So Miss Aleck is 3 months in the making and I’ve been trying since its conception to get SOMEBODY to allow me to try my hand at freelancing. Finally, it is here! My debut article for the mother of online Black Mags: Madame Noire!
I encourage you to read my sound off on all things related to race and film and leave your opinion too!
Here is a snippet!
Once again the Great White Hope comes in to save the day in another film chronicling a piece of black history. The buzz surrounding the release of the highly anticipated trailer for Django Unchained, is causing division in the black community. Big surprise? The grandfather of ‘revenge’ stories, Quentin Tarantino, is displaying slavery in a way that it has never been told on the big screen –a single slave’s quest to avenge himself. Of course, he cannot do it without the help of a white character who promises Django his freedom after he completes his slave master’s scripted hit list. Herein lays the controversy of the Hollywood heralded “Great White Hope” caricature vs actual history. Denmark Vesey, a real-life Carribean-Afrikkan slave did not consult a white abolitionist or Negro-friendly slave master before planning the biggest revolt in American history. He single-handedly shook up the plantations of the south. Yet, his story will never be splashed across the big screen without being brutally exaggerated by producers. The Django trailer did little to show any creative thinking on the part of a slave whose life had been stolen from him, instead it displayed his ability to be the brawn behind his white master’s brain. The Step-it-and-fetch-it act was almost disgraceful; still I imagine the theatres will be filled with people who have been craving a revenge story since the Kill Bill Trilogy.
Read more here
