D.C. MOVIEGIRL'S 5 STEPS TO MAKING A GOOD MOVIE ABOUT RACISM

Okay, I have a rant/confession and it's so very appropriate for Black History Month.

I hate most movies about race. I really, REALLY, freakin' do.

Now, I'm specifically referring to movies about slavery, the civil rights movement, and the like. Now, the reason for this, is not because of the subject matter, no...Honestly, we don't make near enough movies about race, not even close to enough.

It's easier to shine a light other people's sins, than it is to turn the mirror on our own. ....*cough*holocaust*cough*

No, I tend to despise them, because most movies about race are as cliche, as that shot of a man jumping away from a blowing-up building and somehow managing to escape, shrapnel-free. They also tend to not be as diverse as Holocaust movies; from Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful to the endured horrors of The Pianist.

Cliches diminish the truth and impact of these events. Also, I'm just plain sick and tired of seeing the same thing done with the same formula, over and over, AND OVER.

That being said...

WHEN and if Hollywood gets the balls to try to make a decent movie about race (I'm talking Schindler's List level), they need to listen to DCMOVIEGIRL and...


#1 GET RID OF THE WHITE HERO

You know who I'm talking about. There's always gotta be a white person acting as a stand-in tourist for the white audience, so they too, will buy tickets and feel a part of things.

I understand. It soothes white guilt to be able to think that maybe, just maybe their ancestors weren't indifferent, afraid to act, or imposing that level of cruelty.

Oh, please, get over it, like y'all keep telling US to do. :-/

HUMAN BEINGS are cruel. Even today. Read the papers. It has no more to do with you, today than I do with distant celebrity relatives on the family-tree. Just watch the damn movie and don't look all apologetic at me, afterward.

...Unless, that is, you're still afraid to talk about/learn about race in this country, and have ZERO understanding of the role of these things in white privilege. And if you have done zip to prevent racism especially when you witness it, in your day-to-day interactions...but I digress...

Cry Freedom, Mississippi Burning, heck even Rosewood had Jon Voight. It's okay to include good white people, because they did exist. It's okay to include morally ambiguous black people, because they also existed. HOWEVER, I think before we even think of moving the "good" white characters, beyond the periphery, we need to a make an excellent race film that has documentary-style honesty without them, because WE saved ourselves, more than anyone else rescued us. Not honoring that? Is the most egregious kind of insult, of all.

#2 NO MORE HOWLING BLACK WOMEN

Now, this is something I am REALLY tired of. In just about every civil rights movie, that's ever been made, there is a moaning or screaming black woman, clutching her dead son/husband/nephew/whatever's head as she wails at the heavens.

Please.

Stop.

No really.

The other kind of moaning black woman in these movies, is the one on the soundtrack, singing some mournful, church-song; usually at the same time, the other howler is clutching her dead son/husband/nephew/WHATEVER's head in her lap, as she screams up to the heavens.

...OR during a funeral, usually attended by howling mom, and "good" white hero.

STOP IT. PLEASE. I BEG OF YOU.

#3 NO HEAVY-HANDED SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

Why? Because it's the difference between TELLING the audience what to think, being all condescending and preachy about it, and SHOWING them. Let them make up their own minds based on the subtleties of a quality piece of film-making.

Please, no, more white people overly-emphasizing the n-word. Why? Because it was as casually said back then, as 'milk and cookies', is said today.

And people forget. ...Black people got so used to this, that no, they DIDN'T dramatically flinch every time the word was tossed out. As casually as some in the hip-hop community use it today? Many black people did back then, because it was so ingrained in them, that that was what they thought they were.

Talk to an older (ESPECIALLY southern) black person, over ninety-five. Look at old documentary footage of black people speaking. You might be shocked at what they refer to themselves and other black people as.

Now, that's some tragedy some of these knucklehead kids these days, NEED to see.

#4 NO MORE OVERACTING

This connects with the self-righteousness. Because there's always some emphatically over-the-top speech refuting horrible racism. Usually, this is from a beaten down black man or woman, who's just grown tired of all the racist treatment.

Yeah, I understand you're tired, but I doubt many people during those slave-times, specifically, actually made speeches so intense (either to an audience or themselves), that they looked like they were trying to bust a vein in their forehead.

In church? Yup. Because I see that, today. But imagine slaves doing this, around mass'r. You honestly think they could regularly get that loud without some form of punishment??

No, they would learn to keep that stuff bottled up, because they had to. No more dramatically quavering voices. No more, looks of "revenge"at mass'r. Because yeah, they would have caught that and gotten their skin flayed Passion of the Christ style, even if mass'r was just imagining things.

As I said, People. Learned. To bottle it up.

So, black actors? Take it down a notch or three.

#5 IF YOU'RE GOING TO SHOW, SHOW IT ALL

Now, here comes the hard part. If you can show a child hiding in shit in Schlinder's List, you can show a white child smiling beneath the charred body of a black man, because yeah, that happened.You can show lynched pregnant black women who have their stomachs and fetuses ripped open.

I'm not making any of this up. Human beings, man. The depth to which we can sink, and somehow think is normal, is low, low, low.

And here's the hard part that THEY NEVER DO. You can show, black men, women and children who learned to feign indifference to it all.

Think about it.

How would you cope with the regular torture and human abuse on as MASSIVE A SCALE as what black people have gone through, in this country?

Heck, look to the footage of interviews with survivors of gang rape, torture, and mutilation in Sudan. They are shells of their former selves. The ability to feel anything, has been pushed back, in order for them to merely survive.

If our ancestors (when I say OUR I mean many of you white folks with black blood too, so DON'T TRIP) wanted to live through slavery, they grew numb to it and that's not even taking into account the fact that most were born into it. If you've read any slave narratives, you can catch the tone of learned tolerance, of tortures you can scarcely imagine.

I've heard an audio reading of a woman laughing at the fact that she was able to fool her master into believing she had been strung up by her hands all night, when she actually managed to a get a little bit, of leverage. ..Okay?

I have yet to see this honestly depicted on the screen. The closest I've seen to unflinchingly depicting that, was Mandingo (once again, ballsy 70's filmmaking) and that movie had a cheesy blaxploitation vibe.

So, there you go. That's my rant. And I'm sticking to it.

EDIT: And Beloved was so very underrated.