This Low-Price range ‘80s Film Has New Relevance In The Kamala Harris Era

Every few years or so, the term “post-racial” boomerangs back into the zeitgeist, bringing with it the myth of a supposed utopia where racial woes no longer need to be brought up — much less rectified.

Just last month, Salon published a piece suggesting that a statement from presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ nomination acceptance speech, “We have so much more in common than what separates us,” implies that she, too, believes that racial labels solely additional divide us.

That was printed lower than a decade after The Atlantic ran a clear-eyed article condemning the fallacy of post-racialism that ought to have put the kibosh on the entire thought and any remnants of it thereafter.

However this rhetoric may be traced way back to 1984 (and doubtless earlier) when The New York Occasions printed an oversimplified “Black folks have much less to complain about now” kind of piece as a result of we had presumably overcome most vital hurdles by then. It cited as proof Rev. Jesse Jackson’s comparatively profitable presidential marketing campaign, Michael Jackson’s document eight Grammy Awards for “Thriller,” and the debut of “The Cosby Show.” Eddie Murphy had additionally confirmed himself as a megastar in “Beverly Hills Cop,” And “Breakin’,” which helped solidify the hip-hop cinematic canon, opened No. 1 on the field workplace.

However that very same 12 months, the low-budget movie “The Brother from Another Planet” additionally opened in theaters, dropping audiences — and its mute, Black male-presenting protagonist from outer house — into Harlem, and providing a far much less idyllic view of the “capital of Black America.”

The movie barely made an affect on the field workplace, save for devotees of its writer-director and indie movie auteur John Sayles. In its oddball, sometimes humorous and eternally poignant manner, it mirrored the realities of race relations, immigration, police injustice, poverty and the drug epidemic that existed all through that so-called Black “renaissance.”

“The film didn’t really pick up in terms of popularity until it got on television,” the movie’s star, Joe Morton, informed me after we hopped on a Zoom name collectively weeks earlier than the film’s fortieth anniversary on Sept. 7.

However there was a starvation amongst some Black moviegoers for tales that mirrored their actual worlds past what was seen in fashionable blaxploitation movies on the time. Morton cites Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” launched two years after “Brother,” as one other instance of a rising fervor for small movies about Black experiences that fell outdoors the everyday Hollywood fare.

“I think audiences ran to them because they were going to be good stories,” Morton mentioned. “Both Spike and John are social commentators. So, I think people were very excited because it was going to be about something, even though we were sci-fi — something real.”

That’s partly why the actor, to today, calls “Brother” his “favorite film,” telling his X followers simply two years in the past that it’s “because of the challenges the character presented and the story of unrecognized Black talent that it tells, and it was my first lead in a film.”

Morton is understood to a more moderen era of followers for roles like Whitley’s fiancé on “A Different World,” Silas Stone in “Justice League” or Papa Pope on “Scandal,” however it’s the title character in “The Brother From Another Planet,” now thought of Sayles’ cult traditional, that established him as an unparalleled display screen actor.

Quickly after his spaceship crash-lands at, fittingly, the Ellis Island immigration middle, Morton’s alien alter ego, an enslaved particular person on his personal planet, trudges by the streets of Harlem in tattered garments, making an attempt to make sense of what he’s seeing. He doesn’t communicate and doesn’t perceive something occurring round him, however gathers some essential truths instantly.

Mainly, whereas race isn’t notably an idea the alien acknowledges on his planet, he shortly understands that his look as a Black man garners particular reactions on Earth.

“He knows the dynamic because, remember, at the beginning of the film, he watches a Black man being arrested,” Morton mentioned, “and he makes the false conclusion of that — Oh my God, that’s what they do here.”

Effectively, that’s not completely false. 1984 noticed a disproportionate variety of Black folks in New York Metropolis being arrested — many with out grounds. For an outsider like Morton’s character, you possibly can perceive why he later runs at any time when he encounters cops.

Plus, because the actor famous, the alien is a fugitive from his planet’s personal model of NYC police — de facto slave hunters — determined to deliver him again. His supernatural talents additionally enable him to listen to the voices, and consequently the experiences, of those that as soon as inhabited the buildings round him. He immediately acknowledges their ache as his personal.

He additionally experiences the extra compassionate and acquainted features of being Black in a largely Black house. Regardless of failed makes an attempt to grasp who he’s, native bar heads welcome the alien into the fold as their very own — an unhoused, innocent Black man they name “The Brother.”

They even discover him shelter, jobs like one on the native arcade, and shield him in opposition to “the interlopers,” as Morton known as them, a pair of white male-presenting characters from The Brother’s planet, performed by Sayles himself and David Strathairn, who intention to recapture him.

Impressively with none spoken dialogue, Morton’s Brother is equal components wide-eyed, empathetic and interesting to look at, conveying a reality that apparently eludes many nonetheless at present: Even when race isn’t acknowledged, one nonetheless experiences the realities of race and racism. And The Brother, whereas harmless about many issues, understands prejudice all too effectively.

To arrange for the position, Morton spent a whole lot of time watching infants and puppies “and anything going through first-time experiences and trying to figure out how to get through those experiences,” he mentioned.

The actor usually makes use of the phrase “stranger” to emphasise that The Brother is an alien who suits in by nature of what he seems to be, however then once more doesn’t. As an example, Morton made a alternative that one of many issues The Brother wouldn’t be capable of perceive is the proverbial handshake, a ubiquitous providing notably amongst Black males in Harlem.

“People would [extend] their hands, and he didn’t know what to do with that, he had no idea what that meant,” Morton defined. “Because, remember, he’s a stranger, supposedly, in a town that he knows what’s going on and he doesn’t. He’s the stranger in a strange land.”

The actor likens his character’s expertise to his personal as a son of a person whose job was to “integrate the armed forces overseas.”

“He was an officer who would show up racially unannounced,” he defined. “So, basically we were always on the outside looking in. We were the ‘other’ who were invading these army posts.”

Morton supposed that it was due to tales like that — extra so than his being born in Harlem, as he and his household had been usually abroad — that helped him get the position within the first place. He recalled spending a mere 45 minutes chatting with Sayles at his audition, which left the actor with the impression that he hadn’t really gotten the job.

“I expected that he would do an improv, since the character doesn’t speak,” Morton remembered. “He did not.”

All through our dialog, Morton, who usually referred to The Brother as “me” or “I” when reflecting on the character, would excitedly interrupt himself to recall a reminiscence about his expertise making the movie and why it was so significant to him. He took me again to the primary time he learn the script, whereas starring on the cleaning soap opera “Another World,” and feeling immediately giddy about it.

However his brokers described The Brother as “a Buster Keaton kind of character,” referring to the filmmaker and actor identified partially for his indelible bodily comedy through the silent film period.

“I read the script, loved the script, disagreed with my agents,” he mentioned, “I didn’t think it had anything to do with Buster Keaton.”

It doesn’t, with the one exception that neither speaks. Within the case of “Brother,” the viewers quickly picks up on the truth that whereas he’s silent, the character’s capacity to pay attention (including a nod right here and there) and quietly empathize is all that individuals usually want or want.

“So, people start telling you things when you do that,” Morton mentioned. “Because I did it as an experiment when I was around other people. I just would listen, and you find that if you are a good listener, people have a tendency to keep on talking.”

You’re additionally not going to say something they’re not going to love, I added.

“That’s right, that’s right,” Morton replied. “Yeah.”

The Buster Keaton comparability additionally overlooks the nuances of each Morton’s efficiency and the character Sayles envisioned. “This was not, ‘E.T., go home,’” Morton added, referring to the saccharine 1982 traditional “E.T.” “Ultimately in the script, there is no way for him home. So, he has to deal with that idea as well.”

With the looks of a Black man in Eighties New York Metropolis, The Brother realizes that the planet he’s simply landed on just isn’t significantly better than the one he left — that his Black physique endangers him, and that he, as soon as once more, should discover distinctive methods to outlive.

None of that’s misplaced on Morton, who was 36 years outdated by the point “The Brother from Another Planet” hit theaters, 10 years after he earned his first Tony nomination for Broadway’s “Raisin.” Following that acclaim, he pivoted to TV with roles on exhibits like “Sanford and Son,” “M*A*S*H” and “What’s Happening!!”

“Brother” was a manner for him to indicate a glimpse of what it was like strolling the Earth with the looks of a Black man — even within a Black mecca.

“There was an opportunity for an audience who had no idea, really, what it’s like to be in Harlem, to see Harlem through a stranger’s eyes and someone who would be easily accepted into Harlem and sort of see what was going on in that community,” Morton mentioned.

Gentrification and drug distribution threatened to overpower the real pleasure, ambition and potential that additionally existed there.

“We have few businesses,” former metropolis councilman Fred Samuels informed The Washington Publish in 1984. “Banks don’t invest here — there’s still redlining,” he mentioned. “Drug problems continue. The schools aren’t teaching. Young people are joining the ranks of the homeless. We used to build eight subsidized housing projects a year. Under President Reagan, we get next to nothing.”

1984 was a time when white folks moved into the Black neighborhood, making it nearly unaffordable and unsustainable for the Black people who had helped make it what it was. It’s arduous to inform whether or not Sayles noticed that coming again when he was conceptualizing “Brother.”

As a result of at present, Harlem is a mere shell of its former self, dwelling to an overpriced Complete Meals and white mother and father elevating their households in now-luxury skyrises, the place the dream of Black homeownership for a lot of has been crushed. Many Some Black people have even solemnly braced themselves for the neighborhood’s loss of life.

“There’s a lot more white students who are living in Harlem now than there were when we made the film,” Morton mentioned.

It appears the thought of post-racialism solely exacerbates the racial hierarchy and the notion that an all-Black house is in some way harmful or unattractive. That’s not splendid in any respect — effectively, not for everybody.

Few scenes in “The Brother from Another Planet” extra acutely spotlight that dynamic than when a fast-talking card trickster (“Succession” actor Fisher Stevens) tries to have interaction Morton’s completely confused character with a speedy collection of gimmicks on an NYC subway. As an example, he repeatedly asks The Brother to chop the playing cards, and the alien is simply too nervous to undergo with it.

“I’m terrified the entire time because my heart for The Brother was over here,” Morton informed me, clutching the facet of his chest as he does within the film.

“So, you see me sitting like this, holding my heart the entire time, because he’s talking in ways I’ve never heard before,” the actor continued. “‘No, do this, do this.’ It’s like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m not sure where this is going,’ and he’s frightened.”

It’s solely when Stevens’ character will get to his remaining act that each the viewers and even The Brother perceive what he’s pointing to.

“I have another magic trick for you,” the character tells The Brother. “Wanna see me make all the white people disappear?”

At that second, the subway arrives at 96th Avenue, the cease earlier than it enters Harlem at a hundred and twenty fifth Avenue, and the white characters hustle off the prepare earlier than the doorways shut they usually’re caught inside with all the arrival Black passengers.

That scene, immaculate in its tempo, execution and payoff, wasn’t even initially within the movie. “As I understand it, somebody said to John, ‘Fisher has a card trick you need to see,’” Morton recalled. “So, Fisher showed him the card trick and John put it in the movie.”

It’s arduous to think about the movie with out it. It excellently portrays white folks’s stereotype of a Black house that fully disregards the reality.

Morton factors to when The Brother, who can heal folks and sort things by bodily contact, takes jobs washing vehicles and fixing radios and online game machines.

“One of the big points was that lots of people in Harlem have lots of talents, and there are no opportunities for them to use those talents and get paid for it,” Morton mentioned. “That plus the underlying drug idea — when the kid sort of overdoses in the apartment building.”

The Brother sees a younger Black man inject a substance into his physique and, naively, decides to grasp what it’s — or does — by placing it into his personal physique. What he in the end experiences, although, compels him to defeat the drug disaster at its supply. And even the sequence when The Brother follows the white drug seller late at evening to his workplace, as Morton recalled, subtly displays the position race performs within the epidemic, which the character additionally grasps.

“[John] makes a real point out of who goes into work at night as other people are coming home,” Morton mentioned. “So that when The Brother even goes in after the drug dealer, the people who are working there are all Black or brown. Again, John is a social commentary person.”

Sayles wrote the screenplay in simply 10 days, Morton mentioned. “The writing was so good, people who came on to the set often thought that I was the one who wrote it.”

He mentioned that the filmmaker’s thought for “The Brother from Another Planet” got here from a dream the filmmaker had by which he apparently noticed old-school sci-fi block letters that learn “Assholes in Space.”

“And those were the two guys chasing me,” Morton enthusiastically continued. “Then he saw a Black man in Harlem — realizing that the Black man was not from Harlem, was a stranger. And so he put those two ideas together and formulated ‘Brother from Another Planet.’”

The unique working title was “The Brother Who Fell To Earth,” a reference to the 1976 film starring David Bowie, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” It modified following an encounter Morton had with an individual on the road in Harlem.

“I think we were on Striver’s Row,” Morton recalled. “I was sitting in front of a brownstone and this brother walked up to me, and he said, ‘Ain’t you the brother from ‘Another World?’ And I looked at John, and so it became ‘Brother from Another Planet.’”

Given Morton’s palpable connection to his position, it truly is superb {that a} white filmmaker is behind the film. Not as a result of Sayles isn’t a proficient artist, however as a result of scenes like those on the bar, the place the male characters riff off one another and even share their very own emotions on “the other,” really feel so sincere and intimate.

Morton understands that a few of what Sayles displays in “Brother” is what audiences would see 5 years later in Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”; the conflicts amongst ethnic teams on high of the extra clearly fraught Black-white relationship. There’s one scene when The Brother’s white employer makes derogatory feedback about his Latino workers.

“The guy who hires me to fix all the games,” Morton remembered, “his opinion of who Spanish people are and who Black people are — it’s right out there. That was the perception I think we all had of how people thought of us.”

Lengthy after Morton and I ended our name, I continued to consider how he talked about The Brother and the character’s relationship to race. And why the film nonetheless sticks with Black audiences, particularly, many years later — although, because the actor put it, “It wasn’t about a Black person from this world or America. It was about someone who was literally an alien.”

But the character was cognizant of the nuances of race and being in an area the place he might be accepted, protected and even really feel love.

And I saved battling the concept anybody, of any race, might problem these realities — even when a Black-Indian American lady operating for president decides to not interact with a query concerning the significance of her racial identities. As a result of she understands that their truths ought to communicate for themselves.

Even a six-toed alien from outer house can see that.

“The Brother from Another Planet” is at the moment streaming on Tubi.