“My mother will kill me.” “I could eat the horse.” "It's a world away." Hyperbole can bring new light to feelings experienced only viscerally, such as that of fear, that of need, or that of a tunnel with no light at the end. This is not to say that hyperboles are the most accurate representations of the situations you find yourself in, but rather it is to say that they are accuracies of emotions that confuse your stomach. In much the same way, Vidor conveys a viscerality of American black culture through his film “Hallelujah!”. This essay will examine four responses to the film from the Literary Digest, along with an excerpt of the image (The Baptism Scene, Chapter Sixteen) to ask whether these responses separate fiction from reality, recognize an analysis of race in a system of classes, and how these divisions play into their derivative interpretations of the film. To begin and address the analysis of real and fiction, we will look at the first criticism written by Allen, where he writes angrily about how the Negro peoples have all been generalized. He continually insists on how the film exaggerates the nature of the black approach to Christianity and jungle sexuality. Vidor would come to his senses and argue that the baptism scene in the film is not a perfect representation of the baptism process (the film is not a documentary, after all). That said, Vidor would take issue with Allen's claim that "the baptism scene... (was) an occasion for jest, levity, and comedy (at the expense of the Negro's religious emotions)," as, rendering the scene into nothing more than a poorly received joke, Allen fails to separate fact from fiction. Vidor would claim this, though... middle of paper...h!" paints a vivid hyperbole of the black population of the first half of the 20th century in the United States. When we take this method of visualization and overlay the opinions of all the criticisms provided , we can see that the film conveys the Negro race quite well However, whether it portrays them well or accurately is a matter of debate as Vidor's implication of hyperbole to produce emotion often blurs the line between what is real and what is. which is imaginary. Similarly, Vidor's recognition of the plurality of the race, can be difficult to pinpoint as hyperbole often leads one to direct one's attention towards the lower classes of the race look beyond the overemotional manifestations and see the impetus behind the emotion and the others that surround it, one can see many different faces within the Negro race of the early 20th century..