Last week I finished watching the new Roots
miniseries. I also finished the Jackie Robinson documentary I had been trying
to get to since April, so the DVR and I are both feeling lighter.
There are a lot of thoughts all over the place, and
I am going to try and get them sorted out here in a somewhat logical manner.
The first thing I want to say is that I read and
loved the book, but I never watched the original mini-series. I'd thought about
watching it at times, but it came on in 1977 when I was five years old. It was
heavily promoted, and the image seared in my mind was the axe about to go down
on Kunta Kinte's foot. That seemed so horrible to me.
I know, not that long ago I wrote that I wasn't
squeamish. I'm not about medical things, and so far I have never seen anything
that nauseates me, though some smells come close. However, I am really subject
to sympathetic pain. For medical things, it is to help and steps are taken to
control pain, so I've eaten dinner while a surgical show was on and it was no
big deal. Hearing about pain - real or fictional - or seeing it does affect me.
The horror of that anticipated pain of amputation stuck with me for years.
Being 39 years older didn't help with that. I'm sure
they showed more, and they showed the continuing effect of the injury, and the
overseer touching the injury to make him hurt, and I was totally aware.
One of the reviews I read was somewhat critical of
the violence shown, not so much for its graphic nature, but that there was so
much resistance shown by the slaves, and they considered that to be a
side-effect of being in a post-Django Unchained society. I see the
point, but I think that is also selling the creators short.
One difference between 1977 and 2016 is that Juffure
was shown as much bigger in the newer one. That is more accurate. Alex Haley
said that he did not think people would accept the sight of a large African
city, but that is something we should be able to imagine now. (Can you imagine
if they had shown Timbuktu?)
We should also be better able to handle stories of
rebellion now. Amistad came out in 1997, so we know that rebellions could
happen on a ship. We should then not be too surprised to find out that it
happened more than once. We know that escaped slaves enlisted in the military,
so we should be able to accept that. There were two deaths where it seemed like
there would have been more fallout, but even then I can imagine how it would
have worked out*. Generally, most of the things that happened seemed pretty
plausible, including that there was much more violence inflicted by owners upon
slaves than vice versa. (And sometimes not even by owners but just rollers on
patrol, or anyone else who took a notion, because that's how it was.)
Gore was not generally dwelled upon. The Fort Pillow massacre could
certainly have shown more, and yet it got the point across. They did use
restraint.
In some ways, the most graphically disturbing scene
was a duel between two land owners, Irish upstart Tom Lea and disgustingly
arrogant on account of being born rich and not Irish William Byrd. While the
set-up showed exactly how horrible the land-owners could be too each other, and
how high the stakes for the slaves were, the duel itself showed exactly how
ineffective and stupid and ugly that pride could be.
They wounded each other, and were in horrible pain,
but would not stop until one was ready to essentially murder and the other
decided he would rather yield than also be stabbed, though he would have felt
no concern at turning murderer himself. It was disgusting, and that is exactly
as it should have been.
The violence was merely one aspect of the show. I
should have thoughts on some other aspects over the next two days.
*Spoilers: For me, that was when Kizzy killed one of
her captors trying to escape, but she was worth $600 and he wasn't, and when
George killed Frederick. Self-defense was not generally allowed, but they were leaving anyway;
maybe they just left fast enough.
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