Showcasing Cinematic Black Trauma

I recently was browsing through the selection of films on Netflix and I decided to watch a film called Mississippi Burning. It is seemed like an interesting film, so I added it to the list and began to watch. And from the beginning, I witness three men slain in cold blood, two Jewish, one Black. The reason being is that the two Jewish are “nigger lovers” and the other is a “nigger”. At the hands of racist white police officers, these boys are killed in a very gruesome fashion and the blood and guts are not spared from being seen on screen. From this scene, I am uneasy and brace myself for a film that will show more gruesome suffering and harm done onto black bodies. I get to about 30 minutes in a witness a lynching and burning of the crime scene, and it is at this point I decide I cannot watch this film; seeing such images will not be good for my psyche, so I skip to the end where the men responsible are brought to justice.

It takes a while for the gut-wrenching feeling to leave me and it is at this point I decide that I cannot watch films that depict the atrocities done onto black bodies, whether it be a slave, colonisation or segregation film, and also I decided that Holocaust films are also off the table. Films that depict the historic mass murder of innocent people, are just not my cup of tea and not because the message isn’t important, because it is, and we should all know about the events that have occurred in history and the stories of those that suffered. However, consuming the atrocities as 90-minute to 2-hour films is a different story and can be problematic. Turning pain into viewing entertainment doesn’t sit right. The intention is usually hard to determine, especially when you consider the gatekeepers. The films are usually critically acclaimed and celebrated for representation and diversity and all sort of wonderful things, however, the images presented to the audiences can further embed the trauma of these events in people akin to those who suffered, and it’s likely these people are already traumatised by the effects of these events.

Trauma is typically defined as the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual's ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences. It’s very possible for cinematic texts to cause trauma for people based on the images they see and the sounds they hear. Now I understand that cinema is entertainment and the events covered in historical films are made to allow audiences to understand major life events in layman’s terms. However, I feel that ingesting certain images should be reserved for education only and not mass entertainment. I appreciate cinema and how it can be a doorway to events we didn’t witness or experiences we weren’t a part of, but sometimes care is not taken with the stories being told. The idea that such grave occurrences in history can be saddled with dodgy narratives and horrific imagery is all for the sake of entertainment and making money doesn’t bode well with me. Showcasing black pain when showing black stories is a classic for Hollywood, but we must beware of this singular representation.

I’m neither a psychologist nor a filmmaker. I am very aware that audiences are known to ‘love’ violence, but I think the levels we show and the amount we glorify should be reduced when it comes to cinema. And when we tell stories of the past, I think maybe we can indicate what it going on without necessarily showing blood and guts – sorry if it doesn’t align with artistic vision, but generations of people are still healing from the damage these events caused and the exploitation of these events sometimes does more harm than good. I’m not saying that these films shouldn’t exist, I just think more care should be taken and we as viewers should be wary of the images we’re presented with and make up our own minds of what we can or cannot withstand. As bell hooks suggests in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994) ‘Never accept images that have been created for you by someone else. It is always better to form the habit of learning how to see things for yourself; then you are in a better position to judge for yourself.’