Most of my writing this week has been wrenching my head back into the headspace of Astronautica; it’s been a full few months of everything but my novel and so I’m reacquainting myself with my characters, my world, and the plot so I can this draft back into gear. That leaves little time for writing blog stuff unfortunately.
Also as it happens I’m not done being busy with the rest of life. This house is packed to the gills with boxes that need to be sorted before being put away or donated or trashed or whatever I’m going to do with the detritus of two households clashing headlong into each other, and that’s on top of getting kids to school and to do homework and dealing with a few broken bones in the household (nothing too big, but that’s as broken bones go, so…), and also the laundry’s been piling up.
So yesterday1 I turned on a movie to have playing while I folded a small mountain of laundry. I chose an old favorite from when I was younger, a Marx Brothers movie, specifically A Day at the Races. It’s fluffy fun with interluding musical numbers, many of which I considered dragged on far too long when I was young. And then suddenly the characters are in deep trouble, running away from the law, and end up hiding in a shanty town full of down-on-their-luck black people.
And there I am, going “Oh no, a black and white movie dealing with race. Uh. Is this going to be okay?”
Well, they have a lovely few songs and some impressive dance numbers, and I’m watching thinking “It seems okay? Wait, is that a problem? I wish I could watch this without wondering this.” I’m pretty sure the part where the brothers smear axle grease on their face to “blend into” the crowd to escape the law is, uh, problematic. But I’m also sitting there thinking “but I’m super-white. Do I even have the correct context to know what problems there might be?”
I did some looking up of how it was received online, and as I kind of expected, it was a mixed bag. Some people were talking about the clear talent on display from the singers, and how it would have been difficult for African-American performers to get jobs in Hollywood at the time so the Marx Brothers doing this prominent scene and letting it sit for a good probably 20 minutes was great for them getting paid and getting good screen time.
On the other hand, there are a few problems, too. The bug-eyed look a few of them give sometimes is a hurtful stereotype; not to mention the fact that “look they may be poor but look how happy they are” was also a portrayal that was common and not doing black members of society any favors. Not to mention that often, dance scenes with black actors had a tendency to be overly sexual or sweaty and intense to give an animalistic bent to their performance, because of course it was. Even if it wasn’t, like some of the Lindy-Hop scenes in some old movies, sometimes it was still changed by directors to be directed at a white audience, not a black or even mixed audience. Don’t ask me the details or if this movie fell victim to that, I’m not a scholar of this.
On the other other hand, these people were clearly shown in sorrow and difficulty but were willing to find ways to cheer up and find hope even if they don’t have money and do have heaps of troubles, as the song says. And to encourage the main cast who found themselves in dire straits to do the same. And the dancing was just plain skillful. There was a larger man who came in and clearly him dancing was being played for a bit of a laugh of the unexpected, since comedy movie, but sheesh could he dance. And the lady singing that song? She’s got pipes! She put the other singer, Allan Jones, to shame. (In my opinion.) (I also don’t think it hurt that they all bet on the main characters’ horse and ended up with quite a good return on that investment.)
Yet back to the other other other hand. This was an internet search of some not overly scholarly sources, since oddly not many official papers have been published online dealing with this issue in this particular movie. So while some people could come on the discussion and say “No, it was well-portrayed and gave great opportunities!,” how am I to know I should believe them? You can be anyone online and claim anything. Theoretically it helps to have good diction and a reasonable or at least likeable position but it’s easy to write something both convincing and false.2
In the end, then, I think it comes down to me to decide what I think of it. How would I feel if it was a group with whom I identified? Would I feel comfortable with my kids learning about another culture through this portrayal? Can I watch this silly movie (which for sure has other problems morally; I probably shouldn’t be rooting for this horse doctor who is claiming he can practice human medicine so he can get rich or for this charlatan selling bad racing bet advice on purpose, though the girl just trying to keep her family business rather than letting it be snatched up by a person who wants to make it a rigged casino seems pretty solid) without being embarrassed? Would it be better if this scene was disappeared?
That last question I think I can solidly answer. No. It was created in its time and shows the views of its time, though I do think it was on the better side of the views of the time. Erasing it and pretending it didn’t exist will do nothing but harm our future.
Similar questions have occurred to me in other topics. Take the founding fathers. We were taught when I was growing up that they were practically saintly. Well, turns out they were all human beings with flaws, some with large glaring flaws. To an extent, I think public opinion has swung the opposite direction about several of them. I was listening to a podcast the other day where someone was teasing that a very well-educated fellow who’d left America for France for a while was being a Thomas Jefferson. But then he objected because Jefferson has a pretty sketchy legacy these days. Now, does he have big problems as a person? Heck. Yes. Keeping enslaved people ranks really high up among his flaws, for example. However, he was also a scholar and philosopher and some of his work on the U.S. Constitution and other works in government were key in creating some of the better parts of the United States. Or take Alexander Hamilton. He’s enjoying a surge of popularity with the recent (ish) Hamilton musical, but he had flaws too. He was, from what I’ve read, a horrendous mudslinger who gave Aaron Burr plenty of reason to feel not only offended but like he was trying to undermine him.
I guess where I’m going with all of this is it feels like there’s a tendency to want humans, history, media, and pretty much everything to slot neatly into “good” and “bad” categories. But we don’t. History doesn’t. Books and movies and entertainment and news and all the things don’t. Sure, many things and people skew heavily one way or the other but that’s not a complete view. It’s possible for good things to be unearthed in the worst people or started by them. It’s possible for a person to have good intentions and good goals and do awful things, like Eli Whitney trying to ease the demand for slavery with the invention of his cotton gin. Boy did that backfire. I’m not saying this is a “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” situation, because that feels like it’s “this person is too important to jettison.” I’m also not saying “How dare you impugn the good name of ____________!!!” If I were looking for a metaphor, it would be “burning this field full of poison ivy and kudzu might not be the best step; maybe we should weed it so we don’t lose anything of value.” That is to say, I wish there was more room to have nuanced views and recognize and acknowledge both the good and the bad in circumstances, in people, and in history.
Because if we don’t, we won’t learn, and we’ll make the same mistakes as our progenitors.
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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- Look if I mention a “yesterday” or something, assume it’s not actually yesterday as of the posting but yesterday as of the writing, and if the date were important I’d list it out rather than using vague words. ↩︎
- There were some other people on one of the forums I found making less grounded claims, like using some truly unhinged and racist language directed at some prominent figures. Like, yeah, I’m sure they’re the problem here and not you, who’s clearly totally reasonable… ↩︎
