Tag: Civil Rights

Blindness, Race, and Love in ‘A Patch of Blue’

Fifty years later, portraying disability on screen with empathy and respect is still rare. Showing an interracial couple is also extremely rare (Green says that some people sent terrible letters to him about the kissing scene; in fact, it’s reported that in some areas in the south the scene was edited out for theaters).

‘A Patch of Blue’ manages to weave together themes of disability, race, socioeconomic issues and family dynamics with beauty and grace.

A Patch of Blue movie poster.


This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships. 

Director Guy Green said of the premise of A Patch of Blue: “basically it’s a very corny story, a blind girl falling in love with a Black man.” He credits the writing of the novel it was based upon (Be Ready With Bells and Drums, by Elizabeth Kata) for ensuring that the story, and resulting film, were not corny at all.
The 1965 film centers around a young blind woman, Selina (Elizabeth Hartman), who has been abused and sheltered, and neglected any formal education, by her family–her mother, Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) and her grandfather, Ole Pa (Wallace Ford). She’s befriended by a Black man, Gordon (Sidney Poitier), and they form a deep relationship, which centers on Gordon’s desire to help Selina lift herself up.
It would be easy to read that synopsis–blind girl falls in love with a Black man–and come to any number of conclusions about the film, especially since it was released at the height of the civil rights movement, but the film manages to capture something much deeper than being a superficial morality play on racism, and it treats Selina’s blindness with care and dignity.
When Selina was five, her father came home unexpectedly while Rose-Ann was sleeping with another man (it’s insinuated that she worked as a prostitute, and still does). Her father killed the man, and when Rose-Ann threw a bottle–a chemical-laden cosmetic–from her dresser at him, it hit Selina in the face, scarring her eyes and leaving her blind.
Elizabeth Hartman wore opaque contacts to simulate Selina’s damaged eyes. Rose-Ann is the only one who berates her “ugliness”; even her grandfather explains that it’s just that people are nosy, not that she is ugly.
Selina’s life circumstances are desperate and miserable, but she is not. The opening shot of the film focuses on Selina’s hands, stringing together beaded necklaces–that’s what she does during the day to help her family (Mr. Faber, her boss, is presented as an important support person in her life). She yearns to spend more time in the park, and Mr. Faber takes her when he can.
It’s in the park that she meets Gordon (a caterpillar dropped down the back of her shirt and she needed help–a problem not reserved for a person who can’t see–and he helps her retrieve it). He’s friendly and gentle without being condescending, and his generosity helps strike up a quick friendship. He buys her sunglasses because she’s self-conscious about her scarred eyes and tells her she looks perfect with them on (this is presented as a generous act for her confidence, not because he actually feels she needs them).
He’s shocked that she’s never heard of braille and was never formally educated: “You haven’t heard of all blind people can do?” he asks, and she is self-deprecating yet unashamed of her lot in life.
Gordon and Selina eat lunch.
While Selina is uneducated (Gordon corrects her grammar when they first meet) and cannot live outside of her home independently, the audience never feels pity for her because she is blind and helpless. Instead, the focus of our pity is on her lack of support–she has an abusive home life and has been neglected. Her blindness isn’t pitiful; her family is.
When Selina is shown doing tasks that she’s been entrusted with–changing linens, washing dishes, cooking, cleaning–she does so perfectly. This is a reminder that her blindness hasn’t been a hindrance to her life and that she is capable of doing what she’s allowed to do.
Hartman, in studying for the part, spent time at a school for the blind to be able to accurately get into character. She wore opaque contacts (Green said they helped because they naturally obstructed her vision), and her family says she wore them constantly and never left character while she was filming.
This careful and empathetic approach to “acting” blind paid off. Hartman’s performance was incredibly convincing and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (A Patch of Blue was Hartman’s first film).
Gordon helps Selina find directions by the sun’s location.
In the film, Gordon attempts to feel as Selina must feel shortly after meeting her. He’s shown at his job–working as a night-shift reporter–getting up from his desk, walking across the room, and attempting to return to his desk with closed eyes (he is unsuccessful, and runs into his coworker’s desk). This short scene is poignant in that it further reminds Gordon–and the audience–what it must feel like to be Selina, if only for a few moments.
Gordon never tries to do things for Selina. From the beginning, he teaches her and empowers her to be able to completely take care of herself. Since it’s clear her limitations are environmental, not innate, she is capable. Her disability–caused and amplified by her family–is not what’s in her way. Her poverty and lack of support system are detrimental to her growth and development.
Gordon could have easily met Selina, befriended her, seen that she could clean and cook, and want to marry her, keeping her dependent and living simply for him. And while his romantic feelings for her are conflicted, he wants her to be independent and educated more than he wants her for himself.
Gordon gives Selina very practical advice (counting steps, listening for traffic) so she can navigate streets by herself–which she finally does, after realizing she doesn’t have to take her home life anymore.
Gordon never belittles or gets frustrates with Selina.
Gordon and Selina’s kiss–one of the first on-screen interracial kisses–was at the same time innocent and deeply passionate. When Selina references the fact that she’d been raped, and wishes she hadn’t so she could be with Gordon, he convinces her that she is not “bad” or “dirty,” like she worries she is. (Someone in 1965 understood how to not blame the victim.)
Their kiss was one of the first on-screen interracial kisses.
The filmography often focuses on Selina’s point of view, and is effective in portraying the sensory details she enjoys (the canned peaches or the music box), and the terrors she lives through–her time alone for the first time on the street, or the memory of being raped (we “see” the man from her perspective–what she could have seen, but only felt).
The racial components of the film are also nuanced and effective. When Gordon tells Selina that “tolerance” is one of his favorite words (and explains that it’s not just putting up with something, but that you don’t “knock your neighbor just because he thinks or looks different than you”), she tells him that he must be full of tolerance. He quietly shakes his head and says that he’s not. He looks deeply affected when white people stare and glare at him and Selina walking together, and clearly has deep inner conflict being a Black man in America in 1965 (of course, these aspects of the film don’t seem nearly as dated as they should be). His brother, a doctor, criticizes Gordon’s desire to help and educate Selina because she is white, and comments on the fact that she comes from a “trash heap” (to which Gordon responds, “She may, but she’s not trash”). Underneath the surface of the film is the fact that socioeconomic factors and family support systems are what determine a person’s opportunities.
Rose-Ann is, unsurprisingly, violently racist. We know that she forbade Selina from spending time with the only friend she ever made because the little girl was Black, so we also know that when Rose-Ann sees Selina and Gordon together, she will erupt–which she does.
The characters to be despised are racist, abusive and neglectful. But Selina and Gordon aren’t perfect–they are complex, sympathetic characters who struggle with their own shortcomings and emotions. Selina is only 18, so her naivety and her quickness to fall deeply in love are believable. Gordon loves Selina as a friend, but is unsure of anything beyond that. He says he’s snapped back into reality after getting lost in their embrace. He deals with anger and frustration, too–not only because of his experiences at the hands of racism, but also because of the injustice of Selina’s mistreatment.
By the end of the film, even the crowd of white people (who before had glared), realize that Gordon is no threat to Selina; Rose-Ann is.
The ending is hopeful, but not saccharine-sweet. The realness of the characters, their struggles and their emotions are highlighted by sparse, black-and-white film and a beautiful soundtrack.
Gordon has called a school for the blind and set up a space for Selina. Before the bus comes to pick her up, she is nervous, and wishes they could just get married. Gordon promises that in a year, they could see if their love has anything to do with marriage. He sits her down to tell her that he’s black, but she already knows.
She says, “I know everything I need to know about you.” As she feels his face she continues: “I know you’re good, and kind, and that you’re colored; and I think you’re beautiful.”
He’s shocked that she knows, and responds “Beautiful? Most people would say the opposite.”
“That’s because they don’t know you,” she answers.
A Patch of Blue portrays disability as a part of a woman’s life that only defines her because she’s grown up with an abusive and neglectful family. As soon as she gets access to a world (literally and figuratively) outside of their little apartment, she thrives, and we know she’s just going to continue to grow. She’s beginning her life–a life that won’t be defined by her blindness.
Her relationship with Gordon allows him to also redefine his own life and helps him see himself for who he is–a beautiful, kind and generous man, who knows how to share life with someone who’s never experienced it.
Fifty years later, portraying disability on screen with empathy and respect is still rare. Showing an interracial couple is also extremely rare (Green says that some people sent terrible letters to him about the kissing scene; in fact, it’s reported that in some areas in the south the scene was edited out for theaters).
A Patch of Blue manages to weave together themes of disability, race, socioeconomic issues and family dynamics with beauty and grace. It was nominated for multiple Golden Globes and Academy Awards; Shelley Winters won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and notably, Sidney Poitier was nominated for the Golden Globe, but not an Academy Award.
A Patch of Blue is one of those films that manages to stay with you for years after you see it; and then, when you see it again, it’s just as beautiful as you remembered.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Oprah Winfrey Succeeds in a Tough Role in ‘The Butler’

Like the film, Oprah’s acting sometimes pushes the edge of melodrama, but also like the film, there’s great emotional payoff. In a film rife with occasionally distracting (although sometimes delightful) stunt casting, it’s a pleasant surprise that one of the most famous media personalities in the world is able to fade (although not quite disappear) into her character. To see the queen of elongated shouted introductions and epic inspirational content play a cynical, alcoholic who cheats on her husband and slaps her kid might smack of awards-baiting, but Oprah’s acting is actually up to snuff.

Only a few days after seeing it, I’m venturing to say that Lee Daniels’ The Butler* ranks among my favorite films of 2013. It’s about as subtle as Miley Cyrus, but personally, I don’t particularly mind that in a movie so engrossing and emotionally affecting (to wit: Black Swan is one of my favorite films of the past ten years).  Condensing almost a century of history of the Civil Rights movement into slightly more than two hours is an impressive feat, one that may not have been possible with a lighter touch on the themes and message.

Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines and Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines in Lee Daniel's The Butler
Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines and Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines in Lee Daniels’ The Butler

The ambitious scope of The Butler is counterbalanced by its focus on one family, eponymous White House butler Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), his wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), and their children, particularly committed Civil Rights activist Louis (a standout David Oyelowo). My Bitch Flicks colleague Erin Tatum’s piece on The Butler excellently explores how the Gaines family dynamic “chronicles the cross-generational struggle to define black identity and masculinity in a racist American society.”  While the central father-son relationship between Cecil and Louis is fascinating, it unfortunately leaves Oprah Winfrey’s Gloria in a more typical beleaguered wife role.

Oprah’s performance, however, elevates Gloria. Like the film, Oprah’s acting sometimes pushes the edge of melodrama, but also like the film, there’s great emotional payoff. In a film rife with occasionally distracting (although sometimes delightful) stunt casting, it’s a pleasant surprise that one of the most famous media personalities in the world is able to fade (although not quite disappear) into her character.

Oprah Winfrey as Gloria and Terrence Howard as an extramarital paramour.
Oprah Winfrey as Gloria and Terrence Howard as an extramarital paramour.

To see the queen of elongated shouted introductions and epic inspirational content play a cynical, alcoholic who cheats on her husband and slaps her kid might smack of awards-baiting, but Oprah’s acting is actually up to snuff. She plays the character convincingly while making her more compelling by leaning on her own abundant charisma. It’s always clear why Cecil loves Gloria despite the regular strain in their marriage, and that she is a good mother despite her personal weaknesses.

gloriawhitehouse
Gloria finally visits the White House when she and Cecil are invited by the Reagans as guests to a state dinner.

Oprah’s success in the role is even more important because Gloria is the only fully-realized female character in The Butler. A lot of the female characters don’t even speak, despite their significance to the plot and relatively high-profile casting. Mariah Carey plays Cecil’s mother and is raped for plot reasons but not given any dialogue. The blood on the stockings of Minka Kelly’s Jackie Kennedy get more screen time than her face. Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan is only present long enough for us to all have a good chuckle at that cheeky casting. (Yaya Alafia has a strong single scene as Louis”s cold-as-ice Black Panther girlfriend Carol, but it’s actually Oprah’s Oscar-clip moment.)

Oprah won an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian work in 2011. Hopefully she'll win another for acting one day.
Oprah won an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian work in 2011. Hopefully she’ll win another for acting one day.

I’ve mentioned several weaknesses in this review, but again, I very much enjoyed and admire Lee Daniels’ The Butler. And despite loving it all-around, my strongest feeling leaving the film was my wish that Oprah Winfrey would act more. I admire her choosiness about her roles (and her promotion of black cinema and artists), but I wish she was just slightly less choosy so we could see more of her on screen. For a woman so successful in other fields, it seems almost unfair that Oprah is such a gifted actress, but it’s even more unfair that we only get to see her in a major film role once every fifteen years or so.

*Lest you think the director of Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire just has a thing for unnecessarily long titles, note that Daniels’s name had to be appended to the film’s title after a bizarre challenge from Warner Bros. to protect 1917 comedy short by the same name. I’m also somewhat perplexed by the decision to forgo the additional s after the possessive apostrophe because Lee Daniels is a singular proper noun that isn’t Moses or Jesus, but the Chicago Manual of Style condones this punctuation for names ending in a z sound, so I’ll let it go. /perscriptivism

Disabilities Week: Blindness, Race and Love in ‘A Patch of Blue’

A Patch of Blue movie poster.


Written by Leigh Kolb

Director Guy Green said of the premise of A Patch of Blue: “basically it’s a very corny story, a blind girl falling in love with a black man.” He credits the writing of the novel it was based upon (Be Ready With Bells and Drums, by Elizabeth Kata) for ensuring that the story, and resulting film, were not corny in the least.


The 1965 film centers around a young blind woman, Selina (Elizabeth Hartman), who has been abused and sheltered, and neglected any formal education, by her family–her mother, Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) and her grandfather, Ole Pa (Wallace Ford). 


She’s befriended by a black man, Gordon (Sidney Poitier), and they form a deep relationship, which centers on Gordon’s desire to help Selina lift herself up.

It would be easy to read that synopsis–blind girl falls in love with a black man–and come to any number of conclusions about the film, especially since it was released at the height of the civil rights movement, but the film manages to capture something much deeper than being a superficial morality play on racism, and it treats Selina’s blindness with care and dignity.
When Selina was five, her father came home unexpectedly while Rose-Ann was sleeping with another man (it’s insinuated that she worked as a prostitute, and still does). Her father killed the man, and when Rose-Ann threw a bottle–a chemical-laden cosmetic–from her dresser at him, it hit Selina in the face, scarring her eyes and leaving her blind.
Elizabeth Hartman wore opaque contacts to simulate Selina’s damaged eyes. Rose-Ann is the only one who berates her “ugliness”; even her grandfather explains that it’s just that people are nosy, not that she is ugly.
Selina’s life circumstances are desperate and miserable, but she is not. The opening shot of the film focuses on Selina’s hands, stringing together beaded necklaces–that’s what she does during the day to help her family (Mr. Faber, her boss, is presented as an important support person in her life). She yearns to spend more time in the park, and Mr. Faber takes her when he can.
It’s in the park that she meets Gordon (a caterpillar dropped down the back of her shirt and she needed help–a problem not reserved for a person who can’t see–and he helps her retrieve it). He’s friendly and gentle without being condescending, and his generosity helps strike up a quick friendship. He buys her sunglasses because she’s self-conscious about her scarred eyes and tells her she looks perfect with them on (this is presented as a generous act for her confidence, not because he actually feels she needs them).
He’s shocked that she’s never heard of braille and was never formally educated: “You haven’t heard of all blind people can do?” he asks, and she is self-deprecating yet unashamed of her lot in life. 
Gordon and Selina eat lunch.
While Selina is uneducated (Gordon corrects her grammar when they first meet) and cannot live outside of her home independently, the audience never feels pity for her because she is blind and helpless. Instead, the focus of our pity is on her lack of support–she has an abusive home life and has been neglected. Her blindness isn’t pitiful; her family is. 
When Selina is shown doing tasks that she’s been entrusted with–changing linens, washing dishes, cooking, cleaning–she does so perfectly. This is a reminder that her blindness hasn’t been a hindrance to her life and that she is capable of doing what she’s allowed to do.
Hartman, in studying for the part, spent time at a school for the blind to be able to accurately get into character. She wore opaque contacts (Green said they helped because they naturally obstructed her vision), and her family says she wore them constantly and never left character while she was filming.
This careful and empathetic approach to “acting” blind paid off. Hartman’s performance was incredibly convincing and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (A Patch of Blue was Hartman’s first film). 
Gordon helps Selina find directions by the sun’s location.
In the film, Gordon attempts to feel as Selina must feel shortly after meeting her. He’s shown at his job–working as a night-shift reporter–getting up from his desk, walking across the room, and attempting to return to his desk with closed eyes (he is unsuccessful, and runs into his coworker’s desk). This short scene is poignant in that it further reminds Gordon–and the audience–what it must feel like to be Selina, if only for a few moments. 
Gordon never tries to do things for Selina. From the beginning, he teaches her and empowers her to be able to completely take care of herself. Since it’s clear her limitations are environmental, not innate, she is capable. Her disability–caused and amplified by her family–is not what’s in her way. Her poverty and lack of support system are detrimental to her growth and development.
Gordon could have easily met Selina, befriended her, seen that she could clean and cook, and want to marry her, keeping her dependent and living simply for him. And while his romantic feelings for her are conflicted, he wants her to be independent and educated more than he wants her for himself. 
Gordon gives Selina very practical advice (counting steps, listening for traffic) so she can navigate streets by herself–which she finally does, after realizing she doesn’t have to take her home life anymore.
Gordon never belittles or gets frustrates with Selina.
Gordon and Selina’s kiss–one of the first on-screen interracial kisses–was at the same time innocent and deeply passionate. When Selina references the fact that she’d been raped, and wishes she hadn’t so she could be with Gordon, he convinces her that she is not “bad” or “dirty,” like she worries she is. (Someone in 1965 understood how to not blame the victim.) 
Their kiss was one of the first on-screen interracial kisses.
The filmography often focuses on Selina’s point of view, and is effective in portraying the sensory details she enjoys (the canned peaches or the music box), and the terrors she lives through–her time alone for the first time on the street, or the memory of being raped (we “see” the man from her perspective–what she could have seen, but only felt).
The racial components of the film are also nuanced and effective. When Gordon tells Selina that “tolerance” is one of his favorite words (and explains that it’s not just putting up with something, but that you don’t “knock your neighbor just because he thinks or looks different than you”), she tells him that he must be full of tolerance. He quietly shakes his head and says that he’s not. He looks deeply affected when white people stare and glare at him and Selina walking together, and clearly has deep inner conflict being a black man in America in 1965 (of course, these aspects of the film don’t seem nearly as dated as they should be). His brother, a doctor, criticizes Gordon’s desire to help and educate Selina because she is white, and comments on the fact that she comes from a “trash heap” (to which Gordon responds, “She may, but she’s not trash”). Underneath the surface of the film is the fact that socioeconomic factors and family support systems are what determine a person’s opportunities.  
Rose-Ann is, unsurprisingly, violently racist. We know that she forbade Selina from spending time with the only friend she ever made because the little girl was black, so we also know that when Rose-Ann sees Selina and Gordon together, she will erupt–which she does. 
The characters to be despised are racist, abusive and neglectful. But Selina and Gordon aren’t perfect–they are complex, sympathetic characters who struggle with their own shortcomings and emotions. Selina is only 18, so her naivety and her quickness to fall deeply in love are believable. Gordon loves Selina as a friend, but is unsure of anything beyond that. He says he’s snapped back into reality after getting lost in their embrace. He deals with anger and frustration, too–not only because of his experiences at the hands of racism, but also because of the injustice of Selina’s mistreatment. 
By the end of the film, even the crowd of white people (who before had glared), realize that Gordon is no threat to Selina; Rose-Ann is.
The ending is hopeful, but not saccharine-sweet. The realness of the characters, their struggles and their emotions are highlighted by sparse, black-and-white film and a beautiful soundtrack.
Gordon has called a school for the blind and set up a space for Selina. Before the bus comes to pick her up, she is nervous, and wishes they could just get married. Gordon promises that in a year, they could see if their love has anything to do with marriage. He sits her down to tell her that he’s black, but she already knows.
She says, “I know everything I need to know about you.” As she feels his face she continues: “I know you’re good, and kind, and that you’re colored; and I think you’re beautiful.”
He’s shocked that she knows, and responds “Beautiful? Most people would say the opposite.”
“That’s because they don’t know you,” she answers.
A Patch of Blue portrays disability as a part of a woman’s life that only defines her because she’s grown up with an abusive and neglectful family. As soon as she gets access to a world (literally and figuratively) outside of their little apartment, she thrives, and we know she’s just going to continue to grow. She’s beginning her life–a life that won’t be defined by her blindness. 
Her relationship with Gordon allows him to also redefine his own life and helps him see himself for who he is–a beautiful, kind and generous man, who knows how to share life with someone who’s never experienced it.
Fifty years later, portraying disability on screen with empathy and respect is still rare. Showing an interracial couple is also extremely rare (Green says that some people sent terrible letters to him about the kissing scene; in fact, it’s reported that in some areas in the south the scene was edited out for theaters). 
A Patch of Blue manages to weave together themes of disability, race, socioeconomic issues and family dynamics with beauty and grace. It was nominated for multiple Golden Globes and Academy Awards; Shelley Winters won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and notably, Sidney Poitier was nominated for the Golden Globe, but not an Academy Award. 
A Patch of Blue is one of those films that manages to stay with you for years after you see it; and then, when you see it again, it’s just as beautiful as you remembered.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

The Remarkable Story of ‘Anne Braden: Southern Patriot’

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (2012)

“I believe that no white woman reared in the South–or perhaps anywhere in this racist country–can find freedom as a woman until she deals in her own consciousness with the question of race. We grow up little girls–absorbing a hundred stereotypes about ourselves and our role in life, our secondary position, our destiny to be a helpmate to a man or men. But we also grow up white–absorbing the stereotypes of race, the picture of ourselves as somehow privileged because of the color of our skin. The two mythologies become intertwined, and there is no way to free ourselves from one without dealing with the other.” – from “A letter to white Southern women from Anne Braden,” 1972
Written by Leigh Kolb

Anne Braden didn’t think that guilt was productive. 
She thought that what got people involved in the civil rights movement was a vision of a different world.
Born in 1924, Braden grew up in Anniston, Alabama–where the Freedom Riders’ bus was fire-bombed in 1961. She talks about being a young white child in the south, and seeing her mother’s house cleaner’s daughter wearing her hand-me-down clothes. They were different sizes, so the clothes didn’t fit right, and Braden says, “Something happened to me when I looked at her. I knew something was wrong.”
Braden dedicated her life to exposing and fighting against racial and economic injustice. She was subversive. She was arrested. She was praised by Martin Luther King Jr.

She wanted a different world.

Anne Braden
Braden is the subject of the documentary Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, which is available on DVD and at select screenings nationwide.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot trailer

Award-winning filmmakers Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering created this first-person documentary, and its brilliance rests greatly on the fact that Braden herself and her contemporaries, biographer and mentees tell the story. The seemingly hands-off approach by the filmmakers (no audible interview questions or voiceovers) works incredibly well, and lets Braden’s remarkable legacy unfold on its own merits. The soundtrack is appropriately present, but not noticeably so, as it should be in a documentary.

This documentary, in short, is amazing. Aside from the technical success of the film is the fact that Braden herself was an extraordinary human being.

Braden says that when she had the realization that something was wrong, it was like photography: “You put the film in the developing fluid and it begins to come clear, but it’s been there all along.”

The images kept becoming clearer and clearer to Braden as she worked as a journalist in the south and covered the courthouse, seeing black men be imprisoned for looking at white women the wrong way, and seeing how murdered black people were not newsworthy.

She didn’t feel guilt. She felt motivated to change her world.

Early on in her career, Braden recognized that issues of class and race were inextricably linked. She says,

“I was in a prison and life builds prisons around people and I had the prison that I was born white in a racist society. I was born privileged in a classist society. The hardest thing was class. I don’t know that I could have ever broken out of what I call the race prison if I hadn’t dealt with class.”  

She married Carl Braden, who was a “radical” activist active in the labor movement. “We got married to work together,” she says. By 1951, Braden was combining marriage, motherhood and activism.

Early on, her activism focused mainly on writing for and talking to black audiences about white people’s roles in racism and classism. The head of the Civil Rights Congress, William Patterson, told her that black people already know what she’s telling them–she needed to talk to white people, because they are the problem. She remembers that he said to her, “You know you do have a choice. You don’t have to be a part of the world of the lynchers. You can join the other America–the people who struggled  against slavery, the people who railed against slavery, the white people who supported them, the people who all through Reconstruction struggled.” She says, “I was very young, and that’s what I needed to hear.” Her work began in earnest.

The Bradens bought a house for a young black family, the Wades, in an all-white neighborhood (it was a way around segregation–Andrew Wade gave them the down payment, the Bradens purchased it, and then transfered the deed). The Wades’ home was shot at, crosses were burned in the yard and a bomb was set off underneath their daughter’s window (remarkably no one was physically hurt).

The Wades, showing where rocks had been thrown and broken the windows of their home.

The bomber was never caught or tried, but the Bradens were, along with five other whites who helped defend the Wades’ house. They were charged with sedition–it was, prosecutors said, all a plot by communists to overthrow Kentucky and the nation.

Braden says that “If you use every attack as a platform, they can’t win and you can’t lose. It works like a charm.” They used their arrest and jail time as a platform. “You can’t kill an idea anyway,” she says. “To a segregationist, integration means communism.”

The film highlights footage from Ku Klux Klan rallies, newspaper stories, meetings, marches, beatings and shootings during the red scare and the civil rights movement. The footage–often presented without narration–is powerful and provides the visual, historical context to Braden’s stories.

The film moves forward through each decade, highlighting social justice struggles (especially regarding race and economic injustice) and Braden’s continuous role. The complexity of anti-communist sentiment, the freedom of speech and association and violence of the ongoing civil rights struggles are examined in depth.

It was difficult watching the momentous struggles and changes of the 60s make way into the 70s, when she says, “That sense of being part of something larger gets lost.” Political activists were repressed and imprisoned, and much of the momentum was lost.

Anne Braden

As the footage from the 70s surfaces, it’s in color; all of a sudden history doesn’t seem so far away. When white women are screaming and chanting about “Niggers” when busing was implemented in 1975, and throwing rocks at the buses, it’s jarring how close it all is. David Duke screams about white power. Communist workers at an anti-Klan rally are shot and killed in the late 70s.

In a statement that seems all-too true today, Braden says of the lasting legacy of this era:

“And this idea of reverse discrimination took hold of the country, and I think it’s the most dangerous idea that’s ever been inflicted on this country. It tells white people that the source of their problem is people of color and it’s such a damn lie because it’s based on the theory that what black people got took something away from white people, and that is the opposite of what happened, every piece of legislation everything that happened that the black movement won, helped most white people and certainly poor and working class white people.”

At a 1980 rally in response to the communist workers’ deaths, she said,

“The real danger today comes from the people in high places, from the halls of congress to the board rooms of our big corporations, who are telling the white people that if their taxes are eating up their paychecks, it’s not because of our bloated military budget, but because of government programs that benefit black people; those people in high places who are telling white people that if young whites are unemployed it’s because blacks are getting all the jobs. Our problem is the people in power who are creating a scape goat mentality. That, that is what is creating the climate in which the Klan can grow in this country and that is what is creating the danger of a fascist movement in the 1980s in America.” 

As the film progresses, we see Braden marching for economic justice and to end police brutality. She stands out, with her cropped gray hair, small body and denim jumpers. Her voice shakes into a megaphone when she speaks at rallies, but her age doesn’t stop her. She keeps marching. When she can’t march, she’s pushed in a wheelchair.

Braden passed away in 2006 at age 81. Right before she died, she said, “I just don’t have time.” She still felt she had too much to do.

Anne Braden and Cornel West

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so inspired by a documentary. By the end, I was crying, near-sobbing–in celebration of Braden’s life, in mourning her death and in feeling a burning fire in my white belly that I needed to do something in this world. Anne Braden had effectively told me that I needed to get to work.

At a march, Braden says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won.” It hasn’t been, and we must continue her legacy.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot puts Braden’s lifelong activism into the developing fluid and makes it clear to all of us. We should all look carefully at these images and be moved to not just frame them for display, but to make them shape our world now.

The Flobots’ “Anne Braden”

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

‘Mad Men’: Gender, Race, and the Death Knell of White Patriarchy

Don is being closed in on this season.


Written by Leigh Kolb

At the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, Sojourner Truth said,

But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.
Over a hundred years later, the men of Mad Men are in a similar spot. It’s 1968, the peak of a decade marked by civil rights struggles. African Americans were fighting for their personal and economic rights after years of slavery followed by segregation and discrimination. Women were fighting for economic and reproductive rights.
The Don Drapers of the world are indeed in a “tight place.”
Season 6, which premiered on April 7, has focused tightly on Don as an anti-hero, if he’s even that. Don was largely a sympathetic protagonist from the beginning of the series, but he’s descending quickly into wholly loathsome territory. His obsession with death is symbolic of the death of a world around him that he’d become accustomed to–women have been quickly climbing up the corporate ladder and we are beginning to see conversations about racial tension in a more critical way.
At the beginning of Season 6, a montage of recent stories played, catching the audience up to speed. The focus was largely on the women in this montage: Joan’s rise to power, Joan’s relationship with her mother, Megan’s relationship with her mother, Megan’s pursuit of an acting career, Sally starting her period, Betty gaining weight and struggling with motherhood, Beth having electroshock therapy and Peggy advancing in her career.
Women’s experiences are not overlooked in Mad Men (although pregnancy is much maligned); of course, the feminism of the series has been pretty clear from the beginning.
As we move through the years with the characters, though, the women–especially in the work force–are beginning to surpass the men. At the ad awards in episode 5, Megan and Peggy were the only ones from SCDP who were up for an award. Both of them had moved on, though–Peggy to a more prestigious position and Megan to an acting career, which is what she desired.
Peggy’s ad was better-received than Don’s. She benefited from his mentorship (as was evident by her using the phrase “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation”), but she’s on her own now, succeeding.
Meanwhile, Don is having what appears to be a midlife crisis (perhaps his whole life is one long midlife crisis). He’s having an affair with Sylvia, who is married to Arnold, a doctor. Frequently, Arnold’s career is juxtaposed with Don’s. Arnold saves lives. Don sells lifestyles. In episode 5, Sylvia and Arnold are heading to Washington DC so Arnold can be a distinguished guest speaker. At the same time, Megan and Don are going to the ad awards ceremony, because Megan (not Don) is up for an award–which she wins. Don Draper’s grandeur seems less grand this season.
Don reading The Inferno. Dante’s journey though hell is not unlike Don’s perception of life this season.
Lane committed suicide. Roger is in therapy; his mother dies, and he seems lost. Don is reading The Inferno and is searching and self-destructing. Pete is kicked out of the house for his infidelity. Abe is supported financially by Peggy. Ginsberg struggles socially on a date that his father set up.
The men of the series are falling.
The fact that Don seems to be falling into an abyss is symbolic of the time in which he lives. Just a few years prior, women were secretaries. Period. He had a wife who stayed home with children. Quickly, his world changed, largely because women fought for that change.
What does his life mean if it’s no longer what he has always known?
The women aren’t “there” yet (nor are we now), as Joan laments to her friend Kate that she’s still treated like a secretary after Kate expresses her jealousy of Joan’s position. (Their hungover, mascara-smudged morning in bed is such an accurate portrayal of female friendship.) Don is jealous of Megan’s on-screen love scene, and shows up to her shoot, not to support her.
There’s resistance, but of course there should be–that’s reality.
Another painful reality in Mad Men is how the show doesn’t tackle race issues head-on. No, the show does not tackle the struggles of African Americans with the same precision and nuance as it does gender issues. There is room for growth, if the subject is dealt with well. However, I can’t help but acknowledge that my discomfort with the main characters’ responses to racism and, most recently, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., is due to the fact that their responses were so realistic. Fear of rioting and violence, the immediate reaction to go on with the advertising awards, awkward responses and half-hugs to their black secretaries, the “wes” and “thems”–of course those scenes made me uncomfortable.
Dawn briefly speaks to her friend about being a black woman in a very white area and industry.
I’m sure I would have been very uncomfortable with how many white people reacted on that day in 1968. But we can’t change history and pretend these characters would have become adept at handling conversations about race overnight (except for Pete, the lone social justice crusader, who was probably just thinking about his own mortality, because he’s Pete, right?).
When Megan and Don return home and watch the news about violence breaking out on television, Megan asks Don if he thinks his secretary is OK (Dawn, a black woman). Don absently responds, “Sylvia and Arnold are in DC.” That’s what he cares about.
If race isn’t ever handled on Mad Men as well as gender has been, it should make us criticize the society of the time–and even today. I was glad to see the main characters react so awkwardly and uncomfortably to King’s death, because it was authentic–authentic to a point that we rarely see in fiction (racial tension is either totally absent or dealt with idealistically). As much as Mad Men is a feminist show, we also know the feminist movement has fairly consistently been labeled–often accurately–as a middle-class white women’s movement.
I hope Mad Men continues evolving into these conversations as Don devolves. Don’s obsession with death this season is symbolic of the death knell of the white patriarchy that was sounding in the 1960s. Dealing with these issues will only make the show richer and more meaningful.
Besides, at this point, I think most of us are pretty eager for Don to be squarely between a hawk and a buzzard.
Something is missing, Don.
———-

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

Women of Color in Film and TV: The Terrible, Awful Sweetness of ‘The Help’

Mmm…empty calories. Like The Help?
Guest post written by Natalie Wilson, originally published at Ms. Magazine. Cross-posted with permission.
If Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help was an angel food cake study of racism and segregation in the ’60s South, the new movie adaptation is even fluffier. Like a dollop of whip cream skimmed off a multi-layered cake, the film only grazes the surface of the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender and geohistory.
Let me admit that I was, in contrast to Ms. blogger Jennifer Williams, looking forward to the film adaptation of The Help, especially as I initially enjoyed the book. However, in hindsight, I realize my initial reaction to the book was naïve (and possibly compromised by a Christmas-chocolate-induced haze).
I maintain the novel is a good read. But its shortcomings – its nostalgia, its failure to really grapple with structural inequality, its privileging of the white narrator’s voice and its reliance on stock characters – are heightened rather than diminished in the film.
While the civil rights movement was a mere “backdrop” in the book, in the film it is even less so: a photo here, a news clip there, as if protagonist Skeeter, with her intrepid reporting, discovers that wow, racism exists – and it’s ugly! And even with these occasional hints that the nation was sitting on top of a racist powder keg, overall, civil rights are miscast as an individual rather than a collective struggle. To judge by The Help, overcoming inequality requires pluck (Skeeter), sass (Minnie) or quiet determination (Aibileen), not social movements.
Also gone is the book’s suggestion that male privilege works to disempower and disenfranchise women in the same way white privilege works to disempower and disenfranchise people of color. While admittedly the novel problematically framed black males as more “brutish” than whites, at least it nodded towards the ways in which hierarchies of race, sex and class intersect and enable each other. The relatively powerful white wives are “lorded over” by their husbands (or, in Skeeter’s case, her potential husband), then turn around and tyrannize their black maids in much the same fashion. The movie, in contrast, puts an even happier face on men/women relations than on black/white ones.
Simultaneously, it frames Skeeter, Minnie and Aibileen as a trinity of feminist heroes, but rewards only Skeeter with the feminist prize at film’s end – an editing job in New York. In the meantime, Aibileen has lost her job but walks the road home determinedly, vowing she will become a writer, while Minnie sits down to a feast prepared by Celia Foote, her white boss.
The audience is thus given a triple happy ending. The first, Skeeter’s, suggests it only takes determination to succeed – white privilege has nothing to do with it! The second, Aibileen’s, implies that earning a living as a writer was feasible for a black maid in the Jim Crow South. The third, Minnie’s, insinuates not only that friendship eventually blossomed between white women bosses and their black maids, but also that such friendship was enough to ameliorate the horrors of racism.
Thus, if the book was “pop lit with some racial lessons thrown in for fiber” as Erin Aubry Kaplan’s described it, the film has even less bulk. Instead, it’s a high-fructose concoction as sweet as Minnie’s pies. And like Minnie’s “terrible awful” pie, with which she infamously tricks the villainous Hilly into eating shit, the film encourages audiences to swallow down a sweet story and ignore the shitty Hollywood cliches – as well as the shitty reality that racism can’t be “helped” by stories alone.
As Jennifer Williams predicted, the film indeed offers:

The perfect summer escape for viewers who embrace the fantasy of a postracial America, [where] filmgoers can tuck the history of race and class inequality safely in the past, even as the recession deepens already profound racial gaps in wealth and employment.

To put it another way, viewers can tuck into this terrible awful slice of the past, forgetting how the ingredients that shaped pre-Civil Rights America have a seemingly endless shelf life and, even more pertinent, still constitute a mainstay of our diet.
Further Reading: For an in-depth analysis of the film in its historical context, check out An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help by the Association of Black Women Historians.
———-
Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Women in Politics Week: ‘Persepolis’

 
This piece on Persepolis, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on July 1, 2009.

I rented Persepolis before the recent Iranian election, and have been thinking ever since about the film.

Persepolis is adapted from the autobiographical graphic novels written by Marjane Satrapi (which I haven’t read), and represents the first graphic-novel-as-film. Other graphic novels have been made into films, but none (to my knowledge) have remained as true to form as this. Visually, the film is lovely, stark, and at times deeply disturbing.

In Persepolis, we meet Marjane, a young girl living in Iran at the time of the Islamic revolution of 1979. The society changed drastically under Islamic law, as evidenced by Marjane’s teacher’s evolving lessons. After the revolution, in 1982, she tells the young girls, who are now required by law to cover their heads, “The veil stands for freedom. A decent woman shelters herself from men’s eyes. A woman who shows herself will burn in hell.” In typical fashion, the students escape her ideological droning through imported pop culture: the music of ABBA, The Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, and Iron Maiden.

While the film is a personal story, it does offer a concise history of modern Iran, including the U.S. involvement in the rise of Islamic law and in the Iran-Iraq war. This time in Iranian history is especially important right now, with the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ensuing protests. One scene in particular depicts a group of people protesting when a young man is shot, bleeds to death, and is hoisted over his fellow protesters’ shoulders–eerily reminiscent of what happened with Neda Agha Soltan, whose public murder has rallied the Iranian protesters and people all over the world.

The history of Iran, while it determines the course of Marjane’s life, really is a backdrop—especially in the second half of the movie. In other words, the film is more about the experience of one woman than a documentary-style account of Iranian history. Once Marjane escapes the society she grew up in, her problems become much more ordinary for a Western audience, more commonplace. She vacillates between different crowds of people. She falls in love and has her heart broken. She feels angst and confusion over who she is and what she wants. She goes home to Iran for a time and, like so many others, ultimately finds she cannot return home.

As evident in the film, Satrapi grew up in a wealthy, educated, progressive Iranian family. They sent her to Vienna as a teenager so she didn’t have to spend her adolescence in such a repressive society, and because they feared what might happen to such an outspoken young woman there. While acknowledging her privilege, not many women in circumstances other than these would be able to accomplish what she has. Satrapi isn’t afraid to show missteps she makes in growing up, either. Young Marjane learns that her femininity, even when repressed by law, offers great power—and shows how she misuses that power. Missing her mother’s lesson at the grocery store about female solidarity, she blames other women for her troubles (“Ma’am, my mother is dead. My stepmother’s so cruel. If I’m late, she’ll kill me. She’ll burn me with an iron. She’ll make my dad put me in an orphanage.”), and falsely accuses a man of looking at her in public to avoid the law coming down on her.

Persepolis is, in every definition of the term, a feminist film. There are strong, interesting female characters who sometimes make mistakes. The women, like in real life, are engaged in politics and struggle with expectations set for them and that they set for themselves. They have relationships with various people, but their lives are not defined by one romantic relationship, even though sometimes it can feel that way.

As much as I like this movie, I can’t help but write this review through the lens of an interview Satrapi gave in 2004, in which she claimed to not be a feminist and displayed ignorance of the basic concept of feminism. I simply don’t believe gender inequality can be dissolved through basic humanism — especially in oppressive patriarchal societies like Iran. I wonder if feminism represents too radical a position to non-Westerners, and if her statements were more strategy than sincerity. Making feminism an enemy or perpetuating the post-feminist rhetoric isn’t going to help anyone. That said, this is a very good movie and I highly recommend it.

A couple of good articles about women’s role in the recent Iranian protests:

The Nation: Icons of the New Iran by Barbara Crossette

Feminist Peace Network: Memo to ABC: Lipstick Revolution FAIL

——

Amber Leab is a Co-Founder and Editor of Bitch Flicks and a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, The Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.

A Review and An Interview: ‘Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear’

To say that Aung San Suu Kyi, political prisoner and General Secretary for the Burmese National League of Democracy is one of the world’s most powerful and inspirational women would not be a stretch. Leaving the safety of England and the care of her family she endured 15 years of house arrest in her non-violent quest for removal of the military junta in power and the instating of democracy in Myanmar. Last week I was lucky enough to attend the 12th Annual Gwangju Film Festival here in South Korea and watch the 2010 documentary, Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear. Even luckier was that the director, Anne Gyrithe Bonne, was in attendance and graciously agreed to an interview.

It’s entirely coincidental that my interview with Anne Gyrithe Bonne will be published during the same week that United States President, Barack Obama, will be in Myanmar. While Myanmar’s current leadership has released many of their political prisoners, Myanmar still struggles with human rights violations. The President of Myanmar, Thein Sein, has promised to review all of the current political prisoners and seek their release by the end of the year. Hopefully President Obama’s visit to Myanmar can spur more changes and continue to encourage their transition to a stable and safe country.

The admirable Aung San Suu Kyi, ever mindful of the hard road towards peace, has warned against too early an acceptance of the government’s words, cautioning against their possible motive of appeasement and fearful that the country could slip back into military control with, ‘the mirage of success’ in front of them. Aung San Suu Kyi’s great strength and personal sacrifice in her fight against the government is ongoing and complete, features that are simply displayed in Bonne’s film.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear naturally covers Aung San Suu Kyi’s infamous periods of house arrest and the personal discipline and mental fortitude she possessed which allowed her to be such a powerful leader and democratic activist. However, the film focuses on Aung San Suu Kyi’s private life, which Bonne would argue is essential to understanding her involvement in the Burmese struggle for democracy. Bonne specifically chose to focus on the astounding relationship between Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband, Michael Aris, since Aris was a major support to Aung San Suu Kyi and similarly held her belief that Burma was everything: more than each other, more than their children. 

Aung San Suu Kyi

What the film does especially well at demonstrating is the incredible mythic power that Aung San Suu Kyi has over the Burmese people. Because of her background as the daughter of the great commander and soldier of independence, Aung San, as well as her renowned public speaking abilities, Aung San Suu Kyi was able to step into her father’s shoes; as one loyal Burmese supporter said of her, “She is not only a fighter, she is a commander.”

I asked Bonne what she felt that Aung San Suu Kyi had given to women of the world, particularly those involved with the issue of human rights and she suggested something very simple: “rebelliousness.” Without this rebelliousness, a rebelliousness founded in the exemplary cause of civil rights and human freedoms, hierarchies cannot fall and ongoing cycles of violence and abuse and repression cannot be removed. One of the most stunning moments of the film came during a clip of an interview Aung San Suu Kyi had given some years ago. In the interview she’s asked about the situation of her communications with the outside world. While she was given permission to write letters to her family, they were all censored by the government; so, incredibly, she refused to send any more letters because she didn’t want to, “communicate through the authorities.” Even completely isolated from her family she refused to give in to the demands of tyranny and authority.

There is a second side to her though; her graceful and poised nature set her apart from other would-be leaders, and even from her college friends. Aung San Suu Kyi was educated at Oxford during the sixties and while other women were exploring the sexual revolution, Aung San Suu Kyi protested that she wanted to be a virgin when she married and that for now she would, “just hug her pillow at night.” In many ways Aung San Suu Kyi never forgot that she was from Burma, even refusing British citizenship as a way to maintain her heritage, for, as she told Michael when they married, “If Burma needs me, I will go.”

This dual-nature she possesses highlights her relationship to Burma: Burma was always her home, but neither was she the government’s puppet, sporting a rebellious streak of her own. A rebellious streak that Bonne believes is demonstrated in her marriage to Michael Aris, who despite his cosmopolitan upbringing, was still an “enemy of Burma” as an Englishman. Aung San Suu Kyi directly went against her mothers wishes, her family’s wishes, and even the wishes of her country by marrying the man she loved: her mother refused to even attend the wedding.

For many years Aung San Suu Kyi stayed in Oxford with her family, giving birth to two children and supporting her husband’s rising career as a Buddhist scholar, a topic that surprisingly Michael actually taught Aung San Suu Kyi about and an interest that the two of them shared. Eventually, Aung San Suu Kyi began to start her own projects, beginning a biography about her father and even applying to graduate school. However, the sudden failing health of her mother in 1988 called her back to Burma, unknowing that she would become its most outspoken and inspiring democratic activist in just a few short months.

In reference to Aung San Suu Kyi’s sudden propulsion into Burmese politics Bonne felt that Aung San Suu Kyi had been seduced by Burma, stating that, “She had been a proper housewife for a long time, ‘ironing Michael’s socks.’ During that time period the world was more about the man; if you wanted to get a Ph.D you couldn’t because you had your children and your house and your husband. Then there was the 8-8-88 revolution and she went to Burma to visit her mother and she was finally elevated. She gave a lot of public speeches, speeches with some say 250,000 thousand people, some say even 500,000 people; she was an amazing public speaker and people loved her.”

But her success would lead to great personal sacrifice, a situation that Bonne outlines in her film. While many are aware that Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest for almost 15 years, some might not be aware that she was allowed to leave if she chose: she just wouldn’t be allowed to return. The conditions for her release were dependent upon her willingness to live in exile from Burma, however, despite her desire to see her family (Aris and her children were refused visa’s into Burma starting in 1995) she knew that she could only be effective if she stayed in Burma. And how could she leave Burma knowing that so many others could not? How could she leave knowing that Burmese people were suffering and political prisoners were being abused? She therefore chose separation from her family rather than abandon her people, a decision that led to criticism against Aung San Suu Kyi, some saying that she had ‘abandoned her children:’ A harsh accusation against any mother. 

Anne Gyrithe Bonne
Yet the interviews featured in the film point out this damaging double standard, a double standard that one of the greatest proponents of democracy and peace of our generation has had to endure. While male human rights activists have had to leave their families in the past, no one accuses them of child abandonment (Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years, but no one ever mentions his children). One of Aung San Suu Kyi’s friend’s from Oxford pointed out, that even the Buddha left his family in to go into the forest and meditate for a while, and yet a woman of self-sacrifice who gave everything for the family that was her country of Burma, still can’t be free from the lazy and illogical and damaging double standards that still rule our society.
 
It was the necessity of exposing the information about Aung San Suu Kyi leaving her children in England to serve Burma that was Bonne’s greatest concern about producing this film; “I was afraid of destroying her cause. It was a balancing act to make her story and also be respectful because I was afraid that the general [leader of Burma] and others would see the film and think she’s a bad mother and end up damaging her cause.” However, Bonne continued to make the film, believing it was essential to uncover the story behind the icon, to realize what had nurtured such a strong and effective supporter of democracy and civil rights.

The documentary then walks a delicate line in respectfully baring Aung San Suu Kyi’s unique past, highlighting her political achievements, while also demonstrating Aung San Suu Kyi’s own humanity. In that light, the film focuses more on her personal relationships and features interviews from several of her close friends and family. Interviews that reveal just how much Aung San Suu Kyi sacrificed for the people of Burma after the Burmese government refused to allow Aris to visit his wife, even as he was dying of prostate cancer. Michael died in 1999 in England, unable to say goodbye to his beloved wife.

Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding Aris’s death and the Burmese governments unwillingness to allow him into the country, Bonne believes that Michael’s death served to increase Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity and power among the Burmese people. When it became known that she had given up everything for them, she became even more beloved and her supporters ever more loyal.

While great attention should obviously be paid to Aung San Suu Kyi’s incredible political triumphs, when asked about what she wanted audiences to take away from the film, Bonne explained that she hopes people see, “That there’s always a story behind the person and then realize what price they had to pay to become that person and who they are.” A tie-in to a beautiful line in the film where Aung San Suu Kyi says, “Nothing is free: if you want something of value you must make payments accordingly.” According to Bonne, Aung San Suu Kyi, “paid a big price.”

The extended version of the film (which I was able to view on Monday night) actually starts at the end of her house arrest, the first few minutes of the film showing footage of Aung San Suu Kyi after her 2010 release. This is unique for many reasons: the documentary was originally released a mere two days before Kyi’s 2010 release. Bonne is humble about this astounding coincidence however, acknowledging that the film certainly, “brought people’s eyes to her.” Obviously the film created a fair amount of exposure about Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation and must have helped to place pressure on the Burmese government. In 2011 the film was selected for the exclusive Berlin ‘Cinema for Peace’ Festival, after which a journalist was finally allowed into Burma to photograph Aung San Suu Kyi.

Bonne’s film exposes Aung San Suu Kyi’s humanity and in so doing has shown the strength and desire for freedom that is possible in leaders and which is fundamentally necessary for the development of human rights in the future. As Aung San Suu Kyi has said, “we must nurture mental strength and support each other,” because it is then that we experience true freedom: “freedom from fear.”

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.


Biopic and Documentary Week: Persepolis

This piece on Persepolis, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on July 1, 2009.


Marjane can’t hide behind ABBA
In Persepolis, we meet Marjane (Satrapi), a young girl living in Iran at the time of the Islamic revolution of 1979. The society changed drastically under Islamic law, as evidenced by Marjane’s teacher’s evolving lessons. After the revolution, in 1982, she tells the young girls, who are now required by law to cover their heads, “The veil stands for freedom. A decent woman shelters herself from men’s eyes. A woman who shows herself will burn in hell.” In typical fashion, the students escape her ideological droning through imported pop culture: the music of ABBA, The Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, and Iron Maiden. 
While the film is a personal story, it does offer a concise history of modern Iran, including the U.S. involvement in the rise of Islamic law and in the Iran-Iraq war. This time in Iranian history is especially important right now, with the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ensuing protests. One scene in particular depicts a group of people protesting when a young man is shot, bleeds to death, and is hoisted over his fellow protesters’ shoulders–eerily reminiscent of what happened with Neda Agha Soltan, whose public murder has rallied the Iranian protesters and people all over the world. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: American Violet

This piece on American Violet, by Amber Leab, originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 5, 2010.

American Violet (2008)

American Violet tells the true story of an African-American mother of four girls arrested and falsely accused of selling crack cocaine. Set in a fictional Texas town with the 2000 presidential election as a fitting backdrop of confusion and corruption, we see Dee Roberts fight–with the help of ACLU lawyers–to clear her name and the names of other innocent people arrested in a broad sweep that day.
Newcomer Nicole Beharie gives a powerful performance as Dee, and the supporting cast, including Alfre Woodard as Dee’s mother, and Tim Blake Nelson and Malcolm Barrett as lawyers for the ACLU, do an equally good job. 

It’s impossible to not love Dee–a beautiful woman, a kind and patient mother, a hard worker, and a caring friend. Her temper gets the best of her once in the film, but she’s protecting her children from their alcoholic father and his accused child molester girlfriend, and can hardly be faulted for it. I’m inclined to think the movie tries too hard to make her character likable. In contrast, Dee’s friend and neighbor Gladys–who is not a conventionally attractive woman, and does not have four adorable children trailing her–is a compelling and empathetic character, but the film completely drops the ball, even failing to credit the actor who plays her. Gladys is Dee’s inspiration for continuing to fight the DA even after her charges are dropped (because Gladys took a plea deal, while Dee would not), but we don’t get to explore Gladys or her situation. I’m curious as to why she’s part of the story, but not really allowed to be a character in the film. While the movie is about Dee, I would’ve liked to get to know Gladys a bit.

Quote of the Day: Molly Haskell on "The Woman’s Film"

This past weekend, The Help (in its second week in wide release) moved to the top of the U.S. box office. While much of the discussion about the film has focused on its race problems, I’ve been bothered by it’s characterization in many reviews as a “woman’s film.” (Note: I haven’t seen The Help.) Because its main characters are women, and it seems to be about empowering women (though I suspect it’s more about empowering white women than black women), it must be a film about and, thus, for women.
Isn’t that the problem? I don’t want to get too far into using The Help as an example (I repeat, I haven’t seen it), but branding a film about women and civil rights in the South (however problematic its depiction) as a “woman’s film” just seems absurd. Have we gone at all beyond Molly Haskell’s 1974 discussion of “The Woman’s Film?”
What more damning comment on the relations between men and women in America than the very notion of something called the ‘woman’s film’? And what more telling sign of critical and sexual priorities than the low caste it has among the highbrows. Held at arm’s length, it is, indeed, the untouchable of film genres […]

Among the Anglo-American critical brotherhood (and a few of their sisters as well), the term ‘woman’s film’ is used disparagingly to conjure up the image of the pinched-virgin or little-old-lady writer, spilling out her secret longings in wish fulfillment or glorious martyrdom, and transmitting these fantasies to the frustrated housewife. The final image is one of wet, wasted afternoons. And if strong men have also cried their share of tears over the weepies, that is all the more reason (goes the argument) we should be suspicious, be on our guard against the flood of ‘unearned’ feelings released by these assaults, unerringly accurate, on our emotional soft spots.

As a term of critical opprobrium, ‘woman’s film’ carries the implication that women, and therefore women’s emotional problems, are of minor significance. A film that focuses on male relationships is not pejoratively dubbed a ‘man’s film’ (indeed, this term, when it is used, confers–like ‘a man’s man’–an image of brute strength), but a ‘psychological drama.’ 

Here’s a thought experiment. If The Help were about a plucky young white man who wanted to interview black male workers, how would we be talking about the film?

Movie Review: American Violet

American Violet is a small victory of a movie.
American Violet tells the true story of an African American mother of four girls arrested and falsely accused of selling crack cocaine. Set in a fictional Texas town with the 2000 presidential election as a fitting backdrop of confusion and corruption, we see Dee Roberts fight–with the help of ACLU lawyers–to clear her name and the names of other innocent people arrested in a broad sweep that day.
Newcomer Nicole Beharie gives a powerful performance as Dee, and the supporting cast, including  Alfre Woodard as Dee’s mother, and Tim Blake Nelson and Malcolm Barrett as lawyers for the ACLU, do an equally good job. There are good guys, bad guys, and everyone in between in American Violet.
It’s impossible to not love Dee–a beautiful woman, a kind and patient mother, a hard worker, and a caring friend. Her temper gets the best of her once in the film, but she’s protecting her children from their alcoholic father and his accused child molester girlfriend, and can hardly be faulted for it. I’m inclined to think the movie tries too hard to make her character likable. In contrast, Dee’s friend and neighbor Gladys–who is not  a conventionally attractive woman, and does not have four adorable children trailing her–is a compelling and empathetic character, but the film completely drops the ball, even failing to credit the actor who plays her. Gladys is Dee’s inspiration for continuing to fight the DA even after her charges are dropped (because Gladys took a plea deal, while Dee would not), but we don’t get to explore Gladys or her situation. I’m curious as to why she’s part of the story, but not really allowed to be a character in the film. While the movie is about Dee, I would’ve liked to get to know Gladys a bit.

The film treats Dee with respect. We learn that her four children have three different fathers, but her private life is mostly kept private. When the DA questions Dee about “how many men she’s had sex with by the age of 24,” her lawyers quickly step in to remind them–and us–that a woman’s character is not to be judged by her sexual history. This was a refreshing moment in the film, when even in so-called women’s films, slut-shaming is regular and almost perfunctory. In another moment of the film, we see testimony from the DA’s ex-wife and daughter, and it’s the daughter’s mocking of her own father’s (racist) slut-shaming that ultimately brings him down. (An ironic and uncomfortable twist is that while Dee’s private life is off limits, the DA’s private life is the strongest testimony against him.)

American Violet is the kind of movie I don’t like to criticize, because it’s a movie interested in Doing Good. It’s a sincere film, it addresses real-life social problems, it has a heroine we root for and get to see achieve a victory, despite the odds. And, it’s enjoyable to watch. Doing Good movies rarely achieve blockbuster status; they typically don’t have large budgets, stars, or major marketing campaigns. Doing Good movies are the kinds of movies we wish the public, at large, would see. However, films that expose social ills tend to suffer from cliched characters, predictable narratives, and overly simplified stories. American Violet–despite its powerful performances—doesn’t escape these problems.

There are a couple of troubling things about the film. First, its creators have a background in documentary filmmaking, and their dramatic attempts were stilted (I’ll expound upon this point in the following paragraphs). Second, while I appreciate the surprise change of direction in the film–criminal charges against Dee are dropped, and the dramatic focus becomes her lawsuit against the racist DA–attacking a single DA for racism leaves the system intact. Yes, I realize this was a true story, but the filmmakers’ choice to dramatize this specific case–reportedly after they heard the story on NPR–feels a bit suspect to me. Texas law was changed as a result of Dee’s case (previously, a tip from a single informant was enough for an arrest), but the system itself seemed enforced; the “one bad apple”–the racist DA–abused the law, and was reprimanded. However, the DA remained in his position and was re-elected by voters who, in this district, weren’t particularly bothered by his racially-motivated policies. There was a real sense of ambivalence in Dee’s victory–a monetary settlement for her and the others wrongly accused, and a personal victory, but barely a scratch on the system. Perhaps the film’s inability to create great drama reflects our society’s inability to really change the system. We want the system to change. But the best we can get–in film or life–are small (yet not insignificant) steps in the right direction.
In light of the Senate’s recently passed legislation to reduce, not rectify, the mandatory minimum sentencing discrepancy for crack cocaine possession, we see a drug policy that is racist to the core. In the United States, possession of five grams of crack cocaine carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years, while it takes 100 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same sentence. According to the NAACP,

Everyone seems to agree that crack cocaine use is higher among Caucasians than any other group:  most authorities estimate that more than 66% of those who use crack cocaine are white.  Yet in 2006, 82% of those convicted and sentenced under federal crack cocaine laws were African American.  When you add in Hispanics, the percentage climbs to above 96%.  Since enactment of this law, the 100 to 1 ratio has had a devastating and disproportionate impact on the African American and Hispanic communities. 

The mandatory minimum sentencing law was enacted in 1986 under false beliefs about crack cocaine, and its results have been devastating. Instead of equalizing the penalty, however, the Senate agreed to make it less worse: reduce the discrepancy from 100:1 to 18:1.
The facts about US sentencing laws are a bit beside the point in relation to American Violet; in the case of the film, the women we focus on are innocent. Police found no drugs or evidence of drug possession, distribution, or use. The filmmakers’ true interests here were legal in nature, though, and the characters in the film felt, at times, like tools for exploring the law. The specific laws on trial in the film are the now-defunct Texas single-informant law, the Clinton-era financial incentive to law enforcement agencies based on the number of drug convictions per county, and the rules surrounding and use of the plea bargain. While in jail, Dee learns that she can take a plea bargain to have her sentence suspended and return home to her children, or she can fight the allegations with her court-appointed attorney–who essentially tells her she’d be crazy not to take the plea. Before seeing this film, I never really thought about plea bargains–who cuts these deals and who ultimately benefits from them. In films we typically see the plea bargain used by people guilty of a crime to bring down the more-guilty parties involved. The issue felt like a minor point in the film, but in the end we see how invested in exposing the corrupt nature of the plea bargain the film really is. Ninety percent of the US prison population accepted a plea bargain, 95% never saw a jury, and the US has the world’s largest prison population. It’s a shame that the most shocking and dramatic moment of the film appeared in the end screen of statistics.
In this case, neither the DA nor the tactics really were impacted; what we get is Dee’s personal victory, which is still powerful and important. Not only was her arrest record expunged, but the other innocent people who were arrested with her also had their records expunged–meaning they could remain in their homes, apply for a job without fear of a background check, and not have to live with a false arrest haunting them.

Ultimately, I liked this film, and encourage others to see it. I do feel ambivalence about it, and am a little disappointed in some of the choices made, but do think it’s a strong, woman-centered film.

Watch a preview of American Violet and learn more about the film here. Leave your thoughts about the film–and any links to reviews or discussions you’ve read–in the comments.