Posted on 08/04/2022 3:29:17 PM PDT by sphinx
The left’s obsession with centering everything on race and sex has reached a new and despicable low with an upcoming movie called “The Woman King.”
The “historical epic film” centers around the real African kingdom of Dahomey, which existed during the Scramble for Africa in the age of empires, around 1800 to 1904.
Viola Davis plays General Nanisca, leader of an all-female band of warriors known as the Dahomey Amazons, as she struggles against European attempts to conquer the kingdom....
The weirdest thing about this controversy surrounding the trailer is that the story of Dahomey is a genuinely interesting historical narrative....
Maybe I’m all wrong and this movie will dive into the scourge that the Kingdom of Dahomey represented in real life. But in our society shaped and molded by the left, where women and blacks often are depicted as blameless innocents only to be acted upon by evil white men, I’m not getting my hopes up.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
An interview with a couple of the culprits: Vanity Fair interviews re: The Woman King
If you are slow on the uptake, this is about (B)lack (W)omen. Just so you know. The promo materials for the film speak of "inspired by" and "based on" a true story. Well, the Dahomey Amazons were real. But then again, space is a real place to which men have boldly gone. That doesn't qualify Star Trek as an historical epic.
I am violating my own rule here. Sorry about that. A primary purpose in beginning the movie ping list was to nudge our discussions away from pure negativism and to encourage some sharing of the GOOD stuff that the film industry does manage to turn out. A secondary purpose, however, is to step our game in the culture wars. Highlighting good movies and shows is part of that. But so is criticizing the bad ones -- effectively criticizing, not just ranting. If the trailer is a fair indication, The Woman King is deep in "jump the shark" territory. Ridicule is the appropriate response. But swinging at air usually misses the target. We should know what we're talking about. I don't intend to pay to watch this movie, but if it gets any traction at all, I probably will watch it as an exercise in opposition research, if and when I can get it for free. In the meantime, I'll read reviews.
Point of emphasis: The Woman King hasn't been released. It will premier at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival) in September and will stream shortly thereafter. The professional critics haven't weighed in yet, at least that I've seen. I imagine some have seen private screenings but are under an embargo. Most probably haven't seen it yet.
The ruckus now is over the concept, pre-release interviews, and trailers. For what it's worth, the movie is getting slammed on Letterboxd and Reddit. Here and there, a few leftist morons speak up to say that Hollywood shouldn't be held to standards of historical accuracy. If leftists want to treat the Dahomey slave kingdom as Wakanda level fantasy wish fulfillment, they can. But I suspect the serious critics won't sign off so easily.
By the way, the film industry absolutely loves movies about slavery as long the slaves aren't (B)lack and the slaveowners aren't English or American southerners. In fact, there is a great love affair with slavers on just about every streaming platform right now. I refer, of course, to the Vikings, who were many things, including world-class slavers and slave traders. The film industry has no problem with that. Nor does it have a problem with viewing slavery in historical and cultural context when the setting is the Muslim world, or India, or China. That's all ok, just so long as there's not a confederate flag to be seen. Treating Dahomey slave catchers and slave merchants as sympathetic figures fits right in.
That said, if this film sees the light of day, Hollywood libs can STFU about Gone with the Wind.
A caution: the trailer may be misleading. Trailers often are. Note that the trailer shows Europeans in 18th century garb and a flotilla of 18th century European ships offshore, and then, much later, Europeans in perhaps late 19th century attire being assassinated by the Amazons. (This happened in the late endgame against the French.) The film also shows King Ghezo, played by John Boyega, who died in 1859. The battle scenes are mostly black on black, presumably depicting inter-tribal warfare. (Dahomey made its living via annual military campaigns to sweep up slaves from surrounding tribes; you might almost think they were Muslims, but they weren't. They had a native religion that was big on mass human sacrifice, which may or may not make it into the movie.) There are a couple of hundred years of very colorful history and a turbulent endgame compressed into the trailer.
My guess is that the movie will try to thread the needle on this "problematic" history, treating native customs with respect, mentioning a few details in passing, but magnifying the misdeeds of Dahomey's customers (European slave traders) to the nth degree. The British finally forced a treaty on Ghezo in 1852 to end the slave trade. Ghezo reneged on the agreement and resumed slave raiding just before his death (which may or may not have been an assassination.) Dahomey then blundered into slave raiding wars with neighboring French protectorates, and the French put a speedy end to that. The Dahomey Amazons were basically massacred when they ran into regular French troops.
The Dahomey Amazons could make a spectacular movie if it were done honestly. Their origins are a bit uncertain, but they eventually formed the King's bodyguard. They were recruited at a young age. They were highly professional (by African standards). They were well trained, disciplined, and highly indoctrinated. They became part of the regular Dahomey army fairly late, mainly because Dahomey's constant slave raiding wars had killed so many of the young men. By the 1840's, a third of Dahomey's army might have been female. By all reports, they were quite formidable in tribal wars, partly because of their discipline and training and partly because Dahomey traded slaves for modern weaponry and ammunition as well as luxury products, so the Dahomeys had a firepower edge against their upcountry neighbors.
This story could make a fantastic movie. Or it could be a clown show. The trailer suggests the latter, but we need to pay attention to the details when the movie is released.
A question for discussion: what in your opinion are the best movies about Africa during the Age of Imperialism? Since I get to go first, I get the low hanging fruit.
Zulu is a great movie. It treats the Zulus with great respect. But since Hollywood loves remakes, Zulu could certainly be revisited with a treatment more oriented to the Zulu perspective -- and, while we're at it, the perspective of the Boers and non-Zulu African tribes, who knew perfectly well that the Zulus would exterminate them if they got the chance. A lot of Africans died at Isandlwana fighting for the British.
I respect more than like Khartoum. The 1966 movie was designed around a personal contest between Charlton Heston (Chinese Gordon) and Laurence Olivier (in dark makeup, horrors!!!) as the Mahdi. If I did a remake, I'd fill in the backstory. The British had turned Egypt into a nominally independent client state, primarily in order to control the Suez Canal. Under British pressure, Egypt halted the slave trade down the Nile, which had been the primary sport and profit center for the Muslim tribes upriver since antiquity. A lot of sheiks were suddenly on Food Stamps. A Mahdi promptly appeared, preaching jihad against the infidel. The whole episode was, in truth, an incident in the suppression of the slave trade. That would be a useful perspective for a contemporary movie to tackle.
Other suggestions? The Ashanti stung the British a couple of times, enough for the British to recognize them as one of the warrior peoples of the Empire. And Ethiopia is full of potential legitimate dramatic potential. But I don't have enough detailed knowledge to suggest anything specific.
P.S. I do have some more suggestions for good/excellent non-woke movies to pass along, but I'll do that in a separate ping in the next week or so, since it doesn't really fit here. But as always, if you've seen a good movie or show recently that you would like to recommend to your fellow freepers, don't be shy. Not everything is woke. We should be supporting the good stuff as well as ranting about the bad.
Movie ping. Enjoy.
Ya know, the Brits handled those Amazons very roughly with fire and bayonet. I doubt the movie will show that...
Maybe buy her way out to go to a country she hates. Russia can keep him/her.
My understanding is that it was the French who finished off the Amazons. But yes. The (W)omen (W)arriors didn’t fare well against European regulars.
It’s so stupid now
ENSLAVED RATHER THAN SLAVE
the woke haters of western civilization always play word games
NEITHER RACISM NOR CAUCASIAN ENSLAVEMENT OF THE SOME OF THE NEGROID RACE IS THE ORIGINAL SIN OF HUMANITY SO MANY LEFT OR RIGHT WISH IT WAS
I have better ways to spend my time. Like watching the Grit Channel. Sure, they have a lot of commercials for trip-and-slip lawyers but I enjoy the scenery. And it is free since I cut the cable.
Yes it is. But on my good days, I am beginning to think that we are now past Peak Woke. We have a long way to go, but the left is doubling down on bullying and censorship because they know they've lost the substantive argument. They are now playing whack-a-mole, but the heretics are popping up with ever greater frequency.
The best way to help it bomb is to turn it into a joke that people will be embarrassed to admit to liking.
To do that, we have to know enough about the movie to hit the target.
Dahomey...isn’t that near Wakanda, ancestral home of the Dindu Nuffin tribe?
It’s now Burkina Faso.
So we can sue the hell out of the movie producers for hurting our feelings like Alex Jones got sued? Or does getting sued into oblivion for saying something offensive only apply to Alex, who’s been a target ever since the shrew Hillary started targeting him and big tech kicked him off their platforms?
That would depend on whether the movie is at least semi-honest, which is a possibility. The trailer may be misleading. I would be surprised if there wasn’t a Come to Jesus moment in the movie when at least some of the internal factions in the Dahomey court truly repent of slavery. I know how I’d script it if I wanted to tell an honest story.
By the way, surely I’m not the only person here who first met the Dahomey Amazons via Sir Harry Flashman’s misadventures in the slave trade? Surely????
So sick and tired of what these clueless perverts, freaks, prostitutes, etc have tobthink or say about anything
Dahomey don’t ya know me?
Its idiotic.
A woman cannot be a king.
Juxt like a man cannot be a queen.
I had never heard of the Sir Henry Flashman books. Sounds like an interesting series.
Burkina Faso is the former Upper Volta. Dahomey is now Benin.
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