A Tale Of 2 Black Films

The disparate treatments of "Nickel Boys" and "Exhibiting Forgiveness" this awards season raise questions about the role whiteness plays in a movie's merit.

Unless folks are doing something like recording whole scenes of a movie on their cellphones, you generally don’t notice who else is in the audience with you at a movie theater. The lights fade to black, the screen brightens and everything — and everyone — around you virtually disappears. But sometimes taking stock of how others react to a film can tell you a lot about who becomes the arbiters of merit and why.

That’s especially true when you’re watching a Black movie.

An example that comes to mind is “12 Years a Slave,” which tells the harrowing true story of a free Black man who was abducted and sold into slavery in 1841. At a 2013 press screening for the film in Manhattan, an inclusive audience sat transfixed in front of the screen during multiple scenes of sexual and physical violence.

Perusing the theater during those moments revealed something interesting. Some Black viewers were stone-faced, while others seemed exhausted by the second or third brutality scene. Many of the white folks, though, were inconsolable — sobbing and blowing their noses. Perhaps that was on account of white guilt, a performative impulse, or because the film really is that stirring.

In any case, “12 Years a Slave,” a Steve McQueen-directed movie that unflinchingly portrays the horrors of white supremacy, was heralded by a predominantly white and so-called liberal Hollywood elite. And it went on to earn nine Oscar nominations.