“The Brother Always Dies First”: on sex, death, and cinematic depictions of race

NOTE: This essay is thirty years in the making. It is a mixture of facts, theory, observations, perspectives and faith. I will try to differentiate between them. I cannot say everything theoretical is true. I can say this is genuinely the way I see the world. Because of the complexity of thought and the time-hopping nature of the narrative, it is also not as organized as it would be if, for instance, I were writing a book. This isn’t stream of consciousness, but I do ask your indulgence, just a bit.

Here we go!

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I’ve loved movies all my life, but they haven’t always loved me. When I was a kid, if there was a black actor in an action film, when I came home the guys would ask: “How did they kill the brother this time?”

And too damned often, I had to shrug and tell them.

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In 1977, the movie Damnation Alley was released the theaters. I remember seeing it on Hollywood Boulevard with my buddy Dan Pinal. In it, George Peppard, Jan-MIchael Vincent, and Paul Winfield are traveling across a nuclear wasteland in an atomic Winnebago. At one point, a woman emerges from the wreckage of a city. A white woman.

I leaned over to my friend and whispered: “They’re going to kill Paul Winfield.”

Dan looked at me as if I was crazy. “Why would you say that?”