From the very beginning of movies, with D.W. Griffith's racist propaganda film The Birth of a Nation there have been racist themes and images in mainstream movies. For much of the 20th century black audiences endured blackface, coons and with the exception of a few dignified Sidney Poitier roles in the 50s and 60s -- barely any representation at all. When the blaxploitation genre broke through in the 1970s it did give more African-American talent a chance to shine but these films largely glorified violence and crime, as well as brutality towards women.
The original Planet of the Apes, starring screen legend Charlton Heston, released in 1968, served as sort of a cinematic version of John Howard Griffin's 1961 book Black Like Me, where Griffin experienced life as a black man by darkening his skin and reported back on his findings. It's a "what if the shoe was on the other foot?" type scenario where white men experience the type of discrimination usually reserved for black people.
Apes imagined a fictional world 2,000 years in the future where monkeys, gorillas, and other primates take on human features including the sort of racism that the Civil Rights Movement was addressing at the time, only directed at human beings. It's about how power corrupts and can be used unjustly but one isn't always aware of the injustice until they experience it for themselves.
The Rise of the Plant of the Apes, a “re-imagining” of the classic Planet of the Apes movies,prove that the racial politics and stereotypes that have long fueled the franchise and are still very present in Hollywood.
Combine the discrimination the apes face in the movie with the long-held stereotypes that likens Black people to apes themselves, and the Rise of the Plant of the Apes appears to be the latest popular culture portrayal of race relations in America.
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