This is piece is profoundly awesome. What it comes down to is that Selma expresses at every turn the political perspective of the black middle class, which prefers to perceive the civil rights struggle through the lens of individual dignity and negotiation, as opposed to collective urgency and direct action. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, both currents were, and indeed remain, important drivers of change. But it explains the film’s contemptuous handling of any whiff of radical politics. The groundbreaking work of SNCC, for example, is dismissed as hot-headed petulance. An utterly bizarre performance by Nigel Thatch of Malcolm X presents him simultaneously as rakish and emasculated, a potential threat to a good woman, without any trace of a threat to white supremacy; while the film redacts Stokely Carmichael from the record entirely. Lowndes County, Alabama comes up several times, but those who don’t know their movement history will not know he was there, or recognize it as the birthplace of the Black Panther party.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 18:33:02 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015