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| MLK facing a police mob at Edmund Pettis Bridge |
C & I saw Selma
last night, and it was a fine film in many ways. It celebrates a break-through
in the quest for civil rights for all Americans. It celebrates the battles and sacrifices
that success required in the face of the deep racism of Alabama and across the Deep
South. (Attention to those problems in the North would come later.) David
Oyelowo's portrayal of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the hero of the film
and true hero in American history, was very well performed.(I haven’t most of
the other best actor nominees this year, but it is hard to see how he could
have missed out. The Golden Globes were certainly right to nominate him.)
Playing a historical character of such charisma as Dr. King presents a terrific
challenge, and he met that challenge very well. Tom Wilkinson portrayed President
Lyndon Johnson, which, on a trivial note, raises the question of why two Brits
play the must play the roles of these two seminal American figures. (This is an
ongoing phenomenon. Wilkinson has portrayed Ben Franklin and former Secretary
of State James Baker, while Daniel Day Lewis portrays Lincoln. Meryl Streep as
Margaret Thatcher hardly seems even the balance of trade.) Wilkinson’s acting captured
LBJ only moderately well, but the portrayal of LBJ’s larger-than-life persona
was the least of the problems. The greatest problem with the film is betrayal
of truth in history.
I almost didn’t write this blog because Maureen
Dowd in the New York Times, David Kaiser in Time, and Elizabeth
Drew in the New York Review of Books
have all written appropriate criticisms of the misrepresentation of LBJ’s role
in these events. I was first alerted to the problem by this
NYT article. I recommend all of these for your consideration. LBJ worked
with King and the civil rights movement. These two leaders weren’t pals—each wary
of the other (and eventually a deep rift developed over King’s criticism of the
war in Vietnam). But in this cause, they were very much on the same team,
working from different perspectives, but the contribution of each was crucial.
LBJ was not an obstacle, but a player. And as the film portrays—and as any
sense of reality dictates—differences of opinions and clashes of personalities
and organizations (such as SCLC and SNCC) are inevitable and provide their own
drama within the movement. Some defend the decision to portray LBJ as an
impediment with the claim that a dramatic foil was needed, but the demagogue
George Wallace and Alabama racists provided more than enough in the way of
genuine bad guys to create the appropriate dramatic conflict. This libel (or
would a film be a slander?) of LBJ is unnecessary and disheartening. LBJ is a
figure of enormous complication and titanic flaws, but we don’t need to enhance
his flaws nor pass over his great accomplishments in civil rights. In addition
to making him an obstacle of civil rights, the film suggests that Johnson approved
the use of Hoover’s salacious material about King. False. This material—an audio
tape—was delivered to SCLC in December 1964 without Johnson’s knowledge or approval.
Johnson, like Kennedy before him and Nixon after him, feared J. Edgar Hoover. The extent that Hoover exercised such a free hand was based on the fear these
presidents felt about the material Hoover might have on them or their
associates with which he could harm them.
Does this distortion of history (the truth) matter? Isn’t
this just Hollywood? Yes, it does matter. And yes, Hollywood distorts history
on a regular and continuing basis. But here, as in many cases before, to
distort history not only does a disservice to unwary viewers (most viewers), it
diminishes the film by suggesting that the film has an agenda. In this instance,
the film, seems a reaction to Mississippi
Burning and others like it that over emphasized white leadership in civil
rights. In that light, this film seeks to portray the black actors as paramount
and the whites as resistant, from those whites passive like LBJ to those aggressive
like Wallace and the Alabama racists. To the extent that the distortion of
Johnson’s role diminishes the film—and it does—it diminishes our appreciation
of this crucial time and great accomplishment in American history. Hollywood
does teach (oh, heaven help us!), and when a film of this gravity and
significance fails in this regard—even partially, as the film gets a lot right—it
rends the garment of our shared history and national life. No film, no book,
can capture reality totally and with complete accuracy. But in the this film,
the deviation is all the more disheartening because of the importance of the
story told and the available historical record.
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| The Politician & the Prophet celebrate a collaboration that resulted in the signing of the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. |
Will filmmakers learn? Not as long as the money keeps
rolling in. In reading about Selma, I came upon discussions of another Oscar
nominee, The Imitation Game, the
biopic about the British genius and gay man, Alan Turing. As this
NYRB article demonstrates, Hollywood (which really messes with reality in biopics) couldn’t tell the
fascinating true story of this hero, either. This review,
by Alex von Tunzelmann in The Guardian,
points out that the film portrays Turing as committing treason (by failing to
reveal a Soviet spy at Bletchley Park), when he most certainly did not know the
man or of any such spying. As von Tunzelmann puts it: “Were the makers of The Imitation Game intending to accuse
Alan Turing, one of Britain’s greatest war heroes, of cowardice and treason?
Creative licence is one thing, but slandering a great man’s reputation – while
buying into the nasty 1950s prejudice that gay men automatically constituted a
security risk – is quite another.” Why these inventions? Apparently,
screenwriters believe themselves more capable and interesting than history.
The truth of history really is quite dramatic if you give it a try,
Hollywood.
