MARCH 2025 Rage & Rampage: "Native Son" (1951)

When I think of culture and unmitigated rage, Richard Wright’s infamous 1940 novel Native Son is one of the first things that comes to my mind. So, for Rage & Rampage, Native Son the film only made sense. There are so many special things about this film for our film club: that the film was made nearly contemporaneously with the book, that it is a noir, and, of course, that Richard Wright himself stars. So many do not know about this version of the film. So many picture the 80’s version with Oprah, Victor Love, and Elizabeth McGovern; or the recent remake with Ashton Sanders and Kiki Layne. Here’s how we discussed Native Son as portrayed by its maker himself.

ALERT: (THOUGHT PROVOKING) SPOILERS BELOW.

Chicago

We started film club discussing the first scene. That may seem obvious, but it is actually quite rare of a place for us to start. But, for one of our regulars, the opening scene set the tone for the film so perfectly: “the Black belt as the secret to Chicago” was how the put it. Or as Bigger describes it in the film “an open air prison without bars”. 

An Aside: So close to how we describe current day Palestine, no? I wonder what Palestine was like at this time, from 1940 - 1951?

The opening scene gives us a taste of the film’s Black life, from the tenements to a communal spirit, to the intimate space of the Thomas’s home. For this film club member, it is not just about the depiction of Biggers’s neighborhood, it is the depiction of children and Black childhood itself on Chicago’s South Side at mid-century. This member wondered whether this was an accurate depiction of Black childhood at this time. Were children really just outside and able to be chaotic? This, for this film club member, also provided the perfect set up for the character of Bigger Thomas himself.

For another film club member, these scenes remind them of Good Times, which was also set in Chicago. They found it ironic that we mostly now remember Good Times through Norman Lear. This prompted the other film club member to wonder: how much of the depiction of the Black neighborhood is about this film being made by a White filmmaker, likely for white consumption?

The liberal critique

I move us from Norman Lear and Black communities depicted by white filmmakers to the depiction of white organizers and organizing in the film. What really strikes me is how the white organizers are both plot device and comic relief. Through them there is also sex and culture. For one film club member, this theme reminds them of reading Invisible Man, which they point out, would have been published contemporaneous with this film’s release. Like Native Son, the protagonist also is chauffeur to a white trustee. The trustee in Invisible Man also wants to be taken to the Black side of town. The similarities go on to include that both protagonists are caught between two worlds — a Black world and a white, overdeveloped world; and both have critiques of the movement.

cOOPTATION & aPPEASEMENT

This film club member also reminded us that the critique of whites in the movement, and of white liberalism, is not new. Just look at the dynamics of abolition. To this I wondered: what are are the implications of this legacy? How should we inherit / inhabit these critiques by our elders now when this very philanthropy is what facilitates so much of our freedom work? When so much of this philanthropy has captured organizing and led to this period of very transparent fascism? In other words, how do we put a scene like this to use now, at this moment, when we will feel pressed into this big liberal tent again?

For one film club member, this exist with scenes like this by considering the creativity of our solutions and ways of being together. First, we need to make sense of this our solutions through, and on social media. Second, they are interested in how many Black folx are saying we’re tired of doing all the protesting. That other folx need to be taking on this labor.

For this film club member, “the undercurrent of appeasement is white rage”. It calls another film club member to struggle with our conceptions of Black community; as a stable category or a static concept. We can’t assume shared values.

Closing with a Throughline

Giving Chase

The chiaroscuro of the chase scenes in Native Son really remind me of the overall chiaroscuro of Ngozi Onwurah’s Welcome II the Terrordome. Running, running, running…