For years, I had railed against censorship in the movies. I had argued that no matter how lousy a movie, no matter how violent or shocking the images, neither I, nor anyone else, had the right to prevent such films being shown.

In recent years, my views on this issue have changed. And what brought about this change? Nothing less than the endless conveyor belt of Gangstas-in-the-hood type movies. For years, I and countless others had been bemoaning the lack of any significant Black presence on the cinema screens. Then the flood came.

At first this was a most welcome screen invasion. Films such as [i]Boyz ‘n’ the ‘Hood, Juice, New Jack City, Sugar Hill, Jason’s Lyric[/i] showed, if nothing else, that Black folks enjoyed a bit of mindless movie violence as much as anyone else. The audiences who went to see these movies were overwhelmingly young and Black. A lot of these films not only featured soundtracks full of the latest R & B and hip hop sounds, but also seemed to have the same energy as this new Black pop music which was on its way to being the dominant musical force of the age. However, as with the music biz, what is innovative and fresh today soon becomes hackneyed and pass once everyone else has decided that this is the hit formula to be copied.

Instead of anticipatory screams of “here comes another one”, we were saying “oh no, not another one!” every time the next over-the-top body count-fest movie came along. Such was the cliché-ridden trap into which these films had descended. The storylines were so basic they could have been written by a programmed computer or a committee.

When the change came it was hardly noticed. [i]Waiting To Exhale[/i] hit the screens and was a financial success. The most noticeable factor was that the protagonists were not testosterone-fuelled young psychopaths but four middle class, wrong-side-of-thirty, female friends. In Hollywood, as in a lot of places, money talks loudest. The success of this film did not go unnoticed.

Among the films that led the backlash was [i]Eve’s Bayou[/i] and [i]Soul Food[/i] released in Britain within weeks of each other. There are some similarities between the films but it would be stretching a point somewhat to try and make too much of a thematic connection. Both films are told from a child’s eye view and feature the theme of a mainly unified family facing various situations at a particular moment in time.

These films are very good examples of what appears to be a new Black film genre – movies that show us in a relatively positive light. No women get called “bitch” or “ho” and the “N” word is not used once. Not surprisingly, the characters are a lot more believable than any of the identikit psychos of the shoot-em-up movies.

Films like these need and deserve our support. Let’s hope their success will inspire and lead to many more Black movies which focus on similar themes and include lots of feel good factor.