History of the Black Movement in America
Today's recommended documentary "I am not your negro" (I am not your negro) was written, directed and narrated by James Baldwin, a representative of the black civil rights movement who was born in 1924. The film clips together films, TV series, historical materials, TV programs, and posters that reflect black issues in the United States. It is a window to understand the black movement in the United States, especially the social status of black people in popular culture and the history of the black movement.
At the beginning of the film, the screen is like a letter placed under a typewriter, and a line of black and white text is forcefully typed on it——
In 1979, James Baldwin decided to tell the story of three of his murdered friends - Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X), to talk about the United States in his eyes.
With a slow, low, calm and powerful narration (the narration is very beautifully written and has a strong literary color), Baldwin slowly narrates his personal experience, and uses the stories of three pioneers of the black movement to restore the history of the black movement in the United States in the 1960s for the audience. important node.
In 1957, black and white educational segregation began to be lifted. Dorothy Counts, then 15, was one of the first students admitted to an all-white high school. In the film, Baldwin described Dorothy as being surrounded by the crowd—
There was unutterable pride, tension and anguish in that girl's face as she approached the halls of learning, with history jeering at her back. It made me furious, it filled me with both hatred and pity. And it made me ashamed. Some one of us should have been there with her.
I'm not your "nigger"
The word "negro" in the movie's title is now generally considered an insult to black people. But in fact, it was a neutral word until the 19th century, dating back to Spanish and Portuguese in the mid-16th century. But since the African-American movement in the 1960s, the word has come to be seen as a rude expression of discriminatory overtones, and has faded out of everyday language along with related words such as neggress.
Yet on The Dick Cavett Show in 1968, the host asked in a very understatement, "Mr. Baldwin, you must have heard the saying that black people...why can't they be optimistic? A little? They say 'it's gotten a lot better' and now there's a black mayor, black people in all sports, black people in politics. Even in the lofty honors of TV commercials, black people are allowed to appear ...is it really getting better, but still hopeless?"
What are the negroes …why aren't they optimistic? Um…They say, but it's getting so much better. There are negro mayors, there are negroes in all of sports. There are negroes in politics. They're even accorded the ultimate accolade of being in television commercials now… Is it at once getting much better and still hopeless?
Baldwin replied: "I don't think there's really any hope, and I'll tell you the truth, as long as people keep talking like this, it's not how the niggas are doing, or how the black people are doing—that's what's going on with me. It's a very real question, but the real question is what will this country be like."
Well I don't think there's much hope for it, you know, to tell you the truth, as long as people are using this peculiar language. It's not a question of what happens to the Negro here, or to the black man here, that's a very vivid question for me, you know, but the real question is what's going to happen to this country.
This dialogue in the film is reminiscent of the French scholar Albert Memmi, who was also born in the 1920s, in his 1957 book The Colonizer and the Colonized. Colonizer and the Colonized) argues that colonizers legitimized colonial behavior in three main ways: First, constructed traits, constructing group characteristics that devalue the colonized and strengthening propaganda (such as laziness, greed, weakness, etc.) ); the second is the mark of plural, which means that the colonized will be called a group and given a collective identity (also known as pluralization); the third is deprivation of liberty, depriving the colonized of their freedom, and the colonized will be other than the colonized. No choice. The above behavior can be understood as the objectification of the colonized. There is no trace of humanity in the colonists, because TA has lost even a little sympathy for the experience of the colonized, and has lost the ability to understand and feel the situation and emotions of the colonized.
This is not only reflected in the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, but the same pattern can be seen in many other historical events. For example, during World War II, the Germans numbered Jews in the concentration camps, stamped the numbers on their bodies, and deprived the detainees of their names; as reflected in the movie, they clearly grew up in the same land and had the same nationality, but they were changed due to historical reasons. Black Americans who cannot be treated equally; what is even more alarming is that white people rightfully call them "negroes" without knowing it, without self-examination, and even thinking that black people have many rights.
I'm not your "XXX"
Although the film reflects the history of the black movement in the United States, its internal model and spiritual core can be transferred to many other issues - social inequality such as race, gender, class and other issues faced by different historical stages and different countries. Maybe you will say that you are not a Chinese who has been discriminated, abused or even personally attacked in the United States (or other countries), maybe you will say that you are not LGBT, maybe you think you are a well-off middle class who has never been rejected treated equally and unfairly. Even so, even if you happen to be a member of the "mainstream" in a safe zone, you may still face regional discrimination, gender discrimination, and all kinds of everyday problems that cannot be solved due to class constraints. Paying attention to and trying to solve the problem of inequality in society is not only to resist the inequality in our daily life and the sense of powerlessness that we may encounter, but also to more people who deserve attention, support and equal treatment. , to obtain due rights.
To borrow Baldwin's words: "The question is not what will happen to '...', but what will become of this country."
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