Navigating a Middle Path

Quick. Who was the most prolific African American filmmaker of the 20th century? If you’re thinking Spike Lee or John Singleton, you better think again.

Many years before Boyz in the Hood’s Singleton was born or Lee became a household name, black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux had written, produced, directed, and distributed 43 feature films, several of which can be considered “answers” to the incredibly influential and notoriously racist first American blockbuster, The Birth of a Nation. Never heard of him? That may be because Micheaux’s creative legacy was in critical dispute after the passing of time. His production quality has been considered shoddy, his emphasis on racial uplift and middle-class values has been derided as quaint, and his supposed fondness for lighter skin and use of racial caricatures and stereotypes has been debated as evidence of his own self-hatred and internalized racism. But in his book Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux (Indiana University Press, 2000), Rice alum and associate professor of film studies at Ohio State University J. Ronald Green ’67 argues compellingly against the assumptions behind the negative critiques. Green’s scholarship is an ambitious effort to place Micheaux among other important, creative American filmmakers, and he argues convincingly that his body of work still has much to teach independent filmmakers and scholars of the genre.

Micheaux wrote, self-published, and distributed seven novels before he moved on to film. And as with any independent filmmaker working during the years 1913 through 1951—especially a black filmmaker—money was in short supply. One of the criticisms of Micheaux’s work is that it suffered greatly due to the low production quality. Green argues that such criticism not only does not take into account Micheaux’s circumstances but also ignores his vision, purpose, audience, and sense of integrity. Says Green, “His style is . . . appropriate to and worthy of his situation and themes and issues. That in itself indicates that his accomplishment may have been greater than has been recognized.”

According to Green, “Micheaux’s work reflects in its style the dilemmas of African American community and class mobility in a white-dominated world.” Micheaux believed strongly in the American Dream and in helping his people find their way to achieve it. The American Dream is, essentially, a dream to achieve the values and material success of the middle class. Green believes that Micheaux’s low-budget production style is one of many ways that the filmmaker’s work illustrated the recurring theme of blacks striving to create a “middle way” in navigating their route toward racial uplift and the American Dream. Micheaux’s use of a “middle way”—utilizing middle-class tools and moderate capital—helped him create movies whose form reflected their content, a concept that he believes many scholars and critics have ignored in critiquing the filmmaker.

Green argues that those who see the low production quality of Micheaux’s films as a hindrance to their overall artistic quality are mistaken. In fact, he states, “the inexpensive production values . . . reflect and also represent, adversity,” which allows Micheaux to remain true to his audience—people who were struggling with adversity as well. He goes further to say that grandiose Hollywood-style film budgets often do their film’s subjects a disservice and compromise the integrity of the filmmaker and his or her efforts. According to Green, Micheaux’s “middle way” allowed him to create art that more closely conformed to middle-class American ideals. He believes that Micheaux used the imperfect tools he had, a “crooked stick,” to achieve his goals and “hit a straight lick,” hence the title of the book.

Just as Green makes strong, meticulous arguments in favor of Micheaux’s production style, he also takes on all of the additional criticisms of the filmmaker, each time finding Micheaux worthy of further scholarship and respect. He is following his own lead here and, in 2003, will publish another book on the subject, but apparently, he isn’t alone. Kansas’s Oscar Micheaux Film Festival has become increasingly popular, so it seems that perhaps the 21st century is paying more attention to a filmmaker that the last 50 years almost forgot.

—M. Yvonne Taylor