 |
| Brad Pitt drops by 12 Years a Slave after a barnraising on the Witness set |
New Movie, Same Old Skin Game
12 Years a Slave—a biopic about Solomon Northup, a black fiddler born in New York who somehow wound up a slave in Louisiana from 1841 until the law rescued him in 1853—is the nearly universally acclaimed frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar.
Yet it’s built upon a fourth-rate screenplay that might have embarrassed Horatio Alger. Screenwriter John Ridley’s imitation Victorian dialogue is depressingly bad, reminiscent of the sub-Shakespearean lines John Wayne had to deliver as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.
12 Years a Slave is hailed by critics as a long-awaited breakthrough that finally dares to mention the subject of slavery after decades of the entertainment industry being controlled by the South. Yet as cinema encyclopedist Leonard Maltin notes: "12 Years A Slave is a remake." ...
You can watch Gordon Parks' 1984 version, Solomon Northup's Odyssey, online for $2.99.
The remake has more whippings, though.
The message behind the ongoing enshrinement of the rather amateurish 12 Years a Slave is that the cultural whippings of white folk for the sins of their great-great-great-great-grandfathers will continue until morale improves.
Read the whole thing there.
By the way, here's the lobby card from the 1971 movie that has unexpectedly turned out to be one of the major influences upon this decade's Oscar contenders:
Any resemblances between Skin Game, starring James Garner and Louis Gossett Jr. as itinerant rapscallions in the South in 1858, and Django Unchained are not coincidental. Any coincidences between Skin Game and 12 Years a Slave are ironic.
By the way, here's the lobby card from the 1971 movie that has unexpectedly turned out to be one of the major influences upon this decade's Oscar contenders:
Any resemblances between Skin Game, starring James Garner and Louis Gossett Jr. as itinerant rapscallions in the South in 1858, and Django Unchained are not coincidental. Any coincidences between Skin Game and 12 Years a Slave are ironic.
Really great stuff, Steve. Never change.
ReplyDeleteHow about for balance sake, if blacks would prefer to produce films regarding slavery, jim crow, or racism in general, whites make a film showing numerous black on white crime. We'll set it in 2013, and film it in a documentary style.
ReplyDeleteHow's that for balance. They can have their version of historical events and the rest can have another perspective which would be told from modern and recent times.
ReplyDeleteThe Important Thing is that history must be rewritten to comport with today's "progressive" notion of what history actually consisted of, as any other treatment of history is, of course, "racist."
Slavery was bad? Who knew.
ReplyDeleteNext, Hollywood shows the Holocaust was sorta of a downer.
"12 Years a Slave: The story of public education."
ReplyDeleteI refuse to see that movie. I even refuse to read anything more about it. Including Steve's column.
ReplyDelete"Their most profitable scam is for Garner to repeatedly sell Gossett into slavery and then help him escape."
ReplyDeleteThat's like Good Bad and Ugly.
Tuco gets beat up real bad by the Yankees.
Passion of the Chicken-Stealing Mexican.
"How about for balance sake, if blacks would prefer to produce films regarding slavery, jim crow, or racism in general, whites make a film showing numerous black on white crime. We'll set it in 2013, and film it in a documentary style."
ReplyDeleteSo buy a camera and a MacBook, you whiney, lazy piece of scheiss...
James Garner or Jennifer Garner?
ReplyDeleteMoral complexity is racist. End of story.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/books/review/the-victims-revolution-by-bruce-bawer.html?_r=0
ReplyDeleteIn Anchee Min's COOKED SEED, there is an account she met a black student in the dorm at Circle campus. She was convinced that white folks be evil and she fumed about Anchee becoming friends with a white girl.
ReplyDeleteShe was enrolled in school of medicine but never did her homework and then seemed to drop out.
I've seen many such types at college.
Blacks complain that there aren't enough blacks in elite colleges and the like cuz of legacy of slavery.
ReplyDeleteNo, there are too many undeserving blacks in college because of the legacy of slavery.
Other than the fact that there would be no blacks in America if not for slavery, it's the slavery excuse that underlies the reason for preferential treatment for blacks.
If not for slavery, if indeed blacks had to be treated on the basis of merit, there would be far fewer blacks in colleges.
http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2013/11/did-trisha-goddard-show-and-scientific.html
ReplyDeleteFrank Rich's piece on this movie is really mind-boggling. He seems to be believe that given half a chance, conservatives would immediately reinstate slavery. Rich's title "Liberal Echo Chamber" is very appropriate, but not in the way he intended it.
ReplyDeleteGiven Rich's track record, this is of course not surprising. From Wikipedia:
A July 2009 column focused on what Rich believes is the bigoted nature of the U.S. president's detractors.[10] On the Tea Party movement, which emerged in 2009, Rich opined that at one of their rallies they were "kowtowing to secessionists". He wrote that death threats and a brick thrown through a congressman's window were a "small-scale mimicry of "Kristallnacht" (or "night of broken glass", the November 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria).
Also, Rich didn't mind the "torture porn" in 12 Years a Slave, but he seems to have developed a taste for such things only recently:
Rich dismissed the historical-drama film The Passion of the Christ (2004), directed by Mel Gibson, as "nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots", and praised Christopher Hitchens's description of it as "a homoerotic 'exercise in lurid sadomasochism' for those who 'like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time.'"
Moral complexity is racist. End of story.
ReplyDeleteEnd of story?
You like totally omitted "anti-semitic".
2000 years a slave to Reichsfuhrer Jesus.
ReplyDeleteThe review of "Skin Game" treats it like some kind of artifact from an ancient and incomprehensible past - as if the very notion of a comedy about slavery is unimaginable. Such I guess is the cultural ignorance of people today.
ReplyDeleteWhy, such a thing had previously never existed (ahem, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"). Next you'll be telling me they made comedies about World War III.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_income_in_the_United_States_by_ancestry
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
No juice.
Northup is a model of prosperous bourgeois respectability, always doffing his top hat to his white peers while out riding with his wife and children in an elegant carriage.
ReplyDeleteHow could he afford that?
Well, actually, he didn’t and couldn’t.
The movie is for black folks, not white folks. It is designed to maintain racial solidarity between poor blacks and The Talented Tenth by reinforcing insecurity, mistrust and racial animus in the black elite: "No matter how high you rise, or how responsible and productive you are, the white man will never respect you and will always try to re-enslave you. Your nice white neighbors will let it happen."
Think of "12 Years" as the black equivalent of Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners": "None of the goyim can ever be trusted. "They are ALL like that."
If you want to make a film about slavery in 2013 you could go to Africa.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of 'The King and I' and other musical depictions of involuntary servitude there is also "HMS Pinafore".
ReplyDeleteThere are two numbers in that 1878 musical play that celebrate floggings. In the Deadeye-Corcoran duet they lustily sing out about the 'Merry Cat-0-Nine Tails'.
In fact Britain which had been among the first nations to outlaw black slavery early in the century still countenanced the whipping of whites in the Navy until 1879.
Whites were routinely kidnapped by press gangs throughout the Napoleonic Wars. The farm kids who were caught in a pub were whisked off to sea for years. When the ship finally returned to England they were often pulled off the returning ship and sent back to sea again on another vessel. Sailors were not given shore leave in port. They were locked below deck until safely out to sea again.
Impressment was also enacted against American sailors. This was of course one the major grievances leading to the War of 1812.
Ships would lose about one seaman every ten days from the natural hazards of sailing. The crew were routinely beaten every day in just doing labor and they were flogged for disciplinary purposes. In the British army - which also kidnapped innocent citizens - and the British Navy they would administer as many as a thousand lashes. That of course was a death sentence. They would flog the man until he passed out, revive him and begin flogging again. It sometimes took days to beat a man to death this way.
Sailors slept in enclosed rooms below decks with 18 inches of space for their hammock They ate wormy biscuits and drank slimy water. American black plantation slaves lived far better and more comfortable lives.
Africans on American plantations had a safer and less rigorous existence. On the Mississippi before the Civil War they preferred to use free Irish poor rather than black slaves because the stevedore work was too dangerous. If you lost your slave in an accident it was a total loss whereas the Irish could always be replaced.
'Old Man River' is a propaganda piece. There were no black slaves in the period depicted in that musical.
So even if everything claimed in this movie is true it was hardly unusual at the time. Kidnapping and enslavement were common practices by which the Brits manned their fleet throughout this whole period.
Albertosaurus
Blacks complain that there aren't enough blacks in elite colleges and the like cuz of legacy of slavery.
ReplyDelete"Legacy of Slavery" is my favorite. Let's sum up the legacy of slavery in America:
1. 40m (?) or so blacks who are here and would not have otherwise been.
2. Said blacks are 20x as wealthy as blacks in sub-Saharan Africa today.
3. Said blacks get far better health care than blacks in sub-Saharan Africa today.
4. Said blacks live under a far more robust legal system than blacks in sub-Saharan Africa today.
5. This could get old quick: more robust, open, and fair political system, much better life expectancy, much better nutrition, real civil liberties & real rights, better policing, far less crime, far less corruption, far bigger & more efficient welfare state, and on and on.
Slavery was an evil institution, and has had a profoundly debilitating effect on white America, as well as black America, to this day.
Nonsense. You're confusing slavery with emancipation and liberalism.
The great Leonard Pitts has a wonderful review
ReplyDeletehttp://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/22/3705296/slave-films-vast-silences-speak.html
95% of the blacks in sub-Saharan Africa desperately wish they could get themselves a piece of that legacy of slavery.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to write a book about Stalin's willing executioners.
ReplyDeleteHe seems to be believe that given half a chance, conservatives would immediately reinstate slavery.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, some of us would.
But we want to enslave Koreans, not Africans. They'd work twice as hard and wouldn't want to mess with your daughter.
In a better world they would have made a movie version of "Flash for Freedom" instead - the Flashman novel set in the Old South, complete with slave rescues, slave trading, and plenty of deceit, disguise, fraud, and sex, and of course esoteric and accurately researched period detail.
ReplyDeleteHighly recommended and demonstrates that you can convey the cruelty of slavery and the ugliness of the world slavery made without being a sanctimonious bore.
"Peter the Shark:" yet all we ever seem to get are pro-Southern whitewashing.
ReplyDeleteI think the kids here in the Internetworks would respond with an El Ohhhh El! to that one. Yes those jews in meditainment just can't conceal their rabid southern sympathies.
Perhaps they'll release a moviementary that tracks the lineage of some northern civil war regiment to determine how many of their progeny have been raped and murdered by grateful American blacks. I imagine the scenes will be reenacted with the emancipation proclamation narrated in the background.
Peter the Shark said..."If there was ever a culture that was alien yet familiar enough to be an amazing source of stories it would be the antebellum South"
ReplyDeleteAlso the postbellum South. A land decimated by war and a ham-handed-at-best (evil at worst) post-war occupation could led to some interesting backgrounds and stories. My grandfather was born in Kentucky in 1898, grew up in Memphis, somehow learned to fly in the aftermath of WWI, left home to join the Kosciuszko Squadron in Poland fighting the Russians in 1920 (he had no dog in the fight, just was looking for adventure), came back to join the USMC as a pilot, got out and ran a number of marginal businesses before joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1939 in some staff role, then went into the US Navy as a Lieutenant Commander in 1942 when the US entered the war.
The Southern white's relationship with blacks is far more complicated, nuanced, class-dependent and dependent on specific relationships than the left can ever admit or is interested in knowing. In the mid '40s my grandparents and my father and his siblings lived in Eudora, Arkansas where my grandfather owned a saw mill (Eudora was where “Mud” starring Matthew McConaughey was filmed). They lived in the last house on a paved road, after which the road continued unpaved. At the end, of the road, another 1/2 mile or so down lived a number of black families. One day the elder male of one of these families moved to Detroit or Chicago (I can't remember which) to work in a factory and would send money home. After about a year he grew tired of it so called my grandfather and said he wanted to come home. Those were the exact words: “Mister X, I want to come home now.” My grandfather arranged for a bus and train passage back to Arkansas.
He remarked to my father during the civil rights era that “I don’t hate blacks any more than I hate my children. However I don’t consider them equal any more than I consider children my equal.” To him they were decent but simple-minded people that needed to be looked after and not given too much rope or they’d inevitably hang themselves. Paternalistic and condescending? Sure. But is that really worse than encouraging them to have out-of-wedlock kids and shoot each other and take drugs and pander to their basest instincts? Bear in mind his entire black experience was with rural, Christian blacks or in the military. I suspect he’d have a different view on the modern rap-infused version. Off topic: He died when I was 10 or so but I distinctly remember him referring to FDR as “that g_d damned communist.”
Black-on-black violence was considered to be their private concern. In the mid 1930’s they lived outside Memphis where he managed the airport. They had a black woman that would cook and look after the kids. One evening she cut up a guy at a juke joint pretty badly and the Sheriff locked her up. She told him that she needed to be out the next morning because she “needs to look after Mrs. X’s kids”. The Sheriff knew my grandparents so let her out and the victim never came in to press charges so that was the end of it. It never occurred to my grandparents that she was in any way dangerous. She worked for them until they moved to Washington, DC in 1939.
Perhaps I’m biased but those stories seem more interesting than “Evil Southern Whites Hated and Oppressed Noble Saintly Blacks for No Reason At All.”
"Slavery was an evil institution, and has had a profoundly debilitating effect on white America, as well as black America, to this day."
ReplyDeleteI disagree. I think the real problem is blacks.
Suppose Americans had brought 300,000 Chinese or Iranians as slaves and allowed in 300,000 free black folks long ago and offered them equality.
I say we would still have a much bigger problem with blacks.
Look at all the problems caused by free black Africans entering Europe today.
If anything, I think US was in better shape because blacks were kept down in the past. If blacks had been given equal freedom from the beginning, there would be many more Detroits all across America.
And black pathologies would have run wild earlier. And white male pride would have crushed long ago as stronger blacks would have taken tons of white women.
Most of black Africa won independence and freedom before South Africa, but South Africa built the most robust economy(so that blacks in other nations flooded into South Africa to look for jobs during the apartheid yrs).
The problem is biology than history. Evolution made blacks stronger, more aggressive, more psychopathic, and less intelligent.
How about "Redtails" meets "Final Countdown" meets "Django Unchained"?
ReplyDeleteThe young black airman take offfrom Tuskegee on a routine training mission in 1942, and time-travel back to 1862. Whereupon they frag their racist training instructor and lay waste to the Confederates at Shiloh. Overkill? The Rebs were already whupped? Not by by black men in P-51's, they weren't.
I haven't seen 12 Yrs--I'll wait for it on dvd--, but I did see Hunger and must admit it is something of a masterwork. Did I like it? No, watching a bunch of Irish potatoheads smearing their shit on prison walls isn't my idea of a good time.
ReplyDeleteBut there was genuine power and a total control of the medium(comparable to that of Bresson in MAN ESCAPES). The best are the opening scenes where we see demoralized British prison guards who gotta do what they gotta do, who win the physical battle with fists but lose the war of the heart. If brutality could be subtle and subtlety could be brutal, this was it.
But I didn't see SHAME as the subject just isn't my thing. I don't much care about the sexual peccadillos of others.
As for 12 Yrs a Slave, I suppose we could cut it some slack for its historical inaccuracies as 99% of all historical films have this problem. I mean how much of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA has anything to do with history? And even though BRIDE ON THE RIVER KWAI is based on a fiction novel, it whitewashed the extent of Japanese barbarism and cruelty in Southeast Asia, not least in their treatment of prisoners.
So, it's disingenuous to be too harsh on McQueen for inaccuracies.
The real point of the movie is the daily conditions with which blacks slaves had to live with. The problem for me is that many viewers will come away with the impression that most black slaves lived under the kind of cruel master shown in the film. In fact, 80% of slaves lived in family plantations with 2-3 slaves, and many had intimate relations with the masters. Some masters were cruel, some were decent(relatively speaking). But of course, because the slave was, to a large extent, still at the mercy of his master, he or she had no power over his or her fate. It's like a dog can be treated well or treated badly, but it's entirely at the mercy of its master. And that is the problem of slavery. A slave cannot just quit his job and go somewhere else to look for work. Like a serf, he is stuck.
To be sure, one could argue there were some advantages to private slavery. A private owner had to purchase slaves as an investment, and that meant he had to take care of the slave.
But statist slavery as practiced by Nazis, Japanese military, or Soviet Union could be much worse as the state could kill off and recruit any number of new slaves for the labor camps and gulag. State doesn't have to pay for shit. It owns everything in a totalitarian society. It's no wonder millions died under such systems. On the other hand, the advantage of statist slavery is it can be ended almost overnight if the regime changes, and Stalinist nightmare soon ended after the death of Stalin.
el supremo: In a better world they would have made a movie version of "Flash for Freedom" instead - the Flashman novel set in the Old South, complete with slave rescues, slave trading, and plenty of deceit, disguise, fraud, and sex, and of course esoteric and accurately researched period detail.
ReplyDeleteHighly recommended and demonstrates that you can convey the cruelty of slavery and the ugliness of the world slavery made without being a sanctimonious bore.
Hear, hear.
(In a better world all the Flashman novels would have well-directed movie versions. If I were a billionaire, that's a project I'd bankroll. In our fallen world, however, only one such movie was made, long ago. It wasn't very good. No way modern Hollywood would ever go near those stories, as they are too racially egalitarian (the wogs being as rascally and interesting as the whites), and full of splendidly transgressive, ass-kicking women who would not suit the modern taste for insipid, interchangeable empowered-ettes.)
Biology trumps history.
ReplyDeleteThere were many attempts to suppress Jewish intellect and business, but Jews nevertheless triumphed in those fields with their superior IQ.
There were many attempts to suppress black athleticism and musical jivery(just ask Jack Johnson and ballplayers who played in the Negro Leagues), but blacks nevertheless triumphed in sports and funky pop music.
Sweden invites black Africans with love and showers them with free everything. So, how are they doing intellectually and economically?
And plenty of free black Africans moved to France. What they most excel in? Sports, rap music, and porn.
If slavery is the real problem, didn't blacks have in Africa for 100,000 yrs? Shouldn't that be the bigger factor than a few hundreds of yrs of slavery in America?
ReplyDelete"If you want to make a film about slavery in 2013 you could go to Africa."
ReplyDeleteAnd cruelty galore.
Google 'African burned to death for stealing potatoes' or 'African burned to death for stealing laptop' or 'African burned to death as witch'.
Lots of that stuff on liveleak. Horrifying.
Are all of the anonymice that post here one and the same Jew-hating anonymouse who pretends to be concerned about Israel's "treatment of the Palestinians"? Or is there one Jew-hating anonymouse along with other non-Jew-hating anonymice?
ReplyDelete"Or is there one Jew-hating anonymouse along with other non-Jew-hating anonymice?"
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's go for consistency.
If someone points out the Zionist treatment of Palestinians, it's anti-Jewish and Jew-hating.
Then, logically doesn't it follow that Jews who talk about white political oppression or historical 'crimes' are anti-white and anti-Western or white-hating?
At the very least, let's be consistent and logical.
The contemporary NYT article about the Northup affair linked in your article describes one Benjamin Shekels (!) as a slave-trader involved in the sale of Northup.
ReplyDeleteSomething tells me he's not in the movie.
There were free black people here at least as early as the 17th century. W.E.B. Dubois, for example, came from a long line of free blacks--I don't think they had ever been slaves in the US. Lots of other black people immigrated over the years--even before the 1965 Immigration Act.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so, but the First Naturalization Act of 1790, and succeeding acts until the 14th Amendment, prohibited the naturalization of blacks.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/wonder-showzen-justice-seas-2/1529287/playlist.jhtml
ReplyDeleteRe: Flashman
ReplyDeleteThe fact that George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books have never made it to the big screen is all the proof I need that Hollywood doesn't care nearly as much about money as it does about ideological conformity.
Can Somalis and Sudanese slave owners fleeing repression bring their slaves as slavery is part of their culture, innit?
ReplyDeleteIf you lost your slave in an accident it was a total loss whereas the Irish could always be replaced.
ReplyDelete"Don't use up the arrows. Use up the Irish. They cost even less."
- King Edward I of England, at least in BRAVEHEART
I first heard of Harry Flashman thanks to Funky Flashman, a bumbling comic book villain created by ultra-liberal (!) Jack Kirby.
ReplyDelete"Slavery was an evil institution, and has had a profoundly debilitating effect on white America, as well as black America, to this day."
ReplyDeleteNonsense. You're confusing slavery with emancipation and liberalism.
Sorry, I was on my way out and that deserved more unpacking. Emancipation and liberalism have had a profoundly debilitating effect on white America, but emancipation (impossible without slavery) was a profound good for blacks. The transatlantic trade was, ultimately, the greatest boon ever afforded blacks.
about the oft-repeated liberal claim that African-on-African slavery was more humane than American "chattel" slavery. I hear that matra repeated a lot by those who finally admit that Africans were enslaving each other first, but I never hear it substantiated much. Anybody have more info on that?
Blacks are more psychopathic than whites. They have a much greater propensity for cruelty. Common sense says anyone would prefer a white master to a black one, as a general rule.
Then, logically doesn't it follow that Jews who talk about white political oppression or historical 'crimes' are anti-white and anti-Western or white-hating?
At the very least, let's be consistent and logical.
Meaning, aren't a majority of Jews anti-White? Meaning, isn't bigotry a far bigger problem among Jews than among Whites?
What exactly is a used slave? I mean, a female one, I understand the negative connotations, but a male one, it could actually be a benefit. Like a stallion that's been worn in a bit, you don't have to worry about him getting uppity. And he probably comes with more experience than one with that 'new slave' smell.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of logical consistency--Did the Jews/Israelis/whatever actually try to enslave the Palestinians? Last I checked there isn't any Arab nation wants them, as slaves or otherwise. Seems more that Tel Aviv spends big trying to keep them out entirely (while the rest of the world funds the more enterprising Gazan smugglers' investment in bigger, deeper, Mercedes-friendly tunnels).
ReplyDelete"Speaking of logical consistency--Did the Jews/Israelis/whatever actually try to enslave the Palestinians?"
ReplyDeleteLet me just say this. If any gentile people today treated Jews like Jews are treating Palestinians, Jews would scream 'slavery and genocide'.
Indeed, Jews scream 'another holocaust' over much less. ADL sees antisemitism and nazism EVERYWHERE... even in whites wanting to control immigration.
"Last I checked there isn't any Arab nation wants them, as slaves or otherwise."
What does this mean? When Germany and USSR were crushing Poland in 1939, no one wanted the Poles. So, it was the Poles' fault for being oppressed in their own land?
And I don't recall that too many nations wanted Jews during WWII. Not even FDR thought to save Jews. Jews were like Palestinians back then. No European nation wanted them, and even nations that were fighting Germany didn't want too many Jewish refugees. Even after WWII, most Europeans wanted to kick Jews out and showed very little sympathy to Jews who returned from the death camps.
So, should we blame Jewish victims of WWII?
I don't have any illusions about Palestinians. They are a suffering people but also a nasty people. And if they got an upperhand over Jews, they would do to Jews what Soviets did to Germans and what US did to Japan(in WWII, though, to be sure, Japan was lucky not to be invaded by the Chinese, the main victims of the Japanese. If Chinese had the military means to 'liberate' Japan, imagine the rapes and massacres that would have taken place in retaliation and revenge. It might have been even more horrible than Soviet horrors in Germany).
So, I'm not saying Palestinians are angels and that problems will go away if Jews treat them nice. (Ron Paul said problems in Iraq would vanish if US just left as it was supposedly American presence that was causing all the problems. He was as wrong as Americans who said that SE Asia would calm down the minute US pulled out of Vietnam. The war raged on, there was the fall of Saigon, Boat people fiasco, the Cambodian mess. Buchanan is more correct on these matters. He sees Iraq and Afghanistan going through what SE Asia went when US pulled out. Thus, it's better not to get involved in the first place.)
The dye has been cast. Too many bitter memories and feelings between Jews and Palestinians. I don't say Palestinians are peaceloving saints and that all will be well if Jews be nicer.
But it was the Jewish community that said things would be all rosy if whites in South Africa just offer peace and equality and hold Mandela's hand. Well? Talk about selective naivete.
Slaves were whipped because whites were whipped. Standard punishment. Only a short time before, 300 people were burnt at the stake in England. No big deal.
ReplyDeletePeople were brutal back then.
"Anonymous el supremo said...
ReplyDeleteIn a better world they would have made a movie version of "Flash for Freedom" instead - the Flashman novel set in the Old South, complete with slave rescues, slave trading, and plenty of deceit, disguise, fraud, and sex, and of course esoteric and accurately researched period detail."
I second your worthy recommendation. As with all the Flashman novels, "Flash for Freedom" is not only a great history lesson, but an uproarious and entertaining read. And the character of John Charity Spring is one of the great all-time fictional villains.
Three cheers for ol' Flashy!
"Re: Flashman
ReplyDeleteThe fact that George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books have never made it to the big screen is all the proof I need that Hollywood doesn't care nearly as much about money as it does about ideological conformity.""
He did once. "Royal Flash" was made into a movie in 1975 with Malcolm MacDowell (Flashman), Oliver Reed (Bismarck), and Alan Bates (Starnberg). You can see it on YouTube. However, despite being made by some of the same people who made "The Three Musketeers" a great movie (the screen-play of which was also written by Fraser) - it was poorly cast, and was unfortunately not very good.
I thought it was going to cast a white guy as the slave because race in movies really doesn't matter anymore.
ReplyDelete[The Palestinians] would do to Jews what Soviets did to Germans and what US did to Japan(in WWII, though, to be sure, Japan was lucky not to be invaded by the Chinese, the main victims of the Japanese. If Chinese had the military means to 'liberate' Japan, imagine the rapes and massacres that would have taken place in retaliation and revenge. It might have been even more horrible than Soviet horrors in Germany).
ReplyDeleteLets put some mythology aside. Revenge for German/Nazi atrocities is only a partial cause of Soviet horrors in Germany (and Poland, Finland, Romania, Austria, Iran, etc.) The Soviets invaded, conquered, colonized, and attempted to communize a large strip of Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1941 - well before Barbarossa, and any excusable revenge. If anything, the commies were even more brutal in 1940 than during their denazification of the same region in 1945. Katyn Forest, anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogQ0p1QBQA
ReplyDeleteRemarkable movie.
"Slaves were whipped because whites were whipped. Standard punishment."
ReplyDeleteMaybe on British ships where the upper classes did whatever necessary to keep order among the lower elements.
But whites were not whipped like black slaves were in America. At least not mostly, I don't think.
The fact is blacks were treated very differently, and that is a fact. Life was hard for most whites but most blacks even lacked simple rights.
And the scale was so large that as Soviet troops rolled into other nations, a kind of free for all mentality took hold.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Russians were near the top of the list of the world's biggest drunkards probably didn't help. That, and a culture that was well behind western Europe in terms of distance from the medieval. Western propaganda called the Germans "Huns," but it was much truer of the Russians. Funny how that image of Russians was put on hold until the wall fell, but is now back in vogue.
The best movie about slavery is "The street of a thousand Dreams." You cannot go wrong with a movie that has 57 naked babes.
ReplyDeleteThe soviet soldiers that rape Germany were from the moslem regions. By this time the soviets were scrapping the bottom of the barrel. The officers could have stopped them, but choose not to.
ReplyDelete"The soviet soldiers that rape Germany were from the moslem regions."
ReplyDeleteRiiiiiiiight.
That Frank Rich cried watching this schlock makes me laugh.
ReplyDelete"Look at all the problems caused by free black Africans entering Europe today".
ReplyDeleteYou can also add Canada to that list. We were essentially a black-free country until quite recently.
Slavery was wrong not just because it was immoral, although concepts of morality were very different centuries ago, something modern day revisionists conveniently forget, but because it inadvertently caused the demographic reality of creating a black community in the USA.
ReplyDeleteWould blacks have been better off in Africa then being slaves in the USA? Probably, unless they were already slaves there.
Would their descendants today be better off in Africa? Probably not.
Would America as a whole have been better off? Most likely yes.
"Slavery was wrong not just because it was immoral, although concepts of morality were very different centuries ago, something modern day revisionists conveniently forget, but because it inadvertently caused the demographic reality of creating a black community in the USA."
ReplyDeleteBut suppose Americans had brought over only white slaves?
Your argument is fallacious by associating blacks with slavery. True, American slavery was mostly about blacks, but slavery itself doesn't have to be about blacks at all.
Using your logic, we can say democracy is evil since black problems in the US happened under a democratic system.
In Europe and Canada, a democratic system is importing free blacks. So, is democracy inherently evil? But Japan is a democracy but they're not importing blacks.
"Would blacks have been better off in Africa then being slaves in the USA? Probably, unless they were already slaves there."
Materially, no. Even black slaves in the US had better chance of survival than 'free' blacks in Africa who had to hunt and scrape by in harsh conditions. It's like even a dog who serves his master is better off than a 'free' coyote and wolf. Also, there was no permanent guarantee of 'freedom' even for 'free' blacks in Africa. Anyone could be captured and sold as slaves by other tribes. You could be 'free' one day and a slave the next day. You could have bountiful food one year but starve the next year due to drought conditions.
Even so, I suppose black Africans still felt as rulers of their own domain whereas blacks in America, even if materially better off, were always reminded of their inferiority.
"Would America as a whole have been better off? Most likely yes."
Absolutely yes but there wouldn't have been no Smokey Robinson, and that is a loss.
Western propaganda called the Germans "Huns," but it was much truer of the Russians.
ReplyDeleteIf the Germans and HUNgarians were "Huns", then the Russians could only be "Mongols".
The soviet soldiers that rape Germany were from the moslem regions
ReplyDeleteHow "moslem" were Moscow, Leningrad, Smolensk, Georgia, Armenia, and the Don Cossack (not Kazakh) stan?
Stalin if anything trusted Soviet Muslims even less than the usual Slavs. To him, they were the ultimate Nazi capitalist kulaks deep inside.
"But suppose Americans had brought over only white slaves."
ReplyDeleteBut they DIDN'T. So what's your point?
"Your argument is fallacious by associating blacks with slavery."
I don't see how at all.
"True, American slavery was mostly about blacks"
You have just contradicted your previous comment.
"but slavery itself doesn't have to be about blacks at all."
TRUE. But in the case of the USA it was, so what is your point?
"using your logic we can say that democracy is evil since black problems in the USA happened under a democratic system."
NO THEY DIDN'T. From the early 1600's until 1783, when the overwhelming majority of African slaves arrived, America was under the colonial control of Great Britain, which itself was anything but a "democracy". In 1780, for example less then 3% of the British population even had the right to vote. SOURCE: THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES / CITIZENSHIP /GETTING THE VOTE.
Even after the revolution only white adult males in the USA had the right to vote, who were themselves a minority of the total US population, although this was still a far higher total then the U.K. Actually it was during this time that as America became MORE democratic that slavery received its first blows. It was agreed in 1787 that all transatlantic slavery to the US would end in twenty years in 1807. Also the Northwest Ordinance Act was passed, excluding the spread of slavery in the Ohio valley. Anti-slave sentiment also increased in the U.K. after 1832 when the vote was extended. The growth of democracy led to the decline of slavery.
"In Canada and Europe a democratic system is importing free blacks."
Not because the citizenry voted for it. It is due to a mixture of elites, globalists, (many of them of Jewish background) the cheap labor lobby and cultural Marxists. Also bogus "refugees" taking advantage of ludicrous Asylum laws passed by the unelected U.N. and judges.
"But Japan is a democracy but they are not importing blacks".
But the Japanese don't suffer from any of the plagues I mentioned above.
For a long time, Hollywood was wary about dealing with slave issue.
ReplyDeleteSo, the problems of the South were depicted with free white guys who find themselves as captives.
I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG and SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS are probably the two most famous. And later there was COOL HAND LUKE. More recently, SHAWSHANK REDUCTION.
Whatever the real Northrup might have been, it is a clever touch to have a free man find himself back in bondage. Without such a figure, slavery would just be slavery. But with him in the mix, slavery is seen in contrast to freedom, and that makes it all the more tragic and agonizing. (There is an element of this in WOMAN IN THE DUNES and WICKER MAN as well. And of course films like RESCUE DAWN. And HAIR pulled a similar trick by having the hippie die in the war.)
Another take on this.
In this review Mr Sailer has outdone himself. It is truly a masterwork of subliminal snark. I'll quote some snippets below with Steve's underlying intended meaning in square brackets next to each one.
ReplyDeleteNote: While reading my Steve-deconstruction, some of you may say, "What do you know of what goes on in Steve's head? How dare you speculate on another man's inner motivations or character, based solely on your superficial knowledge of him!"
To which I reply, read the original article and count up all the base motives and character flaws that Steve imputes to the long-buried Northrop. And take THAT cudgel up first with Steve himself.
"12 Years a Slave—a biopic about Solomon Northup, a black fiddler [just another unserious albeit musical black man] in New York who somehow wound up a slave [He must have been a naturally careless person – surely this can’t have happened very often] in Louisiana from 1841 until the law rescued him in 1853 [black men need the government to rescue them] —is the nearly universally acclaimed frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar."
You can watch the 1984 version online for $2.99." [Northrup’s story is not worth much]
The remake has more whippings, though." [Whipping slaves is a laughing matter]
"The message behind the ongoing enshrinement of the rather amateurish 12 Years a Slave is that the cultural whippings of white folk [morally equivalent to the actual skin-stripping type of whipping that black slaves endured in America] for the sins of their great-great-great-great-grandfathers will continue until morale improves." [The ultimate legacy of slavery is white people being criticised]
"A glance at Northup’s ghostwritten [black man can’t write for himself] 1853 memoir makes clear that in 1841, rather than being a pillar of this Yankee community, he was an unemployed [black man doesn’t work] fiddler dragged down by his own “shiftlessness” [black man is shiftless]
"His poor family never reported or even guessed that he’d been kidnapped. They apparently assumed that vanishing was just the kind of thing he’d do" [even black people know black men are unreliable].
"Epps was a manic master who forced his slaves to cavort until dawn whenever he was in a “dancing mood.” Today, he’d be diagnosed as bipolar." [Poor white man had mental health issues and deserves our sympathy. Certainly his behaviour says nothing much about how slaves were treated in the South]
"Thus, they were publicly outraged that a slave sale had been contracted without proper title." [Slavery at its best was a well-run and regulated institution]
"Their most profitable scam is for Garner to repeatedly sell Gossett into slavery and then help him escape." [How unethical. Slaves are property.]
In this review Mr Sailer has outdone himself. It is truly a masterwork of subliminal snark. I'll quote some snippets below with Steve's underlying intended meaning in square brackets next to each one.
ReplyDeleteNote: While reading my Steve-deconstruction, some of you may say, "How dare you speculate on another man's inner motivations or character, based solely on your superficial knowledge of him!"
To which I reply, read the original article and count up all the base motives and character flaws that Steve imputes to the long-buried Northrop. And take THAT cudgel up first with Steve himself.
"Northup’s hometown newspaper, the Saratoga Press, surmised that Northup had been an accomplice in a scam gone awry" [Devious black man. All parties should really take a share of the blame here, including the one who was enslaved for 12 years.]
"...Still, this theory that Northup was a man of raffish character ..."[devious unreliable black man]
"In general, the movie depicts the other slaves as displaying remarkably little human warmth toward Northup. They mostly act like zombies whenever he is around. Perhaps they perceived him as untrustworthy?" [nothing like a spot of speculative character assassination.]
"An illustrated edition sold 30,000 copies—not as many as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, but more than enough to launch Northup on the abolitionist lecture circuit." [Opportunistic black man. Probably got himself enslaved on purpose]
"But those who knew Northup best seem to have assumed that he had become a “worthless vagabond”..." [shiftless black man]
"For example, the finest 20th-century staging of Stowe’s bestseller is the wild “Small House of Uncle Thomas” ballet in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1951 musical The King and I, in which the Burmese slave girl Tuptim restages Eliza’s escape from Simon Legree to call for her own manumission." [Whew. Getting hot in here. Let’s shift the focus away from white people enslaving black people for a bit.]
"Third-rate Victorian literature "[Northrup’s story is hardly worth reading]
"Indeed, on the rare occasions when Wilson quotes Northup’s utterances, the slave speaks in a more plausible [ignorant, ungrammatical] fashion"
"it would be racist for Ridley to show [ignorant, ungrammatical] slaves, say, ending their sentences with prepositions"
"It’s hard to make African-Americans boring, but 12 Years a Slave manages." [Northrup’s story is hardly worth watching]
In this review of Mr Sailer's review, Maasai has outdone himself. It is truly a masterwork of subliminal snark.
ReplyDeleteNote: While reading my Maasai-deconstruction, some of you may say, "What do you know of what goes on in Maasai's head? How dare you speculate on another man's inner motivations or character, based solely on your superficial knowledge of him!"
To which I reply, read the deconstruction and count up all the base motives and character flaws that Maasai imputes to the long-blacklisted Sailer. And take THAT cudgel up first with Maasai hisself.
-----------
In a nutshell, if you ridicule a movie about slavery, you are ridiculing slavery itself.
It's like if you find THE GREATEST STORY EVER MADE to be ridiculous--as Dwight MacDonald did--, you find the torture and Crucifixion of Jesus to be a laugh riot.
If you feel nothing but contempt for Kramer's JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG, you are a Holocaust Denier.
No matter how false or ridiculous something is, if the subject matter is grave, you better respond to it gravely and on your knees, you damned racist.
Don't be like that Holocaust Denier Pauline Kael who dismissed SHOAH. Her review exposed her as a self-loathing Jew who really loved Hitler. And her dismissal of ELENI meant she loved Stalin too and had no feelings for the victims of communism.
If the subject is 'sacred', you must exhibit the cathartic symptoms of guilt, panic, and rapture in order to be redeemed.. as with so many white libs on facebook who recount how their lives were altered by the experience.
So, wet your panties before a Negro stud and wet your eyes before a Negro slave.
A couple of days of research revealed that Solomon Northup was likely a more interesting man than the dull plaster saint portrayed in the fairly childish "12 Years a Slave." Is it too much to ask that Best Picture frontrunners be more psychologically sophisticated than ABC After School Specials?
ReplyDeleteInteresting interview with Mcqueen in FILM COMMENT.
ReplyDeleteHe seems less self-righteous and angry than the white guy who interviewed him.
He says he identifies with everyone in the film, even with the slave owner.
http://youtu.be/2-UMNSVX7_I
ReplyDeleteWow. Hot damn!! Shiiiite!!!
One of the most spectacular directorial debuts ever. Sanders is, along with Fincher and Johnny To, the best in the business. And it's his first outing as feature film director. Just mind-blowing. And no dorky geek boy fetishes that have always cluttered the works of Lucas, Jackson, Burton, and many others.
Sanders has natural film sense like some musicians have natural rhythm. If he goes on like this, he'll be the heir to Welles, Kurosawa, Boorman, and of course Spielberg.
Unbelievable work. One of the greatest triumphs of art direction and special effects. Colorful characters, lots of charisma. One of the most stunningly rapturous and imaginative movies in a long long time.
For the first time CGI really gelled with natural wonder. Truly enchanting. And very dark too.
Sanders is the guy to watch.
Cuaron hit a homerun with GRAVITY. A truly OMG experience.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/adp/history/1836/blacks/frameset.html
ReplyDelete