Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 47

45 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