Still not seeing Harriet

Given what I have posted previously, going to see Harriet should be a no-brainer for me; I like Kasi Lemmons and I like Harriet Tubman.

I can't do it, for a few different reasons.

One reason is the casting of London-born Cynthia Erivo. I am not automatically against giving US roles to British actors, though I think it happens more often than it needs to. (There was a Key & Peele sketch about that.) I mean, after the "Minty" episode of Underground, it's going to be hard seeing anyone other than (Brooklyn-born) Aisha Hinds as Tubman, but other people get to play roles that different people did well. I get that.

(Lemmons has addressed that by pointing out that there was a lot of African-American representation, both in front of and behind the camera, and I respect that.)

However, Erivo has a bit of a reputation of saying messed up things about US Black people. Anti-Blackness is a thing, and it has been a successful export of the US in very disappointing ways, but the way some Black people consume that is by looking down on the descendants of enslaved people and that is not cool. As far as I can tell, the closest Erivo has come to an apology is saying things were taken out of context.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1044181901706178560.html

That in itself might not be enough to keep me from watching the movie, but it also doesn't seem to be enough about Harriet. It introduces a non-historical character who can be killed to up the stakes. It has a white man save Harriet's life by killing a Black man. It adds drama in stupid ways. Harriet Tubman's life was interesting enough without needing to do that. You want action? Include the Combahee River Raid.

I don't doubt that many people have found the movie good and inspiring, and I hope so, I guess, but I also know it could be better.

Here's the thing: writer Gregory Allen Howard started working on the script in 1994, a time when it was suggested that Julia Roberts could play Tubman.

https://ew.com/movies/2019/11/19/julia-roberts-harriet-tubman-studio-exec-suggestion/

That is more interesting to me after having watched Rosewood (1997), directed by John Singleton. It was a mess.

It was based on a true story, had a director I like, and tells an important story, in this case about a massacre similar to Black Wall Street though smaller in scale. With all of that material to use, it focused way too much on the white people, like shopkeeper Jon Voight, who harries two guys with a train to rescue people, then makes them go faster than they can - breaking the train - and then helps them fix it. Hero! It did not look at all like the kind of stupid masculinity that gets people killed in the name of macho. (Also, when other refugees were coming and it was a concern that the train would get too full, they shot at them. I thought that sent a poor message.)

I would complain that none of the Black characters are given meaningful  character development, but the white ones don't really get that either. Maybe Jon Voight's wife does. She earns the approval of her stepchildren by defending them with a shotgun. (Yes, normally a job for a white guy, but he was busy breaking the train.) But that Black girl Jon Voight was sleeping with? She had to die, and she had to die because she was too ashamed to take shelter in his house.

Otherwise, a triumphant ending to so many Black people dead or displaced is that Loren Dean goes home and beats his cheating wife whose lying set off the killings, and the gross old racist's son rejects his teaching and leaves home.

It may not be a coincidence that one of the running themes in Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) is that Samuel L. Jackson keeps assuming Bruce Willis is racist, and he is wrong every time. That's just Black people having a chip on their shoulder. Apparently the 90s were about being over racism but not everyone getting the memo.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think a single one of those movies had bad intentions. Intent just isn't enough. It is also important to be able to de-center, and to be able to remove pet ideas when they would be inappropriate to the greater work.

To be fair, there are many movies that I don't see, but this is one I would have liked to have been able to root for. I don't know that I blame anyone involved - it's a tough industry, and they may have done things to make it better - but I can go see other things.