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The Black List
TV Review by Kam Williams
HBO Documentary Profiles Prominent African
Americans
You might have missed the premiere of The Black List, since
this fascinating new HBO series premiered on August 25th, the same night
Michelle Obama was addressing the Democratic Convention. Fortunately,
you can still catch replays of the first installment of the
groundbreaking program (check local listings) which features revealing
interviews with 23 prominent African
Americans.
The project is the brainchild of still photographer/moviemaker Timothy
Greenfield-Sanders and former NY Times film critic Elvis Mitchell who
collaborated to produce an intriguing show far superior to the Black in
America special which aired on CNN earlier this summer. For this
documentary employed a novel format to provoke soul-searching, thereby
eliciting heartfelt answers.
An unseen and unheard Mitchell posed piercing questions about being
black to his 23 subjects. And the emotional content of their responses
is heightened because each appears onscreen alone, with nothing behind
them but a stark, blank backdrop. This forces the audience to focus on
their words, which have been invariably edited and distilled down to
their most evocative moments.
The icons participating represent a diversity of fields ranging from
academia to athletics to activism to the arts. While most are household
names, such as Reverend Al Sharpton, Colin Powell, Chris Rock and Serena
Williams, some are not instantly recognizable, like Time-Warner CEO
Richard Parsons, curator Thelma Golden and Negro League baseball great
Mahlon Duckett.
One person you might be surprised to learn he’s even black is Slash, the
lead guitarist of the heavy metal group Guns N’ Roses. He talks
earnestly about how uncomfortable he felt when lead singer Axl Rose
wrote a song with the N-word in the lyrics.
Others’ reflections prove to be just as interesting, whether it’s Rock
ruminating about working at Red Lobster, Colin Powell declaring that the
Armed Forces would never have been integrated back in the Forties if it
had been left to Congress to pass a law, or Susan Rice talking about
being a Rhodes Scholar.
CEO Parsons was particularly insightful, observing that when you’re
black, “people feel compelled to bring up the notion of ethnicity with
you. We’ll know we’ve made real progress when you just get to be a
person.” And if the country ever becomes that colorblind, shows like
this will finally be obsolete.
Meanwhile, a salute to Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell is
in order for producing an innovative series likely to revamp the way in
which television studios approach the personal portrait genre.
Rated TV14 for adult language and adult content.
Running Time: 87 minutes
Studio: HBO
To see an excerpt from The Black List, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2LAp7b77EY&feature=related
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Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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