Themes
Micheaux's films featured contemporary black life. He deal with racial relationships between blacks and whites, and the passage for blacks trying to achieve success in the larger society. His films also reflect his ideologies and life experiences. The journalist Richard Gehr said, “Micheaux appears to have only one story to tell- his own- and he tells it repeatedly”.
Micheaux sought to create films that would counter white portrayals of African Americans, which tended to emphasize inferior stereotypes. Micheaux created complex characters of different classes, and was never interested in simplicity. His own life experiences were the basis for much of his work. Growing up in southern Illinois, which had long been influenced by Southern migrants and culture, he learned about some relationships between African Americans and whites, and their misunderstandings.
Read more about this topic: Oscar Micheaux
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)