WTF Wednesday - Slavery and Black History month
I have a whole bunch of WTF Wednesday posts cued up. But, since this is the last Wednesday in February, which is Black History Month here in the US, I think I’ll stick to just one post today. Here’s something to think about as you watch the Oscars this Sunday.
This article appeared yesterday on CNN. Django Unchained Trivializes Slavery. I think that Jesse Williams makes some very good points in his article. Especially about why we let Quentin Tarantino get away with some particularly racially insensitive behavior (really, they released slave action figures as a marketing tie in?!?) while promoting himself the movie. And I have to wonder why Tarantino seems so proud of having made an “authentic” movie and stimulating discussions about race, when it seems to me all he did was make his usual ultra-violent movie just sprinkled with a rather astonishing number of racial slurs. There is being a l’enfant terrible and then there is being just plain terrible.
I found what Williams had to say very interesting when contrasted with the article that I’d read earlier in the week about slave narratives. America’s Slave Narratives should shock us. I read quite a few slave narratives in high school (remember, I went to boarding school) and again in college. I think that one of the reasons why I cannot, just cannot, force myself to generate even the slightest interest in reenacting the Civil War (despite my love of the hoop skirt) is probably because I am so very uncomfortable with that period in our nation’s history.
Is it right to be entertained by the suffering of others? And why have all the famous movies about slavery (Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Song of the South, Amistad, etc.) been made by white men? Talking about race is a very tricky thing. But I think we really need to ask ourselves whether the oppressors have any right to tell the story of the oppressed? Is there any way they can do it justice?
This article appeared yesterday on CNN. Django Unchained Trivializes Slavery. I think that Jesse Williams makes some very good points in his article. Especially about why we let Quentin Tarantino get away with some particularly racially insensitive behavior (really, they released slave action figures as a marketing tie in?!?) while promoting himself the movie. And I have to wonder why Tarantino seems so proud of having made an “authentic” movie and stimulating discussions about race, when it seems to me all he did was make his usual ultra-violent movie just sprinkled with a rather astonishing number of racial slurs. There is being a l’enfant terrible and then there is being just plain terrible.
I found what Williams had to say very interesting when contrasted with the article that I’d read earlier in the week about slave narratives. America’s Slave Narratives should shock us. I read quite a few slave narratives in high school (remember, I went to boarding school) and again in college. I think that one of the reasons why I cannot, just cannot, force myself to generate even the slightest interest in reenacting the Civil War (despite my love of the hoop skirt) is probably because I am so very uncomfortable with that period in our nation’s history.
Is it right to be entertained by the suffering of others? And why have all the famous movies about slavery (Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Song of the South, Amistad, etc.) been made by white men? Talking about race is a very tricky thing. But I think we really need to ask ourselves whether the oppressors have any right to tell the story of the oppressed? Is there any way they can do it justice?