Without Prominent Characters of Color, do Alexander Payne’s Films Truly Represent Omaha?

By AbbeY Kegley

In 2013, The New Yorker published a profile on Omaha director Alexander Payne titled “Home Movies,” in which he describes his love for directing in Omaha by saying, “here in Nebraska, I feel comfortable with the details.” However, it seems there are some details about Omaha largely missing from his films, details he may be disconnected from.

As a white woman growing up in West Omaha who studied film at UNL, I feel both a great admiration for Payne and a deep criticism of his portrayal of our hometown in the lack of representation his films depict.

Born and raised in Dundee, Payne has been inspired by and utilized Omaha as the backdrop in four of his seven films, filming in the city as recently as 2016 for “Downsizing.” Payne depicts a love for Omaha, the first place he called home, in his filmography, and yet his films leave much to be desired for a population of Omahans whom his films shutter out. 

The Omaha visible in his films is limited to Dundee, the Old Market, and Papillion—codifying Omaha to its white-dominated spaces, substantiating the largely undiscussed redline that still exists in the city’s metropolitan area.

People of color are thus subjugated to the peripheral in films with a lot to say on the class climate of Omaha and greater Midwestern America.

This could be a result of Payne having spent less and less time in Omaha since his childhood. Yes, Payne keeps a residence in the city, and has greatly supported the culture of Omaha through his work with Film Streams, sitting on their Board of Directors as recently as 2021, but cannot spend most of his time in the Midwest as a member of the film industry. 

Thus, his films depict an Omaha relegated to the past, Payne’s past, with a narrow insight on how the city actually operates today. This disconnect is most apparent in “Downsizing,” which employs Omaha iconography (Omaha Steaks, La Casa Pizza, and Jams), yet still seems to portray only a narrow insight of Omaha as a city.

The most prominent character of color in his Omaha films appears in “Citizen Ruth,” an Iranian man named Peter who plays a small role in aiding a pro-choice organization. Beyond that, there is little representation of people of color in his films: in “Election” there is a Black football player named Randy, whom Paul’s ex-girlfriend dances with on-screen for four seconds, in “Downsizing” there is a Black news reporter that appears on a tv screen, and in “About Schmidt” the main character sends letters to a Tanzanian boy named Ndugu Umbo through a foster program, who never actually appears in the film other than in a photograph. 

People of color in Payne’s films possess no agency of their own and are visible largely in the background or the margins (when visible at all), serving only as narrative devices for white character’s own character development. In “Citizen Ruth,” Ruth is depicted as having at least one child of mixed ethnicity (a nonspeaking and unnamed role) which brings some possible complexities to the character Ruth. But these complexities are not deeply explored as the audience only sees her children for a few seconds in the entirety of the film, and only from a white woman’s gaze (their mother Ruth).

Payne’s films are worthwhile in their own right, at their best (and worst) having nuanced discussions about the politics and traditionalist values of Midwestern America. However, Payne’s Omaha films stop short of depicting the full depth of socioeconomic relationships in Omaha, and stop short of representing Omaha as a whole by leaving North Omaha and commentary on race in general out of the equation. 

The people of color in Payne’s movies about Omaha possess an invisible and unspoken social status, as if their presence within Payne’s narratives is exceptional in nature. It reveals the inherent flaw in calling his films “Omaha films,” where there exists a prominent gap between the Omaha that Payne grew up in, and the city Omaha actually is.

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A Catalogue of Screen-time of the people of Color in Alexander Payne’s Films depicting Omaha:

“Citizen Ruth” - 3 minutes and 16 seconds;

one named character (Peter) and two speaking roles (Peter and a Black female corrections officer)

“Election” - 5 minutes and 15 seconds;

two named characters (Phil, an Asian high school yearbook photographer, and Randy, a Black football player), and zero speaking roles

“About Schmidt” - 1 minute and 21 seconds;

zero named characters, and zero speaking roles (Note: Schmidt does have an on-screen conversation with an Indigenous man in Broken Bow, NE, though the conversation is narrated over)

“Downsizing” - 16 seconds;

one named character (Ron Hayes, a Black news reporter), and one speaking role (Note: there is a prominent person of color in the narrative (Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese woman) but she only appears in New Mexico)

*This catalogue lists only named and speaking roles.

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