"Agh,a Negro!": Denzel Washington avoids the racial pitfalls of Hollywood and redefines the black antihero. (Culture).(Critical Essay)

Black antiheroes are not new to cinema. D.W. Griffith's The Birth of A Nation, literally the birth of modern film, placed black antiheroes--including an evil-causing mulatto woman--square in the middle of its story line. Meant to be a post Reconstruction history lesson, Griffith's film tells a familiar tale--that of blacks who commit the cardinal sins of sexually craving for whites and equal rights (the two going in tandem), who in the end, finally get their due (that would be death). Nowadays, black actors and actresses still inevitably spend a portion of their careers fighting racial demonization, thanks less to Griffith's canonization of the black male as white rapist ...