Movie Opinion: On Race, Cinema And Jimi biopic

Last issue we reviewed Jimi: All Is By My Side, a flawed but intriguing account of Jimi Hendrix’s tumultuous year in London before he became a musical icon. Directed by John Ridley, who won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay for 12 Years A Slave, I found its depiction of Hendrix as an enigmatic but increasingly ego-driven dreamer a compelling one. However, it appears major liberties have been taken with the depiction. Hendrix’s ex-girlfriend Kathy Etchingham has protested against scenes which show Hendrix (played by Andre Benjamin) viciously hitting Etchingham (Hayley Atwell) and holding her in a headlock.

Etchingham has declared that the scene is “unethical”, “inaccurate” and “nonsensical”, stating that Hendrix was never violent towards her. She is so enraged by the depiction that she is considering legal action, saying “If I don’t [take legal action], it’ll just get repeated and repeated and it’ll become the truth.”
Ridley – who famously fell out with director Steve McQueen over writing credits on 12 Years A Slave – has apparently fallen into one of Hollywood’s most pervasive and politicised character tropes: the aggressive black male. The stereotypical image of the young black criminal male still dominates media and fuels racism, particularly in the U.S. Thus, the inability of Ridley to tell the tale of a successful, iconic black man without reverting to fictional depictions of his violence cannot be separated from the political implications of this trope. After a summer where three innocent black men were killed by white police officers who erroneously assumed the young men were violent criminals, a study by propublica has revealed that young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white peers.
And on screen, they’re apparently more likely to be defamed. Biopics of white men often downplay or outright ignore their subjects’ violence and abuse. As merely one example, A Beautiful Mind ignored mathematician John Nash’s violent temper, which he often inflicted upon his wife. Meanwhile, depictions of men of colour onscreen are often based in violence – or they are patronised by the stock character that Spike Lee calls the magical negro; a trope that presents black men as gentle, mystical beings who exist only to guide the white protagonist.
Ironically, All Is By My Side does address issues of racism, and John Ridley himself is a man of colour. Time will tell whether his future projects avoid presenting black men as slaves, mere props to serve white men’s stories, or violent thugs. These three dominating tropes need to be dismantled, not for the sake of cinema, but of people.