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

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.