- Also Known As:
- Version:
- Languages:
- Length:
- 105 minutes (Uncut)
- Review Format:
- DVD
- Year:
- 1967
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Crime
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- Black police detective investigates a murder in a racially-hostile town.
- Themes:
- Advertising | Alienation | Compassion | Communism | Corporate Power | Courage | Curative | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Erotophobia | Ethnicity | Genocide | Grieving | Gynophobia | Identity | Justice | Loneliness | Loyalty | Materialism | Narcissism | Nostalgia | Personal | Personal change | Political | Political Correctness | Rationality | Republicanism | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Self-Esteem | Sexism | Sexual Repression | Snobbery | Solipsism | The State | Stereotyping | White culture | White guilt | White privilege | White supremacy
- Similar to:
The White Man’s Heaven is built on the corpses of People of Color
For a film purporting to be about alleged social progress in race relations, there are curiously few Black speaking parts on show here. Like all films made by Whites about White supremacy, the implicit claim is that Whites know best and that the White definition of racism is always going to be the correct one (Whites will listen to no other, in any case); deliberately evading the racism of such a world-view. (Whites are not happy to let the beneficiaries of pedophilia [pedophiles] define pedophilia nor the beneficiaries of burglary [burglars] define burglary, but are all-too-happy to let the beneficiaries of racism [Whites] self-servingly define racism: A clear conflict-of-interest that undermines the entire enterprise.)
“
They call me Mister Tibbs!”
People who can only think of themselves as White are poorly-equipped to understand Black people, since they also know so little about themselves. So this movie is really about a White Sheriff (brilliantly-played by Rod STEIGER) and his snail-like movement towards fully-embracing his humanity. It is the salvation of his soul - &, by extension, the crippled souls of all Whites (in works like Birth of a Nation) - that this film really concerns itself with (being a direct descendant of the White supremacy of that movie). But because this White concern is never reciprocal, the outcome is hard to care about because it never addresses why Whites are not already human to begin with.
In the Heat of the Night imagines it is about universal brotherhood (the Black detective played by the quietly-virile Sydney POITIER comes from the “City of Brotherly Love”), but never explains how his state-of-grace would, or could, ever be achieved by Whites who are never taught to practice such love, in the first place. POITIER’s strong presence has the strange effect of making the White males seem like contrite mummy’s boys; wallowing in the humid and emotionally-repressed climate of a southern gothic melodrama: An unadmitted White sexual anguish, of which the implications for White masculinity the White writers dare not pursue, in case they appear a) racist, b) sexually-jealous and/or c) homosexual. The underlying White fear here, of course, is that Blacks are somehow better than Whites, especially since Black people do not define themselves, primarily, by what they are not.
“
What kind of people are you? What kind of a place is this?”
The contrivances in the preposterous plotting would be more acceptable if the movie had anything insightful to actually say about the White problem. The social reconciliation here is as fake as the insincere claim that all things are now possible: A desperate thematic device to make Whites believe they can escape the trap of their culture and lead fuller lives. This inept, unrealistic film is designed to deepen White racial complacency (& Black mistrust of, & anger at, Whites) by presenting Whites as superior - even to their own natures - in the interests of a racial harmony that Whites have never sought: An alternate reality within which Whites project how they wish others to see them, as a vain means of running away from how they actually are seen. Only the political issue of White guilt is implied - and without others, the story becomes little more than an evasion of reality.
The audience is required to believe that a Black policeman would change trains in a Southern US state knowing full well he could be arrested for vagrancy by a police force he knows perfectly well to be White supremacist. (POITIER, himself, refused to come south of the Mason/Dixon Line for filming.) And that a racist sheriff would engage said policeman in a conversation before locking him up; thereby acceding that he is dealing with a human being and not just another Nigger.
“
What are you doin’ wearin’ White man’s clothes?”
In reality, this is more likely to be a Klan town, where a well-dressed Negro would be killed for such impertinence, as well as the temerity to act like he thinks himself the equal of any White man. The Black detective would be the hunted and not the hunter of this implausible narrative; meaning that the Whites here can only be emotionally-moving if one possesses the (Caucasian) luxury of knowing that one will never be at their (non-existent) mercy. (Proof that Black people risk their lives believing what they see in Hollywood movies.)
Moreover, the audience is invited to feel sympathy for a poor White who earns less than a Black; the former being doubly-poor in White eyes because the psychological wage of being a poor White is that at least you feel, somehow, better-off than a Black - even if just as poor. (After all, no White ever wishes they were born Black, no matter how anti-racist they claim to be, nor how rich their would-be Black parents could be.)
The always-excellent Lee GRANT has a small role as the wife of a murdered man who insists the Black detective investigate her husband’s murder - despite the small town’s racism. Although a contrived scene to demonstrate the White worship of White power, it does elicit the ultimate question about White nature: What kind of people are you?
The kind of question only an honest White or any Black could ever hope to answer truthfully - or even ask, in the first place. Many unacknowledged issues about the White need for White supremacy are raised but never explored: Money, sex, marriage, greed, guilt & power are the bedrocks of White social control, but they are elided in favor of an impossible friendship and a causeless respect that can gain Whites none of the material values they seek.
But, what if (in a far more likely scenario) the widow had demanded POITIER’s lynching for the wealth her husband brought to the town? Would he have survived the White solidarity (also well-conveyed in Fury) of an aimless, idle, compulsively-wicked and terrified people who can only come together as a mob?
Whites are a people trapped within the legend of their own greatness. The film cannot ignore this obvious reality, since there is no other way to explain the behavior of the Whites in it, but the movie refuses to dramatically engage with this theme. Whites cannot live-up to their claims of genetic superiority, yet cannot relieve themselves of the need to make such claims - like the schizophrenic trapped in his own delusions who, aging, cannot renounce them lest he admit his life has been an abject waste of time.
Because Whites do not wish to address their ulterior motives - to evade responsibility & guilt for them - they are continually left in a state of existential despair as to whom they are and whom they might be. This explains the supreme value Whites place upon nostalgia since it means never having to look forward and face, perhaps, a better future; while simultaneously creating a state of being permanently-trapped within the limits of an amoral history.
There is even here articulated the absurd claim of reverse racism: That when a Black man hates Whites for being racist, this is morally-equivalent to being a White man who hates Blacks for being Black. This implies that hate, in and of itself, is a bad thing, regardless of its reason for existing. As if women who hate sexists were somehow sexist; or, pedophile-hating parents somehow pedophilic.
Whites are clearly resentful of Black people being allowed to hate Whites for White supremacy; while - simultaneously - being able to do what Whites cannot: Evade the label ”Racist“. If White supremacy were egalitarian, as implied by claims of reverse racism, then few would complain about it. But, it is precisely its non-egalitarian nature that leads to Whites being justifiably-hated by Blacks; Whites then trying to use this White-created hatred as a self-fulfilling excuse to continue being racist.
To challenge such political-correctness would be to undermine the film one is watching; effectively alienating the very White audience White film producers hope to attract. This matches the ultimate rejection of reality here in that racism is not seen as an economic system for the sole welfare of Whites, since this would require Whites to move through the layers of denial, avoidance, shame & confusion to see a system that puts Whites at an economic advantage and all other ethnic groups at a disadvantage by creating “Affirmative Action for Whites”. (The film barely hints at the inevitable economic decline caused by the White supremacist tendency of hiring only the Whitest [not the best] so that businesses become as inbred in their practices as Whites are in their marriages.]
There is also no talk of the fact that the police exist to keep the peace and, therefore, to keep things as they are; hence, their being labeled institutionally-racist - they could not, realistically, be anything else in a racist culture. Also, little mention of the all-important Institutional Racism that supports this kind of film-making (despite nearly all of the Whites here being depicted as racist) and that without this racism most Whites would rarely be more than merely mediocre. Yet, the institutional power of big business is referenced throughout, without this discrepancy apparently troubling anyone. Nor is there much talk of the political pressures placed upon an elected sheriff who would want to blame a Black man no matter the evidence - if it were easier than finding the real culprit.
So, one has to wonder: What forms the White imagination? A mysterious Caucasian genetic force? A desperate attempt to conceal an inferiority complex? Or is it the White denial and White guilt that leaves this very question unanswered here? Instead, we are presented with White stereotypes (exhibitionist White trash, dumb deputies, hate quickly turning to love (an oddly-superficial metanoia) when a White man accused of murder is cleared by the Black detective, businessmen not serving Blacks, etc) rather than fleshed-out human characters. This helps conceal the fact that White supremacists in real life only intermittently make themselves so obvious, since there is little need for them to do so when the institutionally-racist nature of White culture is understood by all. It also serves to distance the film-makers from such White supremacy by suggesting racism is only a matter of the absurd behaviors of inbred physical grotesques, rather than a deeply-rooted fundamentalist conviction that exists as a latency in all Whites - ugly or beautiful.
The fact that there were few Black film stars, in any White-dominated country, when this film was made strongly suggests these characters are nothing more than scapegoats, thrown at a Black audience to atone for the White sins Whites lack the courage to renounce since White supremacy offers Whites so many advantages; being, for example, more likely to be employed (because of ones skin color) in so many Hollywood movies like this.
This is compounded by Whites in Northern US States focusing on those in Southern States to vainly occult the White supremacy of the North by cinematically-scapegoating imagined lesser Whites. Thus, the movie flatters Whites by its very existence; while evading the very myth of White superiority that the film hopes to strengthen in claiming Whites can be better than they really are - solely by making films like this. Whites are made to appear able to overcome their inbred racial hostility - all without the need to actually prove that any such thing has actually taken place. There are good and bad Whites, apparently - yet, in real life, they all benefit from a White supremacy of which very few Whites complain.
This movie has little to really say about generic race-relations because the political content is shallow and evasive. It is an absurdly-racist anti-racist movie (what else can you expect from White liberals) that works well as a murder-mystery thriller, but which Black people know - from their everyday experience - is complete codswallop in every other respect; the film, itself, being proof of the Institutional Racism the script pretends does not exist.
However, the verbal sparring between POITIER & STEIGER is well executed and prevents its candle from flickering-out entirely, but it is hardly surprising POITIER became tired of appearing in guilt-ridden White movies like this, where he was required to do little more than play the honorary White conscience and the token Black.
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