Discover the cinematic legacy of Black artists with Samantha Sheppard, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Performing and Media Arts in the Cornell University College of Arts & Sciences, and host Nicholas Phillips.
Black actors, writers and directors have made profound contributions to television and film, entertaining and educating audiences through powerful stories and performances that reflect the human experience.
In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast, brought to you by eCornell, Samantha Sheppard, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Performing and Media Arts in Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences, explores the rich history and future of Black artists in cinema with host Nicholas Phillips.
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Nicholas Phillips: Welcome to keynotes from Cornell University. I'm Nicholas Phillips on today's episode. I'm joined by Dr. Samantha Sheppard, the chair of the department of performing and media arts and the College of Arts and Sciences. On this episode, Samantha and I are discussing the impact Sydney Poitier recently deceased Carl Weathers and other black actors and actresses have had on Hollywood. Additionally, we'll discuss race films and some unknown but game changing movies. Dr. Shepard, thank you so much for joining us.
Samantha Sheppard: I'm really, really glad to be here. It's going to be a really fun and exciting conversation with you today.
Nicholas Phillips: I know, I'm very excited. It's so firstly, the most important question, what's your favorite movie and do you have a favorite actor or actress?
Samantha Sheppard: I love how you lead with the hardest question to ever ask someone who studies film and media in general. And it's kind of really interesting because two years ago Sight and Sound came out with their most recent, like a hundred favorite film list. And I was really lucky that they asked me to contribute. And you know, it's a great thing that you get to talk about, you know, in global cinema, what are your What are the best top 10 films? And then you also get a chance to really talk about how making that list is really subjective. And of course, you're signaling to a certain kind of craft and style, a kind of impact, but also to like your own personal interest. And I mean, I had some like heavy hitters on there, you know, your Alif, your Eats the Soul, your Raging Bull, your Tongues Untied, but I also had Sister Act 2 on that list and that's because that's my favorite film. Um, and uh, it's surprising most people because they're saying, Oh, wait, don't you do this for a living?
Samantha Sheppard: Why aren't you saying something more, you know, dignified? Why aren't you giving me the latest Christopher Nolan? And it's like, but the thing is, your favorite movie has to be, number one, a movie that you're going to watch if you turn it on in a hotel room, you're going to watch and seek it out. You're going to own it. You're going to be able to quote lines from it. It's going to have made a huge impact on you in a really particular way. And I think with Sister Act 2, people forget that is a film about teaching. And so for me growing up, seeing that film, I mean, it's about teaching in a choir and Whoopi Goldberg's like really actually a headliner in Las Vegas.
Samantha Sheppard: So like, as a Leo, that's my full energy, right? But then she's brought in to save this school by turning this, you know, ragtag group of students kids into a choir. And so it was about the power of the arts, you know, the power of a good rap to get, you know, kids together. But it had like a lot of mini life lessons that I thought really, at the time that I watched it as a young kid made a really big impact and it's kind of stayed with me and it's just so deeply pleasurable. A young Lauren Hill in the film. it taught me, you know, if you want to pursue something like studying film for your entire life, that's not a wild idea. It was basically, all summed up in an amazing scene between Whoopi Goldberg's character Dolores also known as Sister Mary Clarence, and Lauryn Hill's character, Rita.
Samantha Sheppard: And she says, you know, if you wake up in the morning and all you can think about is singing, you're supposed to be a singer, girl. And all I want to do is watch films and movie and talk about them with students in like a really critical and historical way. So, like, that's what I should be doing, and so it created an entire life path, that's the impact of Sister Act 2, that is me, so that actually is my favorite film to watch, not necessarily my favorite film to teach, I don't teach it at all, but my favorite film to watch. But your other part of your question was about my favorite actor or actress, and that's a little bit of a hard one as well because it really, there's so many. I love Hollywood glamour. Like, I love a glammed out actress. Like, give me your Alana Turner's, give me your Claudette Colbert's, give me your Joan Crawford's. But then it's like, Denzel.
Nicholas Phillips: Yeah.
Samantha Sheppard: Nobody's acting. I mean, the man could tell me he's my father right now. I'd believe him. Like, with the kind of ability to, you just, everything he can do, and I want him to do more comedy, but he just has this exceptional range. He's so well trained. And he's just, I mean, he's an actor's actor. I mean, it followed probably right behind like Robert De Niro, but you know, some of his films, you know, De Niro goes a little too hard in the paint for me that I can't really keep my heart going, but but it's Denzel. It's definitely Denzel Washington.
Nicholas Phillips: Yeah. I would have to say Denzel. I was surprised by the Sister Act 2, though.
Samantha Sheppard: I know. It was a little curve ball right there. I know.
Nicholas Phillips: I would have to say mine's probably Remember the Titans.
Samantha Sheppard: Remember the Titans?
Nicholas Phillips: Just watch it on repeat constantly. It's my favorite movie.
Samantha Sheppard: That's such an interesting thing, especially since it plays so interestingly with history and with melodrama. But we often forget that sports films particularly are like men's weepies. So it also makes sense that you would maybe like hold on to that because you're able to tap into this inner emotion that you wouldn't have allowed yourself in a regular kind of cry film, for which that is totally a cry film.
Nicholas Phillips: Yes. Men's weepies. I have something to add to my vocabulary. So, you know. Getting back to our conversation, this is kind of your first time here. So I was hoping you could kind of give us a little bit of background. Um, you know, you have your PhD in, you know, media studies and film. What got you interested in, kind of studying film and its history and all that stuff?
Samantha Sheppard: I think when I tell people when it comes to my trajectory as a film scholar and a writer and a speaker it really began in college. But of course, you know, what you realize is you've been training your whole life. I loved movies. I loved going to the movies. We had a $1.50 movie theater that I could walk to that was like, down from the Walmart and I could sneak in snacks from the dollar store.
Samantha Sheppard: I would also go to the bathroom, wait around, and go to another movie because I wasn't rich. So even $1.50 felt like a stretch. And so I had been watching movies my whole life and I had just been consuming consuming stories. And I thought, you know, this is really important. And maybe I want to work in film someday, but I'm probably just going to be a lawyer like my favorite television show, Living Single.
Samantha Sheppard: I'm going to be Maxine Shaw, played by the great Erica Alexander. So I went to Dartmouth College and I took a class I took Intro to Film and I took African American Cinema. And that class changed my life. Number one, I didn't really know that you could teach film. I didn't know that you could teach particularly black film history. And so when I got the books, I read them twice for fun. And I said, Oh, there's something here in the water. I mean, It's Dartmouth. We're already nerds, but like the nerds on nerds situation that end up adding to it meant that I was so compelled by the subject matter. So I ended up majoring in film and television at Dartmouth and then went straight to get my PhD at UCLA.
Samantha Sheppard: And what's really powerful when you think about this global medium is that it's, and this is also not just film, but also television, it's a mass medium, is that it's an unparalleled, cultural tool, part of a larger cultural institution and a cultural industry. So being able to study it is really to study not just art and artifacts, but also an industry that has a business, an economic, a politic, a history.
Samantha Sheppard: And so it was so rich and complex and at the same time, maybe the most interesting person at any dinner party, because I could always be like, so like, what are you watching? And then there was a good chance I was watching it, too, because. I don't get outside. And so I just really love being able to talk about this stuff.
Samantha Sheppard: And that's really what kind of drove is that I could do this. And then I could teach students about this, that it was more than just the thing that they liked, that they could have a really rich conversation.
Nicholas Phillips: Now, I'm wondering if anybody has ever said, oh my God, my favorite film is Citizen Kane.
Samantha Sheppard: Yes, people do. People do usually because they're trying to impress me. And I have to say. You know, I mean, I think that's great because it is a really important and significant film.
Nicholas Phillips: And just to kind of get back now, like you mentioned, you went to UCLA. What was it like to have, you know, Hollywood in your backyard essentially and studying film and media?
Samantha Sheppard: Oh my God, I absolutely loved it. First of all, when you go to LA, you already have to play it cool because you're just walking around seeing stars all the time and you just have to say, you know, this is just normal life. I'm not going to run up on them right now. And then, UCLA is really fantastic in part because it's a professional school and it has a critical study side.
Samantha Sheppard: So I was, training and learning the history of film and media and television. All together alongside folks who were learning directing cinematography and screenwriting. And so there was a real strong appreciation for craft. And then we would see them go out there and do their work in the world.
Samantha Sheppard: And also we would see folks from the industry come into the classroom and come into the school and talk about the industry itself. It was really lovely just to be able to be in kind of an enriched environment. And then we also remember that L.A. is filled with all not all of, that's a misnomer right there I'm about to say, but filled with so many great archives.
Samantha Sheppard: So you have the Margaret Herrick Library, which is the archive that is maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that's the Oscars folks. And what they end up doing is they end up basically having these huge files on basically every film. And so you could go and find out all this interesting stuff about all of these old films because they kept, you know, the correspondence between the studios and in the producers and the directors.
Samantha Sheppard: And so if you're saying, why was this film looking like this? You can go back and see the cast list. You can see handwritten notes when they were, you know, during the production code era, which is Hollywood's period of like extreme censorship. You can go see the ways they tried to make changes to like be able to fall into the production code, like rules.
Samantha Sheppard: And my favorite is when I teach, I teach the film of Imitation of Life, the 1939 John Stahl version. Um, and what you can see is this is after the production code has started, and they're trying to get away with the fact that Imitation of Life deals with an interracial storyline between two mothers who work together to deal with the Depression era, and then there's a young light skinned girl named Piola played by the actress, the black actress, Freddie Washington. And what's so interesting about this is it's obvious that she's black. We know she's black, but she's playing a young girl who wants to pass. And so there was all this concern from Joseph Breen at the studio, not at the studio, Joseph Breen basically writing saying, we need to make sure that everybody knows that she's black, even though she looks white and she wants to be.
Samantha Sheppard: So they wrote in there, it's like, you all have to really make sure that this is not a story of miscegenation, because we can't have that. We can't have mixed race. That's one of the prohibited rules. And so what they ended up basically doing is putting the throwaway line in there where they say, Piola, she's a product of a very, she has a very light, light, light skinned pappy.
Samantha Sheppard: So that way they can kind of deal with the fact that she looks white. And that's what she's also talking about, it's having these yearnings, what she wants to be is white like she looks, which isn't actually wanting to be white. She just wants white opportunities. This is 1939. She wants to be able to go and do what she wants to do without having race bias.
Samantha Sheppard: be a barrier for her. So it's great to be able to go to the Herrick and see all these kinds of wonderful materials on Hollywood history. So, you get to see stars, you get to be, you know, in an industry conversation. But you also get to be have this rich resource between there and the UCLA Film and Television Archive is the second biggest archive, only second to the Library of Congress.
Samantha Sheppard: So you can imagine, you know, they have, you know, television programs. You want to see what's happening during the Watts revolt in 1965, the way that television programming was covering that revolt, they have the footage. You can go back and look and really see what kinds of discourses were happening around sort of major social events.
Samantha Sheppard: And so it's really exciting. It was an exciting time to be doing my work there.
Nicholas Phillips: It's bringing back memories for me of seeing like, you know, small clips of some of the Watts riots and things like that.
Nicholas Phillips: I'm interested to know what impact Birth of a Nation had on, just as a quick follow up on, African Americans in Hollywood and, you know, developing movies and everything like that. It seems a lot of us get our understanding of the world based off the media that we watch.
Samantha Sheppard: Of course. I mean, there's no film that hasn't had a long standing that has not had a longer standing impact in the Birth of a Nation. And if you ask D.W. Griffith that we were to reincarnate him right now, which I'm sort of like now we're good on that. But if we were to ask him, he you know, he was vehemently opposed to the idea that his film was racist.
Samantha Sheppard: And D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation is based on the book by Thomas Dixon called The Clansman which was really a desire for him, Dixon, Griffith, and Woodrow Wilson really to cement the idea that there was the need for the Ku Klux Klan, that there was a need for a white vigilante group to restore social order post Reconstruction.
Samantha Sheppard: So, the fact that Birth of a Nation was the first film to be screened at the White House and then Woodrow Wilson would later call this film, "history written in lightning" despite the fact that it was a complete warping of historical fact is really significant. Number one, it tells you the importance as a culture industry, that it would be aligned with our political systems, that it would be in the White House. And number two, that it would create particular characters that would reverberate historically even to this day. So we have longstanding figures like the Mammy, longstanding figures like the Black Buck meaning some like lascivious hyper aggressive, hyper masculine, black male figures who, you know, are, you who would be a threat to white womanhood.
Samantha Sheppard: We have the figure of, you know, the racialized coon or the, which is kind of a jokester, jester, but a comical black figure, but where the comedy is racialized in very particular ways. And then of course the tragic mulatto figure which we see that common refrain come up when it's particularly with mixed race actors and actresses.
Samantha Sheppard: And so the way that has shaped the kinds of stereotypes, the pervasive stereotypes and iconography throughout film history, we could always say, well, I swear I saw a Mammy I swear I saw one now. I swear I saw the same kind of trope. Is that there's a historical legacy of those kinds of images, but it's also a legacy because Birth of a Nation was so stunning, visually.
Samantha Sheppard: It was synthesizing so many film formal choices that had not been synthesized before it was like one reels like so, you know maybe 30 minutes, maybe 15 minutes and now we were in a three hour epic film that is using close up melodrama, full dramatic storytelling, cross-cutting and parallel editing so you emotionally are caught up and swelled with the fact that you get, you end up feeling narratively positioned to root for the KKK in this film and it's done so expertly through how he's cutting back and forth between a family in peril and the rescue mission of the Klan.
Samantha Sheppard: And so when I say what's so important about all of the film techniques in film form that the history of cinema is so implicated in a question of race, and how to also be a potential, a potential apparatus of racial harm that we can't divorce or divest those two. And so when we think about the history of cinema, we have to think about the ways in which film can be used as modes of racial redress or also potentially used for modes of racial harm.
Samantha Sheppard: So that's something I think is part of the legacy of Birth of a Nation, is that it created character tropes and a history of being able to have a very seductive, persuasive form, make us not really even question the kinds of racialized imagery and the racial harm of really filmmaking.
Nicholas Phillips: And, one of the things you mentioned was, some of the films being developed at Tuskegee and these other HBCUs, and a lot of us obviously can name some very old, you know major directors the Sergei Eisenstein's for example but one name that may not come to mind for most people when it comes to filmmakers is I think I'm going to be butchering it, but Oscar Micheaux.
Samantha Sheppard: No, you nailed it.
Nicholas Phillips: Oh, perfect. What was his impact on the movie industry as a whole or the film industry rather?
Samantha Sheppard: Oh wow. That's such a really important question because Oscar Micheaux comes at a really important time. And it's actually a really wonderful rejoinder to the Birth of a Nation question because his 1920 film Within Our Gates is often thought to be kind of a response to the racial lies of Birth of a Nation. So Oscar Michaux is really an entrepreneur a filmmaker, a novelist. He wrote seven novels. He made over 40 films, though we only have a small selection of them. But he made films during a period of time that started in the 1910s and went all the way to the 1940s.
Samantha Sheppard: But the reason why we don't have them are for a couple of reasons. Number one is that during this period of time, people were making films, but they didn't really think that how you have to kind of preserve them, like film preservation requires control temperature rooms when things are shot on nitrate you can't have them any place they could be flammable. So when we think about the history of in this time period, I'm talking about silent cinema. But silence, but we have actually lost this is not just in terms of black filmmaking. I'm just talking about film in general. We've lost a huge percentage of films because they were just not preserved, because we didn't know what this industry was. This was a new medium. This was like having fun right now. It's basically like doing TikToks and Snapchats. You don't know what you're supposed to be preserving, what you're supposed to be archiving. So Micheaux makes a bunch of films and we have only a few of them that we can actually see.
Samantha Sheppard: But he made them particularly during a time where you couldn't really work in Hollywood. So he had to self finance his own works. He would travel with his own works and he would make films as part of a period of time that we would call race films. So him people like the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, figures like Spencer Williams, who was also a director and actor.
Samantha Sheppard: They would go around and we call them race films, so it makes it sound like they're black films, but when we say race films, it usually was black actors sometimes sort of a black showman. But it was white money. So it was usually sort of interracial cooperative ventures with Oscar was a little bit different, but he self financed these films that were basically meant to be for black audiences that would also usually have a kind of moralistic or educational, pedagogical tail.
Samantha Sheppard: So they were for like middle class values, you know, teaching black people things like. Why education is really important, a very sort of a mix between the Boisean and like a Booker T. Washington kind of ethos, like so total full bootstraps, but like talented type version of it. So he was a prolific race filmmaker who really navigated the exclusion of an industry by basically creating his own pathway.
Samantha Sheppard: And we are thankful to even have his films because of, like I said, the issues of preservation. In fact, the film I described Within Our Gates from 1920 was thought to be lost. all the way up until 1990 when it was found in Spain.
Nicholas Phillips: Oh wow.
Samantha Sheppard: Yeah, so they basically had to re-dub the film back and we know we're missing parts of it because of the title cards are a little off, but it's a rich trove and he's one of many who we would call race filmmakers who made films for black audiences, particularly because at the time you couldn't go to the theater.
Samantha Sheppard: There was no interracial theater going, so these are segregated black audiences and he made them about black people and black lives and told black stories so he really is like the forefather or one of the forefathers not the first black filmmaker, but one of the forefathers of black filmmaking.
Nicholas Phillips: So for you, I'm wondering, is there a Jackie Robinson, as far as, you know, black actor or black actresses go, who kind of broke that glass ceiling or who really made it into the mainstream.
Samantha Sheppard: That's a great first of all, I love always just pointing this out. Jackie Robinson also was in the movies. He started himself to Jackie Robinson was Jackie Robinson in the Jackie Robinson story. Yes. it's a really interesting film. Number one, he's way too old to be playing his younger version of himself in the film.
Samantha Sheppard: Ruby Dee's in this film, opposite him. It was basically very soon after the book. The Jackie Robinson story came out by Arthur Mann. And it's a really interesting film, but in terms of what Jackie Robinson represents in terms of breaking color barriers, that really has to be the domain of Sidney Poitier.
Samantha Sheppard: And I was really grateful. Um, is that when Sidney Poitier passed I had a chance to write the um, kind of, it's not an obituary, but kind of a critical conversation post his death for the Atlantic. And it was really talking about the impact that he made because he was in certain ways really the first black crossover star.
Samantha Sheppard: And I mean crossover star as in like, both celebrated not because we've had other crossover stars who have been appreciated, but partially because they may have been caricatured. But he was the first crossover star who um, he won an Oscar, you know, he played this dignified figure often and that's both to his gain and to his and into a little bit of a constraint, meaning that he wasn't allowed to be a fully fleshed human being always but he did so in a way that, that re-inscripted what black masculinity was on screen um, and for many people was the only black person that they knew, even if they did not actually know him, in the ways that film and television can create a level of intimacy between actor and audience that we should always be critical of.
Samantha Sheppard: But as really an important one and he really broke barriers for black actors in terms of Hollywood and also in terms of roles that he played, but also in the fact that he was able to blend his artistry with his activism and was really um, really a sort of a public outspoken person while balancing the extreme burden of really being the first.
Samantha Sheppard: And since then we've had many Sidneys and that's where we get our lineage of our our Denzel's the late Chadwick Boseman's um, you know. Those what would have been, you know, Will Smith, like that's, that's his lineage. Um, is he's really impactful crossover box office, big success figures. That was Sydney Poitier first.
Nicholas Phillips: Yeah. Those two really hurt losing Sydney and then Chadwick, where I feel like it was in the same year or something.
Samantha Sheppard: It was, it was tough. I mean, yeah,
Nicholas Phillips: You know and as we're thinking about you know, the roles actors and actresses have played throughout the history of Hollywood I'm wondering how has the depiction of maybe black life changed throughout the history of Hollywood and throughout the history of film and cinema as a whole.
Samantha Sheppard: Yeah, I mean, I think that, again, to go back to Birth of a Nation, not to have it have this strong hold on us, but, you know, Birth of a Nation inscripted a plantation genre. Which put black people often to a pastoral world and not in just in terms of subservience, but also sometimes in narratives that kept them away from questions of sort of modernity or being contemporary figures in idyllic spaces.
Samantha Sheppard: That's one of the interesting things that like a film like Cabin in the Sky because they're removed from white worlds. And so Hollywood also got really into telling black stories where black people were in all black worlds. And so they were removed from an integrated society because that's also part of a social move is that is separate, but equal kind of ethos.
Samantha Sheppard: And so what we've seen is sort of this adoption of integration in terms of narrative, in terms of. You know, co stars, but also in terms of the ways we think about the world's connecting. And so, what we've also seen is um, Hollywood and independent filmmakers, and particularly Black directors, wanting to tell much more richer stories of Black life.
Samantha Sheppard: And that would be stories that would range, that would cover Black historical events, Black contemporary figures, Black dreams, Black hopes, Black speculations. And that's what's been really exciting, is really seeing the ways in which particularly Black directors have opened up conversations of I'm wanting to show Black people not have to be perfect.
Samantha Sheppard: Number one. So that's a little bit of the Sidney Poitier effect is that you don't have to be perfect. Wanting to explore black historical past. So I think of Barry Jenkins, absolutely stunning and under watched, go out and watch it people. Underground Railroad based on Colson Whitehoods. Um, um, maybe I might've said his last name wrong, but based on the novel they turned into an entire adapted series for Amazon.
Samantha Sheppard: It’s the most, it’s hard to watch. And I think I understand my audience, particularly black audience. They, I don’t want to go back and watch stories about slavery. You know, I don’t want this. And not critically say things like oh, it’s trauma porn, but like we’re it’s a past and if you don’t think that there was laughter on the plantation. You don’t understand the humanity of black experience.
Samantha Sheppard: So it's a really deep and rich text. So I think that we're seeing folks and also to imagine the one place that I think we still don't always want to but shout out to my discovery fans and that I'm talking about Star Trek discovery is black people in the future. So, we're looking still for more, you know, imaginations of black people who exist in the future and how we might imagine Black futures, which is something I'm hoping we'll see more of in terms of media making.
Samantha Sheppard: But now we're just seeing black people integrated into worlds, and that's really great.
Nicholas Phillips: You know, one thing I'm thinking about is, you know, like you mentioned, obviously, you know, looking back on our history and like with the Amazon series, it is hard to watch, our history sometimes, but it's history.
Nicholas Phillips: History is, sometimes not easy to digest. I'm wondering what film or even television show would you say had the biggest impact on the shift in portrayal of Black life?
Samantha Sheppard: Wow. I mean, I think in that sense, and not to have this podcast be sponsored by slavery, but sorry, can we say that this month?
Samantha Sheppard: But nonetheless, nevertheless, she persisted. It has to be Roots. Roots changed television. It was the most watched television series in the history. It was like the most watched TV show, TV anything in the history of television, as a miniseries. It brought together white, black, every audience and they sat down and had to reckon that fact that they weren't watching black history, they were watching their history. And that was already a complexity. And so Roots also changed the fact that if you ever seen Roots, you know how many black actors and actresses are in this work. And it's just a rich, compelling. So we have like the history of black film and television in terms of acting labor in this film, in this miniseries, excuse me.
Samantha Sheppard: And so, but it basically also talked about the viability of black stories, that there could be an investment in here. People will come out and watch because that's also one of the big unfortunate Hollywood illusions, which is that blackness, people won't come out and watch and blackness won't sell.
Samantha Sheppard: And then we know we say, why are we sending these people all around the country? Because people will go see anything number one. And number two is that also, we have a history of people showing up and showing out, whether that's turning on their TV and then getting the Nielsen ratings or actually going to the box office and making Black Panther, you know, a global success is that people will watch, but it's actually Roots.
Samantha Sheppard: Roots fundamentally change people's understanding of the capacity to deal with black stories. And in fact, that Black stories may have to deal with pain or deal with a history of racial violence, but also would deal with family overcoming stories of love, stories of preservation, stories of hope, I mean life. So, that was roots.
Nicholas Phillips: So it's so amazing. Love Roots. And I kind of want to shift gears a little bit kind of towards present day. And I promise audience, I know I'm not going to make this keynote into a funeral. But we recently lost, Apollo Creed, Carl Weathers, great actor, Chubbs, everything. thinking about other actors and actresses around his age, you know, many of them obviously are extremely iconic.
Nicholas Phillips: What connection can we draw between, you know, Carl Weathers generation of actors and actresses and this new upcoming generation of actors and actresses? So, you know, Michael B. Jordan's and everybody else.
Samantha Sheppard: That's such a great question in part because Carl Weathers comes actually as part of a particular cohort that we don't always recognize and as a person who writes not just about African American cinema and television who also writes about sports films I have a deep investment in both the rocky franchise, but also in understanding that there was a large number of black athletes who became actors and and that includes Carl Weathers um, Canada Lee, who would play in Body and Soul, another boxing film people like Willie Strode, who would later be nominated for an Academy Award for Spartacus even, like I said Jackie Robinson, you know, acted, so did Joe Lewis but there was just this huge number of, oh, of course, you know, Paul Robeson was a Renaissance athlete in general and would become, you know, a great man, singer, actor. But so there was this huge crop of folks who were basically coming out of sports in general, in part because of this hyper fascination with the hyper masculinity of blackness and all of these kinds of interesting I would say caveats that, that ended up becoming really exciting, great actors.
Samantha Sheppard: And what we saw was the ways in which they really could elevate text and change text in really important ways. And to think about, particularly with the Rocky franchise, how important Carl Weathers is as a character. Not Carl Weathers, the actor, but Carl Weathers, yeah, Carl Weathers character is to the entire series with the figure of Creed that would later of course be inspiration for Ryan Coogler to go back and then to reach out to Sly Stallone and saying, I want to re engage with this topic and make creed with Michael B. Jordan. So we see is this really interesting what I would say is a kind of citational practice and historical awareness of our actors and actresses these days. Kind of thinking about the legacy between them and other really important films and figures.
Samantha Sheppard: And so I think there's an interesting through line to think about, of course, Carl Weathers and a Michael B. Jordan who then plays, you know, his son of sorts in terms of lineages if we want to go the patrilineal way. But just in general, I think that nowadays especially maybe because we're in the period of reboots and remakes is that we think about with the remake of The Color Purple is that there's kind of this cyclical nature that's also happening between our older actors and our younger actresses, I think that there's an awareness in terms of the relationship between current black actors and actresses.
Nicholas Phillips: With it being award season, I definitely wanted to, you know, ask you a little bit about the awards you know, obviously there are, tons and tons of actors, some that come to mind, the Viola Davises, the Morgan Freemans who do a billion films, but it seems like they never really get.
Nicholas Phillips: The credit that they deserve almost I think maybe Morgan Freeman only has won an Academy Award or something, do you think that'll ever change in the future? Where you know these iconic actors and actresses will eventually get something obviously before they pass?
Samantha Sheppard: That's such a great question. I think about that, especially in context of, you know, this academy season with Angela Bassett, even particularly being nominated the previous year for, and it felt sort of long time coming because she lost out with What's Love Got To Do With It. Right. And then we think, you know, we're finally, she's going to get to the stage and then she loses.
Samantha Sheppard: right? And she loses to another person who's also had a long Hollywood career, Jamie Lee Curtis. And then she's now given this honorary Oscar, right? And do I think that I don't want to be unhopeful, but I do think that past is prologue. And I think that the Hollywood, I think that Hollywood sometimes gets a rap that it's, you know, a very progressive industry and it's, you know, always moving forward, but it's actually not at the avant garde of many things.
Samantha Sheppard: And it's certainly not in terms of inclusion. And also in terms of recognition, something that really struck me recently in these conversations about compensation and also about recognition is when Viola Davis was, you know, explaining to everyone that I'm the black Meryl Streep. Like, you know, the roles I've done, the training I've had, the awards I've been in, the things I've done, but I don't get offers.
Samantha Sheppard: Like I'm not fielding a bunch of offers. And therefore if you're not fielding a bunch of offers, you're not feeling a bunch of moments of recognition either. And Hollywood has just never been on the pulse of recognizing Black genius, both in terms of acting, but also in terms of directing, in terms of screenwriting in terms of casting, in terms of lighting, in terms of all of the categories.
Samantha Sheppard: And we can say, I always use the example of the film by Cassie Lemmons from 1997, Eve's Bayou. Which got written up in popular press and people saying, is it too good to be a black film? You didn't know what to do with it. It's a period piece. It's with Sam Jackson. This is one of his good ones. Right.
Samantha Sheppard: And it stars a young Jurnee Smollett and Lynn Whitfield. And it's, you know, it's, it's set in in Louisiana. It's rich. It's so good. It's like, it's also one of my favorite films. And it's got wonderful, beautiful acting. And it's, in that sense, it was shocking to people because it was black people in the historical past, but it wasn't slavery.
Samantha Sheppard: So they were just, you know, dressed well, but like with like, you know Sam Jackson was philandering like that was a problem. That was a conflict, right? And there was like an element of food like there's a history there and all this stuff, and it's so good and people didn't know what to do. It was not it was nominated for Spirit Awards It was not nominated at all at the Oscars and there's a lot of reason things aren't nominated people don't realize It's not just a popularity campaign.
Samantha Sheppard: I mean, it's a campaign like your studio has to campaign for it. So when things like 12 Years a Slave was nominated for its Oscars for which, you know, Lupita won and like, you know, there's a lot of recognition around the the play, another play, the film itself. It's in part because it was produced by A24, which was produced one of the big names of A24 is Brad Pitt and his Plan B.
Samantha Sheppard: So Brad Pitt does the work that you have to do when you want to get work nominated and potentially recognized, which is basically, you remember when you were in high school and if you said you wanted to run for student council, you basically had to start lobbying all your friends. That's what this is.
Samantha Sheppard: You have to go around and lobby all your friends. You have to go take them around and make them sit down and watch the film and say, let me introduce you to this Lupita. You have to really, you have to work for it to campaign. And so some of the smaller works and the really interesting things like A.V. Rockwell's new film, A Thousand and One, I think it's called starring Tiana Taylor.
Samantha Sheppard: So good. Right. That that film, you know, you, if you don't have the same kind of, infrastructural campaign machine that a studio has behind the work. You don't have people pushing that. How is she not nominated for this role when you have other works of different varying calibers? And this is already again subjective, we're judging art but so I think it's going to be, I think it's really going to still be quite difficult because some of the great work is still happening by independent folk, and they don't have the kind of studio backing and campaign machines to be able to get that kind of recognition and breakthrough.
Samantha Sheppard: And then the fact of the matter is that people are still creating work for white audiences only. I'm not terribly optimistic. But I'm always very hopeful for the times that people are able to break through. And we get to see great actors like Sterling K. Brown, who I think is really he's to me, the head of the class of the new generation of actors who have an extreme range. If you were with Sterling K. Brown on Army Wives, if you're watching Lifetime with me and watching Army Wives, you know that man can act. So, but he has shown us with American Fiction, he's not even in the film that much, so scene stealing good, just rich, everything in the face. He knows what he's doing, but we knew that because This Is Us.
Samantha Sheppard: That man had us crying every 15 minutes, had to stop watching for my emotional health. Right? So, you know, so we have so many great actors who I hope get a chance to be nominated and to dazzle on the stage and be recognized because we know that they're really brilliant.
Nicholas Phillips: It's funny. I was talking to my wife because we saw it and I was like, why didn't they give me more Sterling K. Brown? Like I love Geoffrey Wright. He's great. But I was like, you got to give me more Sterling K. Brown in this film. Like, you know, is he doing multiple movies with this schedule like just a couple more scenes.
Samantha Sheppard: He's so good.
Nicholas Phillips: But we, you know, you touched on Angela Davis. I mentioned Viola Davis. We just got a great question in that was submitted by Lester. So Lester asks, what needs to be done to have more voices of black women in film, not just as sidekicks?
Samantha Sheppard: That's such a great question. And I would say a couple of different things. Number one, is that we want to recognize that black film and and particularly black women's film does not just exist in Hollywood.
Samantha Sheppard: And so, one of the ways we can kind of keep ourself aware of how and who is making film is to really open ourselves beyond what we see you know, come to the local Regal or multiplex. And that there's a strong tradition of black Women's independent filmmaking, and particularly black women's experimental filmmaking. And so you want to also hit things like the festival scene. So there's a wonderful festival that happens in Philadelphia called Black Star, which brings particularly global black voices and black filmmakers into a conversation. And so you end up getting to see work that may not be able to be picked up for distribution may not then get to stream on Amazon or Netflix.
Samantha Sheppard: And you have, you know, collectives, like Third Horizon and the New Negress Film Society, who are not interested in Hollywood. They're interested in supporting Black women filmmakers who want to work on the fringe or work on the side. But I also think it's really about opening up the gates. And this is actually not a question for Black women or Black folks in general, but it's for those who are in charge, because sometimes we put the onerous on well, why aren't you in better films or why aren't you doing things?
Samantha Sheppard: And we have to realize we've got to change the gatekeepers or the gatekeepers have to be a bit more inclusive. So it's really about thinking about who's running all these studios, who's gatekeeping, who's taking risk and Issa Rae was just profiled saying these Hollywood folks are not taking risk anymore.
Samantha Sheppard: They're going for the simple formulaic stuff and even she's finding obstacles and barriers and she's proven herself in all these different and distinct ways. And so it's really about gatekeepers opening up the gate because we're going to be creative and we're going to be geniuses and we're also going to be able to put, and also diversity is good big business.
Nicholas Phillips: You mentioned Issa Rae, and I'm kind of, thinking about, I love her by the way, she's amazing I'm thinking about, you know, obviously you had mentioned Chadwick Boseman as well is there, or who would you say is, the next big actor or actress when it comes to, African Americans in Hollywood.
Nicholas Phillips: Would you say there's one or a couple or is there one that stands out to you?
Samantha Sheppard: I think right now we in terms of Hollywood's metrics, I think in terms of bankability, critical claim and has had this huge crossover appeal, which is what else was going to put it and it's Zendaya. Zendaya is a figure, she's in these huge big budget films, Your Dunes, but she gets to also be on television, right? She's in Euphoria, she's won awards, she's won Emmys she has this sort of critical cachet but hasn't lost it in a way that so many people still love her, like you can't, you know, nobody can say anything bad about her, no, I wouldn't, I love her. But she's really somebody to watch and she has an interesting legacy and lineage with another sort of trailblazer like Halle Berry, right?
Samantha Sheppard: So, also, you know, a mixed race actress who is navigating the kind of stereotypical ways in which black women get framed and reframed and Hollywood blends, but she's a really important figure. I also think in terms of thinking about means of production. I'm really interested in the work that Ryan Kugler is doing as a director and therefore how he's also emboldening other folks like Michael B. Jordan to take up directing and not just worry about being in front of the camera, but really being really skilled in multiple ways, meaning to create and make your own stories. just in terms of full crossover appeal and can play to white audiences, can play to black audiences.
Samantha Sheppard: It hasn't been stymied by the quote unquote, how can blackness travel global questions in terms of big work? It would just be Zendaya. And I think it's also a youth factor. She really has done something really interesting with using her youth, but also her savvy to create really interesting sumptuous roles.
Samantha Sheppard: But I'd love to see more really great roles. There's Danielle Deadwyler who most people don't. She played Emmett Till's mom until um, oh yes, she was also in The Harder They Fall. Love that movie. Yes. Yeah, so she was so good in it and also a dark skinned black actress. Really great. But I know that when I say, she will have a harder uphill battle in terms of the roles and the access because of how gender beauty and race shape the limited roles that women in general can be able to access, but she's someone who you want to look out for because she's really doing some interesting things on screen and she's got a film coming up with Algis Hodge in the Hodge Brothers.
Samantha Sheppard: I think it's going to straight to streaming nobody's paying me for any of this. So check out all the platforms figure that out. But yeah, there's just some really interesting people. But it's Zendaya, it's the late Chadwick Boseman, who just is, I think death haunts us all because we could see it. He was many things, and he was everything all at once, and a true gifted person.
Samantha Sheppard: And then of course our Viola Davis, who is, we hope to see her be many things. I want to see her to the scenery. I want to see her I loved her and you know How to Get Away with Murder just committing crimes daily. But you know just as amazing, just getting those law schools that kill those kids and you got I mean, I don't sanction violence, but if you're gonna do it, you know do it in a Shonda Rhimes vehicle.
Nicholas Phillips: Dr. Shepherd, thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss new episodes as they are released, wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about eCornell's online courses and on campus programs, check out the episode notes for more information. Whether you are a busy professional or an impassioned lifelong learner, there's sure to be something that suits your goals and interests.
Nicholas Phillips: Thank you for listening.