DreamlandI'm very fond of movies from the 1940s the acting and directing was superb and filmmakers really knew how to tell a story. Also, they could tell a tale without blowing somebody up or sexually degrading women. In fact 21th century dream weavers could learn a lot from the old masters.The downside, of course, was that Hollywood was still saturated with racism and sexism. It is fascinating to watch America's changing roles (remember that we are now in the 1940s, at war and the labor force is full of women) and dream weavers struggle to portray these changes on screen.The 1940s -1950s is called the "New Negro" era. The filmic face of peoples of color had begun to change. This was no accident. America had just journeyed through the Depression and she was at war. Certainly America didn't want peoples of color to feel that WWII was a "White folks war" and of thus of no concern to us. Which was exactly how some Black folks felt.As Horace Clayton joking described it, a black sharecropper greeted a white man at his gin with the news: "By the way, Captain, I hear the [Japanese] done declared war on you white folks" (Cripps, 1993; p. 30).Yet many African Americans felt it wise to link their cause with winning WWII -- after all we wanted equality.And so began the oh so slow change in the portrait of Black America.Valjeanne Jeffers-Thompson, 1997; 2009
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