Oscar Micheaux was a black author and filmmaker. He started his career by writing novels in which the protagonists were black men, set in the white South Dakota. He then saw the movie by D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which, while it was anti-black, impressed upon Micheaux the idea that films can be extremely compelling and was fascinated by them. He made his own movie version of his novel, The Homesteader, which became a commercial success despite being directed by an African American. From there, Micheaux continued to direct and produce movies, especially geared toward black audiences.
His movies were especially controversial because they tackled the harsh and unspoken black truths in his films, such as challenging the legal justice system, crude stereotypes of African Americans, or other concepts dominated by white people. He even hired black actors, instead of white actors pretending to be black. African American people were depicted as real, intelligent, human beings, and not the vicious stereotypes that they had been depicted as in past white films. His films gave the African American population hope in that they were able to see positive images of their community, rather than the negative representation they had seen previously portrayed of themselves.
3 comments:
It's interesting how radical Michaeux's ideas were. Because he is a filmmaker and author he probably wanted to have radical ideas so his ideas will be spread around the US, causing people to fight for change. I'm assuming this was around the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Do you know around what time he started spreading his radical ideals, like before or after the start of the Harlem Renaissance?
Micheaux's first book, "The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer" was a sort of an autobiographical novel that showed how discontented Micheaux was with the circumstances that surrounded his race. In it, he speaks on how he was being denied his civil rights and the struggles he was going through to follow his aspirations. You could consider this to be the first time Micheaux "expresses his radical ideals," which was in 1913, or you could consider "The Homesteader", the sequel to "The Conquest" and his first movie to be the first real spread of his ideas. "The Homesteader" sort of follows the same concepts as "The Conquest," (black life in the West) but became more well known especially because of the movie. "The Homesteader" was first published in 1917, and was then released as a movie in 1919.
This is interesting how African Americans did a lot of good things and they never really did anything bad. Which is sad to me on why whites and other privileged people looked down on them.
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