Post by Captain Snark on Apr 11, 2015 15:08:57 GMT -5
I don't want to be one of those people who rail against "political correctness." The anti-PC crusade, I've always believed, embodies an eerie reverse political correctness in itself. Yet after seeing certain movies and TV shows, I've been unable to avoid thinking of that term. Like James Brooks' unconvincing comedy Spanglish (which didn't work because the Hispanic mother played by Paz Vega was unbelievably written). Or the 1977 miniseries Roots.
Roots was one of the first blockbuster miniseries, telling the story of Alex Haley's ancestors from an African kidnapped into Virginia slavery to freedmen in the Reconstruction era. Haley's book is a compelling epic, if partly plagiarized. But the TV version, produced by David Wolper, is the work of hacks. Yet it has the sanctity of "victimology," which puts it above criticism. (Another example of this is the miniseries Holocaust, which came out a year later. I haven't seen the latter show, to tell the truth, but I heard it was about as imaginative as its title.)
Scene after scene gets played to the rafters, and there's no stinting on cheap dramatic ploys. We're asked to believe that Ben Vereen doesn't know that his master is also his father, because his mother never told him, so we can have a phoney emotional climax when she finally tells him the truth. (In the book version, he's aware of the truth from his early childhood, which is what anyone with half a brain would expect.) A word to the wise: if you're a deserter from the Confederate Army being hidden by a slave, don't try to rape his wife or he may kill you--but of course the plot requires Doug McClure to be unwise. And it ends with a childish "empowerment" scene where the Negroes point a gun at evil Klansman Lloyd Bridges and tie him to a tree before leaving town. It mustn't look like they're running away, you see. As for production values, ABC spent more on Roots than the network had spent on any previous TV movie, but you'd never know it: it looks very cheap, especially the first episode set in Africa.
Granted that there are some remarkable performances from black actors like Louis Gossett, though Maya Angelou and O.J. Simpson give embarrassing performances even for non-actors. But the white cast is pretty embarrassing. I think in particular of Edward Asner, a brilliant actor as Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as the unpleasant German father in the previous year's miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. Here, however, he plays the slave ship's conscience-plagued captain as if he had a really bad hangover. It's one of the worst performances in the history of American television! (Of course, he won an Emmy.) Ralph Waite, better known as Pa Walton, is perversely miscast as the ship's hardened first mate.
Granted that the institution of slavery was an ugly chapter in American history and human history, and that past histories have often glossed over its horrors. I'm not denying that black Americans deserve to have their story told, but they also deserve to have their story told well, and it is not told well here. This material should have been handled in a far better way, and Wolper's 1979 sequel Roots: The Next Generations is actually better made in a lot of ways. (But Wolper went on to make turkeys like North and South.)
Back at the time, Pauline Kael, fashionable movie critic in The New Yorker, predicted that in the future movies would be divided into before and after Roots. (She had a weakness for semi-educated, attention-grabbing overstatement, as when she compared the premiere showing of Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris to the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring ballet.) Well, Pauline, I think I can say you were wrong. Even as miniseries go, Roots can't hold a candle to Lonesome Dove!
Roots was one of the first blockbuster miniseries, telling the story of Alex Haley's ancestors from an African kidnapped into Virginia slavery to freedmen in the Reconstruction era. Haley's book is a compelling epic, if partly plagiarized. But the TV version, produced by David Wolper, is the work of hacks. Yet it has the sanctity of "victimology," which puts it above criticism. (Another example of this is the miniseries Holocaust, which came out a year later. I haven't seen the latter show, to tell the truth, but I heard it was about as imaginative as its title.)
Scene after scene gets played to the rafters, and there's no stinting on cheap dramatic ploys. We're asked to believe that Ben Vereen doesn't know that his master is also his father, because his mother never told him, so we can have a phoney emotional climax when she finally tells him the truth. (In the book version, he's aware of the truth from his early childhood, which is what anyone with half a brain would expect.) A word to the wise: if you're a deserter from the Confederate Army being hidden by a slave, don't try to rape his wife or he may kill you--but of course the plot requires Doug McClure to be unwise. And it ends with a childish "empowerment" scene where the Negroes point a gun at evil Klansman Lloyd Bridges and tie him to a tree before leaving town. It mustn't look like they're running away, you see. As for production values, ABC spent more on Roots than the network had spent on any previous TV movie, but you'd never know it: it looks very cheap, especially the first episode set in Africa.
Granted that there are some remarkable performances from black actors like Louis Gossett, though Maya Angelou and O.J. Simpson give embarrassing performances even for non-actors. But the white cast is pretty embarrassing. I think in particular of Edward Asner, a brilliant actor as Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as the unpleasant German father in the previous year's miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. Here, however, he plays the slave ship's conscience-plagued captain as if he had a really bad hangover. It's one of the worst performances in the history of American television! (Of course, he won an Emmy.) Ralph Waite, better known as Pa Walton, is perversely miscast as the ship's hardened first mate.
Granted that the institution of slavery was an ugly chapter in American history and human history, and that past histories have often glossed over its horrors. I'm not denying that black Americans deserve to have their story told, but they also deserve to have their story told well, and it is not told well here. This material should have been handled in a far better way, and Wolper's 1979 sequel Roots: The Next Generations is actually better made in a lot of ways. (But Wolper went on to make turkeys like North and South.)
Back at the time, Pauline Kael, fashionable movie critic in The New Yorker, predicted that in the future movies would be divided into before and after Roots. (She had a weakness for semi-educated, attention-grabbing overstatement, as when she compared the premiere showing of Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris to the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring ballet.) Well, Pauline, I think I can say you were wrong. Even as miniseries go, Roots can't hold a candle to Lonesome Dove!