Whitewashing in movies: French edition

[salinea]

So yesterday, I went to the movie theater (to watch Princess and the Frog, which was good, btw, nice songs); and I saw an ad for one of those big historical dramas that French cinemas like so much, called "L'Autre Dumas" (The other Dumas); about Alexandre Dumas; and his relationship with one of his writing collaborator/ghost writer Guillaume Maquet. Gerard Depardieu plays Alexandre Dumas.

In case you're wondering "so, what?", this is a picture of Alexandre Dumas:
Dumas was a little bit Black, you see. Grandson of a Black slave from Saint Domingue aka Haiti. Yeah.
Funnily enough I never learned that one in any of the classes at school.

For added irony, the French word for "ghostwriter" is the same word as the French N-word. (Yes, people keep using it widely in the media without wondering if it might offend anyone). So all the synopsis are talking about it as the relationship between (white) Alexandre Dumas and his "N-word" with a heavy connotation of "and his slave". (One article I saw, not about the movie, but about a book on the same subject re-edited for the occasion uses the sentence: "L’ironie de l’Histoire veut qu’à l’heure où la France s’apprête, en 1848, à abolir l’esclavage trime dans les soutes de Paris un nouveau type d’esclave, le « nègre littéraire »." = "The irony of History wills that at the time when France, in 1848, is on the verge of abolishing slavery, a new type of slaves is working in the holds of Paris." Yeah, really. Ghostwriting = exactly like slavery! *facepalm*). Which, interestingly, back in 1845, was exactly the sort of word games a Pamphlet against Dumas on the subject of ghostwriting by Eugene de Mirecourt, who really liked to use racist language against Dumas, and for which Dumas even got him condemned. Which, it gets worse, according to the wikipedia is even where the etymology of this particular use of the word "nègre" in French comes from. Oh, for fuck's sake!

Are they really making a movie about Dumas and ghostwriting without addressing the context of racism that shaped the whole controversy? Or are they going to address the controversy blindingly ignoring the irony of what the fact having a white actor playing a biracial historical figure means about racism in contemporary France? Either way, this is full of fail.

ETA: Two articles in French criticising the whitewashing as well.

Comments

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

I knew Dumas was bi-racial because I looked him up back when I was reading him heavily--not sure why everyone is flipping out because no one ever took them by the shoulder and told them. :P Information exists, if only folks would care to look for it.

*snerks* I had to make a site for him back in the day, for a web design class in high school. For the layout, I'd vectored this image, then photoshopped Dumas's face over the king's and given the cows musketeer ensembles. They were credited as "les trois moooo-squetaires." XD

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

hahaha, you make a good point I guess. I don't know that much about writers' life in general. Except those I do. Hmmm. I guess there are some writers' whose life details are more widely known that others though.

HOLY FUCKING COW. Err, did you get a good grad?

Pt. 1

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the more I think the details known about a famous writer's life may have to do with the works completed. More is probably known of the late J.D. Salinger than of Dumas. Both were celebrities and are still widely read, but the highly prolific writers such as Dumas tend to be given less attention toward personal habits and more toward their many published (and sometimes unpublished) works. The very most the average reader seems to know about Dumas is that he was a lover of excesses, but then that fact adheres to the resplendent manner of his works, so. ;)

However, to refute that notion too, American Psycho is a novel that's widely read and highly esteemed, yet I'm not sure how many readers know that Bret Easton Ellis is homosexual. *shrugs* And maybe the fact of Dumas's heritage and other details of his person were more commonly known nearer to his day, when reading was not so often kicked aside in favor of TV.

I'm pretty sure I received a good grade for that project--but that was, oof, three years ago now. Jesus.

Pt. 2

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I had originally meant to thank you for posting this, but I've just been so battered by work in the past week that I've been neglecting many things. When I read your post, I almost couldn't believe it was true. And while it's tempting to laugh at the awful pun, it's done in the bad taste of a clueless child who wants to say something crude but doesn't know what sort of repercussion to expect, and that's what makes it hard to respond to. That's often the trouble with racism, too, really. It's not put into people's heads by reason. In fact, it's almost always handed down by parents and superiors, if not peers. And since it's not born of logic, it can't really be exorcised by logic, either. Which is why so many American public schools with dense white populations really work double-time to "teach" kids to not be racist, as if it's going to make a difference. Trying to teach people how to think and feel is akin to thinking you can teach someone to swim by giving them floaties and dropping them in the middle of the ocean. Can't really do anything with them on, but you're not going to drown that way, so why take them off? You can, however, teach them racism in such a fashion, but since the people pushing equality must be more assertive and have a better understanding of what equality means and what the methods toward it should accomplish, even cookie-cutter middle-America ain't doin' too good, to borrow their vernacular.

I've never had trouble qualifying racism and picking it out, nor have I had to struggle against falling for the "allure" it maintains for providing a means to further categorize the world. As I remarked to a friend, it's about as edifying as believing in Santa Claus, which is why I don't understand how it manages to be so dynamic and wide-spread. Maintaining a racist stance is like eating fatty foods, except that a slice of chocolate cake at least gives a great deal of pleasure and sense of satiety to a chocolate-lover. I guess if you're a true sadist, racism is like that, too. And if you're just a racist person, you're probably too afraid even to wonder what made you that way, or you just don't care or recognize the fault. I was quite lucky, having been home-schooled initially, to not absorb those notions from my peers at an impressionable age, and was even more fortunate furthermore that my parents and mentors weren't bigots.

When racism appears on the world stage, though, it's a whole different thing entirely from being called something derisive by a school-mate, where, depending on circumstances such as country, region, age, etc., someone is likely to put the offending party in their place. In the light of such scandals as Avatarfail, or whatever it's being called, crowds of fools are scrambling to say the right thing, even if they don't know how deeply they believe it, and people who should be discouraging this are encouraging it, because it's the moral thing to do. But is it really wise to give those who wave the flag of moral superiority the privilege to say anything without worry? Because it's for the greater good, because they mean well, because it would be "siding with racism" to put scrutiny on their claims? Arguments against racism are often conducted in the same throw-logic-to-the-wind manner as acts of racism themselves. It should be in your heart, they say. But if that were true, I wouldn't find migrates from my part of the country making strikingly racist remarks when they profess their hearts are over-brimming with sympathy for all people.

Pt. 3

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

For example, I was discussing the atrociously low rate of black male literacy (6%, at the time we were discussing it) in the country with my boss. This is due to stark differences in what the late David Foster Wallace called SWE (Standard White English) and SBE (Standard Black English). By the time we start learning grammar and spelling in public schools, we have already internalized most of the grammar rules that will be clarified and practiced in written form through junior high. Many children who come from standard black families, however, have internalized different grammar rules. Is it fair to tell them their English is wrong and give up within a year or two? And then tell them, at each opportunity for the rest of their lives, that it would be pointless to try, that they are doomed to achieve even less than mediocrity, that they are losers? And it all comes back to a crucial decision to not educate them in the dialect they would need to succeed academically for the rest of their lives. DFW actually wrote a great essay that talks about some of this. The title of the essay slips my mind, but it's part of the collection that was published as a book entitled Consider the Lobster.

Black females typically have it a little easier, because the education system goes through a bit more trouble for their sake. Because they're minorities, descendants of slaves, and they're women. They are a million victim roles congealed into one. To not expend a little more effort for them would not be excusable in the eyes of the general public.

There was a program that was sort of being talked about in Southern California for a while, but this was a year ago that I was hearing about it and I haven't heard a peep since. It proposed starting black kids on SBE in schools before transitioning them into SWE at around age seven or eight. Toward the end of elementary school, they would be entirely switched to SWE, which they should, by then, be nearly as proficient in as their white peers.

A co-worker overheard us and responded by falling into a vitriolic rant on how the "black dialect" is murdering English as a language, by putting its slang in the heads of impressionable teens and breeding such disgusting things as hip hop and rap music, and generally debasing America, if not the world, and turning people stupid. Therefore, its appearance in schools could only be ultimately devestating for the entire nation. Which is funny, because this was one of the most stupid speeches I'd ever heard, coming from a young white man from the Midwest who is one of those people ignorant enough to say, in a most genuine tone, "I don't see color."

Pt. 4

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

The issue here is not about whether one sees color or, in this man's case, how often he attends church. Nor is it about moral superiority, about who anyone else would've cast as Aang, or about whether I like rap music or enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire. This is not about having sympathy for the "unlucky" people of color we know.

Speaking as a white American girl who spent her childhood entirely sheltered and her adolescence and teens mired in fiction and pop culture, and the first few years of her adulthood working scary hours at S****y Sandwiches & Salads while struggling to eke out an existence in a faraway state, and who happened to be one of maybe three white employees in a staff of twenty-two, I've never had trouble keeping friends of entirely different upbringings and ethical backgrounds. The only friends I've really had trouble keeping were the ones whose brains just worked differently. Often this was a case of one of us, usually them, being a more prone to act on emotion and the other to act on logic, making one seem cold and the other hot by comparison, etc. etc., and all of those other things that are generally hard to work past until you're an adult and have the first-hand experience that teaches you to consciously avoid hurting people's feelings without being cool or terse. Many of my best friends here are black, Mexican, Asian, or a mix of two, sometimes with a little white tossed in. I've heard racial terms thought offensive used an endearments; I've sometimes used them myself. The people who encourage you to speak with them that way most often seem to be trying to soften the blow of a word that could be used against them in another scenario. That I understand and comply with. I also understand that many people not of my race are not comfortable with that sort of behavior, and with them I refrain.

Like I said, not being racist is not really, inherently, about the aforementioned things. What it's really about is loving people of other or mixed backgrounds without bias, or, if you don't know any, not having to doubt your potential to treat them with all deserved respect and kindness. It's about not believing that bigotry is well-founded because it's not, not because it would be immoral to. Of course it's immoral, but it's also, more importantly, just absolute, fucking stupidity.

Statements of genuine giddiness over shiny Hollywood (a scum hole in and of itself, btw, so it always surprises and amuses me when people expect less than pithy, derivative, shallow crap to come out of its studios but whatever) trailers are rained upon with assertions of moral superiority. Yep, people just love to wave that certificate around, even when doing so gets nothing really done. So it really makes me smile when someone succeeds in bringing something that is irrefutably an instance of a blatantly racist agenda to the light. Anybody can talk, but when the one talking actually GETS IT, and can do it like this? That's my bliss. I so want to buy you a cocktail, love.

Catie, author of this monstrous, meandering series of comments of no scholarly value whatsoever resides in San Diego, California. She is a student of paralegal law and the doting owner of mischievous black cat.