The white guy or the colored guy?
Posted on 01/22/2018 8:34:36 AM PST by C19fan
A school district in Wisconsin is mulling over whether to remove the classic Harper Lee novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” from its high school curriculum after a parental complaint.
Parent Tujama Kameeta wants the Monona Grove School District in Monona, Wisconsin town to remove the novel due to the “48 racial slurs directed at African Americans in the book.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thecollegefix.com ...
The white guy or the colored guy?
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is usually a middle school book.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS is hardly a "chick" book!
Control of education has long ago been surrendered to the faaaaaaaaaaaaaar left and even in the most elite/best private schools, the best of Western Lit classics/masters ( European and American ) is hardly ever taught/read now; sadly.
COMMIE CORE prescribed reading Obama's speeches ( GOD save us !), during his first term and ignored most books and speeches older than 5-10 years.
Back before the flood, when I was in school, reading lists, even in what is now called "middle school", were at a much higher level than what most places now require in high schools. Older books were written with a higher vocabulary, better grammar, and insights than the current crap. So of course they MUST be banned. Can't have anything that smacks of "WHITE PRIVILEGE"...don'tcha know.
Oh the horror! /s
I could be wrong but I think the person is a “he”. Of course, it’s so easy to tell with names like that, isn’t it?
When I worked in theater in an inner city years ago, black actors consistently put down the theatrical version of TKAM. It was insulting, racist, condescending - you name it. That it has provided work for actors for 50 years is never admitted. They hated poor Tom Robinson! I suppose they hated the brilliant Brock Peters as well...
What really got my goat was that remark about Wuthering Heights.
I once met Don Rickles. Indeed, he had a heart of gold.
Whatchu swatting at?
https://vimeo.com/153249121 (Just a couple minutes of Uncle Jemimas mash liquor ad)
Hemmingway DOES “stink”; except for THE SUN ALSO RISES...the ONLY good thing he EVER managed to write.
The same thing ( re your theatre story ) held true, for what some black radical morons said about old Hollywood movies, in the early '70s.
The latest "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" series, with the Mulatto Heathcliff, who couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag...that one? If so, I concur...it was unwatchable! And I've never liked the book nor the Olivier movie to begin with; however, I did give that latest version a look-see and couldn't abide with it at all.
A mulatto Heathcliff??? Rather, odd...
I will say I first was introduced to the story through the Olivier version and cried until no tears were left. I adore Olivier.
But when I read the book, which I also love, I was shocked and horrified at its endless cruelty and brutality. And why not? Emily Bronte was no idiot lass; she was a mystic, an intellectual and a fierce and brutal woman who endured everything from galloping consumption to rabid dog bite without blinking an eye! She was also the family’s cook which is another reason I adore her. And she put up no sh*t from employers who thought they could steam roll her, lol.
Looks more like PaJama, but you never know these days.
In the novel, Mr. Earnshaw finds the homeless boy Heathcliff described as a "dark-skinned gypsy in aspect", living on the streets of London and takes him in and eventually adopts him. I seem to recall other mentions in the novel of his dark complexion and dark or "black" eyes.
There was a film version in 1992 with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Heathcliff and Cathy that was pretty well done and includes the second generation story of the children of Cathy, Hindley and Heathcliff which wasn’t in the Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon version.
Interestingly Merle Oberon was herself part Sri Lankan and Māori, born out of wedlock in Bombay to a 12-year old girl and raised by her grandmother, who also was only 14 when she gave birth to her daughter, growing up thinking her mother was her older sister, something that Oberon kept a closely guarded secret.
Healthcliff simply wasn’t a mulatto despite his gypsy eyes - any more than Alexander Hamilton was. Yes, Merle Oberon seemed to be of mixed blood but that doesn’t make Heathcliff anything other than British. The Welsh often have very dark eyes as do the “black” Irish (of which my father and myself are descended from).
I wasn't saying he was mulatto, just that in the novel he is described as being dark, like a gypsy. I am not familiar with the version the OP was talking about but think I found it and it looks simply awful, truly awful, and not just because the actor who plays Heathcliff is black.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181614/videoplayer/vi4277052441?ref_=tt_ov_vi
Again, I liked the 1939 version but also the 1992 version.
I love Olivier is EVERTHING...except that role and in THE ENTERTAINER, which is an abomination.
Still and all, anyone having seen the Olivier version, which is the GOLD STANDARD, and then sees that latest one, where almost the entire cast MUMBLED, had the expressiveness of an Egyptian mummy, and the grace of Nancy Pelosi, wouldn't care for it at all.
This against her own culture.
Yes -- and no. That didn't reflect "the existing left wing views of that era." Rather, it was the attitude of well-off Southern Whites to the PWT of the era. And they didn't think of class-based condescension as an attack on their own culture.
Left-wing attitudes were more complicated back. Of course there were all those images of violence in the South on the news, and of course liberals and radicals were on the side of integration, but lefties were singing all kinds of folk songs about working people, so their views were more nuanced back then.
Interesting stuff about Oberon; some of which I knew, some of which I didn't.
I just listened through chapter 4 of Wuthering Heights this weekend.
It’s in the public domain.
OTOH...JANE EYRE is the Bronte ( Charlotte ) book I love. :-)
Why didn’t you like it?
I do like GOTHIC novels from Victorian/Edwardian England ( THE WOMAN IN WHITE, FRANKENSTEIN, NORTHANGER ABBEY, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY, THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, DRACULA, THE MOONSTONE, UNCLE SILAS, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, CARMILLA, VARNEY THE VAMPIRE, ARMADALE, anything by Dickens, and many others ), some of which were read to me by my grandmother...ALL of which I read/reread as I grew older and throughout my life.
I had to read WUTHERING HEIGHTS and never liked it; it just wasn't enjoyable.
That same same year, we had to read SILAS MARNER, which my grandmother had read to me, when I was younger and whilst many, in my class, had the grumbles at reading that book, I loved having to read it for myself. It's just a matter of what appeals to one.
And frankly, the whole Heathcliff/Cathy thing always has struck me as a maudlin soap opera/good girl yearning for the "bad boy"; oh YUCK!
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