Abstract
The Black bohemian is a largely overlooked character in both “Black” and White Hollywood despite an established subculture that has existed for years. This article looks at how Black American bohemian identity in two independent love films has evolved from the segregated world of Generation-X in Love Jones to the integrated world of two young millennial Black bohemians in Medicine for Melancholy. Using the markers of culture, space, and politics, this article posits that while we can read major superficial changes in the way Black bohemian identity has evolved between Generation-X and Generation-Y using these two films, on a fundamental level, Hollywood has not changed in its depictions of alternative Black life and love and continues to rely on the cliché tropes of a monolithic Black identity.
Keywords
Everything about being indie is tied to not being black.
A New “Old” Black Identity
Before he even stepped to the microphone and spoke/spat/rhymed the question, “Who am I?” in a slow melodious tone, it seemed to be understood that we did not know Darius Lovehall, one of the protagonists in Love Jones. In 1997, Lovehall (played by Larenz Tate), an overconfident, chocolate-skinned, chain-smoking, bohemian writer with lazy eyes, was an anomaly, at least on the Silver Screens of Hollywood, where Black youth identity seemed to be defined almost exclusively by guns, gangs, and pimps. To hear a young Black man wax poetic about spirituality, romance, and yes, sex, as tales of urban grit and crime defined what was perceived to be a monolithic Black youth identity, was to say at the least abnormal. Instead of Lovehall’s spiritual sexual verses that were oozing with sensuality as he questions this mysterious identity, “Who am I?; well, they call me brother to the night, and right now I am the blues in your left thigh, trying to become the funk in your right. “Is that alright?” Audiences were used to the sonnets of the Notorious B.I.G., whose closest lines to romance were “When I met you, I admit my first thought was to trick/You look so good huh, I suck on your daddy’s dick.”
The Black American bohemian experience is a subculture that is often overlooked by Blacks and Whites alike in Hollywood (Boyd, 1997). With the exception of Nola Darling in Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, Raymond Joshua in Slam, Tom Collins in Rent, and a few others, the Black bohemian lead character has been largely absent in late 20th- and 21st-century film, despite an established subculture that has existed for decades. Although many Black bohemian artists, like Poet Amiri Baraka, Painter Jean Michele Basquiat, Singer Michele N’dgecello, and Actress Lisa Bonet, have been heralded in their various genres, Hollywood has mainly stuck to the same five characteristics of Blacks as toms, coons, bucks, mammies, and jezebels that Don Bogle outlined in his seminal work in 1973.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the urban gangster film dominated the box office, until the huge crossover success of Waiting to Exhale. That film’s popularity signaled to studios that some Blacks were tired of tales of crime and violence. This attitudinal change coincided with the work of a young filmmaker, Theodore Witcher, who was writing Love Jones, a film that reflected his own bohemian lifestyle, which was lived more in the poetry houses than the “hood.” Love Jones is a coming-of-age story about two twentysomething young, Black creative types trying to figure out life and love in Black bohemian Chicago. It was one of the first movies of the late 20th century to show a romance between two Black Generation-Xers (focused on love, not sex as Booty Call, 1997, did just a month earlier). It immediately distinguished itself from mainstream depictions of “Blackness” at the time—on and off screen—by using a burgeoning cultural arts movement that was thriving in urban cities, but was invisible to much of America to create a new representation of Black life in America. Love Jones was released to critical acclaim, exposing audiences to a world that many Black and White audiences did not know existed. But despite the praise, the Black bohemian romance genre seemed to die. 1
Occasionally, Black American film would delve into the Black artsy social misfit or indie-inspired character (like Slam and I’m Done With White Girls), but it was not until over 10 years later that someone again decided to fully explore Black bohemian love. Medicine for Melancholy is a tale of two Black bohemians (or perhaps the millennial updated moniker—“Black hipsters”) bicycling around San Francisco talking love, freedom, and politics in the year that the first Black man was elected president of the United States. Superficially, it appears to be a far different film from Love Jones; but on a deeper analysis, the films are more closely related than apart. This article looks at how Black American bohemian identity in Black love films has evolved from the segregated Black bohemian world of Generation-X in Love Jones to the integrated White world of two Black millennial bohemians. Using the markers of culture, space, and politics, this article posits that while we can read major superficial changes in the way Black bohemian identity was portrayed between Generation-X and Generation-Y, using the indie films Love Jones and Medicine for Melancholy as primary examples, Hollywood has not altered its depictions of an alternative Black culture and remains to rely on the cliché tropes of a monolithic Black identity.
In 1992, cultural critic Nelson George (2001) classified four distinct personas in “post-soul,” postcivil rights African American culture, one of them being the “boho”—the Black bohemian. In an updated introduction to the book in 2001, he notes that it is the boho persona that he has had the hardest time explaining. Black bohemians, African Americans who shed conventionality and often have interests in art, literature, and philosophy, have been a part of alternative culture since the late 19th century, in areas like the Upper West Side of Manhattan, known as the Tenderloin, Harlem during the early 1920s (sparking the revolutionary Black arts movement known as the “Harlem Renaissance”), Greenwich Village alongside the beat generation in the 1950s and 1960s, and even Paris, France, for much of the 20th century. However, except for a few projects that were either nonfiction or based on real-life artists—see James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (1989), The Josephine Baker Story (1991), and the recently released Brookly Boheme (2011)—narrative film largely failed to capture the alt-Black lifestyle fully, particularly in the 1990s. “I didn’t want to write a bourgeois fantasy, like ‘Boomerang,’ nor did I want to write something in the ‘hood’ genre,” said Witcher at the time.
All of my friends exist in between those worlds. We’re not bourgeois, nor are we “hood rats.” We are a combination, and I was interested in making a movie about that group of people who never get to see movies about themselves. (Diamond, 1997, p. H15)
In another article, he added, “It was a hump to get over, getting the studio to believe we’re on the edge of a new cycle . . . [because] audiences haven’t been exposed to this side of African-American life” (Spring Movie Preview, 1997).
Spike Lee’s films during this time helped complicate the stories of Black America; but it was not until the breakout success of Waiting to Exhale (1995), which was directed by Forrest Whitaker and released by 20th Century Fox, that studios began to really see the profitability in alternative narratives on Black life. 2 The film, based on a novel about four middle-class Black women looking for love and happiness, had a budget of 16 million, grossed 81 million dollars worldwide, and received critical acclaim from White and Black audiences. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that independent studio New Line Cinema, which had found previous success with relatively low-budget Black gangster films like Hangin’ With the Homeboys and Set It Off, decided to purchase Witcher’s script, and produce Love Jones. Love Jones, with a reported budget between 5 and 10 million dollars, superficially may not have seemed like a gamble when motion picture studios were spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films like Titanic, but for a smaller house with less capital, the film probably was a considerable risk. Led by studio executive Robert Shayne, a known risk taker, New Line felt that culturally the time was right.
There are a lot of people who don’t like to go to movie theaters and watch a bunch of rowdy people making trouble. The perception that the African-American community is permeated with young men who do drive-by shootings and are rude to all women is an unfortunate one. And this movie, in an accessible and charming way, suggests that there is a strong, vibrant other culture that just hasn’t made as much noise.
2
Yet even producers of the film worried about the finances of the box office battle. Nick Wechsler told The New York Times days before the release, “We don’t know how much of an audience exists for this. It’s pretty much a gamble on the financier’s part” (Diamond, 1997, p. H15).
The independent film’s boy meets girl premise was not particularly revolutionary, but garnered much attention, and won a jury award at the Sundance film festival. Critics seemed almost taken aback by the film’s nonviolent, intellectual, middle-class [read White] narrative, something that seemingly never existed in the minds of “mainstream” reviewers until Lovehall took to the stage and started reciting poetry, not rap. Yet, as quick as Love Jones entered the scene, the new genre seemed to vanish. Perhaps it is because the film made only 12.5 million dollars, reportedly just barely breaking even, a surprise to Shayne at New Line and Witcher. In 1998, Witcher said,
I don’t know if people could make heads or tails of it, or if it was so different than what they were used to. I don’t think any of the [advertising] materials hinted at the poetry and coffeehouse stuff, [or] that there were overtly recognizable black types that . . . people could identify with, good or bad. We chose to just sell it as a love story, and the fact that it may not have been enough speaks to some larger issues about the society that we live in. (Hornaday, 1998)
Shayne goes on:
Love Jones wasn’t a broad-based, fun movie. It was thoughtful. Poetry is a hard thing to sell. It was a little bit of a soft movie. It didn’t smack you over the head in three minutes. I frankly am much more proud of and can stand up for “Love Jones” than I could for “B.A.P.S.,” which was a misconceived attempt to be entertaining. (Graham, 1997, p. 9)
As Tyler Perry, a financially successful, though often critically panned filmmaker, seemed to captivate the Black viewing audience in the early aughts with movies that often played into the standard Black stereotypes, young Black bohemian love stories were still a rarity until the low-budget film Medicine for Melancholy. That film is set in a very different cultural realm than Love Jones, in the world of a very distinctly White hipster scene in San Francisco. The mood has changed from dark to light, the music is now indie rock instead of jazz, and the bougie crowd of well-dressed Black youngsters sipping on their drinks with a “respectable” cool has been replaced with drunken, drugged-out White twentysomethings after a long night of partying, and the two wrinkled protagonists Micah and Jo’, waking up together after a sex-filled night.
George once said,
It is no longer radical to assume the existence of a loose community of African Americans who practice yoga, don’t believe in Christianity, disdain most commercial Black music and see the traditional notions of upward mobility as a soul sucking trap.
3
Yet, it still seemed to be so when Medicine for Melancholy was released in 2008. At that time, America was embroiled in a heated debate about race, with some people saying that they were tired of the race debate, that they were beyond it, spurring this idea that America was “post-racial.” Other narratives about the growing number of mixed race youth perhaps sparked by Barack Obama’s lineage also were prominent. Yet, while the number of mixed race families was a hot topic, Hollywood, and I would argue, mainstream society at large, has not fully dealt with what is known as mixed identities. In fact I believe we are still a nation that, perhaps because of the contentious Black-White historical dynamic, still primarily deals with race relations through the Black-White prism, and the characters in Medicine for Melancholy were no exception. Micah and Jo’ were an anomaly seen as an alternative to the mainstream Black experience. One review of the film posits,
If two African-American characters are introduced who do not match stereotypes, does it induce a kind of vertigo? If say, both are civilized young people compromised by a sense of social displacement, do the forces that create that social displacement appear less than civilized? (Guillen, 2008)
While the concept of an alternative Black lifestyle still seemed as new as in 1997 (though visually and acoustically this concept was more of a radical departure of “Blackness”), it was not as successful with Black or White audiences alike. It was not immediately called a classic. It went on to make US $110,000, hardly a significant amount for a film made on a budget “less than the cost of [a] car.” (Lim, 2009).
It may seem that comparing an independent film with a much higher budget and an independent film with a lower budget is unfair. But, in the very White-washed cinemascape in Hollywood, Black films and particularly films that depict an alternative Black lifestyle are rare. Both films are products of independent studios, and, and though Love Jones had more recognized “stars” at the time, the stars in it were mainly stars of “Black Hollywood.” Moreover, films that focus solely on the Black bohemian world (not a Black character or two in White/mainstream bohemia) and particularly Black bohemian love are so rare that the sample size for any project attempting used for comparison would be exceeding small and finding a perfect comparison unlikely.
The Black bohemian is a rarified character in African American film history because it forces Black and White Americans to alter their understanding of some sort of monolithic, essentialized Black identity, an already problematic phrase in itself. Movies like Love Jones and Medicine for Melancholy are important because not only are they introducing audiences to new cultural realms but also because they are reflecting societal views of a population of Black people and portraying them in ways that only film can do. Despite the fact that he is speaking on television, we can apply Herman Gray’s (1995) assessment on the influence of television to film as well:
In order for television to achieve its work—that is to make meaning and produce pleasure—it has to draw upon and operate on the basis of a kind of generalized societal common sense about the terms of society and people’s social location in it. The social ground and the cultural terms on which it works depend on assumptions about experience, knowledge, familiarity, and the accessibility of viewers to these assumptions. (p. 9)
Looking at the Black bohemian gives us a key understanding, and fills in a missing component to how we can read Black identity, which is always changing, evolving, and constantly being negotiated (Jackson, 1999). As Blackness is almost always defined against the notion of Whiteness (Roediger, 2006), reading the Black bohemian, which is a subculture of a culture already defined as alternative, can provide a key understanding of race in Generation-X and Generation-Y. Previous studies on Blackness, identity politics, and American cinema have engaged in long battles over the definition of Blackness, representation (Bogle, 2002; Guerro, 1993), and the essentializing aspect of Black film (Hall, 1990; Lubiano, 1991; Snead, 1994). While these debates still need to be hashed out in a more thorough way, my concern is to address how ideas of Blackness and Black identity are essentialized through space, politics, and, most significantly, culture in these depictions of Black bohemia. On the surface, in both of these films, “Blackness” is performed in strikingly different ways. However, with a closer reading, we can understand that Black identity—at the minimum defined as a shared lineage between characters—is not understood in vastly different ways by these films. If anything, the so-called evolution of the creative young Black artists from the highly racialized, heterogeneous world of the ’90s to the “postracial” multicultural early millennium seems negligible. While the spaces that these Black twentysomethings evolve over the years from that of the segregated Black world to an integrated White one, so-called “cultural” indicators of race, or codes, symbols, and meanings of others’ worldview, using Jackson’s definition (like music, friends, clothing style, and mates), and politics of race (from silent to vocal) change over the years, the same cultural tropes of an essentialized “Blackness” remain. Both, while attempting to reject an essentialized Blackness, still rely on the same sort of essentialized cultural Blackness that they are rejecting. Love Jones essentializes Black identity through culture. Medicine in particular essentializes identity through spatial segregation of culture.
Defining the Black Bohemian
How does one identify a Black bohemian? One would first need to define a bohemian. A common definition of a bohemian is a person who typically embraces an alternative, countercultural lifestyle, which is informed by literature, art, and intellectualism, while challenging conventional norms. Elizabeth Wilson (2000) in her book Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, however, says that bohemia is more of a sentiment than a reality:
The myth of the bohemian represents an imaginary solution to the problem of art in industrial western societies. It seeks to resolve the role of art as both inside and outside commerce and consumption, and to reconcile the economic uncertainty of the artistic calling with ideas of the artist’s genius and superiority. (p. 3)
Using that understanding, then could perhaps the Black bohemian be societies’ response to the problem of Black art in the postmodern world? Could the Black bohemian be the way that society is responding or rather “dealing with” the so-called inauthentic representations and actions of a subculture that does not conform to conventional understandings of Black identity? Perhaps this idea of a Black bohemia, too, is really just a myth, a way to “other” Black identity that is more complicated, or too complicated to be guided and defined by conventional rules. Or perhaps the Black bohemian is just a group of radical Black people who feel alienated by society and choose to live outside of conventions. Or if White bohemia is really a myth, then perhaps the Black bohemian is too. Perhaps it is not in opposition, but a part of Black culture that is just as undefined. Norman Podhoretz, an editor of Commentary, seemed to think that the idea of a Black bohemian was an oxymoron. He believed that Blackness was tied to Harlem, and certainly not anywhere like the Greenwich Village of the 1960s, and that the idea of the Black bohemian in spaces that were not Black was problematic (see Watts, 2001). In some ways he was right: The bohemian scene for the most part, whether in the 1920s, 1960s, or 1990s, failed to include any Blacks as a “legitimate” part of its culture, without “othering” them, or reducing them to first being Black, then bohemian. Even today, the majority Black band TV on the Radio, known for its indie music, is known as being a Black band that does “White stuff.” Overall, it seems that the perception is that the Black bohemian is going against, and in opposition to, what seems to be a mainstream Black culture, as well as a mainstream White bohemian culture, which we can see while perhaps radical and contrarian in theory, has, according to Podhoretz, the luxury of being exclusionary. I will use that understanding and definition as I proceed.
Love Jones is set in the all-Black bohemian world of late-’90s Chicago. It follows photographer Nina Mosley (Nia Long) and writer Darius Lovehall. The two meet in a smoky dark poets’ café, and it is love at first site after Darius dedicates a sex-fueled spoken-word poem to her. Nina is struggling to figure out how to enter the world of photography with photos that seem “raw” and reminiscent of Gordon Parks, while wondering whether she can make things work with her ex-boyfriend, an upstanding “buppie” doctor. She and Darius try to work things out during sex-filled romps, late-night dance sessions, drum-beating house parties, books, and intellectual one-liners.
Medicine is set in a vastly different world of indie music and culture in San Francisco. The movie begins the morning after Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins) have an alcohol-infused one-night stand in the house of one of their White peers, as they learn about who the other is and what that person’s worldview is like. In Medicine, Micah and Jo’ have relationships with White partners and socially partake in the integrated world (or a world that is not so integrated) of indie music. Their lives are immersed in it: their style of dress, the foods they eat (at one point Micah notes that Jo’s eggs over easy on wheat are “nonnegrodian”), their method of transportation (bikes), and the music they listen to. Their reality is created, defined, and limited by the culture of this world.
The Synopsis of Searching
Both movies represent characters that are searching for an identity, and they are constantly creating and redefining these identities.
Through reflective devices, such as Nina’s camera in Love Jones and the mirrors in Micah’s apartment, we recognize that reality, particularly as a Black person in America, is constantly shaped by multiple views, discourses, and narratives; and more importantly, we understand that there is no such thing as “reality.” This idea that reality is subjective rather than objective is a lesson that was implied in Love Jones, through Nina’s constant gaze of Darius through her camera lens, and in Darius’ poetic journey, when he implies that he does not want to deal with reality. (To quote him in A Blues for Nina: “Cause rather than deal with the fallacy of this dry ass reality, I rather dance and romance your sweet ass, in a wet dream.”) The subtle frustration with reality and existence within and outside of it is clear in Medicine too, in which the person Micah believes he is—the person we see Micah looking at in the mirror is different from what Jo’ sees Micah to be. In addition, it is important to remember that when thinking about identity and these two films, the filmmakers, due to the drastically different periods when creating these films, seem to have different missions and goals for their characters. Love Jones seems to be an attempt to establish/reestablish an identity through these cultural indicators that the filmmaker believes has been lost in Hollywood, as Witcher notes, whereas Medicine is attempting to figure out exactly what to do with that identity once it has been established for audiences.
Spaces
In the so-called ghettocentric movies of the ’90s, Blacks are largely seen as trapped within a space; and it is here where I first see a departure in the boho love stories. In both of these movies, space is representative of freedom, an essential quality of the bohemian ethos: the ability to move between within and throughout. These characters are not trapped by the system or circumstance but have the ability to move between worlds as they often do. In Love Jones, motorcycles, running, and the train are signs of the characters’ physical ability to choose their spatial settings. Particularly important in this reading is that these characters choose to occupy these segregated or integrated worlds. Both filmmakers make it clear that all of these characters have some sort of agency to determine their own fate, to live in other worlds. In Medicine, travel on the bicycle is mainly used as a mode of transportation. In the pale cityscape of San Francisco, the cinematographer depicts the city as open, wide areas where Micah and Jo’ have the ability to move around. By giving mode of transportation to these characters, and showing them moving throughout these spaces, we see that Nina, Darius, and Jo’ and Micah are unlike the young folk depicted in “hood” tales without options to leave.
The camera helps us understand these spaces better. In Love Jones, Darius and Nina choose to live in this all-Black bohemian world that seems to be defined by materialistic representations of the Black culture, they choose to frequent Black establishments. Nina chooses to shoot pictures of Black people; and in the case of Darius, he lives in a Black neighborhood. Because of an assumed comfort within these spaces, the characters in Love Jones do not particularly appear to be in opposition with their spatial settings, but rather are part of it. On the other hand, space has a different kind of meaning in Medicine. In Medicine, space is instrumental in defining their lives, and maybe to some degree their identities. The fact that both of them exist in these White spaces in itself seems to be emblematic, a fact that is important to Micah but negligible to Jo’. Most of their spaces seem to be oppositional. They are constantly on the move within the city, but the camera always follows them; they are never looking out, but always looking in. These spaces, whether or not in the larger mainly White city (a place Micah painstakingly points out that is only 7% African American), are never quite equal to the characters; and we find the cityscape often dominating the scenes. Even in Jo’s apartment, a place that is a multiracial sphere of existence, space is vast and deep. Not only is the physical space big, the distance between Micah and Jo’ is pronounced as well; and it is here perhaps where the filmmaker is trying to make a statement—that trying to coexist in these worlds is problematic. Many of the spaces the characters visit are a part of these integrated worlds; but it is only in “Black” spaces—like the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Martin Luther King memorial, and particularly Micah’s apartment—do we see any sort of closeness between the two characters. Only when we are in Micah’s apartment, a theoretical “Black” space, do we see characters dominating the lens, and do we see closeness between the two characters in terms of physical space. It is mainly in this so-called Black space that characters are physically close together, touching, making love, and talking; and the camera brings us close to them. Perhaps this is a representation of what race does—it not only unifies people and brings them close together but also limits them. In Love Jones, people seem to only leave their protected sphere of Bohemia out of necessity, and usually it is in these unchartered territories where “The Man” is encountered. White men in particular are a barrier for Nina to advance her career, with one photographer firing her for not getting the food that he wanted, and another asking her if her work could be less “raw.” In these scenes, the spaces of the hegemony dominate, and Nina seems to be physically smaller. Darius also interacts with his spatial setting when he finds himself unable to get proper mail delivery to his home, and attributes it to his existence in a Black neighborhood.
While the physical journey between and within spaces is very important to these movies, the mental space is also an important contribution to understanding the role of Black identity. Both films provide characters with ways to escape their reality. For Darius, he writes and smokes; for Nina, it is photography. By the time Medicine is released, art, while providing a sort of escapism, also enforces another reality, an unreality for Black folk like Micah and Jo’ (which I will discuss in later paragraphs); therefore, in order to escape their reality, they use drugs (marijuana) and each other as forms of departure from their exclusionary spaces, and freedom from a White world where they are often misunderstood. In Medicine, the mental escape from reality is literal, as their whole day after their one-night stand is based in a space that is not within their actual reality.
Culture
Culture is the main vehicle, particularly in Love Jones, in which the experience of the Black bohemian (mixed in with a little of the Black bourgeoisie) is conveyed. From the Charlie Parker record that Darius plays for Nina, the Afrocentric clothing of his friend Sheila (Bernadette L. Clarke), the Michael Jordan jersey Darius wears, the Black art, the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, the references to the African religion of Yoruba, the hip-hop played in one of the characters’ car, the spoken-word style of poetry in underground clubs, the list goes on. But herein lies the problem: Culture seems to be the main vehicle the filmmaker uses to connote some sense of racial solidarity. The characters do not engage in political conversations about race, they do not talk about slavery, or even present day racism for that matter (though their frustrations are implied whether it is from Nina’s eye rolling when an overbearing White boss does not like the food she brought him or Darius’ “aggressive” attitude and teeth sucking about not getting his mail). However, more than these subtle indicators of displeasure with the larger world, the idea of a shared lineage is represented through Black cultural art. In these spaces, Black art, it seems, is supposed to present an understood definition of Blackness and identity. While these cultural indicators prove important and unifying in a certain understanding of what Blackness is, and by extension the Black bohemian experience, as Herman Gray notes and Stuart Hall reinforces, it does not substitute. In fact, it relies too easily on mainstream’s idea of Black culture and then attempts to provide the “alternative” to Black identity. We know that while culture is an important part of this idea of “Blackness,” Black identity is more than about what music you listen to, the way your apartment is decorated, or how many references to Gordon Parks you can make, as one can see in Medicine. On the surface, Medicine gets this idea and appears to depart from these cultural indicators of race by making fun of them; yet on a second viewing, one can see that Medicine too is feeding these standard cultural essentialisms of “Blackness” rather than negating them.
More than Love Jones, Medicine shows just how flawed using culture as a key to any aspect of Blackness or identity can potentially backfire. The characters in Medicine wholly exist within another culture, a culture that, as Micah put it, is defined by purely being not Black; yet they are constantly being defined by their oppositional status to the indie culture. However, by filmmaker Barry Jenkins constantly reifying Micah and Jo’s outsider status, he is reaffirming that there is a certain prescribed cultural arena for Black people. Jenkins appears to be implying that Micah and Jo’ are the “exception” (which Gray says is typical in television as well), as opposed to the norm; their love for indie puts them on the margins not in the mainstream of any community. The director implies that culture is the dividing line, and those who are not a part of one or the other, truly are in a limbo. This idea is most prominently seen when a group of young men dressed in baggy pants approach Jo’ and Micah, and they are clearly frightened, or at least expecting something negative to occur, like a robbery or maybe a drug deal. At that point it is clear that these indie folk are “different negroes,” they are the “positive” ones and distinct from other Black people who engage in perhaps counter-hegemonic Black culture; that is, until these thugged-out looking guys reach from their pockets and pull out—a bottle of juice. Micah and Jo’ relax, and we are reminded by the filmmaker that this aesthetic of an elite culture is only that—an aesthetic. The thugged-out looking guys essentially were not any different (from what we can see) from Micah and Jo, except they were hustling, perhaps to indicate a class difference. This scene is a significant comment on the superficial values that we place on cultural markers. Yet despite Jenkins’ understanding of the problematic and I think essentializing nature of culture, neither of his main characters are able to exist without this idea of segregated cultures, which is essentially defined by the ways they view their connection to their Black bohemian identity.
Ironically, both movies use music and dance to illustrate the experiences of their characters. But instead of the historically Black music of jazz and r&b tunes that provide the sound track for Love Jones, the music of Medicine is indie, moody, and devoid of some of the soul style that is a common trait in modern-day Black film. Their wrinkled clothing (which goes against the Black middle-class tradition of respectability and orderliness), logoed t-shirts, Velcro sneakers, and bicycle bags reflect the White-washed indie scene; but again, what does this tell us about who they are? Micah and Jo’s use of cultural references, like Vanilla Ice and David Bowie, alongside MC Hammer and Rick James, once again magnify their existence within two worlds. It is clear that they both understand two different cultures, much like the duality that W. E. B. Du Bois mentions Black Americans face being Black and American, but are not particularly beholden to either one (this is implied more with Jo’ than Micah). When Jo’ says she wants to dance and Micah asks whether she wants a “Black or White” experience, it is crystal clear these worlds are divided. As the movie suggests, and I will venture to suggest, while culture defines the characters in both films—helping to characterize exactly who they are and who they are not—the more progressive and more useful way of understanding these characters may not involve any cultural aspect. Even if culture is eliminated from the equation, a shared heritage is a common bond that may not be defined by the spaces they occupy but may explain why they randomly slept together (at least Jenkins wants us to think that). Stuart Hall (1990) said,
[The] Diaspora experience is not defined by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of identity, which lives through, not despite differences, by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference. (p. 235)
This is implied as much in their visit to the museum. During this visit, it is the first time we see Jo’ smile and feel a tenderness between the two. It seems that walking through the world of the Black experience, walking through the world of the slave, and looking at the door of Goree Island, we understand that their bond (and perhaps the experience of other African Americans) is rooted in something deeper than culture, but a shared history of slavery.
Politics
As Tommy Lott suggests in his analysis on how we can define Black cinema today, politics may be the way to understand Black identity and the complications of it. Culture, as we can see, may prove to be a continually outmoded way of thinking, particularly as Generation-Y becomes even more multicultural and complex (Lott, 1991).
Love Jones is not overtly political. It barely makes a mention of race; and when it does so, it is in a matter of fact way. It, however, makes a very political statement through its silence on race. For Love Jones, a film that defined a Black bohemian identity for a generation, being anti-Black mainstream, was political just by being so apolitical. It was not the gleaning social commentary of a Spike Lee or John Singleton film, it was a love story that was essentially about middle-class Blacks doing “normal” middle-class things. Love Jones tried to rewrite the narrative of the Black experience by depicting one aspect of Black life that had failed to be recognized in Hollywood. Therefore, every proper noun and verb, every reference to Mozart and Bernard Shaw, every depiction of Black marriage, every sip of wine drunk from a wine glass and not a 40-ounce bottle, and, of course, the depiction of Black love, not sex, was a political statement. Medicine is more overtly political. Perhaps this is due to the polarized climate of politics in which it was written, or because of the rise of Barack Obama and his idea of change that Micah espouses Black radical politics. Micah and Jo’ represent two sides to the current, complicated debate on identity politics in the United States. In this oft-quoted passage, Micah quips:
Like how do you define yourself? If you had to describe you know, your idea of how you see the world, like how would you do it, in one word?
That makes no sense, people aren’t that simple. How can you define yourself in one word?
Easy. Me, I am a Black man. That’s how I see the world that’s, how the world sees me. But if I have to choose one I’m Black before I’m a man. So therefore I am Black.
I don’t see it that way
Why not?
That’s your problem. You feel you have to define everybody, you limit them to the point where they’re just a definition and not people.
How you figure?
You just said it. You went from I am Micah. To I am Black.
I’m not?
Yes, but you’re everything else too.
That’s not how society sees it.
Well, who gives a shit about what society thinks?
[Blank stare]
I don’t want to talk anymore.
For those who solely define this movie by one quote, Micah may seem the radical Black figure, a remnant of the Black power movement, and Jo’ the postracial princess. In fact, this is how Barry Jenkins himself said he envisioned the two characters. However, for me, politics proves to be a tricky game in Medicine. As Jo’ reflects, her identity-Black identity-bohemian or not is more than just espousing Black power rhetoric, dating a Black man, or playing an African drum. For a character who deems to be so post-racial, so beyond even the concept of race, she demonstrates a clear understanding of these markers of Blackness too—by demonstrating an understanding of the stereotypes of Micah as she navigates around her own racial identity. Was she a covertly political figure? Perhaps because of her seemingly indifference to race, while constantly embracing it, in either negative or positive ways throughout the film, we realize that Jo’ too understands somewhat that she will always be an outsider looking in. As the two characters stand outside a coffee shop in front of a community meeting composed primarily of White liberals talking about the gentrification in San Francisco, while politics is present, we realize that no matter how far one goes, and no matter how far their distance is from the “mainstream” Black experience is in bohemia, their race, their ethnicity will always leave them like all other African Americans—on the outside looking in.
The Inescapable Past
Despite the interventions made at the time of their releases, as you can see with critical reaction to Love Jones, the past is prologue. The past is always used to define these boho films, and particularly to define what Black bohemian identity is, even if by simply defining what it is not. Perhaps the success of these films is the commentary on how Black bohemian identity is freeing and limiting, and by virtue of being a constant other is ultimately inescapable and confining. Both filmmakers, though seemingly aware of the racial tropes they are defying, still seem to fall into the many of the same binaries that Bogle put forth that Blacks in films are either coons, toms, bucks, mammies, or jezebels. Despite the attempt to complicate the narrative and the spaces they live in, many characterizations of the Black experience and Black identity are revisions of stereotypes that have been around for decades. For example, in Love Jones, you have the trope of the strong Black woman. Nina is independent, fast-talking, and often comes off as more intelligent than her male counterpart (exemplified when Darius making intellectual musings falsely attributes a quote to Mozart, instead of Shaw). She is anything but the mammy; in fact, she could be considered a jezebel, a persona that fits in with the loose bohemian ideals of love and sex. She is fairly light in complexion, and she serves as a sexual seductress. She sleeps with Darius on their first date, leaves him to explore a relationship with another man, and refuses to compromise her artistic integrity for employment. When she comes back to find Darius in the arms of another woman, she makes the decision to go out with his good friend Wood. It is clear that she holds a power and is not afraid to use it. Nina is portrayed as the aggressor, and Darius in many ways is beholden to her. Darius may be beholden to her, as he noted in his poem (Say baby, can I be your slave I’ve got to admit girl, you’re the shit girl And I’m diggin’ you like a grave), and perhaps this is a version of the emasculated Black male, but he still has some agency. Although no traces of the tom and coon exist, he delves into the Black buck territory when we learn that he has only had more than one relationship that lasted more than 6 months, and he quickly goes out with another woman once Nina leaves to visit her ex. More than the buck, however, Darius represents the angry Black man. His anger is atypical—he is angry not at “the man,” but at love and his inability to find it. While these traits still counter some common narratives, it is still enough to reinforce the idea that Black men are full of rage and passion. We see his physical frustration with anger when he pushes his typewriter off the desk and his tone change when he tries to get his mail delivered to his neighborhood.
Some of the supporting cast in Love Jones also gives us insight into how the filmmaker wanted us to understand his representation of Black bohemian identity. Love Jones, while managing to give an alternate view, reminds us just what the “mainstream” view that it is rallying against, through the slick character Wood—short for “Hollywood” (Bill Bellamy). Wood is the one character who seems the most distant from the Black bohemian ethos they espouse, though he clearly is situated in their world. With his street pseudonym “Hollywood” to his seeming “regular” job (in contrast Lovehall’s other pals like Savon (Isaiah Washington) who is a teacher, and Sheila who works in a vintage music store), the movie implies that he represents “lower class” sensibilities by being inarticulate, hip-hop loving, and driving a funeral hearse for a vehicle (though he mentions that “at least it’s a Cadillac”—once again pointing to another cultural indicator of Blackness). Wood is obsessed with sex and has a disrespectful attitude toward women. The two other women represent the idea of Black sisterhood that is another common cultural trope. Sheila is the darker skinned Afrocentric friend, who is somewhat of the mammy character. She is confident, a protector, and a collaborator, but never seen with a man (though one is implied, perhaps to dissuade any thoughts of lesbianism, in order to maintain a so-called Black respectability, while still being boho in nature). Josie (Lisa Nicole Carson) is the big-haired, big-chested, overly sexual best friend. While neither role is developed strongly, it shows the two extremes that Black women are often viewed in—as saints or sinners.
If Nina is represented as the slick, smooth, and sensual Jezebel, Jo’, another lighter skinned character, is portrayed as equally aggressive and sexual. Micah, like Darius is the one who pursues Jo’, and though her vulnerability is more clearly displayed than Nina’s, she makes the decisions in the relationship. She constantly derides Micah’s militancy and what she believes is overreliance of race as a signifier of his identity. She is clearly the one in command, she invites Micah out, and she too is the sexual aggressor; and Micah follows her command when she wants to eat, when she wants to dance, and so forth. While the angry Black man is made fun of in this film, it also characterizes Micah, and in that sense reduces him to a stereotype of the emasculated Black male. 4 We literally see the physical differences between Micah and other Black men in the previously mentioned scene when two Black men approach Jo’ and Micah to buy some juice. Those men have braids, they wear baggy clothes, and they talk in a more urban vernacular. It is in this moment, unlike in Love Jones, that the audience can see the worlds colliding and understand how these false indicators of culture give us false depictions of racial identity. Micah really is no different from the guys hustling the juice on the street. Their realities are just that they exist in different spheres.
Sexuality is also another trope that these movies delve into; love is not just expressed through words or looks but through physicality that has always been attributed to Black Americans. There is no shying away from sex, and in 1997 and 2008, giving into sex seems to signify that release from reality and escape into the other world. But like so many of the other tropes relied on in these movies, they handle sex in a way that reflects a historical middle-class African American view, which brings me to my final point—that middle-class ideology is and has been a constant presence in both films throughout the years. In Love Jones, Nina and Darius in separate spaces question their actions the night before, wondering whether they moved too fast. Jo’, in talking to Micah, also sadly asks whether their rendezvous was a one-night thing. This implies that while these women may be sexually liberated in a way, they are aware of societal standards of so-called “loose women.” Neither wants to be read as a sexual being; though by their rhetoric and with their bohemian ideals, one would assume it to be unimportant to these women. Cleanliness is also a part of a Black middle-class ideology, and all of their homes represent clutter-free spaces. Jo’ in particular is sensitive to the fact that Micah has not bothered to shower in the time they were together. Other aspects of middle-class ideology are fully on display, particularly concerning education and the belief that hardwork pays off. Darius and Nina are portrayed working on their craft. Micah tells the audience about his dream job and love for aquariums since age 2. For Jo’ who is the least stable in terms of employment, finding out what she wanted to do was important and clearly a sore spot for her still implying that work (and making a difference) was a part of determining her place in society. Finally, music is so prominent in both of these movies that it is difficult to overlook. Music plays an important role in helping the audience understand these characters—they are defined by it—indie or jazz, and display this through dance and language. It seems that the constant connection between movement and melodies follows African Americans whether they occupy these White or Black spaces. However, while the music is an important component to these films, the willingness to use music and dance once again signifies the filmmaker’s unwillingness to let go some of these generalizations about Black culture.
Conclusion
So how does one define the evolution of the Black bohemian identity from Generation-X to Generation-Y if filmmakers seem fairly confused about it? Perhaps not really as an evolution at all. Medicine is filmed as sort of a pale colorless dream, with mostly all the color washed away. In a way it seems that perhaps Jenkins used this lack of color to perhaps theorize about what the world would look like if color were not emphasized as a single defining thing. However, the reality that seems to exist is a world where color, even muted, is virtually the same in the Black and White world that was depicted in the opening scenes of Love Jones. And, it sadly shows the lines, while maybe blurring somewhat, like the out-of-focus topography of San Francisco, are still outside of the mainstream. Alternative narratives to the thugged-out worlds that dominated the ’90s have certainly evolved since Love Jones. With the Obamas, Tyler Perry, and stars like Gabrielle Union, Sanaa Lathan, Taye Diggs, and Angela Bassett portraying images of the Black middle class, America seems to have become more comfortable with somewhat “alternative” depictions of African Americans on screen. Still, while America has become more comfortable with multiple representations of Black identity on their screens, it still does not mean they are beyond it.
Medicine proves that despite a more assimilated culture, Black identity is still “the other” with most Blacks looking in rather than the opposite. Instead of critics calling Medicine a new and fresh idea, the way they did with Love Jones, they posed it as a more “complex” understanding of African Americans. But the context is still the same: the othering of African Americans when they are doing something that departs from the standard “ghetto” tale. It is that assumption, that Black identity is something that is not understood by some sort of hypotehthical mainstream, that the mainstream is never in that space peering in, like Jo’ and Micah were during the community meeting. Jenkins, while attempting to explore a world beyond race, much like Witcher, understands that the idea is thoroughly implausible. Ultimately, in reading the two texts, one could ascertain that bohemian Black identity has not evolved much. Perhaps we can read the different endings of the movies as a commentary that each makes about race in their time period. Love Jones ends on a positive note: Nina and Darius get back together. Despite the fact that it is raining out, there is an implied sense of hope and a future—the light so to speak. In Medicine, there is no such thing as hope, but more of a continuation of life. Medicine seems to be infinitely sadder, not because the couple possibly does not end up together but because as Jo’ rides off into the morning light alone, a sense of the powerlessness of life seems to loom. In Love Jones, which still had a trace of postcivil rights momentum, hope is still alive, hope was still a phrase used by Jesse Jackson, and hope was still a place where the president was from. By 2008, hope had been replaced with the idea of change; and I think when it comes to matters on race, Jenkins was commenting on how little had truly changed. Perhaps it will be in the next era of boho romances that we can see integrated spaces become shared spaces rather than oppositional spaces, and identity being defined in ways that rely on more than just cultural artifacts. While the backdrop of these films has changed, moving from segregated spaces to integrated ones, embracing various cultures, Black identity is still seemingly portrayed in opposition to everyone else. When the spheres become shared, then, and only then, perhaps we can see an evolution in the way young Black bohemians are represented in films.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following faculty members for help on this project: Tim Raphael at Rutgers University-Newark, and Allison Perlman at University of California-Irvine.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.