Melvin Van Peebles 'Classified History X'

Classified History X by Melvin van Peebles thinking about how African Americans could be viewed in movies by younger generations. In the documentary Peebles, talks about that moment when he was 12 or 13 and he realizes that he feels shame coming out of the movie theater. This got me thinking back to all the times I would sit and watch movies as a kid. As my mother was a huge fan of the Turner classic movie station, I grew up watching movies such as Casablanca and Billy the kid. Most time I would brush the old movies off, thinking they were either too boring or too hurtful and scary. However, there were also times when I sit down next to my mother and admire all the pretty women acting, twirling, or dancing around while the handsome men strut

It was the mention of the instinctual color difference between lighter skinned African-Americans and darker skinned African Americans in the movies that caused me notice that my mindset in each of the black independent movie clips changed. This created a sort of “other “in my mind. But, “other” rather than notice and protest the difference between the lighter and darker skinned African-American. The first thought that popped into my mind was “of course the lighter skinned Americans are the heroes. They look a lot more like the whites.” It seemed to me that rather than given the African-American community pride, such was the goal of black independent filmmakers, these black films seemed to further perpetually an untrue stereotype. That once again, black people, specifically darker skinned people, still somehow inferior to those who are is lighter skin not. Its not different at all from the movies that were created during this time, having white actors play black people pretending to be white people. In this since I completely agree with Peebles that black independent filmmakers didn’t create thing that were all that different from what was already out there; because the community was so desperate for some type of positive representation that they subconsciously over looked deeper ingrained prejudices