Charges of Racism, Anti-Semitism Make the Rounds
Two stories won’t go away. The first are the occasional but passionate articles about Precious, whether it’s a movie for the white community to feel better about themselves (“see the black people can find their way out of the ghetto), and/or it’s a movie that stereotypes the African American community. The NY Times posted an op-ed about it recently:
The blacks who are enraged by “Precious” have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them. It was the enthusiastic response from white audiences and critics that culminated in the film being nominated for six Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an outfit whose 43 governors are all white and whose membership in terms of diversity is about 40 years behind Mississippi. In fact, the director, Lee Daniels, said that the honor would bring even more “middle-class white Americans” to his film.
He finishes with:
Redemption through learning the ways of white culture is an old Hollywood theme. D. W. Griffith produced a series of movies in which Chinese, Indians and blacks were lifted from savagery through assimilation. A more recent example of climbing out of the ghetto through assimilation is “Dangerous Minds,” where black and Latino students are rescued by a curriculum that doesn’t include a single black or Latino writer.
Right, okay. But that story really did happen. So we should just not tell that story?
Would the world be a better place had Precious never been made? Do black filmmakers, and women filmmakers, always have to “speak for the community”? Can they ever just make films about the not-black-not-white-but-human condition? Do we always see that Precious is black? I don’t have the answers to these questions. I am merely asking them. “My black friend” in New York felt a great kinship with the character and the film – does that make him an Uncle Tom? Owen Gleiberman defends with an article that declares, “Attacks nf Precious are starting to say more about the attackers:”
The insult of a cliché — as drama, or as social observation — is that it’s a lazy abstraction elevated to a plane of “truth.” Whereas what I loved about Precious is that it presents its heroine, from minute one, as a lacerating and tragic and spiritually messy and complicated individual; that’s true of the forces that bear down upon her as well. Gabourey Sidibe’s impacted, mostly hushed, but quietly emotional performance allows you to respond to the moment-by-moment experience of Precious’ internal strife, and the nearly universal praise for Mo’Nique’s performance is a recognition that Precious’ mother is never just a “type.” She’s a force, as profoundly etched in the misery of her past and the love-hate rage of her present as the clinging monster-mother from The Glass Menagerie.
He continues:
What I most want to address, however, are several points in Reed’s essay that strike me as almost perversely wrongheaded. After making the specious claim that Precious is a movie largely reviled by African-Americans (he provides no evidence — but the film’s box-office demographics do not bear out that assertion), he states: “In guilt-free bits of merchandise like Precious, white characters are always portrayed as caring. There to help. Never shown as contributing to the oppression of African-Americans.”
I think he’s talking about a different movie. Over the decades, Hollywood has made dozens of facile dramas, many of them set at inner-city schools, in which African-Americans are lifted up through the efforts of saintly white characters. But Precious isn’t one of those films. There are virtually no white characters in the movie; the stray ones who appear don’t carry any noble, righteous weight. Yet having established the patronizing genre/category he thinks that Precious belongs in, Reed writes that white critics “maintain that the movie is worthwhile because, through the efforts of a teacher, this girl begins her first awkward efforts at writing.” He then adds, “Redemption through learning the ways of white culture is an old Hollywood theme.”
It seriously made my jaw drop to see a scholar of Ishmael Reed’s stature claim, in the middle of the New York Times, that an abused, illiterate black teenager struggling to learn how to read and write is an instance of someone “learning the ways of white culture.” Since when did literacy become a conspiracy of “white” indoctrinization? It’s enough to make you wonder if the victimization stereotypes that Reed sees in this movie are really in the eye of the beholder.
Meanwhile, some have charged, or probed at any rate, this idea of the Wandering Jew in An Education. True, the real-life character upon whom David was based was, in fact, Jewish, and therefore a bit of a stranger in a strange land amid the gentiles. But claims have been made that THIS David, played by Peter Scarsgaard, is the embodiment of all that has always been assumed and feared about Jews. I would think it laughable if I hadn’t myself been the victim of hate mail (I’m only half Jewish on my father’s side – not even technically Jewish, but do you think that makes a difference? My blood must be tainted). The belief that Jews are the root of all possible evil in society prevails to this day. Irina Bragen lays it out on Fighthatred.com piece called, “The Wandering Jew in ‘An Education’: The Anatomy of an Anti-Semitic Film”:
From the moment David starts following the teenage Jenny in his fancy car, the pudgy, effete David Goldman proclaims his ethnicity. (Jenny: “I’m not a Jew.” David: “No, I am. I wasn’t … accusing you.”) Like the predatory creature characterized in “Der Ewige Juden,” Goldman pretends to adopt the values of his host culture in order to turn its treasures into his profit. He offers Jenny “three five-pound notes” to drive her cello home safely out of the rain; “I’m a music lover,” he tells her. Then he proceeds to corrupt the innocent gentile girl (played by Carey Mulligan) with expensive flowers, gifts, concerts, art auctions and trips to Oxford and Paris.David enriches himself by ruining good English neighborhoods, deflating property values and looting cultural treasures from displaced widows. He moves blacks into white neighborhoods: “Shvartzes,” he tells Jenny, “have to live somewhere; it’s not as if they can rent from their own kind.” The only identifiable Jew in the film, he constantly uses the collective “we” to justify his wickedness: “This is how we are, Jenny,” Goldman editorializes. “We’re not clever like you, so we have to be clever in other ways, because if we weren’t, there would be no fun.” He uses the word “stats” for old ladies he victimizes. They “are scared of colored people; so we move the coloreds in and the old ladies out and I buy their flats cheap.” Along with his partner, Danny, David barges into a house, military style, and speeds away with precious relics. “We have to be clever with maps,” he tells Jenny. An ancient map, he rationalizes, “shouldn’t spend its life on a wall…. We know how to look after it…. We liberated it.”Is it possible that the film attempts to link the predatory Jew with his purloined Jewish homeland?
In “An Education,” Jenny’s values, and those of her middle-class parents, teachers and first boyfriend, are antithetical to those of the crooked Jew. The Brits are refined, attractive, honest, sober and hard working. Boyfriend and classmate Graham, “a handsome boy,” according to the script, plays the violin, is modest and clean-cut and presents Jenny with the same plainly wrapped Latin dictionary for her birthday as her parents.Miss Stubbs, an English teacher, encourages Jenny to pass her “A” levels and earn her way into Oxford in the same honest way she once got into Cambridge. Like Graham and Jenny,Miss Stubbs is “attractive,” “bright” and “animated.”
By contrast, writer Nick Hornby, who initiated the film project based on a woman’s personal essay that he changed to suit his themes, confesses that he feared “no conventional male lead would want to play the part of the predatory, amoral, lonely David.” David’s wife, Sarah, “a homely looking woman in her early 30s,” shows no surprise when her husband’s fiancée, Jenny, shows up at her door. As alien a creature as David may be, the dark, curly hairedJewess is accustomed to her man’s infidelities.
The climactic scene after David proposes, when Jenny, unaware of his treachery, informs her school’s headmistress that she plans to marry a Jew, is blatantly anti-Semitic:Headmistress: “He’s a Jew? You’re aware, I take it, that the Jews killed our Lord?”Jenny: “And you’re aware, I suppose, that our Lord was Jewish?”Headmistress: “I suppose he told you that. We’re all very sorry about what happened during the war. But that’s absolutely no excuse for that sort of malicious and untruthful propaganda.”The pretty girl makes no attempt to defend her fiancé’s human dignity, no effort to profess her love for him. As a depersonalized, demonized Jew, David has no qualities worth defending. Instead, Jenny suggests she prefers spending the Jew’s money over studying her Latin.“My choice is to do something hard and boring or marry my Jew and go to Paris and Rome and … eat in nice restaurants and have fun.”The articulate headmistress, played by Emma Thompson, defends the native values that the rootless Jew tempted her student to abandon. “Nobody does anything worth doing without a degree,” she warns Jenny.When a character like Emma Thompson makes blatant anti Semitic statements in a modern film, we expect that she will eventually be exposed for her ugly prejudices; in a coming of age story, especially, we expect that the education of the heroine would include her awakening to the falsehood of the racial slurs and stereotypes thrown at her by the corrupt adults in her world. In an Education, by contrast, it is Jenny who repents for her mistakes; After she discovers her fiancé is married, a remorseful Jenny returns to the Headmistress of her school. A weeping Mary Magdalene, Jenny is now “dressed soberly in clothes not unlike a school uniform.” This transformation, the screenwriter notes, “completes a circle.”The headmistress smiles, pleased at Jenny’s repentance and willingness to return to the wholesome Christian values with which she was raised. “I suppose you think I’m a ruined woman,” Jenny tells the Headmistress. “You’re not a woman,” the Headmistress kindly responds, “pleased with her line.” As movie blogger Joe Baltake points out, the film “seems to go out of its way to justify Thompson’s anti-Semitic outburst.” Baltake is one of a minority of critics to acknowledge the film’s anti-Semitism (many of the glowing reviews fail to even mention that Jenny’s seducer is Jewish, or that the word “Jew” appears in the film). A little more subtly, David Edelstein, of New York Magazine, writes, “The story’s most obvious lesson is: Beware of Jews bearing flowers….”Despite the advertising campaign’s promise of a seduction film, there is nothing erotic about David. True to another ugly stereotype, Goldman turns out to be wimpy, “fruity,” “babyish” and disgusting. He calls Jenny “Minnie,” and wants her to call him “Boobaloo.”
PJ says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6:33am
“Dangerous Minds” did _not_ happen the way that movie depicted. If you read the book, you’ll see that the teacher used rap lyrics as an entry into studying literature; in the movie, IIRC, she uses Bob Dylan? The movie changed the book (and therefore, of course, the actual story the book depicted) to make it more appealing for white audiences.
Marble_Plum says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6:36am
Are you talking about My Posse Don’t Do Homework? That’s a great book.
Aragorn75 says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6:37am
In my opinion, Precious is not about black people. It is about people in general. Its theme and message are universal! It is a story told by a black director using black actors. But the story itself, child abuse, is something that happens regardless of race!
I didnt think about race or black people when I was watching that movie. It was all about a very disturbing but also strong story about a strong girl.
filmboymichael says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6:41am
Why do people insist that we sugar coat things – like we aren’t intelligent enough to know the difference between what’s wrong and what’s right??? People try to hard and push to hard for us to live in a PC world, and the fact of the matter is – we just don’t.
There were a few anti-semitic words said in an education – this is also a film that takes place in the 60′s – and the story is auto-biographical….but we need to white wash it and sugar coat it so people don’t feel something??? Have we become a numb society????
And as far as the piece on precious is concerned – he doesn’t provide a lot of proof with what he preaches – he calls it a movie made for white people with white saviours….the only white person i really recall in that film is a kid from the class room and maybe the guy who is washing the windows when precious steals the chicken….Blue Rain was not a ray of “white” hope – I saw her as a hispanic who loved to teach everyone. I think Reed is full of proverbial shit. He said black people are enraged by the film, but doesn’t follow up by giving solid examples. When he does offer “proof” it sounds like it is from someone who hasn’t even seen the film.
I am just in the middle of coffee, so my thoughts aren’t as clear and concise as i would like them to be, but this article by Redd has gotten me very heated up.
Candice Frederick says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6:51am
ands lets not forget about the blind side. which is another black man being recsued by a white woman. there’s always gonna be something to get people riled up but at the end of the day these stories are fictional stories based on real events, that do happen.
Aragorn75 says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6:58am
Regarding the anti semitism in An Education, I think some people are too sensitive. I am sure you can find something negative about some people, races, occupations in every movie if you look very carefully.
That movie is set in 1960s. And it is based on a true story. I am sure in every society there are people who are anti-semitist, racist, etc. So we will just ignore them even when we tell a real story! Isnt this censorship???
And regarding what Emma Thompson’s character said in the movie about jews, believe it or not I heard the same thing from a couple of people here in US in our time. And no they were not anti-Semitic, they were only good Christians (as they call themselves). Also since i am neither, so i may not know all the details but isnt it kinda what happened? So will we rewrite the history not to look Anti-Semitic?
I think some people just like the role of playing victims so they see the same thing wherever they look
filmboymichael says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 7:02am
as far as reed’s article is concerned – i think it’s a violent article that beats up the reader with words.
I just sent it to my best pal who wrote back “Why do I feel like I’ve just been slapped in the face”
I find his article to be vile.
yankeefrommississippi (Shannon) says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 7:31am
I read this article on An Education yesterday. I think it raises some intersting points, but I didn’t find the film to be anti-Semetic, personally.
I think the biggest problem I had with the article is that it suggested that the fact that the most anti-Semetic character (Thompson’s) is vindicated in the end in regards to Jenny’s mistake (dropping out of school and planning on marrying David) means that the film vindicates her anti-Semetic statements as well. I didn’t get this impression from the film at all. I thought that Thompson’s character was the most unsympathetic in the whole film. She just happened to be right that Jenny shouldn’t drop out of school and run off with David, which would have been true whether David were Jewish or not. In other words, it shows that people are complex – and even people with prejudices aren’t completely wrong about everything all the time. I actually appreciated that about the film.
I don’t know enough about the history the author of this article talks about to say whether it was the intent of Nick Hornby to write an anti-Semetic film. I suppose he could have changed it, and made David’s character not-Jewish, but I think the film would have lost a layer of depth if he’d done that.
I actually really LIKED David, even though I knew from the beginning that he was bad news. A lot of that was because of Peter Sarsgaard’s performance, but I think the whole film presents him as a charming and likeable person, even though he is flawed. And those flaws have nothing to do with being Jewish, at least in my eyes. To me, his being Jewish exposed prejudices in the other characters – prejudices that I’m sure existed pretty rampantly at the time and place depicted – and showed them to be flawed characters, as flawed as David is.
Then again, as I say, it’s not something I probably know enough about to speak to the film’s intent. I can only say what I got out of it.
As for Precious, I still haven’t seen it so it’s tough to say for sure, but I see it as progress that a story that isn’t inherently a black story can be told in a film where all the major players (cast, director, etc.) are black.
Magically Delicious says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 7:40am
This reminds me of a 30 Rock episode in which Liz goes out on a date with a black man and finds she does not like him, but he doesn’t believe it:
Liz: I truly don’t like you as a person. Can’t one human being not like another human being? Can’t we all just not get along?
Steven: Liz, I wish it could be like that… and maybe someday our children or our children’s children will hate each other like that, but it just doesn’t work that way today.
Liz: So what you’re saying is that any woman that doesn’t like you is a racist.
Steven: No, no, no, no, no. Some women are gay.
Dan says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 7:40am
So the argument is that An Education is anti-semitic because the David character is Jewish (just like in real life) and because people from the 60s make anti-semitic comments (just like they did/do in real life)? This honestly made me want to scream at Irina Bragen.
Just because a movie has a bad/amoral character who is a Jew doesn’t mean that it’s anti-semitic, any more than a movie with a bad dude who is Catholic is anti-Catholic. Not everything is made with some insidious racist agenda, get over yourself and your persecution complex.
Cissa says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 7:46am
Hmmm. I can’t respond as a USern or British, but as a Latin American: I guess when those societies start looking at people first as “humans” instead as “blacks”, “jews”, “this”, “thats”, discussions and articles such as those exposed above wouldn’t happen. Everyone’s human, everyone’s subject to suffereing, to making mistakes, to getting things right or wrong. Color, race, religion don’t make anyone more or less prone to feelings, casualties and what not. It’s hard for me to try to understand why some people still insist on separating themselves from other human beings based on superficial so-called “reasons” or motives. That’s very unhuman I must say. That’s trying to believe that certain conditions and events can only happen to certain groups, such hipocrisy.
Ezekiel says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 8:04am
I would comment more but Aragorn hit the nail on the head perfectly in comments 3 and 6. Nothing more to say really.
nick m-c says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 8:35am
I’m not buying it from either of these articles. SHAME ON MR. REED. Really. The Blind Side and Avatar are BOTH more overtly racist than either of these two films. But they’ll continue to howl at the rain. It’s much easier to attack the more critically acclaimed movies that no one’s seen, than to alienate the masses by pointing out real anglo-dominated stories in blockbusters. For shame…
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE FOR BEST PIC :( says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:07am
RACISM EXIST: Chocolate for the news!
At least if your leaving in Earth Planet…Sorry but its inevitable…
Afrika is back bishes says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:08am
This is a bunch of bullshit. Ishmael Reed needs to shut the hell up. A majority of the people who went to the theaters to see Precious were black. I watched Precious during the summer in Atlanta. I was visiting a friend from high school there and we went to the theater together. It was the largest multiplex theater in Atlanta and the room could fit hundreds of people. Amid the sea of people, I could not spot a single white person; not even one. I rewatched Precious again in the Midwest with a friend and I noticed the same racial trend in the theater. Black people have overwhelmingly supported this movie so all this claptrap about race is a bunch of bullshit.
Mr Reed, shut the fuck up.
arjay says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:27am
Movies aren’t like hyperdermic needles. You don’t go to see them and suddenly get infected with what you see. You don’t see a Jewish character acting a certain way and automatically believe all Jewish characters act that way. Good characters aren’t “representatives” or ciphers of certain demographic groups, they are characters. If the way they behave is believable then it’s justifiable.
Douglas says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:34am
The argument for Precious being racist is dumb. The amount of blacks becoming attracted to and supporting the film is a huge. While not everyone may not enjoy it (I and my co-workers (1 Mixed, 1 Black) did not) everyone agrees why it’s still respected and still has value to it. It still pushed for 2 more Black Actors and Director to gain some respect from critics and the Academy. And it’s different from the usual Tyler Perry schlock the relies and the same old stereotypes to grab jokes from.
If anything THE BLIND SIDE is WAYYYYYYY worse in rooting off from that white guilt to produce the film. You’re telling me a film following a southern white women with an all too perfect family saves this borderline retarded and talentless black kid and saves him to become an NFL talent? Ha. now that’s bad.
daveylow says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:35am
Unless you did a survey of all black viewers of Precious, and it doesn’t seem like anyone has, I don’t know if you can say if black audiences support or don’t support the movie. It seems some of these articles are based on conjecture with no sources to back them up.
I was not aware of a lot of attacks against An Education for being anti-Semitic so it looks like whoever wrote this article is trying to stir things up.
filmfemme says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:37am
I know several African Americans who thought “Precious” was great, myself included. And I also saw it in a sold-out theater with a mostly Black audience. Ishmael Reed’s intelligensia friends do NOT equal ALL Black people.
And this so-called controversy with “An Education” is so “mountain out of a molehill” material.
daveylow says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:41am
So I could attend a screening of Precious with mostly black people and most of them could hate it. What does that prove? That all black people hate the movie? Obviously not.
cris says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:41am
Fuck all this…. i am so tired of at least once or twice a year, people complain about racism in movies…. when are people going to learn that movies are about having fun. that they are about telling intresting and amazing stories, whether they are true or not. let’s face it, i fuck… hate racism of any kind, jews, black, gays, women, senior citizen, etc. etc. but the truth is, they did happen and some of this kind of racism are still happening (which is unbelievable in this day and age) but it still happens. LEE made a great film and he is JUST telling a story. a great and important and very difficult story and what do people do? critize it !!! which is not wrong… IF THEY ARE CRITICIZING the filmmaking aspect of it. or the acting. or the editing. but no, they critize that they made it for white americans. are you serious, really? fuck the assholes who try to always find something stupid and negative in great films just so they may seem smarter, which is all the contrary, they just look dumb. People should never forget that movies are a fucking experience and should be measured by how much fun you had watching it. or how much it changed you while watching it (or after). these movies had good stories and i bet anything i own that when a filmmaker is making a movie he just want to create the best fucking movie he can so EVERYBODY can enjoyed. not just certain kind of people or a minority.
Bob Burns says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:47am
and speaking of which…. all gays are suicidal pedophiles, right?
great essay, Sasha. A Single Man does reinforce a stereotype, but so what? It’s a very real story and we come to know the individual beyond the stereotype. Same thing, IMO.
David says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:50am
Honestly, I thought “An Education” was more an attack on Christianity than it was an attack on Judeaism. My friend and I were laughably stunned when she said that the Jews killed their Lord. But not because we thought it was Anti-Semitic. Rather, it seemed almost like a jab at Christians because it’s something they just can’t let go of — nor can they understand that their own Savior was, indeed, a Jew, himself.
For me, that is less saying that Jews are Christ-killers, and more saying that Christians are grudge-holding nincompoops.
So, you can read into it however you would like and find what you’re looking for, I suppose. That was just how we interpreted it.
As for “Precious,” I find all of this nonsense to be ridiculous. Within minutes, you become so absorbed in Gabourey’s performance, you forget you’re watching a “black” story (whatever that means). There is virtually no context of race anywhere in the movie, and as someone who was physically and verbally abused growing up, I latched onto the narrative not because of the fact that she was black and I’m white, or she’s a woman and I’m a man, and that makes me feel good (for whatever reason. But because it was a character that I could see myself in. Here is a character that, at face value, on the surface, I have nothing in common with, and yet, there is something significant that we both share. That’s called a story of the human condition. Get used to it America.
Andrew says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:51am
I had a discussion with my Jewish grandmother about “An Education” and we both agreed that the plot line about David being Jewish seemed out of place in the story – it was enough that he was older and a con man wasn’t it? The fact that the story made a point of him being Jewish for no real reason – it isn’t a holocaust movie – gave the film a whiff of antisemitism. It was very subtle but it actually ruined the film for me.
Pierre de Plume says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:51am
I believe that Precious is controversial because it tackles unpleasant subjects, so it comes as no surprise that peoples’ reactions — regardless of their color — will be all over the map. Despite the film’s raw power, my disappointment is that the apparent inexperience of the director resulted in an uneven result. I’m hoping that Daniels will get better with time, as it’s clear he has talent and something important to say.
Afrika is back bishes says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:54am
Andrew
You raise a good and valid point.
lizriz says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:54am
“When a character like Emma Thompson makes blatant anti Semitic statements in a modern film, we expect that she will eventually be exposed for her ugly prejudices; in a coming of age story, especially, we expect that the education of the heroine would include her awakening to the falsehood of the racial slurs and stereotypes thrown at her by the corrupt adults in her world.”
We do? One can’t make a movie unless it’s a morality play? Nothing can be left to lie out there for our own examination? What a load of bunk.
the other mike says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:55am
i have a lot of respect for Ishmael Reed, he was out there on the front lines in the 60′s and 70′s and had a huge influence on the great Richard Pryors outlook.
i think his argument is why these sort of black films get rewarded by the academy. i have to say 85% of the roles black actors have won for are stereotypical. Maids, magic negroes, crooked cops, tyrants, sassy mamas, and now a nutcase welfare queen.
matt says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:59am
From what I’ve read, Prof. Reed seems to be a very intelligent man, but it seems his emotions toward the movie and his feelings about the subjugation of blacks in general are clouding his ability to criticize the movie objectively. I agree with Gleiberman that, granted Reed is a different person with a different lens of the world, but he does seem to have viewed a different movie than I did. His essay on Precious makes all sorts of jumps in logic (perhaps based more on his observations of the world instead). In another essay of his, he lambasts the Precious producer Sarah Siegel by saying “if you Google her name, Sarah Siegel, along with “images” you’ll find her posing in photos some of which have blacks smooching her.” (http://www.counterpunch.org/reed12042009.html) When I checked, the only photo that met those descriptions was one of Precious director Lee Daniels “smooching her.” (http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/3nRazZrJEg3/Push+Based+Novel+Sapphire+2009+Sundance+Portrait/mp-ihPyXZzE/Sarah+Siegel-Magness) Uninformed points like these make it hard to accept Reed’s argument.
To his credit, Reed does seem to be willing to listen to his opponents in the comments section here:
http://www.indypendent.org/2009/12/08/precious-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-movie/
Pierre de Plume says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:17am
I agree, lizriz (#27). It seems that a lot of people want movies to assume the role of advocacy in what I consider to be a didactic, heavy-handed manner.
Films are often successful not because they’re good but because people agree with the politics portrayed in a not-so-subtle manner. (These politics can reside at any point on the spectrum.) To me, this is more the business of documentaries than narrative filmmaking. Good art looks at shades of grey — life’s complexities — and spurs people to think and feel for themselves.
wabbit says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:25am
It seems like Ishmael Reed watched “The Blind Side” and wrote about “Precious.” I’ve seen both and found “The Blind Side” to a have a horrible ‘white savior’ message. If he’d written basically the same essay about “The Blind Side,” I’d agree with him. Maybe he’s getting senile and forgot which film he saw?
“Precious” is about a strong-willed black teenager trying to pull herself out the hard world she’s in with the help of black teachers, black role models, and black community – in spite of her black mother.
“The Blind Side” is about a helpless black teenager who can’t do anything about the hard world he’s in without the the help of his white mother, white family, and white role models – in spite of the entire black community.
Read more:
Mark Blankenship, The Huffington Post: “[The Blind Side] begs us to feel sorry for black people and feel grateful that there are white people in the world who can take [care] of them. A story like that dehumanizes black and white people alike. It irons the complexity out of life and replaces it with a simplistic lie.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-blankenship/should-we-want-movies-lik_b_293888.html
Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: “[The Blind Side] peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the rescue of blacks who become superfluous in narratives that are supposed to be about them… The filmmakers would like to lull you to sleep with this milk of amnesia, hiding behind the fact that this bewilderingly condescending movie is based on an actual person – but one who you end up knowing almost nothing about.”
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-11-17/film/saintly-white-people-do-the-saving-in-the-blind-side
As for the Oscar race – Sandra Bullock plays a strong female character (which we need more of in film), but it’s a fairly one-dimensional character – pretty much based on strength alone. Gabourey Sidibe plays a nuanced character that reaches extremes – from crying to laughing, full of quiet strength, outspoken when necessary – with a wide range of emotion.
menyc says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:39am
@24Andrew: But isn’t AE based on a true story? Maybe it seemed important to include his religious background to show the tension in early ’60s
San FranCinema says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:39am
Owen Gleiberman rightfully hits back at Ishmael Reed.
http://movie-critics.ew.com/2010/02/08/the-attacks-on-precious/
Matt says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 11:02am
People who make charges of racism and anti-semitism in film are retarded.
J.P., Esq. says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 11:04am
Both of these articles raised my ire, but Bergman’s article specifically. It seems to me that she was actively looking for reasons to declare that film anti-semitic. Simply because one character makes anti-semitic remarks, something entirely plausible coming from an older individual living in the 1960′s Britain, does NOT mean that the entire film espouses that character’s views. Just because David, a character based on an actual human being, engages in behavior most would deem unsavory, does NOT mean every Jew currently living engages in that behavior or that the film endorses such a view.
To me, although I have yet to see either film (hope to do so shortly), both Precious and An Education are about the human condition, about weaknesses present in all human beings of any race, religion, or cultural background. I am reminded of the last scene in Ibsen’s play Miss Julie. (Spoiler Alert!) At the end of the play, Julie commits suicide. One of the characters exclaims something like “People don’t do these things!” Ibsen’s point was that people DO, in fact, do these things, and I’m going to show you. Both films show behavior capable by all humans, and are certainly not endorsing such behavior. Nor do I see Precious as about “assimilating” the “savages.”
While I enjoy escapist art such as Avatar, I admire art that pokes into the dark corners of the human condition to make us think, and perhaps give us hope that we can rise above our weaknesses and our unfortunate backgrounds. Comparing Precious to a D.W. Griffith movie? Really Mr. Reed? Learning to read and write is “assimilating?” I hardly see Precious as making that same sort of blanket statement using the horrendous cultural stereotypes used by Griffith.
No, these movies are ultimately an exploration the human condition, applicable to all. Precious should have a good response by white audiences as it is a film intended for all to see. Ok, that’s enough rambling for now.
Sasha Stone says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 11:16am
San Fran, did you even read the article? Gleiberman is quoted at length – you just have to glance upwards.
Blacktie says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12:00pm
filmboymichael (#3)
Paula Patton is African-American and was portraying an African-American character.
unlikelyhood says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12:01pm
There’s an unusual amount of race in this race. Glad that’s getting a conversation going, if nothing else.
Haha says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12:29pm
Some people just love getting offended so much that they will examine every little thing in a piece of art so they can get off by the fact that it offended them. At the end of the day, you don’t have to agree with films to like or respect them. People are dumb.
David being Jewish was odd though because it didn’t contribute anything to the movie other than the Emma Thompson line. :shrug:
It was complexity for the sake of complexity, left open to interpret however. IMO. But I didn’t see it as offensive.
daveylow says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12:42pm
An Education is based on a true story. If they had not made David Jewish, would the writer above attack the film for erasing his identity?
As for Emma Thompson, it’s pretty clear if you watch the film that Jenny does not tolerate Thompson’s character’s comment about the Jews, and Jenny herself is not anti-Semitic. Does the writer of the essay know anything about attitudes in London in the 60s? And is she saying that a filmmaker has to follow certain rules when they’re trying to portray characters’ prejudices in the past?
Aragorn75 says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12:44pm
So based on these articles, can we say that no movie based on racist characters can be made? or no movie about a anti-Semitic family for example? What about if someone wants to make a movie about a crazy lunatic who thinks all the problems are caused by the Jews (Muslims) and start killing jewish/Muslim people? Probably not possible! So isnt this CENSORSHIP? What happened to the freedom of expression? Dont those racist/anti-Semitic people still exist today? So whats wrong about making movies about them?
R. Kurt Osenlund says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 1:00pm
Owen Gleiberman said it best: Since when does learning to read equate to learning the ways of white culture? I met Lee Daniels, and in no way did I take him for a filmmaker trying to appeal to some white agenda. And so what if he said he wants more middle-class white Americans to see it? That remark is clearly intended to mean he wants the film’s accolades to broaden it to an audience it’s NOT exactly made for. This particular bit of the “Precious” backlash is asinine. It’s reaching for something that isn’t there.
Paddy M says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 1:00pm
Peter Sarsgaard’s wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal, is jewish. I doubt that he would have accepted the role of David if it were as Irina Bragen supposes it to be. And I wonder has she completely missed the point about Emma Thompson’s character – maybe Hornby and Scherfig wanted to convey the racist attitudes prevalent in the English middle-class in the 60s, maybe they’re not defending her racism. I didn’t come out of the cinema rallying after Thompson’s character as the savior of the story, my heart went out to Jenny, and Miss Stubbs.
Devlin says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 1:21pm
Good to see that most commenters can smell the BS in both these arguments. I just think these are over senstitive media types looking to create a story where there isn’t one.
I agree with whoever said that Emma Thompson’s character is the most unsympathetic character in the film – more so than David. Putting that much weight on such a minor, dislikeable character’s words is ridiculous. Also, I had to comment on this from the An Education article…
“Baltake is one of a minority of critics to acknowledge the film’s anti-Semitism (many of the glowing reviews fail to even mention that Jenny’s seducer is Jewish, or that the word “Jew” appears in the film)”
Uh…Maybe that’s because David being Jewish is not an issue for most reviewers and audience members, unlike the person who wrote this piece. We are all past that sort of thing, it’s just part of who the character is. Do we have to mention that Anthony Mackie’s character in The Hurt Locker is black? Or that the kid from Up is asian?! So everytime the word “Jew” appears in a movie, we need to warn everyone? I didn’t catch who wrote this, but this is complete crap. Get over yourself! (which is where the problem really lies, eh)
“If we criticize every type of minority portrayed in a film because they aren’t portrayed in a “good light” we are going to have a very bland slate of films to choose from because everyone looks, acts and talks the same way” – Well said, Sasha.
GMJ says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 2:02pm
“Attacks of Precious are starting to say more about the attackers”
In my opinion, the EW headline writer should have removed the words “are starting to”. One’s personal experiences may have some influence on how someone experiences a movie, a television show, a book, etc.
I suspect Op-Ed writer Ishmael Reed has never met filmmaker Lee Daniels. I also suspect that the life experiences of 72 year old Reed and 50 year old Daniels are also very different. Would Reed have written a different Op-Ed piece if he met Daniels or the people associated with the movie? Who knows.
Checko says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 2:36pm
i think is ridiculous that the people spend so many time trying to look for the negative things.. just because a film shows the reality about the world doesn’t mean is racist or hateful.. so are you telling me that milk was homophobic because the gay lead dies?? if i can remember scary movie was a very racist film produced, wrote an directed by black people and african american comunity didn’t say “racist, racist..” if precious was a comedy they would love it (madea, anyone?) but because white, latin, european, asian every people is loving the film.. they say “RACIST”.. so now who’s the racist?.. and that sad true is that the people who’s so negative is the people who should be happy that a film about their commmunity is getting so much attention.. when was the last time a film about black people directed by an african american was nominated for best picture? c’mon be positive people
Reichdome says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 3:20pm
do i spy a sinister smear campaign attempted by a ridiculously conservative press? honestly the conservatives need to accept progressive ideals in film else they shouyld get lost disgraceful
brainypirate says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 4:07pm
@34: really — you’re going to use that term?
jnow says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 4:22pm
RE: An Education
Right. Because Grifters in other cultures aren’t frowned upon? In “An Education” David was referring to he and his friend as “we” as in “Grifters”… not “Jews”. It’s like Michael Corleone referring to “we” in the Godfather as Catholic, as opposed to “we” as in his family/business.
Seriously. Article is stretching a bit.
Silencio says:
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 4:24pm
Wow. That interpretation of An Education is…stunning. People are really good at finding stuff to be mad about.