Why black camera crews are necessary.

International Cinematographers Guild in an article in the November 2017 issue pointed out on page 63 there have only been 16 Black still photographers working in motion pictures since 1971, it came as a shock. I have been a photojournalist, broadcast journalist, commercial and advertising photographer my entire adult life. I did not know that. I have been working as a unit and key art photographer for the past twenty years with over two hundred fifty posters to my credit and over eighty jobs as a unit photographer from movies such as Boyz N The Hood, White Men Can't Jump to What Love Got to Do With? and "42 and Get On Up. Now there about four or five photographers of diversity working on motion pictures, specifically sadly many black features. I fight to expand history of black cultures, cinema and talent on and off the set. To put the history and significance of Jackie Robinson what could be better than portray his son who is now a coffee farmer in Tanzania with a co-op reaching hundreds.

RHETORICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST LACK OF BLACK CAMERA CREW MEMBERS ON FILM “BLACK PANTHER”

FIRST, A FEW RELEVANT TERMS/IDEAS:

Cultural Artifact or Artefact is a term used in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology and sociology for anything created by humans which gives information about the culture of its creator and users.

Cultural Relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, rather than judged against the criteria of another, by another.

Cultural Products. – Tangible and intangible products of a culture, deliberately produced to enhance and represent a culture and its concrete aspects of daily life. ? Tools, foods, laws, games, etc. – Beliefs, religions, political ideologies, socio-anthropological rationales for treatment of “Others” . ? Paintings, monuments, works of literature. ? An oral tale, a sacred ritual, a system of education, photography, art, FILM.

Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study") is the philosophical study of (the structures of personal and collective or cultural) experience and consciousness. One’s consciousness needs to be involved in the study of one’s own experience, so one can report/interpret it without outside intervention/translation/filtering/altering.

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The above are terms we don’t use often enough in discussions of African American History. History is told through the cultural products that become its artifacts. The keener the observer’s awareness of the artifacts’ actual history, the more s/he will know to reference in discussions of the philosophy of experience that they convey.

This is exactly why black films need black camera crews. But as context for the applicability of the above terms to any Long Duree (multi-disciplinary historical) discussion of African American cultural artifacts, the Pompeiian culture is a great example. In the ground-breaking exhibit “Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption,” archaeological techniques were used to link cultural artifacts to the lives of the people who once lived with them. In so doing, this exhibit taught the most accurate way to depict any cultural/historical narrative. It taught that telling the Story of a culture requires you to approach it and its artifacts as if you are the subject you are interviewing, as if you are an archaeologist, pursuing a priviledged POV into the culture-subject’s motivations.

Archaeological respect for Pompeii’s artifacts teaches us about the Pompeiian culture that existed before the trauma and thereby, more accurately about the reasons for the trauma. In fact, Pompeii’s artifacts are what has kept the culture alive in our minds.

But how DO we interpret artifacts with an analytical focus and respect? Archaeologists from all over had come to study Pompeii, for centuries, imposing their own cultural (and wrong) interpretations about how Pompeiians lived, what they thought about, and as a result, why they died.

“If an ancient city survives to become a modern city like Naples, its readability in archaeological terms is enormously reduced,” says Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School at Rome. He says this because in analyzing the significance of artifacts, one has to unpack the many other cultural artifacts and viewpoints of other archaeologists and historians that are always dumped on top of it. He also said -- “It’s a paradox of archaeology that you read the past best -- from its moments of trauma.” 

Our African American past is also best read that way.

This is where Phenomenology comes in.

Phenomenology is the philosophy of life that can only be gleened from one’s own, conscious interpretation of one’s own unique life experience. One has to gleen a philosophy of experience for oneself. One cannot gleen a philosophy of experience merely from the experience of others, because other peoples’ experiences will involve biases that may be acceptable for their cultures but not for yours. For instance, if the Pompeiians had learned to interpret the signs of impending doom from actual observation of recent volcanic eruptions instead of listening to the Romans’ mythological interpretations of the Gods’ whims, they would have survived. They would have left the island.

Our cultural narrative should teach us how to stay alive during cataclysmic events, we shouldn’t have to sift through a plethora of other peoples’ biased interpretations of it to get that messaging. We need an ability to observe/interpret our own Stories, to learn through our own actions or vicariously through the actions of characters like us, depicted in cultural products and artifacts like literature, art, values, rituals and film.

Regarding film product, many people think the writer alone crafts the scope of the film as artifact. The writer merely brings the characters to the imaginal proscenium. It is the camera crew for any film that “sees” and depicts historical or even mythologized narrative for the audience, that relates the Story’s psychological dimensions through lighting, shot ratio, composition and “editing-in-camera” perspectival decision-making.

African diaspora mythology and traditions, even when depicted by extremely competent white camera crews, cannot possibly completely depict cultural artifacts they don’t know to look for or see. Sadly, African Americans are so used to having to experience their own culture through biased POVs, they can often no longer tell the difference between real historical narratives and inauthentic ones. However, there is a difference, and not recognizing or acknowledging this difference can only contribute to a society’s collective cognitive dissonance about its aggregated histories and render the whole collective’s historical framing, invalid. African Americans from a certain part of the country will always know how to interpret that region’s cultural products better than a visiting archaeologist from another country. African Americans, like all other U.S. citizens, know all film depicting them will become cultural artifacts for our future descendants. We should all therefore be asking who will be interpreting our own Pompeiian graffiti? Who will be interpreting African American cultural memes, dress, religion, customs and rituals in appropriately Big History context for all U.S. citizens to understand?. No one in this country benefits when our individual cultural Stories are interpreted by citizens with no vested interest in their accuracy. We learn about the universal values we share with other human beings through the specificity of their cultural narrative. Americans don’t want anyone mythologizing the wrong cultural meaning into any cultural legacy. African Americans are tired of having the cultural meaning of their Stories be disrespected, distorted, manipulated and over-looked.

Phenomenology teaches a philosophy of experience as consciousness of bias. In the case of the phenomenology of the camera crew, their job is to “see” beyond the bias of the writer’s observations. It isn’t the writer who sees beyond the camera crew’s bias. In this way, the camera crew interprets the history or narrative the writer represents – we hope - without amy inappropriate cultural relativism. Here are a few examples of inappropriate and culturally relativizing sologisms — “I would never be vicious or cruel to people, so slave-owners probably weren’t really that mean, either. They can’t all have been psychotic, and they are MY ancestors, so this can’t be true. I’ll lessen the harsher aspects of the slavery experience in my shot selections.” Or - “Muslims have their own traditions, so honor killings must be ok for them. I’ll shoot Muslims in my film as more feral human beings than I think Christians are (as if anyone of any faith wants to be killed, for practicing it”)

A white camera crew shooting African American narrative it hasn’t lived itself will be biased, no question, even with an all-black cast and a black director. Interestingly, in the case of the cultural product we are all proud to see become cultural artifact before our very eyes, “Black Panther’s” own Marvel series developer Stan Lee, who is white, created it during the Civil Rights era specifically to get RID of the white cultural relativism that diminishes all African American narrative. What a sophisticated and admirable framing of experience he had. But a white camera crew’s natural bias is not the only source of cognitive dissonance for viewers. When supremely qualified, extant African American camera crews are overlooked in consideration for jobs involving African American narrative, their income will decline so they can’t remain in their respective unions long enough to be ABLE to be hired to “eyeball” their own narrative and interpret it on film. This is a much more insidious kind of racism. We want people who recognize cultural Shadow to be the ones to interpret it. Nothing against white camera crews, otherwise.

#preventculturalrelativism

You could say that writers create narrative for camera crews to interpret or “see.” Camera crews are the audiences’ ‘observers” and visual interpreters of experience, cultural products and artifacts. Camera crews enhance, contextualize, augment and put scenes into visual perspective/shot ratios for the vicarious benefit of the audience, to emphasize certain psychological and cultural dynamics over others. Therefore, camera crews will often change what the writer originally intended to depict in the narrative. 

This is why everyone should interpret their own history. This is why #blackfilmcrewsmatter.

#hireblackcameracrews

Then again, some cultural artifacts are universally understood. Among the Pompeiian ruins for example, 81 loaves of what anyone would recognize as bread were discovered to be covered in volcanic ash in a large, possibly commercial oven. 

Less easy to interpret was a surprising amount of graffiti in the Pompeiian ruins - also preserved by the volcanic ash. As today, “blank, mostly windowless houses presented seemingly irresistible canvases for Ancient Pompeiian passersby to share their thoughts. Some of the messages seemed modern, with different names: 

Auge Amat Allotenum (Auge Loves Allotenus) C Pumidius Dipilus Heic Fuit (Gaius Pumidius Dipilus Was Here). A half-dozen walls around town offer comments on the relative merits of blondes and brunettes, about the cuisine of certain cooks, about corrupt political leaders’ fairness or lack of same, about crooks for whom to watch out.

Other graffiti inscriptions saluted local gladiators. The city’s 22,000-seat amphitheater was one of the first built specifically for blood sport. Gladiators came mostly from the region’s underclass—many were slaves, criminals or political prisoners—but charismatic victors could rise to celebrity status. Celadus the Thracian was “the ladies’ choice,” according to one inscription.” 

The point here is that the interpretation of Pompeiian amphitheater graffiti was best rendered by people who did not culturally relativize or confuse Pompeiian slaves with their masters, who knew what to look for in the very handwriting of the desperate gladiator graffiti.

We African-Americans, even as depicted in more African culture-centric graphic novel mythologies such as this wonderful “Black Panther” Marvel franchise launch -- have MOSTLY been in one form of gladiator-body riddled Amphitheater or another, historically depicted by others, with our own historical artifacts, cultural “voice” and history distorted. On purpose. 

It is therefore not enough to see our Stories depicted on film. Our stories must be interpreted with appropriate perspective. At this point in our history, it should be obvious why our films require historically INFORMED, African American camera crews. How else will we be able to render our life experience into the cultural artifacts they deserve to be.