Rascism in Manderlay
-
deadbunny28 — 14 years ago(December 16, 2011 08:36 PM)
hey i haven't seen this film yet, but i have seen a few other works of his where there is racism shown, but really to me it always seemed more like von trier poking fun at it rather than him being racist himself
examples: Dear Wendy - when the girl mentions to the main character that she thinks the black guy is handsome, he remarks that he doesn't see what is so good looking about him, he just sees that hes dark
if anything what he did here was the exact same thing they did in blaxploitation films with sex role reversal, if anything he did it better bcus i laughed harder
Dogville - they have the mammy caricature and her invalid helpless daughter
if anything in this example he pokes fun at America for their portrayal of blacks like that
So even though I haven't seen this movie yet, I'm betting by his previous examples that it is just him poking fun at racism again and making a social point -
NxNWRocks — 18 years ago(February 09, 2008 04:13 PM)
- I think you have entirely misunderstood the meaning of the epilogue. Or do you deny that there are some people in society - of all races - who do not accept a helping hand, unless that means the hand does everything for them? The group of slaves in the film had never known how to live for themselves, which makes their decision not to embrace the freedom offered by Grace unfortunate to say the least. But I think Von Trier's point is you take a helping hand to pull yourself up, the rest is then up to you. As this pertains to blacks in America, even blacks themselves, such as Bill Cosby, are speaking out against a certain percentage who do nothing to help themselves. This trilogy is, after all, called Land of Opportunities.
- If you are going to critique the epilogue, it helps to get it exact, not "words to the effect."
- Racism is a word thrown around so much and so easily nowadays, which belies the notion that America has gotten over race. We haven't. We are still as obsessed about it as we ever were, but we can hardly even speak of racial matters, particularly socioeconomic factors - without the race card being played on either side.
"Youve no wounds to show, so wash your car in your X baseball shoes."
-
allan_traynor — 18 years ago(February 15, 2008 05:45 AM)
who says the narrator is correct anyway? is the narrator not merely conveying a perception for us to judge? just like any other characters opinion in the story?
it's there to open the debate, which is what i think this thread has done.
www.fifesfinestonline.co.uk -
bas215a — 18 years ago(March 12, 2008 09:16 PM)
I love some of Von Triers movies but I could not get through this one. The idea that slaves would not know what to do with their freedom, is absolute crap. There are hundred of slave narratives, political entreaties and interviews about how slaves resisted their status and runaway when the opportunity presented itself. African Americans have only had constitutional rights since 1964. You feel that privileges and advantages of the prior centuries have been completely erased in less than 50 years? Do you live in the same country I do or are you just very young?
Please learn a little history before bash the experience that millions of people live in every day. Maybe your dream world will exist some day but it is not now. Maybe it will happen when the U.S. has an African American president? In light of the smears that are endured by Barack Obama (he is drug dealer, a secret Muslim, is anti-American, not American enough, not patriotic, and is only winning the democratic election because of his race, need I go on????) Would you like to repeat your Pollyanna view of race in light of the current American election season?
"Yeah, I killed them and I hope they burn in hell!' - Samuel L. Jackson, A Time to Kill -
chubsmcgee — 18 years ago(March 22, 2008 05:06 PM)
I'm about 98 percent sure that the narrator was being sarcastic at the end. He was showing what Grace was thinking as she fled the plantation confused and angry. He wasn't trying to suggest that he believed it was the fault of African Americans for any hardships they endure. Rather he was suggesting the futility of Grace (or I guess in Lars von trier's phobia ridden little mind, America) going so blindly into helping this people or any group of people deemed of needing help (ie. Iraqis). The movie was summed up in the opening when William Defoe was reminding Grace of what happened when she was a child and tried to help her Tweety bird.
I hope that clears some stuff up. -
huh_oh_i_c — 17 years ago(May 18, 2008 07:43 PM)
Hmm, I do HOPE he was sarcastic in the end, because this is a hurtful thing to hear for blacks, all over the world, not just African Americans.
But the narrator is the important part of the movie. The narrator, that is the opinion of the movie, of the maker, the message that it is trying to convey.
The fact that most of the former slaves knew about the origin of Mams Law suggests that they had more of say in matters than was obvious at first.
Wilhelms "How dumb do you really think we are?" is very revealing to me, in that respect.
The ones "refusing a helping hand" might have been directed to all, not just the blacks.
No matter how it was intended, and I don't think that Von Trier is a racist, although he might feel superior in some ways, we know it can be interpreted as racist, by those who are already racist and weren't gonna change that after seeing this film.
The Imdb quotes here reflect only those parts of the film which makes whites look good, I tried to correct that with quotes where whites are being criticized.
Condoms
cause teens to have
SEX
just like
roofs
cause
RAIN
Atheism is a
religion
like
NOT
collecting stamps is a
HOBBY -
kwalstedt-1 — 17 years ago(October 12, 2008 05:11 PM)
I thought the narrator was heavily sarcastic throughout the film, though possibly most so at the end. To me the point of the film was that white liberal do-gooders are just as racist and destructive in the end as white conservatives. Von Trier protrays white liberals by turns as guilty, privileged, arrogant, naive, hypocritical, and ultimately useless. Grace thinks she knows better than the slave community that she "frees" and assumes she needs to take charge of and educate. She does not ask if they want her "help" and she does not take in any of what the people of Manderlay are telling her and showing her. She blindly proceeds with her mission, driven by guilt, righteousness, arrogance and some genuine caring mixed in. But her belief that she can and should control everything in their world ultimately leads to naught. If she had any redeeming qualities, her failure might have led her to self-reproach and introspection, but instead it makes her turn on the people she thought it was her mission to help. It's a bleak condemnation of American society by a director who can't manage any sympathy for any of his subjects.
-
Tchoutoye — 14 years ago(October 21, 2011 06:00 PM)
The narrator, that is the opinion of the movie, of the maker, the message that it is trying to convey.
Not necessarily. One of the tropes of fiction is that of the unreliable narrator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
One of the weakest elements of both Dogville and Manderlay are the highly suggestive photo montages during the end credits, when the abstract allegories that constitute both films are connected to real life events.
Is Von Trier suggesting that all blacks are like those in the film? I surely hope not. I'm willing to give the director the benefit of the doubt and consider the epilogue narration an attempt to be provocative on a sensitive issue, which, due to its suggestive ambiguity, somewhat clumsily backfired and lends itself to misinterpretation. -
puradrea — 14 years ago(January 28, 2012 11:32 AM)
I'm 99.9% sure the' helping hand' comment was sarcastic (listen to the tone of voice againit was dripping with sarcasm). If you recall, the 'helping hand' in the beginning that lynched the husband who was willing trying to escape his brutal wife was directly compared to Grace's character. Grace, an arrogant, spoiled rich girl imparting her world view through force. While Von Trier's film was 'about' slavery, it was actually a parable for Americathe hypocritical pattern of wreaking havoc then forcibly extending a 'helping' hand to the poor, misguided people who are just too ignorant to pick themselves up and require assistance to free themselves (once again, Iraq). The pictures in the epilogue tell the narrative of the brutality that African-Americans have faced from slavery onward, depicted our leaders assassinatedI think Von Trier is very aware of American history, and the storyline of this parable was not a universal condemnation of African-Americans (it was after all one shocking little enclave in Alabama), but an example of how human behavior can be impacted by oppression and more-so how arrogant and hypocritical Americans can be by imposing freedom by force as an excuse to alleviate guilt for past transgressions. He basically lets you know that this was a parable for the Iraq war by showing the picture of President Bush in the epilogue's montage (not just there because Bush doesn't care about Black people)
By the way, I'm African-American too and was not in the least offended by this film. While I can't say that all of his films are 'enjoyable,' Von Trier has some really large cojones -
todnshel — 17 years ago(June 20, 2008 09:14 PM)
to quote you on this .I love some of Von Triers movies but I could not get through this one. The idea that slaves would not know what to do with their freedom, is absolute crap. There are hundred of slave narratives, political entreaties and interviews about how slaves resisted their status and runaway when the opportunity presented itself. African Americans have only had constitutional rights since 1964. You feel that privileges and advantages of the prior centuries have been completely erased in less than 50 years? Do you live in the same country I do or are you just very young? I dont find it so hard to believe that they would be hesitant or afraid or unsure. Much like a prisoner who has been conditioned to prison life and following a set schedule for 30 years and then suddenly set free. It can be very very scary.
Where would they go? who would house them? where do they get money? clothing? food? try to imagine if you will being kidnapped and set in another country, where no one knows you, you have nothing to your name, and whats more you are surrounded by the very same people that have forced you into a certain way all your life. So basically no one you can trust, or ask for help.
No the fact that they had a hard time trying to adjust isnt unrealistic to me when you think about it. -
PsychoDingo — 15 years ago(December 29, 2010 01:31 PM)
There are also many real-world stories of slaves who decided to stay with their former owners after being made free, just as there are many stories of freed prisoners who can't wait to get back into jail.
I think the point is not so much that slaves or prisoners are incapable of figuring out how to live as free people, but that some of them have developed comfort zones and want to stay in them, for better or worse, rather than deal with the unfamiliar.
Another thing worth considering is that it is a mistake to fall into the trap of thinking that a movie about 20 slaves is not a movie about all slaves. People need to learn that it is possible to address a certain segment of the population without extrapolating it across the entire population. Otherwise, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that Do The Right Thing is proof that Spike Lee thinks all black people are petty racists with ridiculous hair cuts and loud radios. -
MrsBuckyBarnes — 10 years ago(December 10, 2015 03:16 AM)
I love some of Von Triers movies but I could not get through this one. The idea that slaves would not know what to do with their freedom, is absolute crap. There are hundred of slave narratives, political entreaties and interviews about how slaves resisted their status and runaway when the opportunity presented itself.
i could not get past the first 15 minutes. it sickened me to see black survivors portrayed as naive simpletons who didn't even think of trying to challenge the oppression and demeaning categorisation they were experiencing until white lady bountiful came to save them. i understand from reading a synopsis that in the end the people of manderlay just cannot cope with being free and would prefer to revert back to being slaves with no future beyond the mansion. that is grotesque. -
Mr Nuff — 17 years ago(January 24, 2009 09:39 PM)
I have to hope that the "But if anybody refused to see a helping hand, he really only had himself to blame" line was sarcastic.
Regardless, it doesn't affect the film's overall message which appears to be that slavery isn't that bad of an institution; and that all white people are viciously racist, save for a few liberals whose white guilt will only end up making things worse for everybody.
I am astounded and angry. I have to meditate on this to see if that's truly the message von Trier is really making before I write my review. -
combatreview — 17 years ago(January 31, 2009 08:30 AM)
Blimey. This is a depressing thread.
First - OF COURSE THE NARRATION IS IRONIC. Apart from it being obvious in the tone of voice employed by John Hurt, the commentary is absolutely at odds with any reasonable interpretation of events on screen, at several points, and exactly as was the case in Dogville.
Second, this film isn't about slavery, nor attempting to be a realistic depiction of Africans, of Slavery, of whatever. You might see it as being about Iraq, actually, since it's pressing the argument that you cannot go from Tyranny to fully-functioning democracy in a matter of months because the distorted pattern of society cannot so easily be rectified.
It's even suggesting that a tyrannised population may find it easier to follow the strictures of the harsh autocracy they had always lived under than confront the decisions and self-determination that had been denied them previously. This may be controversial in that it offends our idealistic assumptions that all humans share equal capacities and equal entitlement to a set of standard freedoms, but that's idealism not observation of human behaviour. Note that humans will often opt for the imposition of a harsh set of rules rather than the chaos offered by freedom - whether that be on the individual basis of a person institutionalised in a prison and unable to live comfortably outside of that regime, or whether it be the people of an East European nation voting Communism back in a few short years after finally gaining democracy.
In any case, the sharp end of this narrative rests on Grace's neck. Her character is comprehensively assassinated throughout this film, despite her good intentions, and she ends up simply as a reincarnation of the tyranny she self-righteously removed - by force, at her own personal behest, and without the actual consent of, or consultation with, those she was liberating.
Grace is depicted, increasingly, as somebody who is no less racist than any of those she condemns - she imposes 'benevolent' racist stereotypes onto other people, most notably her eroticisation of one man, on whom she also imposes the 'noble savage' stereotype. She's too caught up in wanting to see this man as proud and noble, seemingly as gratification for her own lusts for the exotic (note the 'Orientalist' imagery of her dream) that she completely fails to recognise what should have been obvious about him. She refuses to judge him as a normal human being, because she is too much caught up with her own prejudiced assumptions to be objective. As one character points out to her at the end, if she contemptuous of the people she has wished to patronise, it is surely that she is contemptuous of herself - this is the society she created with her deliberate society-building good-intentions. Yet, the whole thing was poisoned from the beginning by the assumptions and narrow-mindedness that Grace brought in with her, and indeed by her assumption that her personal model of a good society could be imposed upon people, rather than letting them find out for themselves what kind of society they should have. In other words, she's as much of a tyrant as her predecessor, it's just that she smiles more and takes longer to resort to the lash.
When she leaves, and the narrator voices her thoughts, we are Absolutely Not supposed to agree with her. Clearly, people don't, and bridle at it. So why does it not occur to them that this was the intention? -
missprincipessa — 16 years ago(July 01, 2009 03:37 AM)
So MrNuff what's your verdict? i've re-watched and find it hard to see the sarcasm. Whether or not Von Trier's intentions were pure, i just felt generally insulted by this film.
Call me thick, call me ignorant, call oblivious if you like to his 'subtle style and implications' this one just doesn't do it for me
Also one shouldn't forget how much he loves to shock and disturb, and how self-righteous he can be I've always loved his work, and if/when he comes out with something new I'll see it but in this case I don't feel his argument of having been fed US media his entire life is enough to justify a supposed awareness and leveled, thoughtful view of the problem.
It feels more like an attempt to shock at any costs.
Furthermore as a little and interesting note the extras do show that when the cast and crew were shown that series of photographs during the credits, many of them were really offended by these, others willing to debate, but in any case, even among them, these photos created serious controversy. I vaguely remember a few walking out on the project but this may be wishful thinking.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
The Dude