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29 1 the Plantation Lives! i’m constantly looking for good material, but most of what’s out there is not good because most screenwriters are only reading other screenplays. they need to read books—they need to read real writing—and they need to read more stage plays. —Alfre Woodard, 2004 Academy Award–nominated actress Alfre Woodard’s suggestion to look beyond screenplays as a source for good material offers a useful although precarious intervention in the future development of African American film due to the critical interrelation between theatrical and cinematic production. Plays with predominantly white casts and their cinematic companions examined in this chapter illuminate the specific challenges of adapting African American drama for the screen. Exemplary of commercial theater, Broadway mirrors Hollywood in casting, narrative, and reliance on the bottom line. Tracking economic data according to source texts exposes greater frequency of adaptation and higher gross receipts of productions with predominantly white casts as compared to those with predominantly black casts. In my research, I found no African American stage plays adapted for film that exceeded $50 million in gross receipts until Tyler Perry’s cinematic adaptation of his urban circuit plays. Musicals are an exception, however. Musicals are big business on Broadway and were especially prominent in Hollywood’s studio era. Hollywood adaptations of musicals have made a resurgence since 2000, proving that the genre remains economically viable. For example, in 2006 the film adaptation of Dreamgirls had gross receipts of $103 million domestically and $51 million internationally, eclipsing its production budget of $72.5 million. However, musicals are less significant to this study because the majority of cinematic stage adaptations since the 1980s are of plays.1 This chapter focuses on the broad influence of productions with predominantly white casts on the development of African American drama onstage and onscreen. In the current Hollywood scheme, black people tend to occupy the 30 FiNdiNg FREEdoM oN StAgE ANd SCREEN role of actors and actresses playing marginal characters in original films and cinematic adaptations. Identifying critical sites of freedom and empowerment that counteract plantation ideology embedded in the narratives and permeating the industry provides the context necessary to fully appreciate the interventions recommended in the remaining chapters of this book. The historical marginalization, dehumanization, and erasure of U.S. Latinos , Native Americans, Asian Americans, other nonwhite minorities, and blacks in mainstream white American theater and film have been the norm with the same basic results. A master narrative that reinforces white supremacy tends to operate within a standard narrative pattern that dominates the entertainment industry. This pattern presents in three parts and will no doubt be familiar to readers. The first part introduces the characters, goals, and conflicts. The second part is the turning point where dialogue, setting, or some other visual or sound techniques indicates important change. The last part is resolution.2 This master narrative, with its literary roots, typically focuses on white male heroes with people of color and women in marginal supporting or minor roles.3 In the master narrative, black people tend to appear as an Africanist presence. Toni Morrison defines this as metaphorical representations of blackness in imagery, characterization, language, and sounds, and various aspects of expression and existence.4 Repeated use of classical Hollywood’s technical elements and patterns of employing the Africanist presence has shaped audience expectations that affect reception of African American films, especially those that break the aesthetic contract.5 The Birth of a Nation (1915), an adaptation of Thomas Dixon’s anti-black novels The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905), helped establish the rules that were already gaining momentum in theater and short films, such as adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). As Ed Guerrero explains, Hollywood’s plantation genre is the quintessential master narrative spanning approximately sixty years, from 1915 through the mid-1970s. It significantly contributed to the creation and ideological functions of black representations, narratives, and images, now overdetermined by Hollywood’s profit-making strategies.6 While the plantation may not often be the visual setting of films produced since the 1980s, the ideology is insidiously embedded in casting and recurring narrative patterns. This affects the development of black film, especially African American film, in various ways. As Hollywood established itself, blacks also established strategies of resistance , exemplifying the power of performance as well as the need for more empowering roles behind the scenes. Performative indigenization in various forms was the primary line...

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