[Peace-discuss] The real problem with Selma

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Karen--

I assume you're talking about Adolph Reed's detailed article that takes the discussion about the film "Selma" as a starting point for an analysis of race and politics today, a subject he's written about - I think quite well - for some time:

<http://nonsite.org/editorial/the-real-problem-with-selma>.

The whole article is a good bit more than a review of the film. I suggest people read the whole thing.

"Ava Du Vernay’s film Selma has generated yet another wave of mass mediated debate over cinematic representation of black Americans’ historical experience of racial injustice ... Du Vernay and others have responded to complaints about the film’s historical accuracy, particularly in its portrayal of Lyndon Johnson, with invocations of artistic license and assertions that the film is not intended as historical scholarship."

Arguments like that, Reed says, have led to "the dizzyingly incoherent and breathtakingly shallow pop controversies spawned by recent films dramatizing either the black experience of slavery or the southern Jim Crow order." (He instances “Django Unchained" and "The Help.”)

And the specific "sensibilities" (I'd hear some irony) out of which these controversies come are those in the paragraph you quote. "History is beside the point for this potted narrative..."

The rest of the article is an attempt to restore some historical accuracy to the current discussion of race. That produces a quite different picture from those "sensibilities" - and Reed's analysis has (as H. Kissinger said in a deferent context) the added advantage of being true.    

E.g., it's not a straight line of development: "...what most crucially connects successful disfranchisement at the beginning of the 20th century and contemporary efforts is not so much an invariant, transhistorical 'racism' ... but a very pragmatic attempt by powerful elites to shrivel the electorate to solidify partisan advantages for their narrow programs of upward redistribution..."

--CGE
  
On Jan 26, 2015, at 5:47 PM, Karen Medina via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>  I assume these comments are about the 2014 film, Selma.
> 
> I will divide them. 
> 1) 
> ...reduction of politics to a narrative of racial triumph that projects “positive images” of black accomplishment, extols exemplary black individuals, stresses overcoming great adversity to attain success and recognition, and inscribes a monolithic and transhistorical racism as the fundamental obstacle confronting, and thus uniting, all black Americans. History is beside the point for this potted narrative...
> 
> Seriously? Anyone who says the film portrayed positive images, extols exemplary black individuals, and a portrayed a united black America did not see the film. 
> 
> All the black people had flaws, and those flaws were exposed.
> 
> The divisions among black America were demonstrated. 
> 
> I remember when "holy" people were writing complaints about the first Harry Potter book, saying that Potter was a devil worshiper. If you read the first book and read the complaints about the books, you would quickly realize that not one of the complaints reflected even the slightest truth about the book. 
> 
> I believe the same is true here. Whoever wrote this about Selma read the Cliff notes version and on the day that Cliff wrote it, Cliff was too busy to get even the smallest bit of information correct.
> 
> -karen 
> 
>  
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