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success of the presentation. This success was seen as a victory for black
film productions (Chelminski 59).
Appraisals of Cotton Comes to Harlem were also presented in
major works on African-Americans and film, Donald Bogle’s Toms,
Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of
Blacks in American Films (1973) and Daniel J. Leab's From Sambo to
Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (1975). Donald
Bogle, an acknowledged black expert on African-American film,
judged Cotton Comes to Harlem as a failure in its presentation of the
black experience. It studiously played up not only to black fantasies
on a black world order but to white fantasies of a black world full of
harmless stereotypes (Bogle 231). In addressing the role of the
audience. Bogle echoed the remarks of other critics who tried to
unravel audience responses. A key issue which certain film critics
confronted was the complexity of the viewing experience for black
audiences, which often interpret stereotyped black characters as
humorous rather than as negative social portraits. Bogle's critique
could apply as well to Himes's limitations in portrayal of his female
characters.
The issues raised in the critical assessments of the film version of
Cotton Comes to Harlem reflect the overall mixture of thematic
intentions and plot devices of the original novel. Most film critics did
not conunent on the differences between the novel as text and the film
script, although Leab noted that the image of Himes's two black
detectives was effectively transmitted from the novel. Coffin Ed and
Grave Digger were described as "tough, aggressive, concerned, sharp
nongrafters who in their own way are quite moral" (Leab 240).
Himes's novelistic goal, to entertain through satire, humor and fastpaced action coupled with social commentary, was successfully
transmitted to the film version. His original "audience" for the
novel, howeve r, was not primarily African-American but French. The
appeal of the film to American black audiences, despite the negative
commentaries of a variety of critics, shows the unique deconstructive
frameworks of African-American viewers of that era in contrast to
critical standards of certain professional observers. Both the novel
and the film were able to mate the requirements of the detective
genre with humor and social commentary.
Hofstra University
Joseph McQaren