I learn something new everyday. I was reading Orgtheory when I came across the above gem of a movie mentioned in the comments about the (recent) and oft discussed movie Django Unchained.
From what I can discern, The Black Klansman is about a black guy that can sort of pass, and looks like some of my cousins, who then infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, after they kill his daughter, in order to bring them down.
This brother is no Walter Francis White; however, he is very didactic and entertaining.
Whatever one thinks of Tarantino's body of work, he will be acknowledged for disrupting how mainstream audiences and critics view B-movies--those late night gems, drive in classics, and other guilty pleasure genre flicks--that were thrown on to the dustbin of film history before he and others in the postmodern turn elevated them to the level of "respectable" films.
It is true that popular culture is ephemeral and disposable. I have been long sympathetic to Adorno's concerns about how popular culture advances the agenda of Power and elites by offering up a space for the masses to self-medicate by projecting their dreams, anxieties, and hopes onto cultural objects, as they make themselves whole through consumerism.
Nevertheless, there remains something to be said about populism, and how regular folks repurpose popular culture for their own ends.
Popular movies can make money, be distributed through the Hollywood system, and still offer some type of political comment and critique. It is just harder for these types of movies to do so.
Now, we have Django Unchained. In the near future, I am hoping for a remake of The Black Klansman.
Will Lee Marvin's The Klansman be showing up again as well? And who would star in the movie if you were doing the casting?
8 comments:
why not go whole hog?
Time to change the Django Unchained Channel.
@paula. we are stuck in the 24/7 news cycle. but like mtv the same stuff is always on.
@lydon. i prefer rebirth of a nation. check it out if you can find it online.
Sam Fuller's clever exploitation flick, "Shock Corridor," featured a black insane-asylum inmate who thought he was a member of the KKK.
@BAW. Fuller? Wow. He was so prolific. I am going to have to check that out.
Yeah, saw it with "The Naked Kiss." Another Fuller curiosity id "White Dog," which was buried from general release for 20+ years or so---it's an anti-racist film that an African American group objected to.
@White Dog made me, and makes me cry, every time I see it. I remember stumbling upon it on TBS when I was in elementary school.
@CdV
Thanks for the tip on "White Dog." Had no idea it's right hit the TV universe. I learned about via a Film Forum NYC Sam Fuller Festival in the early '90s, but never caught it. I'll have to dig it up. BTW, I read that "Naked Kiss" has a nice new DVD print---it's freaky good.
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