(ThyBlackMan.com) Can we summon all of our people that are tasked with writing the black experience in America? A message needs to be sent to our people in Hollywood that its far time we stop making movies that have to have moments that allow white people to feel comfortable. We don’t give each other that courtesy, and we should not give it to anyone else. It is 2019, and there are still characters added to scripts that allow white people to write off the rest of story for the one space that allows them to feel good about themselves, or it doesn’t show them exactly what happened to black people in a manner that would make them uncomfortable.
Sometimes giving the white person their moment doesn’t come in the form of the “white savior” trope…it can come from simpling dumbing down the facts. We should be out of excuses as to why this form of pandering to white people exists. The arts are should be a representation of what is happening in life. We can’t write books condemning the black condition and speaking on the severity of what our people have faced while making movies about some of our histories freedom fighters whereby we don’t see the intensity we read.
I will not say “Harriet” was a bad movie. However, I will not dismiss those of our people that saw it and found a certain part to sit badly with them. I understand creative freedom, and that the movie was not a documentary. Bigger Long was not a real person…he was added to the story. He’s a black man hunting a black woman…who is then killed by the slave owner that has him hunting this black woman. Black slave hunters were rare, and though this may be a truth in some narratives its fiction in the movie. This could lead one to wonder why was it necessary to invent the character of a black man hunting a black woman leading our people to freedom. Though I don’t view the slave owner as the “white savior” character, I take a bigger issue with this fictional black man created to hunt Harriet.
Furthermore, this fictional character is there, but the reality of what our people went through is absent. The truth of the institution of slavery is missing its rawness, and in omitting that I see this as one of the ways the movie was made palatable to white audiences. The presence of the fictional Bigger Long plays a part in this same logic. His character can allow some white viewers to walk away says “see they had a hand in their own circumstances”. This might seem far fetched to a black viewer, but it’s not far off if someone is trying to avoid the reality of the inhumane behavior of white people in the film.
It is not our place to make history easier to stomach. What black people face, and have faced, in America is inhumane, ugly, bloody, ghastly, terrifying and downright evil. White Americans that go to see these kinds of films should leave feeling like they have walked into one the worst horror stories they have ever seen. They need to understand what happened. Our people need to see the horror and understand what we have endured, and the price that has been paid for us to have been able to survive as a people. The films can also give us insight to the generational scars we carry to this day. A disservice is done to all viewing the movie when white sensibilities are taken into consideration. Maybe we can come to a place whereby we dare to tell our truth without filters.
Staff Writer; Christian Starr
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