>From a discussiuon on another list:
I'm so far out of it that I never even heard of Crash till last night. (I haven't seem Brokeback Mountain either.) Since I seem to have missed Crash my throw-the-TV-Out-The_Window moment at the Oscars came when the "Pimp" song by the 3-6 Mafia (I think that is what they are called) won best song.
Well, Hollywood's portraits of blacks has never been any good since DW Griffith, Steppin Fetchit or Butterfly McQueen. Even Catwoman was awful, and I had high hopes for Halle Berry in tight leathers with a whip.
That goes for stuff written by black writers and directors, as you point out, including most of Spike Lee, for example. The best of the stuff featuring blacks created by US directors and writers of any race
doesn't rise above B-film medium grade action/adventure/comedy, like Ice Cube's stuff, e.g., Barbershop, which at least does not at least provoke rage and nausea, partly because it has no pretensions to be more than sort of entertaining.
Then there are the handful of cross-cast films where, e.g., Denzel Washington is cast as an actor but it's not about race (Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, e.g. -- though he's a Brit, Branagh, so I'm not sure that counts -- anyway, it doesn't say anything about the Color Line.
All of this is enough to make you think that Derrick Bell is right that Black-White relations in this country are hopeless. The critical (both in the sense of importance and in the sense of calling on the apparatus of critical theory) question is why so many well-intentioned, liberal, even radical people of both or all races, evidentally intelligent, even thoughtful, are so stupid about race.
Here is a half-baked thought. Step back for a second. Hollywood has produced a zillion dystopias ranging from silly (The Terminator, which I confess to finding entertaining) to serious (e.g., Blade Runner, Twelve Monkeys, Brazil) to pretentious (The Matrix) -- and no really globally hopeful or Utopian films. They even had to try to put a happy "revolutionary" ending ending, totally unconvincing, on a William Gibson inspired film Johnny Mnemonic (utterly forgettable with Keneau Reeves). In the current reason we got real-world dystopias in Syriana (not half bad, in my view) and The Constant Gardener (sentimental).
Back in the 70s it was sort of possible to show feisty workers organizing unions and battling the bosses in Norma Rae and Harlan County USA, but Silkwood, with the heroine's murder and ther corporation's victory, was more honest and lasting, and is still not a period piece like the other films I named.
The point is, that Hollywood seems to be able to represent to itself the Max Weber-Frankfurt School thought that there Is No Escape from the Iron Cage. Capital has won, resistance is unimaginable (which is why the second two Matrix films are so empty, like Johnny Mnemonic) the world is doomed. A very petty-bourgeois thought -- and I don't usually talk that way. Of course it has a certain degree of persuasiveness too, under the circumstances.
Ok, tie this in to race relations. It is is not permitted for the petty-bourgeois consciousness to just give up on the ideals of the civil rights movement and the hope of racial justice in the way that it is permitted to give up on larger visions of social transformations. Even though we can't see any clearer way out with the impasse in race relations than we can in class relations, we can't _say_ that out loud. We can't think it. So we get persuasive, well-thought out, intelligently articulated capitalist dystopias and lots of really stupid depictions of race relations that are meant to somehow express a hope that has no rational basis.
If this is right, I guess it's mildly encouraging that bad as the race relation films are, it's good that Hollywood and the petty bourgeoisie for home it speaks generally can't give up the ideal of racial justice. If it were to reconcile itself to racial oppression the way it has reconciled itself to capitalist exploitation and imperialism, that would be very grim indeed, even if we cannot in fact see much hope of racial justice. Unless you consider getting Colin Powell and now Condi Rice into the Sec of State's office to be progress . . . .
--- Ralph Dumain <rdumain at igc.org> wrote:
> This> Here's what focused my attention. It may seem
> trivial to you, but it
> horrified me to the bone. In the wee hours of the
> weekend I watched a
> movie that seemingly everyone I knew insisted was a
> great film. I had my
> suspicions, but I gave in out of curiosity. The
> film is called CRASH. It
> was a contemptible piece of shit beyond belief. It
> was worse than BULWORTH
> and all of Spike Lee's movies combined. I was
> enraged. But I was stunned
> that people that I know, people who count among the
> few I might consider
> intelligent in this stupid country, fell for this
> shit. I had experienced
> that with BULWORTH, but I was prepared, because I
> know that white people
> are ignorant and will swallow anything. This time I
> was stunned because
> not only did my white friends fall for it, but black
> friends as
> well. Perhaps the fact that they are all middle
> class and live in the
> 'burbs has something to do with this, but I was
> flabbergasted in any case.
>
> Anyway, a couple of folks called me last night, and
> boy were they sorry
> they did. First, a white friend called on his cell
> and made the mistake of
> bringing up the subject of movies. I started
> yelling at him and told him I
> would kick his ass for recommending that piece of
> shit CRASH to me. He
> said that he and his mate loved the film and that
> they had just rented
> BULWORTH and loved it too. I snapped--"yes, of
> course you would"--and
> spent the next hour on the phone cussing him out.
>
> While I almost never watch the Academy Awards, I had
> nothing else to do and
> kept the TV on for reference. When I saw CRASH
> receiving the Best Picture
> award, I almost threw my TV set out the window. It
> was Orwellian. And
> when I saw that dumbass white liberal director and
> co-writer Paul Haggis
> mounting the stage, I wanted to choke the life out
> of him. Just watching
> the extras on the DVD had infuriated me--stupid
> actors explaining how real
> the film was and how it wasn't contrived--yeah,
> right--and that moronic
> jackass Haggis pontificating about his film. It
> made me want to throw up.
>
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