The portray/representatio n of black people in film

That's a big topic/subject. Probably I should spend more time thinking about a response, but I feel like saying generally the portrayals are stereotyped but not always. It seems like the representations are meant to be how a black person thinks and behaves as opposed to other ethnicities, like how different they are culturally and all, rather than how they are in a more precise/complete/accurate way as a character in the film.

I know and knew many blacks, from having been a boxer and making friends of fighters and trainers, and from being married to a successful black woman.

There are films that depict a black character as just a character without noticeable separate character traits dependent on color, like The Manchurian Candidate (Denzel Washington) and An Unfinished Life (Morgan Freeman}.
That's what I want to see more of, human beings not clichés.
Your question could take a book to analyze, though.


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Check out Hallelujah 1929. Especially pay attention to the character played by actress Nina Mae McKinney. She plays a better seductress in that film than Marilyn Monroe did in all of her films put together.McKinney gives a performance more like a real person unlike Monroe's phony cardboard characters. Nina Mae McKinney's portrayal of sex appeal in that film makes Marilyn Monroe look like nothing. Also check out actor Daniel Haynes as Zeke in the same film. I think black people have been portrayed very honestly in films. Daniel Haynes as the honest cotton picker succumbing to the temptations of Nina Mae McKinney is a great example of an honest man working honestly for his money but preyed upon by a "bad" woman. This is a great film and a story of a man representing many good men and the problems they face when they get paid and have some money.

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