The Devil Finds Work

"It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it so see."

This is my second time reading this. It is an essential text for me, in learning how to interpret the screen, and more than that. It has not lost an ounce of relevance. Personally I don't think you have to have seen the films, though they can provide some context (I went and watched 'In the Heat of the Night') after reading the first time. The point is not Baldwin's analysis of the films themselves but what his analysis reveals, which (if I can take a shot at it) is the extremely complex relationship between black and white Americans, and how this relationship is distorted, or not, on the screen. That most of the movies are written and produced by whites is very significant, and still is. If you want to try and wake from the nightmare of history, and resist surrendering to the corroboration of your fantasies on the screen, which every moviegoer today is still in danger of, please read this book, and read it again.

I was sitting in a resort hotel theater, watching the Jack Black/Jason Momoa Minecraft movie with my kids, after having told off some middle school aged goons who were playing hentai noises on their phones instead of watching the movie. I had just finished re-reading 'The Devil Finds Work,' and because of that I payed close attention (or as close attention as one can with two young children sitting on your lap as you feed them Sour Patch Watermelons), to the black character (Danielle Brooks). As soon as I saw her I realized that while the movie industry has made some progress, in this movie they had not made an inch. For she was the ever-present black friend in Hollywood that exists simply to help and encourage and assuage the conscience of the white characters, moviegoers, and directors. That the script of this movie is so bad it can hardly be called a movie does not matter. We're still watching it, and everything we watch effects us. James Baldwin reviews not just the important or good movies in 'Devil Finds Work,' but whatever movie he happens to see.

Dawn's reaction to the white girl's crisis struck me: "It's okay, he's just playing in an abandoned mineshaft." Because if there is anyone who has learned how to respond to a crisis, and what constitutes a true crisis, it is the black woman who has to work fifteen side hustles in order to make ends meet. I do not think it is a coincidence that whenever the script comes close to learning more about Dawn, we are promptly steered away to another feverish action scene. This is ignorance, this is racism and blindness. Should we cancel it? I don't know, and I do not think it really matters, but if it is all we watch and all our kids ever watch then we are in danger. For as James Baldwin says about 'The Exorcist,' "Americans should really know more about evil than that." Evil, true evil, operates in shadow:

"He [the devil] was not always evil, rarely was he frightening -- he was, more often, subtle, charming, cunning, and warm. So one learned, for example, never to take the easy way out: whatever looked easy was almost certainly a trap. In short, the Devil was that mirror which could never be smashed."