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. 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.