The Black Panther Party, Hollywood, and Popular Memory 17
drug lords to undermine black communities, the side effects of their deals have
certainly harmed poor blacks. Like heroin in the ’60s and ’70s, crack flourished
during the ’80s in poor black communities, at the same time that the war on
drugs failed to produce many victories.” Nor does Dyson perceive the
representation of white policemen in Panther as unnecessarily caricatured.
Dyson credits Van Peebles with “a gesture of cinematic exaggeration that
faithfully evokes the spirit of police terror of that period. It was Rodney King
made routine.” The critic concludes, “The Panthers were neither thugs nor
saints. They were soldiers of misfortune in a brutal battle against racist
supremacy, vulgar capitalism, and the violent oppression of blacks. Panther
helps us understand why this revolutionary Marxist group of the ’60s armed
itself.”^^
Thus, despite its shortcomings and inaccuracies of detail, Mario Van
Peebles’s Panther must be given credit for attempting to address some of the
larger historical truths of the 1960s and preserve the legacy of the BPP, in
opposition to the caricature of the BPP and the 1960s offered by such cinematic
pabulum as Forrest Gump. While Panther failed to attract the financial backing
and audience of Forrest Gump, the Van Peebles film demonstrates the potential
of cinema to render a dialectical alternative to establishment mainstream
entertainment. Perhaps Van Pebbles deserves the last word. The director insisted
that he wanted to assert the revolutionary legacy of the Panthers. “And rightfully
so, for the Panthers are often victims of media trickology. Witness thenunfortunate buffoonlike portrayal in the universally loved Forrest Gump.""^^ Let
us hope that other filmmakers will take up the challenge of discrediting the
Forrest Gump mentality of contemporary America.
Sandia Preparatory School
Ron Br iley
Notes
1. Nina J. Easton, “The-60s-Aren’t Dead File: There Are Five Black Panther Movies in
the Works,” Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1991,26.
2. Janies Snead, White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (New
York: Routledge, 1994), 142; Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American
Image in Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 2-3; and Vincent F.
Rocchio, Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood’s Construction o f Afro-American Culture
(Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000), 26.
3. For historical background on the Black Panther Party see Charles E. Jones, ed.. The
Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Back Classic Press, 1998); Kathleen
Cleaver and George Katsiaficas, eds.. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther
Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy (New York: Routledge, 2001); and
Philip S. Foner, ed.. The Black Panthers Speak (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995).
4. For background information on Forrest Gump see Shawn Breiman, ed., MagilTs
Cinema Annual 1995 (New York: Gale Research, 1995), 213-216.
5. Michael Medved, '‘Forrest Gump,"' New York Post, July 6, 1994, 33; and Medved,
Hollywood vs. America (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).