Avoid Exclusionary, Either or Thinking
Junious Ricardo Stanton
There is a video going around featuring multi-millionaire songwriter, model, and actor Tyrese Gibson ranting about slave movies. In it he asks “how many more slave movies is Hollywood going to make?”
https://atlantablackstar.com/2019/10/15/ho... Gibson best known for his role in the Fast and Furious films disparages historical films about slavery like Harriet. The new bio-pic about Harriet Tubman was released over the weekend and made $12 million dollars. Not bad for a low budget film. In an interview he stated “When you support these movies that highlight us about things that happened in our history, is that the sum of what you know of black people? How many more nannies? How many more butlers? How many more slaves? How many more movies that’s going to project this energy off on to us, as if that’s all we ever was?”
Gibson goes on to extol Black Panther an extremely successful film which was based on fictional comic book character in a non-existent country called Wakanda as a ground breaker. Yes it gave Blacks opportunities in front of and behind the camera, but is he serious? It was a totally fictional block buster comic book movie! Gibson was clearly promoting his latest film Black and Blue which some critics have panned but has made $15,574,562 domestically and internationally since its release.
I get it, Black Panther offered African people in a new light albeit fictional; but his film Black and Blue is also fictional despite the fact Gibson brags about it being relevant and topical because it deals with police corruption. Obviously to Mr. Gibson’s way of thinking, police corruption is a new and unique topic. That’s preposterous!
Mr. Gibson certainly has a right to his opinion and surely he is free to promote any film he is in. My issue is this; he seems clueless about the deeply rooted ravages of slavery and racial oppression in addition to how that history still impacts us today psychologically, economically and socially. Gibson is an entertainer but at least he should be conscious or woke on some level; especially since he is worth a reported ten million dollars. That should buy him some knowledge.
We need to study and unravel the slavery experience to see how it still traumatizes us today. In fact the history of policing and “law enforcement” in this country are rooted in slavery and the ruling elites’ oppression of poor whites and people of color. These are facts Mr. Gibson obviously chooses to ignore. If he is going to promote his film at least do it in an intelligent manner within a accurate historical context.
As a people we have to avoid what I call exclusionary either or thinking; fixating on one thing and ex-ing out the other. We have the ability to discern and make choices. Obviously we have disposable income, we can choose how to spend it (or not) and decide what to spend it on (or not). We can see both films. I did. Or, we can choose not to support certain types of media at all. We can support both fictional and historical films!
While Gibson has the right to his opinion, the fact of the matter is, in Black and Blue he plays a stereotype, a Black male ghetto resident with as criminal record. He plays into the stereotype that criminality is rampant and pervasive in our communities.
The hero in the film is a Black woman who escapes the neighborhood by joining the Army, subsequently serving tours in Afghanistan, then after drifting around returns to New Orleans to take care of her dying mother. Following her mother’s death she joins the police force. So here we have the notion there are only two options available to Black people: a life of crime and dead end menial jobs or being part of the imperialist military/oppressive police!
That is exclusionary- either or thinking. We have to learn to use our divine gifts of imagination and creativity to visualize a life of success for ourselves and our people beyond the stultifying options presented in the media.
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Posted By: Junious Stanton
Wednesday, November 6th 2019 at 10:26AM
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