I have not seen the film but look forward to it.
I"m so sick of black people whining about not getting movies like this made and when they do, they attack them with a viciousness they never apply to any other films.
I don't think most of the people attacking this film have seen it. They read an attack by someone and then co-sign it without seeing it.
Part of the reaction is our ambivalence with our relationship to the history of American slavery...and the typical disappointment people have with films about the subject.
Meanwhile the Jewish community continues to make films about the Holocaust and support them every time.
There is a wide enough range of depictions of black life for black folks to take the chip off their shoulder and deal with our legacy. And the movies about slavery are so much better than ever.
The ADOS argument is retarded beyond belief. Malcolm X, WEB DuBois and every other great black intellectual giant has supported Pan Africanism. A bunch of non achieving jealous scrum bums making jealous complaints about Black Brits and/or Africans achieving in America is a dismissible punk move.
As for the movie itself, I don't talk about things I haven't seen. But I know the producer and director, and they are people of great integrity.
A few things here...
First off, RH, I've been a fan of your movies and I wouldn't be a fan, or as much of a fan, of the Black Panther character, if not for your comic series. But I take some major issues with what you've said here. First off, I find it insulting that you describe (black) people as 'whining' for 'movies like this'. To me, that kind of condescending response is one I've seen from black elites who are frustrated when black folks don't get with their program, of their white elite allies and friends. It's so easy to display frustration with black folks in a way that is never done with other groups. But I digress, who are the people who whined about 'films like these'? First off, there's been a noticeable weariness when it comes to movies about slavery to begin with, so where as the clamor for another slavery film, even one supposedly about Harriet Tubman? Show me the widespread groundswell for it. You said yourself there is an ambivalence about slavery movies already. IMO, people want to see movies where black people are winning, living well, and there was no backlash against
Hidden Figures in comparison, even though it took place in the Civil Rights era, which is also a cinematic era that I think black audiences have become numb to, though not as much as slavery, when you consider the success of
Hidden Figures, The Butler, The Help, and
Green Book (though I would contend here that white people also supported those films).
Second, for 'movies like this' I would assume here you are talking about films that depict our history in positive lights, well the contention here is that this film does not do that. That this film inserts fictional characters into the real life story of Harriet Tubman to push anti-black narratives while also lessening how brutal slavery really was. So how many of these 'whiners' were asking for films that distort our history? If anything, the criticism of this film is consistent with the demand to portray our history more accurately as well as positively.
There are critics of this film who haven't seen
Harriet-which is not unusual (you don't have to have seen D.W. Griffith's
Birth of a Nation or
Gone With the Wind to criticize those films)-but there's also people who have seen bootlegs and there are scenes online of the film that people are also referring to. One could say that just seeing a scene leaves the criticism open to seeing things out of context, but I see some of these scenes as contradicting people who claim that the black bounty hunter was not a villain and that Harriet didn't get saved by her white slaveowner, both of which clearly happened in this film. And do you also take issue with people who have seen the film and back up the criticism of it?
When it comes to Holocaust films, I would argue that Jews support those films because they control the story/filmmaking process in ways far greater than with
Harriet and most other films about 'black history' that come out of Hollywood. Those films reaffirm Jewish humanity and don't stoke gender divides. How many of the Holocaust films have Jewish bounty hunters working in league with the Nazis? How many of those films depict a 'complicated' relationship between Jews and Nazism, or want to show a 'complicated' or complex portrayal of Nazis? How many show how the 'corrupting' influence of Nazism also made villains on both sides?
JoJo Rabbit, written and directed by Polynesian Jew Taika Waititi has gotten some criticism from some because they felt he was making light of Nazism, and were those people as wrong as
Harriet detractors are to voice their concerns?
Standing up for accurate portrayals of historic icons and our history
is dealing with our legacy. The idea of supporting
anything with black people in it is avoiding demanding better. There's a thirstiness and deep well of insecurity for many of us that we will take whatever Hollywood gives us because some black folks are on the screen or involved. They know that, so they are content to give the bare minimum. As they are to also minimize the horrors inflicted upon our ancestors, which they've been doing since the dawn of cinema. From what it appears that is still happening with
Harriet. If
Harriet is the best depiction of black history that Hollywood offers then I'm fine with seeing no films about our history from Hollywood. We shouldn't be expecting Hollywood to accurately tell our stories anyway-especially if we aren't in full control of the process.
When it comes to ADOS, the icons you mentioned have all been gone from us for over half a century now. The idea that we just keep doing what we always did when there's not much proof it still works-if it ever did-makes no sense. Show me where Pan-Africanism works, where are the tangibles today from it? The anti-ADOS crowd also ignores the xenophobia practiced-unfortunately-by some Continental and other Diasporic Africans against Black Americans. It's okay to dump on us, but when we push back, that's not fair. Why should black Americans support a film starring a woman that's said xenophobic things about us? Why should we reward someone who has insulted us, and looks to be doing so again, with
Harriet?
