Lowpe
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
Contemporary academic and social justice thinking is that it's racist to portray black characters in the role of slaves or laborers as happy or cheerful. They're right that slavery and Jim Crow life were basically miserable states of existence in which the people yearned for freedom or a fair chance, too often chaffing under mistreatment, inequality and an unequal opportunity for the "pursuit of happiness."
But people are remarkable at finding ways to survive and sometimes thrive in adverse circumstance. There were slaves and Jim Crow-era blacks who enjoyed life. Some thrived. Sometimes black slaves, black tenant farmers, and black laborers had cordial and affectionate relationships with their white owners or neighbors. I think it would be fair to say that was perhaps startlingly common, while also acknowledging that far too often there was mistreatment and cruelty ("absolute power corrupts).
Movies suggesting that white supremacy was beneficial or desirable would be detestable. Movies suggesting that blacks willingly embraced a subservient role (usually or all of the time) would be historically inaccurate and therefore detestable to we Forumites. Movies suggesting that it was possible for whites and blacks to get along, or for blacks to be at times happy or joyful and cordial with their white neighbors would be historically accurate.
I haven't seen Song of the South in many years, but I didn't find it offensive at the time. Gone With the Wind does portray the slaves as mostly humble and cheerful in their servitude; that was possible though not universal, so the movie sees the South through rose-colored glasses, as told from the point of view of the privileged class. If the makers had wanted to present a more balanced view, they could've depicted slave auctions and whippings and whites fathering children by their slaves, which would be rape by any definition of the word. But the movie wasn't there to make a message or teach history; it was there to entertain through drama, and did a good job of it. It's not a perfect movie but those circumstances could have existed.
Gettysburg was a nice balancing act that managed to do a lot of things rather seamlessly.
I recognize that my views on these topics would be noxious to 75% of New York Timesand Washington Post readers. People see these things way differently.
Slavery is often looked at strictly emotional or thru a different lens for an ulterior motive. The process I find to be abhorrent, but there are facts not commonly known:
Every race was enslaved at some point of their history. Christians were enslaved even in the early 1800's along the northern coast of Africa for example. Slavery exists currently.
There were black slave owners in the South, owning as many a 50 slaves especially in Louisiana. I believe the first slave owner in the colonies was himself a freed slave from the Caribbean. In addition, the population of freed blacks was greater in the south than in the north at the time of the civil war. So not all blacks were slaves in the south.
The Brazilian use of slavery lasted longer than in North America, and was particularly painful in that they imported I believe more slaves and on a ratio of something like 10 males for each female.
And then there is all the black slavery that went east and not west to the new world.
None of this justifies or endorses slavery, but I believe the correct historical record.
Please feel free to correct me, because I have not made an in depth study of this...
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RE: The movie that shall not be named - 
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