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. 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."