- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Year:
- 2013
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Historical
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- A free man is abducted and sold into racial slavery.
- Themes:
- Alienation
- Christianity
- Compassion
- Destiny
- Emotional repression
- Empathy
- Friendship
- Humanity
- Identity
- Loneliness
- Loyalty
- Narcissism
- Personal change
- Self-expression
- Sexism
- Sexual Repression
- Solipsism
- Stereotyping
- White culture
- White supremacy
- Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
- Black Snake
- Mandingo
- Review Format:
- DVD
Divide & Conquer
Excellent film about how Whites got to be so White supremacist - the economic and psychological benefits so afforded. The creation of Western wealth is presented in such a matter-of-fact style that one becomes quickly convinced that Whites are so traumatized by their upbringings that they could never be anything other than violent European savages; looking for someone to blame for their own poor ethical choices. In this, the movie is a careful and full exploration of how Whites try to economically-pigeonhole Blacks into inferior social and intellectual positions in order to assuage the White fear of Blacks so created. This enables Whites to exploit Blacks more easily and helps prevent Blacks from being successful - which would make Whites resentful since it would prove Blacks equal.
What is so clever about this movie is that it details how Whites attempt to claim Blacks are fit only to be slaves; while living in permanent fear of slave rebellion - as absurd as sheep farmers living in permanent dread of their own flocks. Unlike actual livestock, Black slaves are the only property White slavers must keep under armed guard and whip (a tacit admission that slavery is neither natural nor normal); thereby trying to make the slaves feel the same fear of their masters as the masters feel for their slaves. The slavemasters here are as terrified of the hate they have engendered as Whites today fear Al Qaeda - and for the same reason.
The paradox here is that any Black anger over their ill-treatment is to be rigorously suppressed to ameliorate White guilt (in the same way Whites today claim Blacks play the non-existent Black
The craven hypocrisy of the guilt-ridden helps create the false empathy of those who care for Blacks, but only as one would care for the financial loss caused by a damaged possession - not for a fellow human being. The false distinction between good masters and bad masters is created that only the most naive and ignorant would accept as valid; making this movie a far superior indictment of White culture than the usual White whining about how life is so much better now for the Blacks whom Whites still despise.
The many peculiarities of White culture are perfectly reflected here in the White preoccupation with conflating the Personal with the Political, such that all relationships become automatically political - eschewing the personal. This leaves no time for personal, egalitarian or trusting relationships since White activity is then solely-concerned with the making of money; hence, perpetual White anger and frustration at the paucity of their personal lives. Whites here rape Blacks to demand the love they cannot obtain from within the confines of their emotionally-repressed culture, family & friends, then howl with indignant rage after discovering affection cannot be forced.
This is a movie of ideas rather than characters, whose characters embody those ideas and carry them forward into our minds. What would ordinarily be a dramatic failing works so well here because - although the guest stars get little chance to develop their characters - the ideas are so fundamental to human life that only a zombie could fail to be moved by them. The actors and concepts are all ably aided-and-abetted by the director (the next Stanley Kubrick?) and the sumptuous photography of beautiful locations set amid such White-created human misery.
In real life, the lesson for Blacks here is that Whites can never be trusted. All Whites benefit from a White supremacy they claim to disown, no matter the many unprovable protestations they make about either not being personally racist or about not all Whites being racially-prejudiced. Such claims are unprovable because no-one can prove a negative (Whites never say who the non-racists are, what they look like or how to spot one, anyway; making this claim mere speculation) nor can one actually define oneself by what one is not or what one claims not to be - that is, after all, to define oneself as nothing or as neuter. Whites have merely moved from alternately wallowing in self-loathing and guilt to simultaneously floundering in both: A self-indulgence that shows no sign of abating.
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