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Post by onebluestocking on Dec 5, 2020 16:11:39 GMT
I've been trying to understand this, because surely ignoring such a terrible history or pretending it never happened would be awful. On the other hand, maybe viewers get "slavery fatigue" and just want another story to be told. It might be like if most movies about women contained rapes or abuse, we would be tired of being portrayed as victims, and want a positive message for once. Of course, many movies contain heroism or uplifting role models, even when they are victims of something. I suppose I can see both sides.
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 5, 2020 17:15:01 GMT
I still asking the same question: why (direct) Holocaust survivors never moan about "Holocaust movies fatigue"? There are a lot of movies about it and for sure, there are people moaning about it! But they are all clear antisemits! Why is woke people the ones moaning about "slavery fatigue"? Why are the "good guys" the one who want to erase this part of history? And just for the record: it's woke social media people nor African Americans who say these kind of things and present it as a general opinion. It's not! Again they are saying, Harriet failed in the box office when the numbers and actual box office reports said the opposite.
I just finished Harriet and it's indeed a very conventional but not exactly formulistic bio. It's more an adventure movie. Very accessible and entertaining. But there is absolutely nothing exploitative about the way it presents black people. It's an action film with a kick ass heroine in the lead. She even has some supernatural powers! You can criticize the film because its conventionalism or because it surely contain ahistorical moments but without a doubt it has a very positive role model at the center. Also about the "white savior" character, I don't have idea what they were talking about. When she runs away, she is helped by a lot of people. Two of them whites but they are barely in the movie! The black characters that helped her are much more prominent. There's also a Senator in two short scenes and you can see that there are white people in the anti-slavery committee but all that was true. There were white people against slavery! I mean Brad Pitt in the much darker Twelve Years a Slave was much but much more a white savior than anyone here.
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Post by mllemass on Dec 5, 2020 17:19:28 GMT
I only saw those comments when The Hollywood Reported posted the story. It was the exact same story, with the exact same wording, that all the other entertainment websites had posted, but the reactions to it were all negative.
As I had mentioned, there were different types of comments. Some people didn’t want a white actor involved with this subject matter. Some mentioned that Benedict’s ancestors - and therefore he himself - were slave owners. Some were tired of movies about slavery, saying that there’s nothing left to say about it and everyone should just move on. Some felt sorry for Erivo and assumed that she was being forced to be in this movie.
It was clear that none of those tweeters had read the article or knew the story being told by the movie. I only know a tiny bit about it from the episode of Victoria. I’m looking forward to learning more about it!
The weirdest thing about the comments, though, is that people have misread THR’s tweet and seem to think that the quotation marks around the word “gifted” have been added by THR. So those people think they’re agreeing with THR’s opinion, but in fact that wording is the actual description of the movie.
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 5, 2020 17:52:55 GMT
I saw reactions when it was first announced. Actually I posted about it here then but they were indeed more yesterday when THR reposted it. Again it is not against BC. I guess you are seeing the tweets against him because you searched for him. I was searching her. I also investigated it the first time and the hateful comments against her are not new. It seems to me that there is a hate campaign against her. Their excuse is that she plays Americans and a dumb tweet she made in 2013.
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Post by mllemass on Dec 5, 2020 19:08:08 GMT
I don’t search for comments about him. I saw the tweet from THR because they mention him in their tweet. There weren’t very many comments at the time, and I don’t want to go back to read if there are more now!
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Post by roverpup on Dec 5, 2020 19:21:10 GMT
"Some mentioned that Benedict’s ancestors - and therefore he himself - were slave owners."
I don't get this at all. What kind of thinking person would proffer this argument? That total nonsense!
That would mean they believe racism is genetic? Like you inherit the slave owner genes from your ancestors?
I've got a very close friend whose father fought in WWII in the German army (he was on the Eastern Front). Is my friend a Nazi because his father was fighting for Germany in WWII? JFC!
And why should anyone give a shit about morons who spout such nonsense say? That's like saying we should all listen to what Qanon promoters say because EVERYONE'S opinions are equally valid! This stuff makes my blood boil!
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 5, 2020 19:37:30 GMT
I read them there yeasterday almost immediately after it was posted and were mainly about her. I was guessing that it was later that they linked him to the pseudo "polemic" because I also decided to stop reading them. Or maybe I already had blocked some of them! At most I saw one or two people mentioning the slave owner ancestor and there were like tens of comments. I was mostly angry at them ambiguously attacking her: suggesting she did or was doing something terrible announcing this movie without explaining what or why.
Anyway, anyone who dares to morally judge a movie or any work of art that they haven't watched and worse that it hasn't even be made are just "church ladies"! Maybe they claim to be liberals or progressives but they are just a bunch of "church ladies" and, of course, very sad individuals. It's very sad to have such a closed mind and being nothing more that a member of the angry mob.
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Post by queenzod on Dec 5, 2020 19:57:30 GMT
bUt He bEnEfITs fRoM hIs PrIViLeGe.
I miss the days when studios or whoever would make a film and release it and THEN people would review it and talk about it. Nobody cared (much) which movie star was shacking up with whom or mistakes in the script because it was none of our business. Twitter has made everyone feel like their opinion matters and that they’re free to spout whatever nonsense oozes out from their weak little brain cells. Everyone thinks they’re co-producing every single piece of entertainment now and have a right to chime in with their personal, stupid take on everything from casting to costuming. Mindless, woke drivel has taken over the airwaves.
Tired of movies about black people’s history, or superheroes, or the Holocaust, or too clever children saving the day, or whatever? Fine. Don’t watch them. But shut up about it. Wasn’t it just last year when people were complaining about not enough movies about POC? So they made more and now they’re all “no, not like that.” It’s ridiculous.
Dull.
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 5, 2020 20:13:09 GMT
"Some mentioned that Benedict’s ancestors - and therefore he himself - were slave owners." I don't get this at all. What kind of thinking person would proffer this argument? That total nonsense! That would mean they believe racism is genetic? Like you inherit the slave owner genes from your ancestors? I've got a very close friend whose father fought in WWII in the German army (he was on the Eastern Front). Is my friend a Nazi because his father was fighting for Germany in WWII? JFC! And why should anyone give a shit about morans who spout such nonsense say? That's like saying we should all listen to what Qanon promoters say because EVERYONE'S opinions are equally valid! This stuff makes my blood boil! You must be very fanatical to make those kind of arguments (not you, roverpup! The people who say those kind of things! ) but of course there are a few of them on the freak show that it's Twitter! The most hysterical comment I have read about BC's ancestor there , many months if not years ago, was by someone who thought it would be great if someone could shame BC asking him to show them photos of his family! Apparently they believe a) BC has photos of his slave owner ancestor; b) photography existed in the 18th century; c) Innocent people should be ashamed for what ancestors they obviously never met did centuries ago! These people don't believe in time and space! They are just oblivious of basic historical facts and, well, reason. It's indeed better to just ignore them. By the way, BC has also an abolitionist ancestor but he fought against slavery in Turkey and a good number of those slaves were white and the woke official line is that white slaves didn't exist.
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 5, 2020 20:38:44 GMT
I remember a The Times archivist posting a newspaper article about that other BC's ancestor fighting against the slave trade in the Ottoman empire but I actually found that he also defended Jews from persecution. www.thejc.com/news/uk/benedict-cumberbatch-and-the-case-of-the-blood-libel-1.55427He was a good man! Anyway those were his actions and not BC's but it's the same with the slave owner! It shows that there is always good and bad people behind ALL of us and that a name as Cumberbatch is very easy to track back!
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