30 1 / 2012
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You see, George Lucas is a brilliant storyteller. Unfortunately, he only knows one kind of story: good vs. evil in a fantasy environment. Both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series underscore this fact, and have made him the icon that he is today. Red Tails, however, is not a space opera nor is it James Bond in the jungle. These are real people with real lives that went through an experience during one of our country’s many periods of war. The source material is rich with possibility and deserves proper respect.
This film delivers none of that.
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Red Tails: A Review (via mauricecherry
)
Interesting. Film historian Jacqueline Bobo said that when Speilberg adapted The Color Purple, his fascination with “Oliver Twist” shaped the film in ways that made the film about his concern with Twist, and less about the transformation of Celie. She goes on to say that in some of his shot choices in pivotal scenes Spielberg made TCP about the transformation of Mister, rather than the transformation of Celie. Again, this is important because the book IS about the transformation of Celie.
Which leads me to ask, what happens when White men act as mediums for Black narratives. Would a Black male or a director of any other race and gender had done it differently? If so how?
(via newmodelminority)
That was actually something my family and I discussed after the movie - the absolute lack of gravity given to the subject matter. We all came to the agreement that Red Tails was filmed as something of an action/adventure in which black people fight against mild forms of racism in order to give a tiny, tiny glimpse at black history. The result is completely white-washed.
The interesting thing about it, though, is that for all its failures - and it has many - for my money Red Tails is still one of the first movies about the dark and extended stretch in American history when black men and women were regarded as less than second-hand citizens that doesn’t hand the reigns over to a white character. A white character certainly helps, but he isn’t a man upon whom the story is centered. We don’t follow him as he combats racism on behalf of black people. There aren’t lengthy monologues about how hard this is for him and how much he admires black people for their strength. The story itself, while definitely told in a way that won’t make white people feel uncomfortable but superior (look at our stupid ancestors, wow, we’d never treat a colored guy like that!), at least revolves solely around the people it’s about.
Compare to The Help which is ostensibly about how the end of racism begins and ends with spoiled white girls. The film is much worse than the book. In the movie, the black women are less central to the story and have no real journey. In the book, on the other hand, the protagonist isn’t nearly as forward-thinking and is a brat who doesn’t want to help anyone but herself and somehow fumbles her way toward pseudo-enlightenment.
In the end, Red Tails stumbles quite a bit (from dialogue to the cheesy and uncomfortable application of villainy in a cartoon war). The storytelling misses the mark; we don’t have a war film or a historical film but a feel-good story that is based on true events but leaves thinking viewers with the sense that it was fluffed up in a way only a white person could manage to do to black history. But black men lead the story which isn’t something many white people are brave enough to do in any medium. That doesn’t fix the problems, but it’s worth noting. And to me, it was an awesome change of pace in a “one step forward, three steps back” kind of way.
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