Black representation onscreen has never been higher. Now let's free ourselves from negative tropes

Black Light is a column by Governor General Award-winning writer Amanda Parris that spotlights, champions and challenges art and popular culture that is created by Black people and/or centres Black people. While Amanda is away on maternity leave, a different writer will be featured in a guest edition of the column each month. This month's edition is an essay by writer, filmmaker and musician Matthew Progress.

I'm a Black storyteller who has been shaped by the stories that were told to me. I was gifted Pan Africanism from my Garveyite elders, Black abstraction from my contemporary art mentors, and unconditional self-love from my grandmother. But learning about the powerful complexities of my culture has never been an endeavour that mainstream film and television could help me with — even amidst a new wave of Black representation.

Here's an exercise: do a quick mental review of all the widely distributed popular films and TV shows featuring Black stories and/or characters from the past three decades. See how many examples you can find that are free of the following: hyper-violence/trauma (domestic, police brutality, Black-on-Black murder), stories set during slavery, stories set in Jim Crow America, the hood/poverty, crime-based narratives, hypersexuality, low intellect or performative stupidity (e.g. minstrelstry), white saviours, or achievement whilst overcoming racism.

Not many, are there?

I'm not suggesting that content featuring these tropes cannot still have value — of course it can. But our archive of mainstream media is a strong determinant of how public consciousness is shaped, and currently the archive tells us that Black life cannot exist without one or more of these toxic characteristics. So as we step into a new frontier of "diversity and inclusion," watching networks and production companies cast Black bodies at an unprecedented rate, we cannot forget the crucial difference between high quantity and high quality.

If we shift focus away from the content of earlier decades and zero in on more recent titles, we find the same problem even within works that are groundbreaking and worthy of acclaim. HBO's Jordan Peele-produced sci-fi/horror series Lovecraft Country was easily my favourite show of 2020. It's an innovative period piece featuring a complex premise, complicated Black characters, Afrofuturism, and terrifying horror. But although I was blown away by this brilliant piece of art, it was still set in Jim Crow America. It still included extremely triggering episodes dedicated to the horrific murder of Emmett Till and the 1921 Tulsa massacre.

Or take Moonlight, a film considered by many — myself included — to be the best of its decade. It's packed with enough Black family trauma to have been made by Tyler Perry or Lee Daniels. If you watched this year's Oscars, you saw Travon Free's Two Distant Strangers take home the award for best live-action short — making him the first Black filmmaker to ever do so. Watching the depictions of Black death in this film basically feels like looping the most painful scene in Fruitvale Station for 30 straight minutes. Even though these works are of immense importance in the canon of Black art, they don't do much in the way of re-shaping public consciousness with a broader understanding of what Black life can be.

There are examples — albeit very few — of mainstream film and TV content that centre Black folks in ways that avoid the use of problematic tropes while achieving a high degree of artistic merit. Take, for example, HBO's radical, abstract, stream-of-consciousness sketch show Random Acts of Flyness, which touches the pulse of Black complexity in a special way. The brainchild of filmmaker Terrance Nance and a host of other directors, Random Acts is a surreal tour through the collective Black mind in the form of vignettes that feature genuine, diverse characters and genre-bending premises. And Issa Rae's Insecure shows us just how artful and entertaining mundane Black life can be (something she achieved with her inaugural web series Awkward Black Girl too). Without the commodification of trauma or the overuse of Black love clichés, Rae crafts a unique, hilarious, unapologetically Black exploration of romance and friendship. Finally, I'd be remiss to not mention Michaela Coel's gripping mini-series I May Destroy You here as well. These shows are able to achieve artistic innovation and mass appeal while modelling a picture of the Black experience that is basically stereotype-free. This shouldn't be so remarkable.

When I use the term mainstream, I'm referring to content that has been greenlit by the corporate establishment, given a sizable budget, and widely advertised to multiple demographics. The White, corporate agenda to keep mainstream portrayals of Black life within a box of suffering, sex and stupidity is actually most evident when viewing content aimed at White viewers. The overwhelming diversity and breadth of White stories greenlit by corporate gatekeepers is truly something to behold (I could provide examples here, but we're basically talking about 90% of existing mainstream titles). What are the ripple effects of this on the public consciousness? When you compare this broad and varied scope of White stories with such a limited framing of Blackness, there is only one conclusion for the viewing public: White possibility is endless, while Black possibility is narrowly constrained.

Don't get me wrong — after decades of invisible token characters and BET-only content, seeing Lovecraft Country directly followed by a Snoop Dogg beer commercial still does feel like advancement. Watching Two Distant Strangers take home an Oscar, then flipping the channel to Megan Thee Stallion's new Calvin Klein ad seems like a reality we've dreamt about for years. But in the haze of the moment, I fear we've become much less critical as a community. If all this new representation isn't coupled with increasingly complex and complete portrayals of Black life, how much advancement does it really represent? If the Black stories being widely distributed to the public are never liberated from the confines of toxic tropes, are they just another hindrance to our freedom?

When you compare [the] broad and varied scope of White stories with such a limited framing of Blackness, there is only one conclusion for the viewing public: White possibility is endless, while Black possibility is narrowly constrained.- Matthew Progress

As we continue to navigate this new frontier of "diversity and inclusion" — witnessing Black representation grow exponentially — let's suppress the urge to rejoice, and commit to a higher degree of skepticism. Let's stop simply calling for more Black bodies on camera, and start unpacking the qualities and messaging attached to mainstream portrayals of Black life. This can be a great era if we remain critical and remember that truly transformative change is something that cannot be given to us — we have to create it.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.