|
The
Trouble With Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property
By Junious
Ricardo Stanton
Nat
Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory
When film producer/writer Frank Christopher
and co-producer/writer/historian Kenneth S. Greenberg set out to
create a film about Nat Turner they took on a truly Herculean
challenge. The two white producers enlisted Charles Burnett an
African-American to direct the film. This collaboration possibly
is the film's undoing. This is not to say Burnett is not a
skilled director. The trouble with Nat Turner: A Troublesome
Property is it lacks a definite point of view or vision.
The film exhibits the ambiguity Nat Turner
holds within the AmeriKKKan culture and psyche. He is demonized
and vilified by whites who defend this nation's legacy of
slavery and no matter how "liberal" or
"objective" the white historians and scholars in the
film profess to be, they are in effect rationalizing or
trivializing the institution of slavery. For Africans in
AmeriKKKa, Nat Turner represents an admirable figure, a man who
refusing to be dehumanized by an untenable situation challenged
the violence and degradation he experienced daily using a
spiritual calling and the weapons of his oppressors against
them, quite effectively.
The problem with this film is it depicts
Turner through both white and black eyes which is troublesome
enough; but it also interprets him through the eyes of the few
people, black or white, who wrote about him. The film makers
used material from Thomas R Gray the white (there were no black
lawyers in 1831) Southampton County lawyer who visited Turner in
the Jerusalem jailhouse following his capture who allegedly
chronicled what Turner told him about the rebellion:
abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, black essayist William Wells
Brown, black playwright Randolph Edmunds and novelist William
Styron whose book The Confessions of Nat Turner created a
major controversy in the late 1960's.
In each vignette director Charles Burnett
attempts to remain faithful to each writer's vision of Turner.
Sadly at the conclusion of the film we still don't have a clear
picture of who Nat Turner was, what motivated him to organize
and lead a small band of avengers in Southampton County to lash
out against all the white slave owning families they encountered
as they traveled from farm to farm on August 21, 1831. To white
folks Turner is a madman, a fanatic at best, and. at worst, an
aberration, a man whose actions sent shock waves of fear and
dread throughout the United States of AmeriKKKa long after he
was captured and hanged in November of 1831.
To black people, conscious black men
especially, Nat Turner is the quintessential hero, a man of
uncompromising conviction who took bold action in an attempt to
secure his freedom. Alas, what we get after watching this film
is a picture of Nat Turner based on the race of the writers and
producer is an attempt by the black director to be inclusive of
limited material written about Turner. To me the film embodies
more of the white view of Turner, the irrational fanatic, who
based upon obscure visions and apocalyptic signs went on a
murderous rampage in Southampton County. That's how whites see
him.
Except for one or two brief sound bytes by
black historians and writers, nowhere in the film does the
viewer actually see or hear how egregiously dehumanizing the
institution of slavery actually was. The film reinforces white
supremacy, somehow those sixty or so whites killed by Turner and
his men were more valuable than the millions of blacks who were
brutalized, degraded and worked to death by the system upon
which AmeriKKKa was built. While the filmmakers intentions may
have been honorable, the result is a fiasco.
Little is known about Nat Turner's
background. The film does not endeavor to shed any light on him
as a person caught in the mire of a debasing and degrading
social system. To do so would have given the film a definitive
point of view, shown Turner's world through his eyes and
engendered sympathy for his plight, if not his actions.
Christopher and Greenberg were not about to do anything like
that. To do so would have been a revolutionary act on their part
and they never would have gotten funding to make the film in the
first place! Even if per chance they somehow secured funding
based on a rational vision of Nat Turner, they would have been
ostracized from the white filmmaking and historiography
communities.
So what we have is a film that fails to
educate us about Nat Turner the man, his times or the
psycho-social and political forces swirling around and shaping
him. It is a film, except for a few superficial details about
people who wrote about Turner, that only succeeds in reinforcing
the contradictory views and notions of Nat Turner held by whites
and blacks. At no time in the film does it occur to the white
commentators Nat Turner did what any man languishing in a
violent and insane environment would have done. To take this
point of view would force them to see themselves, AmeriKKKan
history, and black people in a different light. The chasm
between the black interpreters of Nat Turner and their white
counterparts due to our hostile power relationships, experiences,
and history in this country appear irreconcilable.
The last portion of the hour long film is
given over to novelist William Styron's explanation
(rationalization?) why he depicted Turner the way he did, why he
introduced the element of unrequited lust for a white teenager,
Margaret Whitehead, as the reason Turner killed her, the only
person Turner is credited with slaying during the rebellion.
Again, responses to Styron's literary license were strictly
along racial lines he was defended by whites and denounced by
blacks. The film like most white media purports to be objective
but in reality upholds an underlying premise of white supremacy.
They try to balance the various depictions of Turner juxtaposing
the differing racial sentiments about the man. However, the
depictions are not equal, the white views predominate which for
me is the film's most troubling aspect.
* * *
* *
Books
on Nathaniel Turner
(1800-1831)
The Manichean Leitmotif by
Arthur Graham / Nat
Turner
A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory by Kenneth
Greenberg
Nat
Turner Before the Bar of Judgment by Mary Kemp Davis /
Nat
Turner's Tragic Search by
Catherine Hermary-Vielle
The Rebellious Slave
Nat Turner in American Memory by Scot French
Nathaniel
Turner TimeLine / 1831
Confessions /
Sonnets in Memory of Nathaniel
Turner (Rudolph Lewis)
Nathaniel
Turner: Christian
Martyrdom in Southampton: A Theology of Black Liberation (Rudolph
Lewis)
Nat Turner in History's Multiple Mirrors
(Felecia R. Lee, NYTimes) / Hatcher
Plans to Exhibit Turner Skull
Insurrection
Of The Blacks Niles’ Register
Sept.
3 1831 / Sept.
10, 1831 / Sept
17, 1831
* * *
* *
* * * * *
|
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
By David Graeber
Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy. Economist Glenn Loury /Criminalizing a Race
|
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 17
February 2012
|
