it’s up right now!

You don’t get The Wayans without The Wayans, yknow?

Maybe not so much now, but prominently so up through like 2010.

The classics, and their depictions for better or worse, are the reason we can tell stories the way we see fit in our modern era.

You don’t get Insecure without Love Jones. You don’t get Black Panther without Boyz In The Hood.

Our various cast and crew members—writers, directors, and actors especially so—have to carry the weight of our world and their own on their shoulders to bring these movies to life.

Give them grace. They have to tell your stories and all of ours at the same time.

Definitely don't seek any of the films out if you're certain they'll be triggering (looking at you, Precious [and Sparkle]) but consider that the tropes may just be depictions of (those) folks real lives and are likely small features or devices in the grand scheme of the story and runtime.

The strongest Black classics are all (off the top of my head) made for us, by us, so an aversion to certain depictions also has to do with a greater systematic conversation about an appeal to whiteness and respectability politics, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Their separation from the greater conversation of “classic” also has to do with the fact that they do not appeal to white people.

Uncomfortable as it may be, many of these depictions are just honest, but they're also not the end-all-be-all.

At the end of the day, lot of the Black classics are just good movies and their appeal doesn't entirely come from the nostalgia of their quotables.

Make no mistake, there are many exploitative and harmful depictions put to screen and reinforced as stereotypes, because of that

but folks like Singleton (RIP) or FG Gray are just painting their world. I can't fault them for being authentic to a life that they lived and are representing to us.

Yes, some (maybe a lot, depending on which/how many movies we talkin about) are anti-black studio mandated efforts to appeal to a w(hite)ider audience.

At the end of the day though, a lot of these are just true-to-life adaptations of some individual Black person’s life.

I had trepidation about this subject matter in college, because a lot of Black classics are not viewed within the same realm of quality as the general movie-goer’s idea of “classic” (white, or otherwise)

In being insecure about certain depictions detracting from that label, I found a thought—

mmm i see, and that’s fair

I used to work in a store that sold them lol

Dolemite is extremely new, I wouldn’t even put that on this list lol. 12 Years lowkey a stretch, too. Idk one black person who watched it outside of Oscar season

absolutely watch Love Jones and Boyz n the Hood, first.