Denzel Washington on Fences: ‘You Can’t Legislate Love’

Returning to August Wilson’s Fences as both star and director, Denzel Washington considers the damage racism does—and the responsibility each generation has towards the next.

After winning a Tony Award in 2010 for playing Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences, Denzel Washington returns to the role in a film adaptation that he also directs. Once again, the performance has drawn critical praise. But Washington does not simply ask us to agree with the man he plays.

Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Fences explores family obligations, thwarted ambition and the lives of African Americans through a household ruled by a bitter father. Troy was a gifted baseball player in his youth. At fifty-three, he works as a rubbish collector and remains convinced that the colour of his skin denied him the career he deserved.

His frustration falls on the people closest to him. He obstructs his son Cory’s hopes of playing football and betrays his wife Rose, played by Viola Davis, by having an affair. The barriers Troy encountered outside his home become barriers he places around his own family.

The man inside the grievance

Troy’s account of his life is rooted in racial exclusion. Yet Washington is wary of accepting every explanation his character offers.

“What if he was not good enough? It’s easy to blame it on racism,” he asks, recalling Rose’s suggestion that Troy may also have been too old.

That does not explain away the lack of opportunities for Black athletes in the period. Washington acknowledges the history of racism and the long struggle required to change it.

“It’s a process. If you’ve been held back for 400 years as most African Americans have, it will take time, not just to stand up, but for those to recognize you, for those to embrace you and those to think that you’re good business. Every generation struggles for the next ones and helps in paving the way for them to do better.”

Troy, however, cannot easily imagine that his son might enter a world different from the one that rejected him. Believing that discrimination will defeat Cory too, he prevents him from testing his chances. What he regards as protection becomes another obstacle.

Progress—and the next generation

Washington’s own career offers a different view of what one generation can make possible. The son of a Pentecostal minister and a beauty parlour owner, he reached a wide television audience as Dr Phillip Chandler in St. Elsewhere, beginning in 1982.

His film work has since ranged from the defiant soldier in Glory to Malcolm X and boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. He has won Golden Globes for Glory and The Hurricane, and in 2016 received the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Those achievements do not lead him to deny the existence of discrimination. They do make him reluctant to attribute every individual disappointment to it. Recalling the Academy Awards contest between Malcolm X and Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman, he points out that Pacino had waited through repeated nominations while Washington had already won an Oscar.

For Washington, recognising the injustice of the past must be accompanied by action in the present. Anger alone cannot create the opportunities the next generation needs.

“We all have to keep trying, and not just point the finger at the one who has to make the hard decision,” he says. “You’ve the right to be angry, but you gotta do something about it. It requires hard work, perseverance and sacrifices for the next generation.”

‘You can’t legislate love’

The family drama in Fences gives those questions an intimate setting. Racism shapes Troy’s circumstances, but his choices still have consequences for Rose and Cory. He can be wounded by injustice and inflict wounds of his own.

Washington also sees limits to what changes in the law can achieve on their own. Prejudice can be passed from parent to child, sustained in the home even as public rules change.

“You can’t legislate love,” he says. “If you go home and teach your son to hate, then law won’t be able to stop it.”

What, then, is his solution?

“Go watch Fences,” he chuckles.