STAY BLACK: How to Protect Your Cultural Voice As a Black Screenwriter
Working as a Black screenwriter in Hollywood is a journey that brings many highs, lows, and lessons. One of the biggest ones is how to keep your artistic integrity and style of writing. For many Black writers this includes writing about one’s own heritage and culture, the simple nuances that are only understood at the cookout or the barbershop. Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy and you must learn how to take a note. Because, sometimes that means taking it with a grain of salt. This is especially true if you’re working with someone who doesn’t have a basic understanding of what you’re trying to communicate. For Black (and otherwise “diverse”) screenwriters, this is often the default. A lack of executive personnel who share our backgrounds equals a lack of understanding of where it is needed most. Here’s what you need to know about keeping narrative Blackness sacred in the land of #OscarsSoWhite.
1) Recognize the Importance of Your Cultural Voice
With the mainstream film and TV industry’s historical dearth of diversity-- which continues to be a struggle-- it’s safe to say that a broad spectrum of underrepresented perspectives is needed. Some people find that the way to address this is to put performers of marginalized experience in roles that otherwise might have been written for a major star from a more privileged background. And while this is a great tactic for a multi-pronged strategy, projects that are culturally bound to these underrepresented perspectives are incredibly important. The little things such as how Black folks protect their hair at night have gone unnoticed by the dominant culture for so long that it can feel like we aren’t fully seen, even when we are “represented.”
Fields like Journalism have proven the importance of depicting Black life from an insider’s perspective, as failure to do so often leads to harmful skews in perception. A century of centering industry-dictated portrayals of Black people has had similar outcomes in entertainment media. This means something’s got to give. The idea that a screenwriter should dig their heels in about any aspect of their work is almost sacrilege in the professional space. But killing your darlings shouldn’t have to mean killing your soul or your consciousness.
2) Navigate Your Notes Process
Unless specifically sought, the chances of a writer receiving notes from a reader who gets your specific cultural background are slim to none. In the classroom the dreaded, “I didn’t get that…” from the instructor is often a directive more than a statement-- even when talking about the appropriate use of AAVE and other pertinent characterization techniques. In the professional space, things can get even more Draconian. I once had a non-Black executive ask me if characters who were strategically taking advantage of systemic racism in the most barbaric way could be “more sympathetic.” I had to recognize that in this case, it was not a note about story quality-- but rather, a note about coddling a dominant perspective by downplaying the writer’s emotional truth. Yet we see that when it comes to the right demographic of writers, those emotional truths are held protected by these processes even when they are couched in factual untruths.
I have found it helpful to politely ask for clarification whenever I need to get to the bottom of the note behind the note. For example, “If I do this I fear it will ring inauthentic to the project’s core audience. Is that less of a concern here?” Because the cultural perspective is often key in my work. I want to establish that importance in my pitch. That way, it becomes clear whether the reader in question is seeking a fundamentally different project than the one I came to talk about. Understandably, this will be a non-starter for some writers-- but not others.
3) Be Okay With Walking Away From Whitewashing
In a recent interview, super-hyphenate Issa Rae laments some of Hollywood’s backsliding on their Diversity, Equity & Inclusion promises. She goes on to say that the recent cancellation of her project Rap Sh!t comes down to executive teams choosing to opt for “safe, ‘universal’ stories.” When we consider that we’re talking about a show highlighting music’s most popular genre, that phrase is a euphemism for whitewashing. And if that really is the goal, then they don’t need to come to the scores of BIPOC creators who are still waiting to be seen in order to fill that mandate. At the end of the day, Hollywood is going to do what it wants because there is little to no path to recourse. However, the more we keep the record straight in these processes, the more leverage we have to move accordingly. That might mean “build your table” as some like to say. It might also mean fighting for legislation that reminds the industry it is subject to the same Civil Rights laws as every other sector. We’ll just have to see.