a challenging documentary written and narrated by Melvin Van Pebbles. He took me way back in film history... back to the Tarzan movies of the forties when my Black sisters and brothers were all running away from the great White hero who kept them from rioting and killing, to that moment in those treasured moments in Shaft when my Soul Brother hero proudly walked away from the White'Black skull duggery which had been destroying the neighborhood.
I thank God for the wonderful work Denzel Washington has done in films like Malcolm X, Inside Man, and The Great Debater. I have cried and clapped and talked about him for days at a time.
After seeing Classified X I see that I have been missing films where Black human beings fail, succeed, and keep trying. Far, far
different from films that shamed/frustrated/angered me from the time I was seven years old in Texas until the films of the eighties, nineties, and today.
Check out Classified X. It's well worth your time.
1 comment:
I can identify with your childhood self in that as a Japanese-American child watching television in the 60's I was depressed to see Asian-Americans not being part of the movie landscape in much the same way.
Houseboys (Bachelor Father), cooks (Bonanza), housekeepers (Courtship of Eddie's Father, spies, and plenty more people White characters needed to rescue or straighten out. Viewers who can't see these forms of media and those which we have now from seats other than they've occupied are still often clueless of the impact of such images. While today they might notice some points of view are absent, or irritably decry their addition as P.C., it's the lack of sensitivity, empathy and compassion that still divides us.
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