emmy®extra March 2008 • more emmy®extra features
Artists Stay Active
Esteemed guests from the television, government
and
academic communities talk Artists & Activism at the
4th Annual NAACP Hollywood Bureau Symposium
By Libby Slate
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Artist & Activism: 4th Annual NAACP Hollywood Bureau Symposium. CSI: New York actor Hill Harper on screen.
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The NAACP has understood the power of media since its earliest years: Founded in 1909, it protested the racist portrayal of African Americans in the 1915 film Birth of a Nation.
The cultural impact of today’s celebrity, art and entertainment was the focus of the 4th Annual NAACP Hollywood Bureau Symposium, “Artists & Activism.”
The symposium is an NAACP Image Awards week event, presented with the Television Academy’s Diversity Committee and its Production Executives peers.
Held in February at Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre on Television Academy Plaza in Los Angeles, the event’s panel included:
- Vic Bulluck, executive director of the NAACP Hollywood Bureau
- Actor Hill Harper of CSI: New York
- Dr. Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA
- Debra L. Lee, chairman & CEO of Black Entertainment Television (BET)
- Judge Greg Mathis of the syndicated Judge Mathis
- Congresswoman Maxine Waters, representing the 35th District of California
Journalist Ed Gordon, host of the syndicated Our World with Black Enterprise, moderated the discussion.
As Waters pointed out, African-American celebrities have been involved in social causes for decades: Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier worked with Martin Luther King, Jr.; Aretha Franklin offered to post bail for Angela Davis; today, Denzel Washington is spokesperson for the Boys and Girls Clubs and Snoop Dog coaches Pop Warner football.
Where the more controversial activities are concerned, why risk one’s career? “All of us who are given the platform of national television or film have the obligation to use that platform responsibly,” Mathis said.
I’ve discovered that more young people think older people don’t care about what they think, what they do. When you engage them, you can influence them.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters
35th District of California |
“I trained to be a good lawyer, activist, judge," he continued. "The challenge is to make yourself relevant to black people; [otherwise,] what does it mean, if no one is benefiting? I believe we have an obligation to uplift our community.”
For Harper, who created the MANifest Your Destiny Foundation to empower underserved youth, “I believe all of us model behavior. My father’s grandfather was president of the NAACP during the Jim Crowe era.”
As for the networks, BET aspires to educate and inform as well as entertain, Lee said. “It’s important that the network gives back in terms of social causes, such as the Million Man March." The network has always seen it as their responsibility to tell the news from a different perspective, she explained.
"Our telethon for hurricane Katrina victims raised $14 million in three hours," Lee recalled. "Our executives sit down and decide what the most important issues are in the country for blacks.”
Not all popular African-American celebrities have been good role models, she noted, Richard Pryor among them. Indeed, Mathis decried some programming aired in the name of entertainment, such as that which, he said glamorized “drugs and thugs.”
The effect of hip hop culture and some rap music, which regularly contain lyrics that can be misogynistic and otherwise objectionable, also came under fire. “It’s a very fine balance,” Bulluck said “The NAACP is a civil rights organization, not a censorship organization.
"The portrayals in hip hop music are often negative," he continued. "The NAACP is on it. We’ve buried the ‘N’ word. But we can’t infringe on the First Amendment. We’ve worked with Dr. Hunt and others on that.”
Waters suggested an antidote to the negative images that entertainment may provide to impressionable consumers:
“I’ve discovered that more young people think older people don’t care about what they think, what they do,” she shared. “When you engage them, you can influence them. Our community would do a better job with the power of engagement than the power of attack.”
Bulluck is disappointed that there is more of a market for films about drugs and guns than for inspiring movies such as Akeelah and the Bee, in which a South Los Angeles pre-teen girl tried to make it to the National Spelling Bee. “A market can be developed,” Bulluck said. “Not enough time and effort is being devoted to developing it.”
There have been some breakthroughs; Harper noted HBO’s Emmy-winning film Lackawanna Blues, made after a long cultivation process.
In an audience Q &A session, Waters drew applause when she said that influence should start in the home, not with celebrities; parents must take responsibility for their children. And asked to address the sense that one is considered a “Tom” for wanting to better one’s life, Hunt responded:
“There’s a standard in place of what success looks like that usually doesn’t include us," he said. "The Cosby Show was a good example because it showed a successful family that didn’t lose their blackness."
"Most research shows that as children age," Hunt continued, "media becomes more important. Our challenge is to try to figure out how to change that [standard], to articulate success so that it includes us.”
The panel was preceded by the presentation of an NAACP/Ford Fund Scholarship check for $10,000 to Harper’s MANifest Your Destiny Foundation.
Candace Bond McKeever, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg and Marcelino Ford-Livene co-chair the Diversity Committee. Television Week underwrites the Academy’s diversity programs. •
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