the black women in Stormy Weather who look more white than black, skinny, and socially considered beautiful; they get their happy endings. What makes Smith’s character different from these other women’s? Some “colorisms,” judgements based on the color of their skin, are apparent in these readings in that those women with fairer skin have a better chance of attaining their happily ever after than those women like Bessie Smith with darker skin. While Lena Horne gets swept off her tap dancing feet, Bessie Smith is just left abandoned to sing the blues.
Stormy Weather, to its credit, tried to better some of those stereotypes by introducing the black culture as purely harmless and benign entertainers. This took out the savage inclination entirely. Additionally, by presenting blacks with their own storyline, something that was just not done in this time period, Koehler offers a perspective of romanticization of black life through one-dimensional characters that seem harmless in nature so as not to intimidate the white populace. Music and dance in Stormy Weather serves as the bridge between races. James Baldwin claimed that “it is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear.” In this, Baldwin touches upon a very true and sad historic element: the white population is still no way near ready to accept and embrace full integration in all aspects. He asserts that blacks must utilize the stereotypical associations like music in order to help promote understanding and cultural tolerance, one step at a time. I agree with what he puts in so simple a phrase, “no American is prepared.”
As such, the storyline of Stormy Weather also emphasizes another important notion: each and every black person in this film has a purpose in the white world. Instead of simply being portrayed as black, they are seen as more than that; they are the entertainers. This label not only presents purpose that the white community can wrap their heads around, but it also acts as self-preservation methodology in a racist and ignorant society. This idea of being the entertainer to protect themselves parallels Charles Chesnutt and James Weldon Johnson’s method of passing for white as self-preservation ideology. To cope with being ignored, treated poorly, and seen as purely less than human, the characters in Chesnutt’s book The House Behind the Cedars and Johnson’s book, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, attempted to instead turn their backs on the life that offers them less than a human’s existence in favor of blending in with a promise of opportunity. Chesnutt’s George and Johnson’s unnamed narrator both turn their backs on being colored men and instead embrace a life of lying about their culture in order to achieve more than they ever could by being black men in a white society. In fact, Chesnutt’s Frank, a dark skinned black man, even claims at one point that “the taint of black blood was the unpardonable sin, from the unmerited penalty of which there was no escape except by concealment” (Chesnutt 84). In these cases, the escape of the injustice surrounding the black race was passing for white, but Stormy Weather offers another escape: embracing a predetermined entertainer stereotype.
While Stormy Weather might not be a perfect portrayal of a misunderstood race, it still had some qualities that make it a classic film for its time. With its music bridging the gap, Stormy Weather is still a film with an all black cast, something that was nowhere near common at that time. The basis of the movie attempts to rescue African Americans from the purely servile role orchestrated by popular culture and racial tensions. Even though it might not be the most influential political activist film, it still has black people on the big screen. This, for the time, was definitely a step in the right direction.
Works Cited
Chesnutt, Charles W. The House Behind the Cedars. Thorpe, Ulverscroft, 1900. Johnson, James W. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Dover Thrift Editions, 1995.
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