Alex Kellogg notes that, for most of the history of American cinema, the black bad guy has been a caricature, not a sophisticated villain. Denzel Washington is changing that.
But Gangster is more than a critical and commercial success. It's a sign of an important progression in American cinema. There is, of course, nothing new about gangster movies with Oscar aspirations. But a gangster film starring an emotionally complex, flawed but redeemable, African American character? That's almost unheard of. By taking on such a role, Washington is reinventing the conventional villain, and the black villain in particular. The traditional one -- wide-eyed, wild, and inherently evil -- is so common in American cinema that he's hard to ignore, yet he's rarely recognized as part and parcel of what got the medium itself off the ground. In fact, just about every black actor has played such a villain (with the notable exceptions of Washington and his forbearer, Sidney Poitier). And the back-story to this stereotypical character offers a rare opportunity to reveal a long list of forgotten movie history.
Read the rest (and comment) here. --The Editors
